Collective Conscious

Bal­loon Juice yes­ter­day took an early account of a poten­tial con­ser­v­a­tive search for a Chi­nese Hitler, leader of the new Evil Empire:

Yes­ter­day, two promi­nent neo­cons, [David Brooks] and Niall Fer­gu­son, both started in on this (I’m pos­i­tive they coor­di­nated these things).

The Brooks piece, as Bal­loon Juice notes, can be con­strued as a call for a “a Chinese-​​style government-​​directed economy”:

That would mean con­nect­ing dis­crete poli­cies — edu­ca­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, fund­ing for basic research — into a sin­gle long-​​term nar­ra­tive. It would mean cre­at­ing regional strate­gies, because inno­va­tion hap­pens in geo­graphic clus­ters, not at the national level. It would mean find­ing ways to tamp down con­sump­tion and reward pro­duc­tion. The most prag­matic guide for that remains Michael Porter’s essay in the Oct. 30, 2008, issue of Busi­ness Week.

The essay itself harps on the famil­iar, but not nec­es­sar­ily true, claim that the edu­ca­tional advan­tage in coun­tries like China is a long-​​term out­come that our lim­ited plan­ning capac­ity nec­es­sar­ily can’t produce:

Instead of mount­ing a seri­ous pro­gram to pro­vide access to higher edu­ca­tion, like the G.I. Bill and National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion pro­grams of ear­lier years, Con­gress grand­stands over the rate of endow­ment spend­ing in our best universities.

My imme­di­ate reac­tion to this is that many of our “best uni­ver­si­ties” are either pri­vate or largely state-​​funded. Despite the ques­tion­able logic here, Porter’s essay goes on to call for “direct[ing] our spend­ing to pri­or­ity invest­ments that also put money into the econ­omy, such as edu­ca­tional assis­tance and logis­ti­cal infra­struc­ture, rather than tax rebates.”

I think this is a great idea, as do oth­ers. Yet, oddly, it brings the “con­ser­v­a­tive” eco­nomic train of thought full-​​circle to two eco­nomic reform­ers in a sim­i­lar line — FDR and Hitler him­self. Go figure.