THE FUTURE: Needed for America: Fewer Claims, More Growth

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The sharpest perils in America's future will arise out of the modern offsprings of progress, claims Macrae. The most frightening possibility is the rapid spread of atomic weapons into the hands of global terrorists. The major industrial countries must meet this predicament by improving the living standards of the poorer nations, thereby increasing the commitment of all human beings to maintaining an unwarlike status quo.

Modern Molds. For the U.S. to reassert its economic primacy in its third century, argues Macrae, the nation will have to go back to its "longstanding, history-given, go-getting" economic pragmatism. He calls for a return to the old incentive-filled free-market philosophy, but in modern molds. Americans, he contends, must restructure their private companies and redesign their governmental bodies in order to free themselves from the bureaucratic shackles that now stifle their growth. They must also broaden the types of community living in the nation to include choices on the political right and left—meaning new concepts like puritan towns, local governments run on contract by private businesses, and towns that emphasize full individual participation.

The prototype for new private corporations may be "confederations of entrepreneurs." Individual entrepreneurs within a single corporation, he predicts, may soon be given even greater independence to run various departments in the company or set up competitive ones. Within the immense federal and state governments, Macrae proposes a new form of market competition called "performance contracts." By this method, citizens will vote regularly for the private contractors—garbage collectors, transit companies and sewage disposal firms—that best deliver the services.

An unapologetic growth advocate, Macrae warns that America must crusade for economic expansion—by investing more, loosening environmental restrictions and breaking bureaucracies. If the world's richest nation fails, he says, the consequence may be that "half the world will remain hungry, and that half-world may blow us up."