Thursday, February 07, 2013

We're number 1!

International rankings of the United States

I'm just going to pick a few of these rankings to comment on:

Index of Democracy: 17 out of 167

Yeah, that's got to be a typo or something.

Life Expectancy: 49 out of 224
And it's likely to get worse .  But, there is some good news in the American medical arena.

Global Competitiveness Report: 4 out of 131
We were #1 until recently.  Good thing we're teaching our kids to not be some darned competitive!

Unfortunately, we only rank #1 in one area: Patents.  But, sadly, there seems to be growing sentiment against patent and copyright protections.  I do have to agree with one point in this link, and that is that our current system is broken.  But that doesn't mean we should eliminate protection altogether.  I'm just not really seeing the argument that the author makes that somehow, innovation and creation will continue, or even increase.  Why would anybody spend the time and resources to make something worthwhile only to have someone else profit from the idea without doing the work?



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