Knowlege economy infrastructure

[Skydaemon]

In the context of stimulus plans, and or positioning nations for the future.

It pisses me off everytime I hear the words infrastructure as if it's somehow a great idea for putting out of work information workers back into jobs. Especially when they use phrases like "post-industrial economy" in the same breathe. It pisses me off for 2 reasons. 1) This is exactly the kind of time we need to be investing in infrastructure for the new economy. 2) I don't believe the kind of infrastructure our politicians know how to do is going to be anything other than a waste of money or some kind of giant welfare program with few lasting benefits.

First off, if this is really a knowledge economy, then I don't think the new infrastructure required to be competitive is industrial-era style infrastructure. Howabout knowledge infrastructure. Did they ever do that broadband infrastructure thing or was that the only part of the $787B stimulus that they scrapped? I get that "knowledge infrastructure" may not be all tangible goods people can point to on the street, and hence it's hard to visualize the importance.

Think about it in terms of civilization stages.

Civ stage 1: Start by moving to a farm-based agrarian economy, then you want farming infrastructure (things like aquaducts and irrigation, granaries) to support farming efforts. Technology (plows, hoes, tools etc) improves our production rate. Eventually we get so good at this that all of our agriculture needs can be met by a declining percentage of the population and we move to stage 2.

Civ stage 2: Then move into a market-based industrial-production economy. What helps here? All the things politicians mean when they talk about infrastructure - roads, bridges, airports, shipping ports. I'd even include enablers like gas stations, electricity grids and projects and hydro and so on. Technology (robots) make us good enough at industrial production that we can do this too with only a small portion of our population, so we move on to stage 3.

Civ stage 3: Well it depends on what the new stage is. Obama et al hint that it might be green jobs or a green economy, but that really just sounds like the final trimmings on the industrial economy to me. It may be a knowledge based economy. Although I'm not sure how it will work out, it seems as likely as anything else.

If it's a knowledge economy then, what do we need in terms of "knowledge infrastructure" to be competitive?

Unfortunately politicians don't like infrastructure like this because it is highly productive, and hence most of the money goes to materials and development and so on rather than loads of unnecessary workers that sit around all day. Hence it creates the knowledge infrastructure but doesn't create many jobs directly.

This is a problem because it means investments are going to need to be strategic and visionary, and are not direct pork -> immediate reward vote-buying type spending that our politicians favor. It also means that this time infrastructure building is totally separate from dealing with the unemployed problem. That sucks but it is what it is.

Now we get to the sticky part: what knowledge infrastructure is going to be valuable for a knowledge economy?

I've heard 2 things from stimulus talk which I'd lump under knowledge infrastructure:
-Investing in the internet and broadband is a seriously good start.
-I'll give them credit for electronic health care records as that could be lumped in as well.

I can think of a lot of other really important changes that need to happen, but I'd be interested to hear what others think is valuable in terms of "knowledge infrastructure". The litmus test that I would use for value here is: does this make the country, or workers of the country, more competitive and productive and viable in a global worldwide economy. If you built the whole batch of this stuff, it would create a major advantage against countries that didn't.