What Was “Our Formula for Success”?

In his new York Times column Tom Friedman laments that the Chinese have lost respect for the United States because we’ve “stopped following our formula for success”:

At last week’s Alaska meeting between America’s and China’s top diplomats, Chinese officials made it quite clear that they no longer fear our criticism, because they don’t respect us as they once did, and they don’t think the rest of the world does, either. Or as Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker, baldly told his U.S. counterparts: “The United States does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”

Surprised? What did you think, that the Chinese didn’t notice that our last president inspired his followers to ransack our Capitol, that a majority of his party did not recognize the results of our democratic election, that a member of our Congress believes that Jewish-run space lasers cause forest fires, that left-wing anarchists were allowed to take over a section of downtown Portland, creating havoc for months, that during the pandemic the U.S. printed money to help its consumers keep spending — much of it on Chinese-made goods — while China printed money to invest in even more infrastructure, and that gun violence in America is out control?

Which brings me to the 2022 Winter Olympics, scheduled for China.

A rising number of voices are beginning to suggest that we boycott the China Games. I have sympathy with that call, as we watch China crush the infrastructure of democracy in Hong Kong and use internment camps to brutally suppress Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang with utter indifference to world opinion. How do we just ignore all that and focus on ice skating?

But here’s the thing: The competition that we really need to focus on winning is not the 2022 Olympics but the 2025 Olympics.

Oh, you haven’t heard of the 2025 Olympics? They are not on your NBC calendar? Well, they are on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s calendar. Xi unilaterally declared the 2025 Olympics in 2015 and suggested that there would be only two competitors: China and America. It was an initiative that Xi’s government called “Made in China 2025.”

He goes on to advise:

But my message to my fellow Americans is: We now have to return to and double down on what was our formula for success.

And that is: educating our work force up to and beyond whatever technology demands; building the world’s best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications; attracting the world’s most energetic and high-I.Q. immigrants to enrich our universities and start new businesses; legislating the best regulations to incentivize risk-taking while curbing recklessness; and steadily increasing government-funded research to push out the boundaries of science so our entrepreneurs can turn the most promising new ideas into start-ups.

It’s unclear to me how he decided those things were our formula for success or, indeed, how he measures success. Presumably, it wasn’t by increases in GDP:

Find more statistics at Statista

There’s quite a bit to unpack there. I’ll focus on these:

• Chinese respect
• Friedman’s formula
• Our actual formula
• Our national goals

The Chinese authorities do not respect us, never have, and never will. How could they? We’re not them and we’re not Chinese. Furthermore they see our civil liberties and diversity as liabilities rather than assets. As final nails in our coffin our lack of willingness to enforce our own laws and their confidence that they can breach our digital security any time they care to are damning.

Fortunately, I don’t care whether they respect us or not. It concerns me that they may no longer fear us. IMO that would be a grave error on their part.

My guess is that arriving at his “formula” Mr. Friedman was only looking at our national ability to “accomplish big things”. The United States is now almost 250 years old. Over that entire period the only times in which anything resembling the items in his formula were national priorities were during World War II (the Manhattan Project) and during the 1960s (the Mercury and Apollo Programs). In aggregate that lasted about 20 years. It’s a bit of a stretch to call that “our formula for success”.

I would say our actual formula for success was more like:

• Import as little as we can. Impose tariffs on foreign goods to ensure that’s the case
• Ensure that the entire U. S. is a large free trade zone.
• Restrict immigration to the “high-I. Q.” people he mentions.
• Education, healthcare, and physical infrastructure are primarily state and local responsibilities.
• R&D are primarily the responsibility of private companies and individuals
• The responsibilities of the federal government are limited to national defense (narrowly construed), foreign relations, ensuring the soundness of the dollar and U. S. credit, and enforcing federal laws.
• Don’t invade other countries or occupy countries where the people hate us.

I will freely concede that our greatest period of national accomplishments and growth was also marked by racial discrimination and injustice. Can those be reconciled? Mr. Friedman seems to take that as an article of faith. I would hope so but it remains to be seen.

In conclusion I would suggest that I agree with Mr. Friedman that we have gone astray but I think I part ways with him in just how we have gone astray. I don’t think it’s in “accomplishing big things”, maximizing the DJIA, maximizing GDP, maximizing population, or maximizing the wealth of a small number of ultra-wealthy people. Or gaining the respect of the Chinese authorities. I think it’s in ensuring a decent life for all Americans and that people have the freedom to work out their own hopes and dreams.