http://hnn.us/articles/5247.html
The Similarity is Flawed Industrial Policies Driving Flawed
Foreign Policies
The problem about economic motivations is that political leaders
are so often economically incompetent. A truly progressive
technology tends to be comparatively disengaged from government.
One does not call a lawyer in, and pay him a fee, to solve a
problem which one can fix with a design change. Industries become
politically engaged only when they are beginning to run out of
choices. This means that a politician who essentially "takes
counsel of his bribes" is likely to be proceeding on faulty
industrial intelligence.
Japan did have options at a point. Certainly, once it was in
Manchuria, Japan had abundant gross resources. At a certain level,
this would have been a good time to cease advancing and give the
world time to forget its annoyance. Japan could probably have
gotten away with Manchuria, if it had not tried to raise the
stakes by pushing down into China proper and Southeast Asia. The
push into Southeast Asia rested on essentially two materials-- oil
and rubber, neither of which was required in huge quantities
(unlike coal, for example). In the course of the ensuring World
War, one or other of the combatants were forced to synthesize both
from more abundant materials. See Arthur Squires, cited
below, for a discussion of the American synthetic rubber program.
Japan built the two biggest and most advanced
battleships in the world, the Yamato and Mushashi. The same skill
and steel could equally well have gone into economic autarchy.
Postwar Japan has taken a leaf from the Dutch and begun to
expand into the sea. The Japanese "metabolic school" architect
Kenzo Tange's unbuilt _Tokyo Bay Project_ (1960) may be
considered as a kind of "counsel of perfection in this matter,
comparable to the Zuider Zee (see Banhan, cited below, for
details). This is, again, something that could have been done
earlier.
The American oil industry has long since ceased to be
technologically progressive. Its most advanced oil exploration
techniques are essentially cribbed from medical electronics
practice. Its refineries are rusting behemoths with persistent
environmental problems, which sometimes explode for reasons
amounting to gross negligence. The proposal to drill in the Arctic
National Wildlife Reserve, is, in engineering terms, a kind of
declaration of intellectual bankruptcy. It is expensive, it will
take time, and it will not provide a long-term solution.
Thoughtful engineering opinion runs to increasing the efficiency
of automobiles as an immediate measure. The Japanese automakers
are leading the way, just as they did in the last oil crisis,
because they place the least reliance on being able to pull
political strings in Washington. It is entirely feasible, through
technological means, to go beyond oil, and consequently, beyond
middle-east politics as they are presently understood. The
automobile is long overdue for fundamental rethinking, on a whole
series of grounds, ranging from highway fatalities to traffic
congestion, to emissions, to oil imports, to flood control
and soil conservation (pavement run-off). In fact, detailed and
practical proposals were worked out in the 1960's (see
Tomorrow's Transportation... and Metrotran-2000, cited
below). Instead, we merely project our internal problems onto the
Arabs.
What impresses me about the present situation is the sheer extent
to which government policy is driven by the technologically
obsolete, not just with respect to oil and automobiles, but with
respect to a whole range of technological issues, most notably
copyrights and patents. Similarly, I am concerned by the the
extent to which the most technologically progressive elements are
writing political manifestos along the lines of "when in the
course of human events..." The computer techies are becoming
increasingly interested in the Boston Tea Party as a
precedent. That is dangerous. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
precipitated a revolution in Russia, growing out of tensions which
already existed in Soviet society. Do not exclude the possibility
that it could happen here.
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Tomorrow's Transportation: New Systems for the Urban
Future, U. S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development, Office of
Metropolitan Development, Urban Transportation
Administration, Washington D.C., 1968 (Library
of Congress catalog number 68-61300)
Metrotran-2000: A Study of Future
Concepts in Metropolitan Transportation
for the Year 2000,
Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories, Inc., by:
Robert A. Wolf, Transportation Research Department, CAL No.
150, October 1967
Amey Stone and Carol Vinzant, Lean, Green Tips for Energy Savings
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2004/nf2004061_9370_db016.htm
Arthur M Squires, _The Tender Ship: Governmental Management
of Technological Change_, Boston : Birkhäuser, 1986, ISBN:
081763312X
Reyner Banham, _Megastructure, Urban Futures of the Recent Past_,
Harper and Row, New York, 1976