After the closest election in living memory, Joe Biden has been declared as the winner of the highest office in America and arguably the world, beating Donald Trump by winning 50.6% of the vote and 284 electoral votes so far.
With his command of a trillion dollar army, still the biggest in the world by far, and a $20 trillion economy, also the biggest, what Biden does in the next four years can affect the lives of billions for good and/or for ill.
The oldest president in America’s history will also be one of the most experienced, walking on those streets of power for forty years after rising from nothing.
His first days in office therefore will probably be one of the most important. What will Xi tell him, or Putin’s successor with Putin himself apparently potentially taking leave at the same time as Trump.
More importantly, what will he tell Angela Merkel, who also is to take leave in the coming months after ruling for much of this millenium.
Or indeed, what will he tell Erdogan in that complex chess in Europe’s doorstep where mistakes are far too easy.
All that we will probably learn soon enough through rumors and reports as well as through who he appoints with the SEC commissioners being of particular relevance for our space and the American economy more widley.
The almost 78 year old will hopefully have an agile and tech aware advisory circle that will know being seen to back blockchain tech is just good PR.
Especially where shipping is concerned and logistics, the blockchain inspired systems that are being implemented hold great promise because effectively they digitize paper.
Man is now evolving. Not necessarily directly but through his tools. In particular, through what is misleadingly being called artificial intelligence which more descriptively can be called as bot management.
That is, coding bots to make sense of data and shape data with that information then acted upon either by other bots, or by humans.
Wifi is crucial in this age, and ensuring its home-grown advancement, in particular where the semiconductors industry is concerned, can turn out to even be vital.
The same for the space industry, for facilitating sensors infrastructure that can be used by cars and other transport to both manage traffic better and free up labor.
That labor is someone and potentially a family’s livelihood. However, the focus should be on equipping the young rather than on holding back progress because the latter is not possible, it’s instead just a choice to leave your country behind in the new digital revolution.
A revolution that has transformed the world and will continue to do so potentially at an accelerating speed.
Thus it opens almost everything to a renewed look. Nothing more so than the American army itself.
After two decades of war, this army has taken far too great a share of the Gross Domestic Product, and thus of the investable funds of America’s taxpayers.
The great industries of the United States can easily mobilize if times demanded. But in a time of general peace, the army should play a lesser role in the budget, with those savings to be used particularly towards funding research and development from which comes innovation, and thus much of real economic growth.
Far greater investment in education is vital if America is to maintain and grow its standards of living.
Moreover, after decades of restricting liberties during an ill-thought and a lost ‘war’ on ‘trrr,’ it is about time America takes the lead in increasing its citizens freedoms.
By that we don’t mean these cultural matters taught in gender studies, but the substantial matters of too much bureaucratic meddling in daily and ordinary activities to the point haircutting barbers now require a license.
The state must give more way to entrepreneurs and re-look whether they have struck the right balance between facilitating economic activity and preventing abuse.
That’s especially in light of these technological changes, with the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process, for example, now looking archaic.
It is very difficult to buy stocks, and that’s primarily because the laws made for a paper age have not kept up with our times where just one click is still too much.
These are things the new administration needs to look at if it wants to win again because the electorate is changing and though we thought as early as summer last year that Biden can be the bitcoin candidate, next time he and his party will be judged on whether they at least tried to make the civil service never again say ‘we won’t innovate for you.’
Unlike the previous electorate, this one does not care about parties too much. So nothing should be taken for granted, as we have just seen.
