Well, the election is finally here. After all the national hyperfocus on McCain vs. Obama, I hope it will soon be time to focus on actual policy. In these times, even the ground rules for discussion are up for grabs. It will be difficult to have an intelligent policy discussion in this country if no one trusts one another, to say nothing about implementing such a policy and having people faithfully follow it. Some of the questions are:
o how do we restore trust in the system?
o what regulations can help?
o if the system will be restructured, what are the goals?
One vivid example of the failing trust is the financial system where there is currently a breakdown of confidence. The banks won’t lend to each other; the populace has little faith that the government is handling the crisis well; and no one knows when it will be safe to get “back in the water” and have a growing economy.
Another example of the lack of trust is in science policy. How do the populace in general and policy makers in particular know which scientists to trust?
This just begs the question: how do we get people in general to trust one another and policy makers in particular?
I've been thinking lately that life seems to be getting more "evolutionary soupy". It's a bit like being around during the dying of the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs in this case might be the current holders of power in government, in the financial world, and in the scientific world. By "evolutionary soupy", I mean that it is a time of rapid evoution of new structures, e.g. blogs, social networks, and scientific institutions that push on the old guard rules (key phrases: new kind of science, perimeter insititute, complex systems, edge foundation, union of concerned scientists, new scientist).
