I tried not to write about Haiti this week, but doing anything else seemed profane.  I have seen that our response to Haiti is intense and obvious, perhaps more so than the Tsunami in 2004.  It has been suggested by some, that this may be because Haiti is at our door step.   Generally, the message is one of us Americans, a great philanthropic country, leading the humanitarian effort - and we are, as we always have. 

Four year olds like to make play houses from just about anything, If it looks like a “hut” or “hideout”, even better.  My son is no exception.  Last night we conducted our nightly routine of building a house on the bed constructed of pillows.   The procedure then involved (as usual) camping-out in the “hut”, for story time.

Current “Clean-Tech” enterprises present few “break-through” technologies. Rather there seems to be an improvement in overall efficiency of existing technologies, many of which (e.g. windmills, solar power) are quite old.

The internet may even pose a more precise analogy to “Clean-Tech” businesses than others insofar as the product is fundamentally important to us, and not merely a “want” which gives rise to consumption. In the case of the internet, the promise of the technology itself has more than been fulfilled, even if the promises of a great number of commercial concerns related to it have not. 

I venture to say that an economic movement which is based on our survival and well being as humans may be fundamentally too important to approach merely as a capitalist endeavor. Historically, novel technologies, even when related to existing demand, are difficult to efficiently monetize. Shifts in behavior however, (as they relate to those technologies) are a better bet.  How difficult will it be to create a substantial economic enterprise in an industry which is neither novel, nor benefited by consumption per sae?