Questions for Leaders at the Aspen Conference

For me, the really big question is something like this:

How can egalitarianistic societies (i.e. societies that make a real effort to spread wealth among the whole population) survive *price* competition with societies that use a more cost-efficient radical division of labor (e.g., they don't expend money teaching quadratic equations to someone whose alloted destiny is to be a street sweeper).

An educated general population is more *productive*, to be sure, but an uneducated general population will always be *lower-cost*.

In past generations, educated populations dominated the world through warfare. Higher total productivity and a literate rank-and-file soldiery give a huge advantage in war. This is how the North defeated the slave-based economy of the South in the Civil War.

But now we are (hopefully!) in an age of price wars. How can the inherently more costly educate-everyone model survive in an age when price is paramount?

My question would be how to prevent labor arbitrage. Given that all things being equal employers will seek out the lowest labor cost, how can higher wage countries hope to compete? I feel corrupt lower wage countries are being rewarded by industry from higher wage countries. Even when the labor must be performed in the higher wage country employers often try to import workers from the lower wage countries and all the while claim a "labor shortage".

Here's one for the dummies in Aspen: 'When the last homo sapien succumbs (and we are no longer), will we have been 'here' at all?'

They might be amazing people for you but the collection includes a sizable number on the Saudi payroll. Hell bent upon wrecking this country and turning it into a Saudi vassal- sort of Amerabia just like Eurabia.

Sizable funding of Aspen comes from these Wahhabist elements. I bet the focus would be taking the social problems and using them to make Americans more plaint to the Wahhabi social engineering and eventual takeover.