eBook Summary:

Generation X needs a fresh direction, and big challenges commensurate with it's ability. This text outlines what needs to be done to take America to the next Level. This new text outlines 15 points that Generation X needs to address, to make the American Lifestyle and experience the best in the world. The author gives Generation X a long-term vision. First and foremost, the vision is based on the requirement for Americans to start taking care of each other. There is an extremely simple, obvious, ubiquitous, and widely overlooked law of nature, superseding Darwin's, that we can use to our advantage, which also, is not included in our basic education. 1 It is based on the insight of Alexander von Humboldt.2 Simply put: The environment determines what dominates. We need to define our environment, to make sure that self-service doesn't dominate ("Takers and Grabbers" don't dominate), but rather that we as a populous are served best ("Public Service", "Greatest Good" is championed ).

Agenda X:

Challenges for the next century 5
Darwin's other half 9
Labor Policy 12
Immigration Policy 17
Voting Trusts 20
Health Care Policy 23
Pension Reform 26
Education Policy 28
Affirmative Action 30
Privacy 32
Law Enforcement,Legal Infrastructure, Moral Fiber... 34
Electronic Voting Agents (EVA) 36
Public Utilities vs. Privatisation 38
Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy 40
War on Drugs 42
The Agency Problem 44
Summary and Next Steps 46

Reader Review:

Generation X needs a manifesto. Something to kick us in the seat of our pants. (Disclaimer: I am a member of this somewhat-despised generation. But not necessarily in good standing.)

The members of Generation X have been defined with a number of labels - none of which are very flattering: Slackers, Apathetic, Underemployed, Overeducated. Even on the most basic level of defining the age range of members of Generation X there is some dispute. Is it people born between 1961 and 1981? Or between 1965 and 1980? Or, narrower still, 1965 and 1975? This is a generation that can't shoot straight. I'm starting to think that we're just a made-up generation, a figment of some marketer's imagination, much as grandparent's day was invented by Hallmark to sell more cards. Let's say for the sake of argument that Generation X is now approximately between the ages of 25 and 40. So if you didn't get to protest the war and do all of the cool drugs that the boomers did, or you didn't get an iPod, you are probably one of us.

A key question for Generation X is: Do we have any sense of public spirit or public engagement? For example, we turned out for Jessie The Body Ventura in 1998 in his successful bid for governor of Minnesota. But you could argue that that's just the kind of ironic take on politics we have, helping elect a feather-boa-wearing-ex-professional-wrestler to the governor's office. Politics, entertainment, sport; what's the difference? They're all things that happen on tv and thus are all pretty much the same. We are the first generation raised completely on television - an uncontrolled experiment whose ramifications we may not ever fully understand, although I think one artist came close with the line: "Here we are now, entertain us." That doesn't smell like public spirit to me. And since we may also be, unironically, the first generation to see its standard of living fall compared to previous generations, the question is of more than just academic interest.

It may be an uniquely 20th century American phenomenon to define a generation by the events swirling around it. For example, the Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression, defeated Fascism, and contained Communism. The Baby Boomers started the free speech movement, protested the Vietnam War, and tried to move this country away from overly restrictive views on race, gender, sex, and sexual orientation. Generation X has...what exactly? Terrorism? September 11th was certainly a defining moment in our history, but the battle is being waged by the Boomers in power and the successors to Generation X on the ground. Generation X, if it is not careful, may become the first care-taker generation in our history, little more than a place holder until a real generation shows up.

So Generation X is now buying houses, reproducing, saving for retirement. "Agenda X" asks us to think about many issues that go beyond paying the bills and raising the kids. When you think about it, almost every issues raised in this book is at least tangentially related to these everyday activities, although we may not notice it. Health care, jobs, immigration, education, retirement. Most of these issues are in the backs of our minds when we decided where to live, who to vote for, whether or not we have to stay in a cruddy job for the benefits, or whether we find ourselves resigned to the notion that we will have to work until we drop. But have we given them any systematic thought? Are these issues inter-releated? Which issues are the most pressing? Are our home-grown ideas sufficient to address them?

The world is a great laboratory of political, social, and economic experimentation. Chris Schmidt has had the benefit of living and working in Europe for a number of years. This is not to insist, reflexively, that the Europeans do things better. I, for one, am tired of hearing arguments that start, "Well, in Europe, the [name of the social program] is so much better than it is here." I am also tired of being the one usually making that argument. What we need is a forum for discussing what Chris calls "best practices." Are there communities (sub-divisions, towns, cities) that have successfully dealt with a particular problem? How did they do it? Take the problem of urban renewal, for example. Most big cities have been in decline for the past forty years. The health of the city is vital, too, for the health of the communities around it. But absent a football, baseball, or basketball game, most downtowns look abandoned. For good and bad, here's how one city handled it:

http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20000521eastliberty1.asp

Another example: Are the "Minutemen" (www.MinutemanReliefFund.org) the best way to handle illegal immigration from Mexico? I don't know, but the Minuteman experiment is interesting to the extent that it's not just a publicity stunt to draw attention to the problem of illegal immigration. Not that I'm endorsing it, but it has some of the elments of Open Source design and collaboration. It also prompts the question: Do some solutions to our problems take the form of transient, informal, unstructured arrangements between private citizens who come together to deal with the problem without leaving any permanent organization or bureaucracy behind? In other words, does everything have to have a government program?

There is a basic human tendency to focus on immediate problems rather than work on long-term problems that may only have a probability associated with their outcome. Sure, we'll eventually run out of oil, but will that be in fifty years, one-hundred years, or two-hundred years? After all, somebody could discover massive new oil reservers tomorrow. So should I pay the extra money for the hybrid? I think Generation X is faced precisely with this dilemma. Most of the problems we face - education, health care, outsourcing, pollution - have variable trajectories in the short-term, and we may be able to isolate ourselves from them for a little while, but they are all becoming inevitably larger and more intractable. Nor is it clear that these problems necessarily have a free-market solution. How should we approach these problems? We could re-define them: 45 million Americans without health care? We've had 45 million Americans without health care for 20 years. That's no crisis. That's the norm. Problem solved. But "Agenda-X" asks us to think about the problems from first principles. Define the standards we will set for all of our citizens and then work on the details of their implementation. Keep an open mind and find out what can we learn from other communities or other countries. If Generation X decides to take up any of the these challenges, their contributions may be impossible to measure. Who's to say that everything wouldn't have working out just fine if we'd done nothing. Maybe we could change our name to the "Uncredited Generation." Maybe not.

The point of "Agenda X" and Chris's associated blog,

http://agenda_x.blogspot.com

is to provide a framework for the discussion of these issues, and a jumping-off point for the process. Chris has created a marketplace for ideas. I know that there are other concerned citizens who have more than a passing interest in politics, and not just of the policy-wonk variety. The agony and ecstacy of public engagement awaits us.

-- David Hayek

About the Author:

Chris Schmidt holds a Masters in Science in International Economics from the Budapest University of Economic Sciences, a Post-Masters Certificate in Finance from Oakland University, and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. Chris has authored an article in Internal Auditor magazine, Editorials in Business Central Europe, the Budapest Sun, and Crain's Detroit Business. Chris is also a Certified Internal Auditor and a Certified Management Accountant. He's worked and studied in Michigan, Germany, and Hungary.