Education and American competitiveness

[Edited for typos from the original, published as a Talkback comment to Dan Farber's "Competing in a flat world" entry on ZDNet's "Between the lines" blog, 16th Nov, 2005.]

Someone said that success is when opportunity meets preparation - to which I add "and motivation". While it's relatively easy to churn out techies as it is a "bricks, brains, books" matter, it's hard to create a society geared towards innovation and progress. The former is about hard individual labour; the latter, about collective change in culture and mentality few dare think of or are ready to take on. In that respect, the US is a unique sociological experiment in the history of mankind.
That's why the Soviets went under - they set sattelites in orbit and manufactured tanks while failing to produce jeans and toasters.
Qualifications by themselves are no guarantee of success. An open, risk-rewarding, entrepreneurship-friendly country (and that doesn't have to mean worker-unfriendly) like the US will come out on top 9 times in every 10, for they have the opportunity, the ingredients and the incentive to making money. America will lead the world as long as the fundamentals above hold or someone else gets better at them.
If for this or that reason the US doesn't find the right brainpower within her shores, she can always import it as with any commodity. I for one would love to be imported.

Rui Costa
Wed, 23rd Nov, 2005
Lisbon, Portugal