
Entrepreneur’s Letter to Obama: Give Americans a Great Challenge to Pursue - MarlonPro
http://technori.com/2013/01/3089-an-entrepreneurs-letter-to-president-obama-give-americans-a-great-challenge-to-pursue/
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mchusma
Building a car in 10 years that costs under 20k and 100mpg is a yawn-worthy
goal. If that were seriously the Country's 10 year goal, do you think that
would inspire anyone? I thought this letter was a pretty good example of
people's "Big Vision" stuff being actually pretty small and extrapolating from
current trends.

His examples are pretty flawed. A more direct example would be "Other
presidents have gone to war, you should too". In addition to the war on terror
and war on drugs, of course.

Here are two good/crazy government 10 year goals: 1) Eliminate the need for a
legislature by using technology to collect votes. 2) Do more for less - find a
way to provide today's services for 1/10th the cost. That way if you want to
keep spending you can spend it on new stuff.

~~~
youngerdryas
A car with triple the gas mileage is yawn-worthy? How out of touch are you? Do
you not believe emissions are a serious problem?

1) Eliminate the need for a legislature by using technology to collect votes.

I think you have a serious misunderstanding about government and complex
systems in general.

2) Do more for less - find a way to provide today's services for 1/10th the
cost.

Sounds great but is a total fantasy. Wildly unrealistic goals are of no use to
people that actually get things done.

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tomjen3
Yes it is boring, it is doable and it doesn't involve the country.

In the sixties getting a man to the moon was an acceptable challenge. More
than 50 years later we shouldn't waste ten years of our countries best and
most brilliant minds on something like merely better millage.

How a commercially viable replacement for oil, that can be made in the US in a
way that doesn't produce CO2? That would do a lot to improve the world is a
worthy goal.

~~~
youngerdryas
A couple billion Chinese and Indians are moving up in the world and they
aren't going to be riding bicycles. I am as big a fan as any of the moon
landing but they didn't even send a geologist. A much better value is had with
unmanned probes. Maybe it isn't as sexy but it is infinitely more sensible
without a Sputnik type catalyst.

~~~
tomjen3
It wasn't supposed to be smart, it wasn't to gather scientific evidence, it
wasn't to do any of these things.

It was to show the world, once and for all, that communism wasn't better than
capitalism.

For that you need a big hairy audacious goal. Better millage isn't one.
Cutting the arabs out of the oil deal, saving humanity as we gather the
resources needed for a final jump into our future as a spacefaring species --
that is a goal worth of us.

~~~
youngerdryas
>It was to show the world, once and for all, that communism wasn't better than
capitalism. For that you need a big hairy audacious goal. Better millage isn't
one.

I understand and it achieved its purpose (yay freedom) but now is different.
Freedom has won, commies are laughed at, though mildly problematic, and the
planet is one, sort of. The problems we face are less epic which makes them
seem dull and we should be thankful for that.

~~~
tomjen3
The planet is split into essentially three groups: the western world, China
and the arab world (Middle-east + large parts of Africa).

China isn't going to attack us, they make far more money trading with us.

The arabs on the other hand.

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cb33
"Abraham Lincoln had a single-minded vision: Preserve the Union. Franklin
Roosevelt didn’t really become great until he united America behind the cause
of ending Fascism and Imperialism. John Kennedy asked us to put a man on the
moon. Ronald Reagan was hell bent on winning the Cold War."

All of those examples are centered around war and/or homeland security and
some of them don't have a lot to do with entrepreneurship. The beauty of the
world we live in today is that we don't need a leader to supply us with a
unified vision/direction; we have tons of companies simultaneously working
very hard on innovating in a multitude of different areas.

There are a ton of problems to solve, so why focus on one?

