Parables From Ricky Bobby

The weather was unseasonably cool for the Labor Day weekend in Okoboji, Iowa. This of course was of no concern to me and my family as we enjoyed a lazy weekend at the lake. Saturday morning we laid around like Macaulay Culkin waiting for a casting call. Food lined the kitchen counter as we over indulged in coffee, orange juice, banana bread, egg dish and even some dessert from the night before. This is how Labor Day should be.

Before the food coma completely set in, "Planet Earth" was put in the DVD player. For those of you who haven't yet seen this series, I highly recommend it. The footage captured is some of the most breathtaking I've seen. Scene after scene, a pattern began to emerge. An animal, down on the food chain would inevitably lose an uphill battle to a larger, stronger and hungrier beast. Salmon were shown trying to swim upstream as bears looking like John Goodman at a Thanksgiving buffet tore into the them. Elk were shown drinking out of a seemingly quite pond when a gator would burst through the serene scene to drag the unsuspecting elk to its watery death.

The animals who were prayed upon were not the only animal out there. In fact they were, without exception, traveling as part of a larger pack. My sister, Melissa astutely made the comment "you don't have to be the fastest, you just can't be the slowest." If you are a Salmon, what good does it do you to be the strongest fish? Or if you are an Elk, does being the fastest give you any sort of advantage? Probably not. Therefore, you just have to be the worst +1 (until that fish gets eaten of course).

To some extent, this exception of mediocrity seems to have pervaded the human race. It would seem we don't have as many people adhering to the Ricky Bobby philosophy "If you're not first, you're last mentality" as maybe we once did. I'm guessing right now you are sitting back, arms crossed like Nancy Pelosi at a Tea Party event saying to yourself "Am I a fish swimming upstream simply not trying to be the slowest of the group?" I'm fairly certain you are not of the Ricky Bobby mentality that if you're not first, you're last. Are the two mutually exclusive?

Below is an example of a normally distributed curve. Imagine the population is graphed on the "Y" axis and performance is graphed on the "X" axis.

Look at the tales marked in white on either end. Can you honestly say you strive to be one of these outliers? Or are you fairly content being part of the 95% majority, swimming upstream with little fear of getting eating by Johnny Goodman? Most of us are.

According to a Gallup poll, 66% of Americans currently believe China has a larger economy than the United States. In reality, China recently passed Japan as the world's second largest economy with a GDP of over 5 trillion. The United States, by contrast has a GDP of just over 14 trillion, nearly tripling the GDP of the much more populous China. The fact that not only do 2/3 of Americans think China is larger than the United States, but they also seem to be apathetic towards that fact is almost as depressing as "The Hills" season finale. Have we as Americans lost our competitive drive?

My inclination is to say no. Sure, China is growing at a much fast pace than the U.S. Who cares, they are essentially in their own version of the industrial revolution. The U.S. has been in this situation before. Gallup's CEO Jim Clifton often tells the story of when he turned on the news 30 years ago and heard the world's leading economists predicting that within 10 years Japan would have the world's largest economy at nearly 5 trillion dollars, followed by Germany at just over 4 trillion and then the United States at just under 4 trillion. They were all wrong. The United States has tripled since that point becoming the world's lone superpower.

Several key factors contributed to this growth. First off is the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. People like Bill Gates not only amassed wealth for himself, but created wealth for hundreds of thousands of people. Microsoft employees, upstream partners, downstream partners, companies who used the product to gain efficiencies etc are all beneficiaries of his masterful creation. One could actually argue that Bill Gates, in stepping down from Microsoft to fully focus on his charity "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation," is actually doing a disservice to humanity. How? Bill is an outlier on the far right hand portion of that curve. Sure, he can give away 20 billion dollars, but does that have the same effect as creating a 60 billion dollar company like Microsoft? You could certainly argue that his entrepreneurship ability is of far greater value to society overall. Just a thought...

The second major reason the U.S. has grown is something called "brain gain." The United States has a good, not great education system. Our students, 50 million strong are up against over 200 million Chinese students. This seems to be an uphill and losing battle, especially when you consider asian cultures spend more time in school than western cultures. They outperform American students in math and science on a consistent basis. Should we be alarmed? I don't think so.

While the gap in math and science must be addressed for America to retain the world's economic national championship, migration will likely keep the U.S. atop the world. The best students from China, India and other eastern countries come to the U.S. to further their higher education, seek employment and amass wealth. We have become and must continue to be a melting pot of cognitive power, propelling our growth and subsequently the world's standard of living onto a level never seen.

So, as a society do we gravitate more toward the Ricky Bobby line of thinking or are we more like the school of fish where only the weakest gets eaten? Maybe neither, maybe both. Either way, we'll finish the race.