How to fight terrorism.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is giving $10 billion to improve education in Dubai. The article observes that 'The whole Arab world publishes fewer books than the country of Turkey'. The Jihadi-Salafis are largely a product of young Arab men, facing bleak prospects with little education and endemic unemployment, seeing jihadism as a way of transcending their situation and, in their minds perhaps, doing something to redress the imbalance they perceive between the affluence of the west and the poverty and lack of accomplishments of the Arab world.

Education will go a long way toward dampening the smoldering embers that fuel terrorism. I would say that it is probably the most important ingredient in an effective anti-terrorism prescription, which, in my opinion, consists of:

1. Education for everyone, and not that rote memorization of verses that passes for education in Madrassis. Real education in fields that are demanded by business.
   
2. Frictionless commercial markets - make it trivial for someone to go into business, and eliminate red-tape, corruption and obstructive competition (such as monopolisim and patent-trolling). In the US, all I have to do is say "Shazzam! Flubco is now a business", and it is so. Once I actually succeed in selling more than $1000 worth of stuff, I have to obtain a tax license from the state, which requires all of 15 minutes and $16 for a two-year license. The developing world should optimize this process in their own markets. Ideally, developing nations should subsidize new businesses with tax breaks and other incentives.
   
3. Frictionless capital markets - make it easy for developing businesses to obtain capital and trade in their own equity. Also, make it possible for successful businesses to retain their earnings, rather than pay exorbitant taxes. The people who created this wealth in the first place are probably better positioned to employ these profits to create more wealth than the government who would confiscate these earnings 'for the public good'.
4. Invest in infrastructure - make it easy and affordable to exchange goods and services through transportation and communication networks that actually work.

If there were a way the US could apply this prescription to the current hotspots of terrorism, instead of blowing upwards of $1 trillion on military intervention, I suspect we'd see a much greater impact on terrorism. If nothing else, dear reader, you and I can help cultivate enterprise in developing areas by extending microloans through services such as Kiva. I suspect each developing entrepreneur who is given a leg up will result in 10-fold greater overall economic benefit, as the needs of their businesses ripple out into their economic community, possibly employing someone who might otherwise take up or at least endorse terrorism as a way of life.

A teacher at Arapahoe High School here near Denver produced a powerpoint presentation for the faculty back in August of 2006. It has since become a small youtube hit, with many people sharing it. A friend of mine just emailed me a link to the video of the slideshow, asking for comments. Though I've long been an avid fan of the whole singularity / transhumanism / extropian outlook, I was surprised to find myself replying:

Blah, blah...transhumanism...blah, blah...singularity...blah, blah... technocalypse...any day now...

I mean, we're already living in the future. Where are the domed cities? And where is my damned jet pack? Can I get a refund?

Anyway, that stuff about how there are so gosh-darned many smart Chinese and Indians that they could eat our lunches and scarcely burp is pretty much crap. As these economies grow, they have their own needs to satisfy. If we project their standard of living upward, it is reasonable to assume that they will soon need the same percentage of technical people per capita that we do. In fact, there is already a shortage of technical talent in India, despite their churning out an alleged 600,000 freshly-minted engineers a year. Turns out that India, for example, is really only producing about 112,000 comparable engineers, versus 137,000 in the US. They have over three times the population of the US, requiring over three times as many engineers for their own needs, let alone satisfying the outsourcing demand of the rest of the developed world. But they produce fewer comparable engineers than us. Hence the shortage. As India gains affluence, they may outsource to us. And don't get me started on their infrastructure problems. Both India and China suffer from endemic corruption and a clan/caste sclerosis, and will continue to have a very difficult time forming the necessary social cohesion and frictionless markets needed to really reach their predicted potential. So unless our government is soon by of and for all Hispanics, I suspect the US and Europe will continue to set the standard by which other societies measure themselves, for many decades to come.

And that stuff about exponential accelerating change? I've been eagerly awaiting this singularity for the past 2 decades, and I don't know about you, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe it isn't going to come quite as quickly as the evangelists predict. In fact, as I spectate from my 50th lap around the sun, I'm starting to doubt that it's coming fast enough to save my increasingly wrinkled ass from the short and brutish fate that all men have shared till now. (Though I do plan to have my wrinkled ass frozen, just in case).

Okay, so is this me getting middle-age-cynical? Or just realistic?