What We Need Is...

...more failure?

I'm moving over from NPR to ESPN radio for the morning ride to work. Colin Cowherd was talking today about why American Idol is a great show. *disclaimer - I do not watch* He argued, American Idol isn't about the singing. It is about winners and losers. America, he said, is a country of winners and losers. It is full of pain and desperation, but also full of people rise above it because they are hungry to succeed. You want to live in a country where everyone makes 36,000 a year and gets health coverage? Go to Canada. Go to Scandinavia. You want a country where a poor ass kid from backwards Georgia struggles for years to practice guitar so she can get one shot at American Idol and knock the socks off Mary J. Blige? Come to America. You want to see kids from the ghetto make it as NBA and NFL superstars, come to America. He argued, it is the pain and desperation and competition that makes people become the best. Because they have to. He says we love sports and competition reality shows and all this stuff because we see this drama play out. We love seeing underdogs with chips on their shoulder beat favorites. We love seeing guys who come from nothing and work their asses off for years and years for one shot at making it against the best competition in the world.

Interesting points. It got me thinking about the financial industry bail out, the mortgage bailout, the stimulus, and all of it. It strikes me, as a country, we all of sudden became afraid of failure. Let me ask this -

So what if the entire world financial industry collapsed? How difficult would it be to re-grow it? Seriously. It isn't some sort of black magic secret how the system ought to operate. You borrow money at X rate and loan it out X+1 rate. If you make money, you survive. If you lose, money, you don't. Maybe I'm being glib or flippant or ignorant here. But since when did it become so vital to preserve particular institutions? Since when did we become so afraid of failure? Hasn't anyone seen that Dwayne Wade commercial? The one where he keeps getting knocked down. And then the music rises and it says something along the lines, "It isn't how many times you fall..." and rises...and then there are shots of him getting off the floor..."it's how many times you rise."

Boom. Maybe what we need is a little more failure and little less bail out.