America should focus on creating the future we want.

Three days ago, Greg Satell wrote a blog post titled: Innovation Needs To Shift From Disrupting Markets To Tackling Grand Challenges. He’s wrong, but close. His conclusion was:

Rather than looking for markets to disrupt, we need to look for human endeavors that we can empower …
The challenges we face today require us to reimagine the realm of the possible.

He’s right that we should not target disruptive markets. People in industry, venture capital and startups are already pouring resources, ideas and effort into these.

But neither should we be targeting “grand challenges.” Greg mentioned three.

His first grand challenge was a zero-carbon economy. But this is already doable. In fact, one country is carbon-negative and four are quickly approaching it. It’s doable in America, too, except our political system stands in the way. The oil and coal companies and their Republican ally ALEC spread lies, fear and doubt with impunity.

The second and third were curing cancer and making faster computer technology. Society is already focusing on these. There is plenty of financial incentive from current markets. In Greg’s own terms, these are already well within “the realm of the possible.”

What’s needed, commitment to create the future we want

What we need to do is to envision and commit to a highly desirable future. A future that’s truly great is “outside the box.” It’s not unthinkable, but it’s a pipe dream compared to the resignation and cynicism that pervade our culture. Yet we know people want it.

For climate change, one such future is a healthy climate. This is a much more desirable future than simply trying to avoid disaster.

For politics, one such future is a political system of, by and for the people. PeopleCount proposes we achieve this by adding a system in which politicians are accountable to citizens. Rather than politics of name-calling, blame and loyalty to parties, we’d have politics be about citizens saying what they want. And government would simply be how citizens work together to achieve it.

Another one for politics would be to make politics honest. Just as lying to the U.S. government is currently illegal, ThePeoplesConvention proposes a new amendment saying that lying to the public about matters of public policy is illegal.

Society should not be targeting big challenges or disruptive ideas. We should be targeting the world we want to create.