~~~
abstractbill
_There are a ton of problems to solve, so why focus on one?_

The idea, I suppose, is that by focusing on a single "big problem", we could
make very rapid progress (instead of making slower progress on a bigger set of
problems). At its height, the US was spending almost 1% of its GDP on the
Apollo program. Now imagine we could all agree on some other goal that we
would spend that much money on. The hard part would be choosing a good goal,
and then convincing enough people that it's the "right one".

~~~
smokeyj
> Now imagine we could all agree on some other goal that we would spend that
> much money on.

Then create a kickstarter page and leave my paycheck alone. Just an idea.

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bloaf
There are two problems with any automotive-based great challenges.

1\. The accomplishment of the goal will almost certainly not result in any
great swell of national pride. Defeating an enemy makes us believe we are
great. Being the first to the moon makes us feel proud of our accomplishment.
Driving a somewhat more efficient car does not give us that same sense of
collective pride.

2\. The government should not be directly doing R&D, market research, or
advertizing for private industries. We got away with the moon landing because
NASA is a government organization, the same is not true of the US auto
industry. The auto bailout was unpopular, why would any sort of
government/auto industry project be seen as anything other than meddling?

Instead, the government should focus on areas that are more directly under its
purview: infrastructure, energy, military, education, public safety, etc.

What sorts of goals might we consider? I think these are better candidates:

Cure any form of cancer in the next 10 years.

Become #1 in international measures of 4th grade student performance in the
next 10 years and 1st in 8th grade performance in 15 years.

Achieve the lowest per capita CO2 emissions of any developed nation within 15
years.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>Achieve the lowest per capita CO2 emissions of any developed nation within 15
years.

The problem with this is that it's too broad. There are a million different
ways to do it which are almost all trade offs of one thing or another, and the
people who have to sacrifice for any given one will be fighting tooth and nail
to make you choose a different one, so you spend all your time arguing with
people and never accomplish anything.

Pick a specific goal. Build a working commercially viable fusion reactor. Take
something like that and put moonshot resources behind it and it will happen.

~~~
bloaf
Broad is different from general. I see breadth as a double edged sword. It
does have the problems you mention. However, if the government could get
sufficient buy-in, it helps because there are a large number of ways to
improve per-capita CO2 emissions (e.g. improving housing insulation,
increasing public transportation usage, development of CO2
scrubbing/sequestration technologies.)

I feel that the real killer of challenges is actually _vagueness._ "Improve
health care" is vague because there is no well defined goal or target that we
will be able to meet.

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jessriedel
A 100 mpg car is highly constrained by the laws of physics to be crappy, or at
least extremely unappealing.

A much better goal, in terms of usefulness, challenge, and well-defined-ness,
would be to develop a self-driving car. This probably could have been done 20
years ago if we had started a Manhattan-style project. But I guess we'll just
have to wait for Google.

~~~
abstractbill
Actually many other car manufacturers are making (perhaps more incremental)
steps towards that goal too: [http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/19/mercedes-
and-other-carm...](http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/19/mercedes-and-other-
carmakers-are-building-increasingly-autonomous-autos/)

~~~
jessriedel
These incremental advances have been appearing for at least 20 years, and
eventually we will have self-driving cars even without an organized effort
(either by the government or a company like Google with massive resources).
But that's a very slow option.

