Hero Worship

EXCERPT FROM MINE OF 12 DECEMBER 2009

In the "Hero Worship" episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, Picard brings the Enterprise into a black cluster to track down a missing ship, the Vico. As they enter the cluster, gravity waves threaten. Enterprise raises shields for protection from the waves. As they travel deeper into the cluster, the waves grow stronger and more threatening. Again and again, Enterprise increases power to the shields. Ultimately, Geordi diverts power to the shields from the warp drive, the ship's greatest source of power.

But the next approaching wave is stronger yet. The crew fears all is lost. The captain braces for impact. At that moment Mr. Data discovers that the shields have been causing the gravity waves. He tells Captain Picard to shut down the shields. With no time for argument or discussion, Picard chooses to trust Data's judgement and orders the shields down. Seconds from impact, the wave dissipates. Enterprise and her crew survive.

Sometimes you have to stop doing the thing that was always the right thing to do. In that episode of Star Trek, the gravity waves grew stronger as Enterprise traveled deeper into the cluster. It appeared that the gravity waves grew stronger because Enterprise traveled deeper into the cluster. But as Mr. Data discovered, that was not the case.

When you have a standard procedure that you use to solve a problem, it can be very difficult to believe that your procedure is the cause of the problem. On Enterprise, they always raise shields to protect the ship. This time, inside the black cluster, standard procedure was the cause of the problem.

For economists, politicians, and policy-makers today, the standard procedure is to apply monetary policy to the inflation problem, and tax policy to the growth problem. But we have traveled in this direction for so long that we have come to a different environment, a sort of black cluster where standard procedure only makes matters worse.

To save Enterprise, we need to drop the shields. We need to stop using monetary policy to fix the inflation problem, and stop using tax policy to fix the growth problem. My advice to the Captain? Use tax policy to fix the inflation problem, and monetary policy to fix the growth problem. At least until we're out of this cluster.