Rowan's Future of Choice

Decision-making is a characteristic of freedom

In America, an individual's freedom to make and live by a decision is at the core of our identify and success as a nation and society. Columnist George Will spoke of this at a seminar last spring. (Bolded italics are mine.):

"We began in 1945 an astonishingly clear social experiment: We divided the city of Berlin, the country of Germany, the continent of Europe, indeed the whole world, and we had a test. On one side was the socialist model that says that society is best run by edicts, issued from a coterie of experts from above. The American model, on the other hand, called for a maximum dispersal of decision-making and information markets allocating wealth and opportunity. The results are clear: We are here, they are not.  The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe." Link

Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.

Removing US governors from the decision-making process

I thought the idea was to reduce the size and influence of the federal government, and rely more on state and local authorities? Here is an excerpt from yesterday's Washington Times:

"President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process.
    "It wouldn't be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday.
    "This would be," he added, "more of an automatic trigger."
    Mr. McClellan was referring to a new, direct line of authority that would allow the president to place the Pentagon in charge of responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease.
    "It may require change of law," Mr. Bush said yesterday."

Link

Executive decision-making

Do any of you remember when corporations bought the first PCs? They went to executive desktops, where they became expensive ($5000-6,000) desk art. Executives couldn't figure out how to use them, and they weren't connected to the mainframe. Staff who really needed PCs to make spreadsheets or to circumvent the typing pool had to wait a couple years for their equipment. Now, look at this 9/19/05 press release from Palm, Inc.:

"...up to 200 Schwan executives will be using smart-device technology to accelerate decision-making and better serve customers while away from the office....Schwan executives were so pleased with the solution, and believed the productivity increase was so obvious, a formal ROI analysis was not required."

What about all the non-executives who need to make better decisions? Link