JustinIdea - Justin Ricaurte's Personal Blog

A Sustainable Policy

Last week it was great to see Al Gore acknowledged for his efforts in promoting the building of a more sustainable society.  With a decrease in pollution and energy consumption, we will have fewer incidences of illnesses such as asthma and thereby decreasing the amount we spend on health care, more money to spend on things aside from energy, greater domestic and international economic growth, and a more peaceful world because money will not flow en mass to dictatorships built off of fossil fuels, especially ones that finance international terrorism. 

One big problem with proposed policy measures is that they do not allow for both parties to get what they want from the table.  The Democrats want to help the environment, public health, etc., and the Republicans want to promote growth by lowering taxes.  To increases its chances of success, a policy should take into account these agendas.  One such as this:

1. A cap-and-trade pollution system where the government sells credits that companies can buy for their needs.  The cap would need to be lowered each year to promote further decreases in energy used. 
2. Requiring all business that produce goods in the United States or that sell goods to American consumers to participate in the system and to take into account a life-cycle analysis of their products.
3. Requiring companies listed in the United States and those that want to have government pensions buy their stock to disclose their carbon footprint.
4. Eliminating the corporate income tax in exchange for participation.

A policy such as this will promote business to adopt more energy efficient measures and reward the most energy efficient companies by allowing them to sell their credits and then not have to pay a corporate income tax.  The elimination of the corporate income tax would further spur innovation and accelerate the development of a more sustainable environment.

This acceleration of innovation will create millions of jobs in research, development, production, marketing, financing, and servicing these new products and make American-made products more competitive in the global economy.  These new employment opportunities along with the money the government makes by selling the credits will also offset the revenue lost by the elimination of the corporate income tax, keeping our national debt from increasing due to the program.

Democratized Design

David Armano found an awesome article by Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek asking the question - Are Designers The Enemy Of Design?  It looks long, but is a very fast read and has a lot of great content.

I think Bruce nailed it on the head when he talked about how design is being and will continue to be democratized. I believe everything will eventually go this way, and the profits will then being to help other people with what they need done, through continued conversations as both David and Bruce mentioned.  To get an even closer look at the democratization in business movement, check out this article from The Economist a year ago titled "The New Organization" [*note* it now requires a subscription], and also this article on self-replicating 3D printers for the future of democratized manufacturing.

For example even though its easy to argue that the vast majority of Myspace pages and websites are ugly, more people can put information online in a easier-to-read format, because they have been given simple design tools.  Would as many websites have sprung up if it required a Bachelors in Fine Arts to design a webpage?  Probably not.  The tools that grease the democratization process will further continue to upend the design industry.  And it would be even better if those tools helped the average person create good (if not great) design!  This is a great tool I have been using at Adobe Labs when trying to come up with color schemes for websites or other materials.

Another piece I really enjoyed Bruce touching on was the sustainable industry movement.  There is so much money to be saved (and made!) from cutting pollution and waste from the manufacturing process and in turn making all of our products more environmentally friendly, it's almost mind boggling.

As a last note, I thought one of the lines David bolded from the essay "We live a life in beta" is something people (who haven't) should take to heart.  You shouldn't be done learning or improving yourself after some set milestone, such as graduating from high school, technical school, or college.  You should strive for continuous improvement in what you do and who you are.  Constantly work on improving your relationships, business, health, and life.  Often improving one will help to improve all.