Majorityrights Central > Category: Globalisation

A little good news is needed now and then. The pioneer spirit is still alive. As a person somewhat responsible for the resurgence in technology prize awards, I have a few things to say about Burt Rutan’s capture of the Ansari X-Prize by being the first to fly a man to space in a reusable craft twice within a week. He follows the great technology pioneers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both of whom came to prominence during similar fair contests: The Guggenheim Trophy and Orteig Prize respectively. (From these exemplars some might now see a reason the powers that be shy away from fair contests—contests where they can’t really control who wins the prizes—and it was left to an Iranian family, the Ansaris, to fully fund the X-Prize.)

A speech by Burt Rutan before the National Space Society is worth a view (requires QuickTime ). He repeatedly and angrily declares his embarrassment at the risk averse culture that has strangled the pioneer spirit since the feats of the 1960s—nearly 40 years ago. I’ve got my issues with his speech but we clearly agree that something went horribly wrong with the pioneer spirit subsequent to the 1960s. The turning inward of the human potential has resulted in the halting of human progress upward and outward with aerospace technology being bureaucratically and monotonously scaled up for jumbo jet transportation. The result is the sort of danger warned of by Charles Lindbergh in his 1939 Reader’s Digest article “Aviation, Geography, and Race”: a sea of humanity threatening our race which is, after all, a global minority. Indeed the technological exemplar of this era has been driven by the rise of finance to preeminence—the inward-turning microelectronic revolution. The unintended side-effect of this revolution you see before you now as a website, but it is small consolation for the damage to our pioneer spirit.  As we were warned by Henry Ford the great struggle of the 20th century was creative industry vs global finance.  Global finance has dominated the past 30 years or more. Perhaps men like Burt Rutan can lead us out of our malaise and realize the human potential.  If so it may be due to prize awards like the Ansari X-Prize that give men even younger than Burt Rutan a chance to make a name for themselves purely via their own grit and gifts.

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The government of Zimbabwe after starving its population by driving the Germanic farmers from their lands—farmers who had accepted Mugabe’s invitation to stay in Zimbabwe and build a more “integrated” nation—now is to “cede land to the Chinese” a “fast growing nation”, in an attempt to bolster agricultural production.

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Here’s to Madame Catherine Gachet, not only a beautiful woman but a maker of the intensely sweet and flowery, white wine of Barsac, in the Gironde … and a skilled marketeer.  For, Madame Gachet has identified her product’s unique selling point and it isn’t the suppleness and finish of a fruit drink.  Nope, it’s the eternal soul of French life: chic with a subtle hint of sexuality.

Unfortunately, it’s just not plain and self-abnegating enough for the French government.  Under the latter’s strict advertising codes for purveyors of France’s greatest technical triumph no joie de vivre may be associated with the pleasures of the vine - no beautiful people, no romance, no excitement, until recently not even a simple description of the product’s taste.  Health and Safety are everywhere, it seems, and set upon the great task of saving the hapless Frenchman from a bibulous end.

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