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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 na
by bloaf 14y ago
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.
- tomjen3 14y agoApart from the cure for cancer, I have one thing to say to all of these: Booooooooring. The goal has to be huge, extremely difficult to pull of, easy to measure and easy to rally around. It has to be something the tech geek and the redneck can agree would be awesome, something that screams USA is number one, something the entire country can take pride in.
- geoka9 14y agoAchieve the lowest per capita CO2 emissions of any developed nation within 15 years. Considering the amount of CO2 emissions from cars, here's a simple one: avoid using the car for personal reasons whenever possible. Use a bike, public transportation, your feet. I, for one, would be very proud of my country if that became the norm for a significant number of people.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago>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 14y agoBroad 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.