Theft at the Public Till
present in the context of history. Instead, we are lulled by a stream of surface facts, made numb, passive, and unreceptive by a surfeit of data that we lack the time and the resources needed to turn it into valuable information. Since the arrival of the industrial age, we have had a terrific word: “more.” It really worked for everything. When our roads became crowded, we built more roads. When our cities became unsafe, we hired more police officers, ordered more police cars, and built more prisons. We built more schools for our children when we found they couldn’t read. We solved our problems by producing endless products in greater numbers. Now, however, the word that worked so well for a hundred years is creating the problems it once solved. More police officers don’t necessarily mean less crime. More hospitals don’t mean better health care. More schools don’t mean a higher quality of education. More data does not mean better decisions. In fact, the opposite has become the case. In our desire to educate, we’ve penalized imagination and rewarded conformity. In our desire for revenues, we’ve en- couraged deterioration by taxing owners for building improvements instead of penalizing them for letting buildings dilapidate. In our desire for mobility, we’ve scarred the landscape with highways that are always too narrow for the increase in traffic they generate. In our search for simplicity, we’ve created overly complex and expensive products that few can operate, let alone fix. We have attempted to solve all problems with “more” solutions. We have asked ourselves only questions that produce “more” answers. “More” is not an answer in today’s world. If anything, more is part of our problem. More just doesn’t cut it as we go through perhaps the most amazing transformation the world has ever seen: from a production based way of life to an information based one. This transformation has created an American economy vastly more complex than it used to be. Our infor- mation age economy is more like an evolving ecosystem than a predictable “economic engine.” Like an ecosystem, an information age economy is far too complex to be designed. It must evolve spontaneously. Who planned the rainforest? Who planned the personal computer industry? In both market economies and natural ecosystems, “unmanaged” competition and
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