The greatest scientific mind of the 20th Century was the late R. Buckminster Fuller, who was the one man who really understood Einstein's theories and who could also explain them to others:
one of his most important discoveries, ranking along with the principles of the geodesic dome and "tensegrity," was the significance of the 22 and 1/2 year industrial development cycle.
Twenty-two and one-half years is the time it takes metals to cycle through our economy and to be transformed completely, from raw ore to smelting and then to a finished product of some kind.
The last industrial cycle concluded with the Gulf War, where much of the "hidden" technology which the United States had been accumulating and developing was made known to the whole world. The most important developments of that war were microscopic in nature, heralding the new age of microtechnologies: just consider the changes that have been wrought in our society since then -- we thought we had won a massive victory over an evil and despicable tyrant, in Saddam Hussein, but now we know that Gulf War Illness and its syndromes have raised the casualty tallies very high, very high indeed. We thought that our technological edge was sufficient to allow us to "build down" our military forces, thus saving money and allowing the appearance of a balanced budget, but the attack on the U.S.S. Cole reveals just how deficient that strategy really is! An Aegis-class destroyer crippled and nearly sunk by a World War Two tactic, the suicide sneak attack with a shaped-charge explosive!
We were all told, repeatedly, that the "global marketplace" and the doctrine of global free trade would make everybody more prosperous, more satisfied with a wider variety of things to buy, more likely to see democracy and capitalism succeeding, and more certain to find peaceful resolutions to age-old problems.
What a lot of hooey that was! The giant multi-national corporations just flat out "bought" our Congressmen and -women when they engineered the North American Free Trade Deal, and then they bought them again -- mostly the same ones! -- when the pressured Newt "the genuine revolutionary" Gingrich to ram the vote on the Uruguay round of the GATT through a lame duck session of Congress. There are many things that I don't know in this world, but one of the things that I am sure of is that the founding fathers did not intend for lame-duck representatives to have the power to alter every aspect of our foreign trade policy when newly-elected members were waiting in the wings. The fiasco over the GATT votes and the robust but desultory debate on the World Trade Organization in the U.S. Senate in 1994 only augments the proof that giving the power to elect Senators to the mass of people in the States was not a solution to the problem of corrupt deals made in State legislatures.
There is no chance that this free and democratic Republic will survive unless a new method is found to protect the States as sovereign bodies, and to hold the U.S. Senators accountable to their home states and to empower somebody -- either the people or electing conventions of delegates of the people -- with the ability to recall Senators who have clearly sold themselves to the highest bidders. Perhaps the Senators should receive their compensations at the end of their terms, with only living expenses and office budgets provided while they serve. Perhaps there is a better way to meet the democratic ideals of having free elections, without making a mockery of it all -- as is being done in New York State, with Hillary Rodham Carpetbagger flouncing around looking pretty in pink.
All of this is germane because that technological marvel, the Internet, exists because men of sound mind and high principles read Fuller's works and knew his clarity of thought, and put the wheels and levers in motion to make his ideas work for them, if not for the whole of the American people. The Internet has been driving political power back into the States, making each race for a Congress something that anyone can follow without having the filters of "the degenerate propaganda media" placed over their eyes and ears. The radical drops in crime and criminal assaults have been, largely, the results of State actions taken by governors and by State legislators, and by local police or sheriffs. The federal government has blustered, passed many laws and spent money wildly, but crime is controlled and criminal mysteries are solved mostly at the local level.
Therefore, what is happening in the new Internet-based economy is of interest to all thinking Americans, all Patriots, all warriors for truth: we are now approximately ten years into the new industrial cycle -- which began after the Gulf War's conclusion -- and we will reach the conclusion of this cycle at the end of 2012, and the mid-point of it late next year (2001). The technological marvels deployed in the Gulf against the Iraqi military were all pioneered in the previous 22 years, just as the "space race" and the Viet Nam war were based on the tools developed and deployed in the War for Greater Serbia (Part Two).
Therefore what is happening now, in the Internet economy and in its component industries and companies, is important and even profound, even if it is excruciating to watch.
Despite the surge in prices on Wall Street, on this the 19th of October, fundamental losses in the Internet sector remain as troubling as before: DSL leader Copper Mountain has hit a new low and is lingering at $9.25 per share, which means that all those people who purchased it as it moved over the $92.00 mark -- on its way to a high of $125 -- have seen their investment capital wiped out. Holding a stock at less than 12% of its original value makes almost no sense, and yet selling it is even worse, as the cost of liquidating the stock can nearly equal what little equity is left in it!!
Broadband provider Antec, of Georgia (symbol ANTC), has seen its value beaten down in the last few days, as well: twice in the last year it has moved over the $50 mark and was seen, for a time in the middle of this year, as a reliable value at $40 to 45 or so. Enjoying a 20% rally today, its price has climbed to about $13.87, which means that 3/4's of its value has been wiped out in the last few weeks. The only people making money on this "dog" right now are the brokers, and the people who have held this stock for some time, and who are receiving its dividends.
That is right -- Antec was hammered down not for failing to make money, but for failing to make enough money to please the scions and the white-shoe warriors on Wall Street! Antec is doing a big deal with Nortel, and will emerge as an even bigger force in the broadband sector of Internet development, but its value has been savaged not by losses but by greed and speculation.
This erosion of value is strictly an insiders' game. It was of no consequence to the common citizen, the trucker or the waitress until the advent of on-line brokerages and day trading.
Now, however, it is everybody's problem. The radicals on the left and in the watermelon patch -- those folks who are Green on the outside and Red on the inside -- have almost no clues as to what is going on. Talk to one or two or a dozen of them, if you dare. They are technophobes, they are Luddites in Birkenstock shoes. They haven't any idea of the forces at work on their society, they only know that they don't like what they see.
And don't expect "the Free Trade liberals" who are operating Al Gore and George W. from behind the Kabuki screen to show much of their operations, at least not now. They have the whip hand in the present election, and that is why it really does matter who is who in Faction One, Faction Two, and whether or not there really is a Faction Three. Remember, all of this wealth and progress was made possible by the genius of "the Free Trade Populist Conservatives" from Virginia, and Connecticut, and Massachusetts -- the so-called founding fathers of the Constitution and of our revolutionary era. We need their spirit again and we need it to return to us, now.
