Hello all,
Welcome to my blog. It's been a while since I've written so bear with me. I've been pondering about a lot of problems that many societies around the world face. Mainstream news reports on banking crashes, lack of market confidence, capital shortages, etc. However, when one considers the individual without the institution, his perspective may change and he(or she) just might see different, more fundamental problems. Among these include lack of shelter/water/fire/food, energy crises, deprivation of educational resources, population explosions, and the shortage of medical supplies. Of course, this is to say nothing of senselessly brutal regimes of genocide and slavery.
A reader with fair knowledge of global trends might start associating problems of the "institutional" variety with the United States and "the First World," while associating the more disturbing problems of the "individual/fundamental" variety with the continents of Africa and South America. A keen reader may also acknowledge that China use to face more "individual" problems, but is now facing "institutional" problems. Indeed, these are often convenient associations. I must concur with this generality and many of the people of much of South America and Africa have been dealt a rather unlucky hand. Nevertheless, I intend to show that the First World's institutional problems stem from the same source as the Third World's individual problems. Furthermore, I intend to pessimistically demonstrate that in time the United States and the West could have a standard of living comparable to the Third World today and optimistically demonstrate that the Third World of tomorrow could have a standard of living comparable to the United States today; although I'll admit that neither extreme is too likely in the near future.
This assertion might seem absurd at first, but the foremost problem of our time can explain how civilizations rise and fall. That problem is...
"How do we get individuals to innovate and invent?" The key to a stable civilization has always been individual innovation and self-reliance. Once people rely on institutions too much, they endow them with too much power. Then, those institutions fall. More to come.