Stability Is Better Than Progress?

I need to get back to unpacking, but in following a link to a health care discussion that Tim Eisele left in a comment, I started thinking about how our culture is moving towards stability rather than growth.

The entire point of universal coverage is just that - covering everyone with health care. That it may destroy our pharmaceutical research industry seems to be acceptible collateral damage. That it ends up being another benefit to those who haven't earned it is immaterial. The goal is to allow them to live their lives as they do right now without concern about how they will earn health care coverage.

Dittos with the GM and Chrysler bailouts. The government is rewarding organizations who have proven themselves failures so that there is minimal change to the way we live.

I would argue that innovation and progress requires some amount of destruction and discomfort. That's not a new thought - the creative destruction of capitalism has been widely discussed. What I would suggest is that all of the goodies we want to preserve are things we cannot pay for and continued access to them will require economic growth that brings with it the creative destruction we're trying to stop.

That is, we are striving for stability in an inherently unstable system.

This is unstable.