"Road Map to an American Renaissance presents a provocative look at the American economy. Mr. Humphrey's purpose in writing this book is to contribute to the restoration of American freedom leading to an American Renaissance." The complete text and figures from this book are now available at this website for you to review and download.
If you find this book worthwhile, you are requested to remit $2.50 to the author.
Mr. John M. Humphrey25967 Mar Vista Court
Los Gatos CA 95033
However reimbursement is at your discretion after you have reviewed the book. We operate on the Honor System.
Cover Illustration by Donald Sturtz
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FIRST EDITION presented in Electronic Form
Copyright 1993 John M. Humphrey
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form
First Edition Published by Vantage Press, Inc.
516 West 34th Street, New York, New York 10001
ISBN: 0-533-10539-0
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 92-93442
John M. Humphrey grew up in Maryland and received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. He then moved to California and received an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. He has spent the last twenty-four years doing systems engineering analysis on both aerospace and mechanical engineering projects. Ten years ago, he formed his own company, doing both engineering consulting and working on developing several new products.
Mr. Humphrey believes that the spark behind this book came from his career experiences dealing with our society's technical and corporate bureaucracies, both as an employee and a consultant.
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The American spirit was forged by the challenges of the frontier and given direction by the 18th century ideals of men of vision in both the old and new worlds. The spirit of self-reliance created by 150 years of frontier living together with the relative isolation of the American colonies provided the necessary ingredients for a successful revolution against the feudal oppression of the old world and for the creation of a society based on the ideals of human equality and freedom. For the past 200 years America has been both a beacon of political freedom and an engine of free enterprise economic prosperity.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Throughout history including our American history mankind has sought to control others in order to prosper at their expense. Unfortunately political control and the inevitable theft that follows whether by force of arms or by legitimized systems demotivates human effort and productive activity. As I view modern American society I see a vast web of laws and regulations. While many of these laws are necessary in some form for our complex modern world, the extent of these laws is in the vast majority of cases excessive.
The vast array of governmental and commercial regulations in modern American society exist primarily to serve special interests in our society who use these controls to prosper at our expense. Unfortunately the pervasiveness of controls in our society means that most of us are both thieves and victims, often many times over. We vigorously defend the few controls that benefit us while at the same time only weakly oppose the hundreds of controls that individually usually only nickel and dime us.
This situation fosters a political system that spends vast resources promoting new schemes of legalized theft. These schemes are always presented as beneficial to the "general welfare" and they initially serve some useful purpose. Unfortunately continuation of controls over a free market creates a dependent constituency that gradually institutionalizes the system. This process inevitably results in continually increasing costs for the desired benefit. Examples of this process range from the medical and legal professions on one end of the political spectrum to welfare, Medicare, public housing and a host of other government programs on the other end.
As we approach the 21st century we need a new American Renaissance to reenergize both American prosperity and the American spirit. The new American Renaissance will rekindle the torch of freedom to guide mankind's way into the next century. Like the old renaissance, the new renaissance will require a climate of freedom that will promote prosperity through both hard work and innovation. The basic freedom - freedom from theft- motivates people both to work hard for today's prosperity and to innovate so we can all work smarter for tomorrow's prosperity.
My purpose in writing this book is to contribute to the restoration of American freedom which I believe can lead to an American Renaissance. I am not a political scientist, but the owner of small silicon valley engineering company. My experiences with the feudal controls that inhibit American technology have served as the genesis of a much broader vision of the essential role of freedom in human society. I sincerely hope my observations and recommendations will spark creativity in the minds of readers so that together we can support the process of positive social innovation in America.
This book makes extensive use of categorization. For example I define several categories for the types of theft in human society. Since the human experience is a continuum, events or situations will never fit perfectly into a finite number of categories. With this admission the reader is encouraged to view the use of categories not as an absolute, but as simply a useful tool to promote understanding of important similarities and differences.
I chose the symbolism of a roadmap to provide a framework for discussing the journey of human prosperity. The two requirements of a roadmap are knowing where you are going and then deciding which road to take to get there. The first three sections of this book are devoted to achieving a better understanding of prosperity and the history of human systems that have fostered or inhibited prosperity. The fourth and fifth sections attempt to use these understandings to better evaluate some of the controls that are currently inhibiting American prosperity and then present some recommendations. Every road follows many twists and turns in reaching its destination. While I encourage the reader to critically examine each turn, I humbly request the reader to try to view these turns in the overall context of the journey.
John M. Humphrey
Monte Sereno, CA
September 28, 1992
