On 9/19/06, Eric Swanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think he is right that we won't do anything unless there is a sense of
> national goal and/or crisis.
Which in a nutshell captures two reasons that I'm pessimistic that we
will behave rationally.
1) Both politics and economics, our main decision-making structures,
are optimized for time periods that are slow compared to this
phenomenon (among others). Because the year-to-year variation is
small, it's going to be difficult to motivate any urgency. (In short,
"boiling frog".)
2) We don't have any experience having an international goal, but
especially in the light of point 1 and a system that heavily values
national soevereignty, it will be difficult to prevent major
defections from any serious process.
So, while we have still may have time to behave rationally in such a
way that costs can be limited and rather small, unfortunately we don't
seem to have the capacity to act rationally in the appropriate way.
mt
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