Tech veneer

I woke up this morning realizing that I live in a third world country that looks like a first world country because of the tech veneer.

We have buses, trains and even planes that are quite unreliable even in good weather. We have subways that don't go where people travel and often public transportation takes 20 or 30 years until it connects airports to the central city. Someplaces it simply doesn't connect.

We have schools where everybody gets beaten up and few learn rudimentary lessons. We have an entire population that never has a new thought after age 23. We have that same population incapable of rudimentary arithmetic. Virtually no newspaper or other media in the country publishes tables or numbers for the innumerate population.

We plan to build high-speed rail systems at astronomic costs while our current Amtrak system is frequently 24 hours late.

We have a police system and a justice system that is unable to stop daytime homicide on the streets.

We have a political system where government employees who cannot be fired earn significantly more money, get better health coverage and retire in luxury under conditions far better than the market workers who pay taxes to support their government employees.

On the face of it, this should make one depressed.

Not me. I have the unique experience of seeing hundreds of new businesses started and flourish in slum areas, in bad neighborhoods and in marginal legal environments because the police and government infrastructure is so incompetent.

It is the incompetence of America that gives us our commercial vitality.

That is what I keep in mind when I see our public transit stopped dead for 20 minutes when everyone pulls out their smart phone or their tablet computer.

America is a Third World country with a tech veneer.