One thing that you can say about the US.  The ‘meritocracy’ and ‘pragmatism’ is strong, and you are always confident that policies that doesn’t make logical sense don’t get passed.

Meritocracy can be very brutal, and follows the ’survival of the fittest’, which means that you should allow uncompetitive industries to sink, and allows the best to win, but long term, it will hopefully mostly work well for everybody.

BBC NEWS | Business | US economy tops competitive table

The US economy has remained the world’s most competitive, despite the country’s soaring trade deficit, a study says.

The world’s biggest economy topped the rankings of 55 nations compiled in the Swiss-based IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2007.

Singapore was the second most competitive nation, moving up a place from last year, followed by Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Denmark.
China rose two places to 15th, while India was unchanged at 27th.  Russia rose to 43rd place from 46th.

Yes, this may work, and is a good idea.  I do feel that in some way, many open source projects are not sustainable, because the people who do the most are not rewarded properly.  Contributing to community without looking for payback is a great concept, but not attractive to most people who have to face real expenses.

Coming from somebody who is “Rich”, yes, let’s do it.

Sun: Pay open-source developers | InfoWorld | News | 2007-05-07 | By Paul Krill

Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current model in which open-source developers create free intellectual property and have others scoop it up to generate huge amounts of revenue.

“It really is a worrisome social artifact,” Green said. “I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.”

The current scenario is Robin Hood backwards: stealing from the poor and making others rich, said Green. 

There is a need to work closely with those in the open-source community to share revenues, said Green.

No, it won’t work!

Writing Blogs Can Be Hard, So Get ‘Help’: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

But blogging has evolved into a marketing tool, creating a new field: ghost blogging.

Business owners and entrepreneurs have found that blogging can build buzz, create a bond with customers and give them better placement in search results.

Many folks face a dilemma, however: How is one to find time to write and post blog entries?

Enter the ghost blogger. Growing numbers of writers and Web design firms are writing and posting blog entries on behalf of clients who want to have blogs but are poor writers or just too busy. Business is booming because blog clients know a good blog can mean a higher ranking in online searches via Google, Yahoo or other search engines.