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Is Trump Pursuing Innovation at Any Cost?
I’ve been having a crazy thought the last couple of months that I couldn’t quite capture. Then my friend Saša hit me with a similar idea this morning.
It’s kind of scary, and it goes like this:
Trump believes that economic growth will heal all wounds in the country.
He believes it’ll fix our position in the world, add jobs, fix crime, and generally make America great again.
He thinks that once America is feared, respected, and 100% acknowledged as the world leader again, the people will be happy, stop fighting with each other, and we’ll see a period of extreme prosperity.
Because of this belief, he’s basically looked for every single thing he can find that—according to him—is slowing down American innovation and prosperity.
That means the EPA, high taxes, our businesses going overseas, and regulation in general.
It might also mean being involved in an active, innovation-spawning war—not like Iraq or Afghanistan. Something scarier and more visible. Something that spawns companies to innovate in the war space, which will speed up technology coming to the public sector.
In short, he might be removing all regulations and taking us to war because it’d be fantastic for the economy. And he knows that if the economy grows, we start innovating like crazy, and we become the de-facto leaders of the world again, everyone will completely ignore the bad ways we got there.
I’m not saying this is what he’s thinking—or even that if it were, that he’s going about it in the right way. I see several things he’s doing actually harming such a plan.
Gutting the EPA
Ignoring global warming
Defunding planned parenthood
Killing net neutrality
(I’ll probably think of several more)
But then again, maybe those harm the country and planet long-term, but don’t stop such a plan from working.
The Oops Theory
Another possibility is that he’s just a wrecking ball doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, but that those will have the same effects as if he were executing the theory above.
So the economy opens up massively and some good things happen, and he thinks it was because of his deft hand in a thousand different matters, when in fact it was more of an accident than anything else. In short, he creates WWII like conditions through buffoonery rather than by design.
Summary
Trump might be playing a very specific game of aggressive economic growth.
The plan could be to make the U.S. extremely dominant, even if that means removing all safety checks on the economy and taking us to war.
The anticipated result would be growth not seen since the late 40’s and early 50’s, and Americans praising him despite many disliking his methods.
Again, I’m not saying he’s doing this, but in certain lights, at certain angles, it kind of looks that way.
Notes
Thanks to Saša Zdjelar for engaging with me on this topic.
For all the trolls who might accuse me of thinking this is a good idea, I voted for Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Take your hate somewhere else.