Gerald O. Barney, Council on Environmental Quality
5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligence with Integrity Ignored by Government and Private Sector,September 20, 2012
This treasure was included in my donation to George Mason University of my entire library, and only now do I wish I could pull it down to look at the table of contents and the conclusions. It *is* available online as a free pdf but I strongly recommend buying one of the used copies offered above, there is no substitute for the hand-eye-brain engagement with a physical book.
There has been no lack of intelligence in the USA, either in the IQ sense of the decision-support sense. What has been lacking is integrity at all levels. Junior bureaucrats follow orders from senior bureaucrats who follow orders from political appointees who follow orders from elected officials whose only priority is to get re-elected, to keep the USA in a two-party monopology, and to retire without having actually addressed any real problems.
I do not agree with the excessive conspiratorial thesis of the other review–none of the conspiracies would work if our electoral system and our government retained their integrity. That is in my view the central problem of our time: restoring integrity to government so that We the People may be well-served by all organizations, public and private.
VITAL POINT: The USA has been both the 25% innovator and the 25% waste producer including a plentitude of toxins beyond most people's imaginations. The onlything we might reasonably offer the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East is a model for getting it right — for ceasing with doing the wrong things more expensively, and instead doing the right things with applied intelligence — design — replete with integrity that produces sustainable outcomes. Absent that, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Wild Cards like Turkey will rule the world and we will — as they have been to the USA — mere collateral damage.