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rohern
Human colonization of Mars.

~~~
cryptoz
We already know Obama's policy on that: No Americans on Mars until he's
elderly, somewhere in his late 70s.

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ShawnBird
I think we should get cheap internet to everyone. I really thought the plan to
use television white space[0] was interesting. Funneling money into something
like Google Fiber would also be amazing. Broadband, like the postal and
telephone systems, should be available nearly everywhere to everyone at a
reasonable price.

[0]: [http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/google-wants-to-put-
wireles...](http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/google-wants-to-put-wireless-
internet-on-unused-tv-frequencies)

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stcredzero
Sorry, but "Preserve the Union" is not any more concrete then "Energy
Independence." In fact I can come up with quantifiers for both.

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msg
Manhattan project focused on climate change.

Pros: lots of disciplines to get involved, obvious ways for ordinary people to
take part (monitoring and reducing home energy use), and a regulatory
environment that is in need of reform (tragedy of the commons for pollution,
carbon market). And obviously, a dire, human-race affecting need.

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cdvonstinkpot
I've felt for years that we could do better with our mpg, and BMW's have been
the only manufacturer to seem to be trying to achieve great mileage with
traditional internal combustion engine technology. I'd love to see our country
take on such a challenge. And I'd buy the car such a project produces.

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VikingCoder
The President of the United States (and I don't mean the current office-
holder, I mean the office of the President) is uniquely incapable of being
this person that you want.

They are the head of the Executive branch. They uphold the Constitution,
specifically the laws passed by Congress.

In this conversation, the President can merely suggest goals to Congress.

Also, Congress is in no position to do what you ask, either: they make laws.

It should not be illegal to NOT pursue the Great Challenge you talk about. It
should also not require taxing everyone. It should require motivating people
to help.

If it's to succeed, it also needs to pay for itself, or be so self-evidently
worthy that people donate to it enough money to keep it going.

In short: I don't think the Government can do you what you want.

Here's where I put my hope for the future:

<http://www.planetaryresources.com>

~~~
rayiner
The space race was funded with tax dollars and I doubt the fees charged for
commercial launches ever paid a fraction of it.

~~~
Shivetya
and the great railroads first came from private industry as did the canals as
did the airlines and so on and so on. The only reason the space race was done
by government first is because they were more concerned with killing other
people with the results.

Face it, government rarely does something first or best except when one
government wants to eradicate another.

~~~
rayiner
The railroads were heavily subsidized and enabled by government. Without
eminent domain authority and grants of government lands, the great railroads
would never have happened. The first substantial airplane network in the U.S.
was the Post Office's air mail service. Most of the existing U.S. airlines
evolved from air mail contractors. Aircraft technology was heavily pushed
forward by government spending in World War I and World War II. The first
supersonic plane was a government project, as well as the first hypersonic
plane.

In other areas: The transistor was invented by the research arm of a
government-granted monopoly; nuclear technology was pioneered by a government
weapons project; the double helix was discovered at a publicly-funded
university; we're talking to each other over a network created as a department
of defense program; much of the field of artificial intelligence was developed
under the department of defense.

The U.S. government linked the pacific and atlantic oceans through the panama
canal; the Army Corps of Engineers made the southwest habitable; the Army
Corps of Engineers built and maintains the locks that makes the Mississippi
easily navigable.

The 20th century is a triumph of the American model: government policy-making
and funding/subsidization combined with implementation by independent public
or private entities.

~~~
spikels
Many of these examples are a stretch:

(1) The transistor/monopoly theory make no sense. The US government never
granted AT&T a monopoly but broke it up in 1982 when they discovered it was a
monopoly.

(2) I don't think the residents of New Orleans would agree that Army Corps of
Engineers should be a model for anything.

I'm sure there are some truly great non-military US government accomplishments
but I just can't think of any...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_ci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_civil_works_controversies_\(New_Orleans\))

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Kilimanjaro
So you need a war to unite the country?

How about the 'War On Corruption'™?

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dreamdu5t
Ridiculous. We do not need Obama to innovate. He is not a King, he is not
supernatural, and his job is not to provide challenges for entrepreneurs.

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pasbesoin
Next generation energy (including storage and distribution). And the multiple,
domestic career and educational tracks that go with this.

Unfortunately, the energy industry is currently held hostage.

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abraininavat
If I was The Decider in Chief, our big goal would be to build a car-free city:
<http://www.carfree.com/>

~~~
cema
Fortunately, we do not have a decider in chief, and the US president is
(emphatically!) not one. Everyone decides for themselves, and on the business
arena, every business decides for itself.

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abraininavat
If only there was a politician who had lofty goals.. like a Moon Base!

