Steve Jobs (RIP), Real Life Seer

An enormous amount of attention has been, quite deservedly, directed at Steve Jobs' life and work since his (way too early) passing earlier this month. One interview that has been making the rounds is his 1985 interview with Playboy. The entire interview is incredibly interesting, inspiring, et al., but I was struck by one exchange in particular...

PLAYBOY: You mentioned investing in education, but isn't the problem finding the funds in a time of soaring deficits?
JOBS: We're making the largest investment of capital that humankind has ever made in weapons over the next five years. We have decided, as a society, that that's where we should put our money, and that raises the deficits and, thus, the cost of our capital. Meanwhile, Japan, our nearest competitor on the next technological frontier—the semiconductor industry—has shaped its tax structure, its entire society, toward raising the capital to invest in that area. You get the feeling that connections aren't made in America between things like building weapons and the fact that we might lose our semiconductor industry. We have to educate ourselves to that danger.

This interview took place in 198-motherfracking-5 mind you. You can replace semiconductors with any number of industries over the past 20 years and see a recurring problem. Presently, if you replace Japan with China and semiconductor with Green Tech, you see an ineffectual US government that never learns anything and thus constantly repeats history. I can already foresee complaints about huge Chinese subsidies and feel the ruptured eardrums from people screaming SOLYNDRAAAA!!! at me, and they certainly have a point. On the flip side, however, those same people are not agitating to try and change the situations. Sure, the Chinese subsidies are overly generous, but the US' are not nearly generous enough. This is an area where we need to compete or we will just continue to cede our hegemonic position (if we already haven't). The US has an issue with debt because of a decade of huge defense spending, driven by two wars, and large tax cuts based upon a failed (repeatedly) economic theory. A problem that has existed (with some relief in between) since  198-stringofcursewordstoovulgartoprintsufficetosayonestartswithaC-5. How about we start looking at a way to change the situation and invest in things like education and green tech? Hmm kay? I mean, c'mon, WWSJD?