ARROWHEAD STUDENT WRITER RECEIVES HONORABLE MENTION
RECOGNITION
Stossel in the Classroom announced the winners
of its third annual student essay contest. Bri Meyer, an Arrowhead senior and
journalism student in Ms. Liz Jorgensen’s class, has been awarded an Honorable
Mention in the contest. For her essay, she received $50 and a
certificate.
Students age 13 to 18 were asked to conduct research through
books, videos and the internet and then write an essay about whether government
or private individuals were better at solving problems.
There were 4,000 submissions from students across the country,
with 225 essays chosen as prize winners. Bri, as an Honorable Mention, was
among the top 6% of all the essays submitted.
Congratulations to Bri!
The following is Bri's essay:
 |
Bri Meyer
Honorable Mention Winer |
In his book No They Can’t, John Stossel claims that the American
government is ineffective, unequipped, and unable to solve the modern problems
of the world. He claims individuals can do these things. I believe that he is
not only correct in his claim, but that the evidence against government piles
higher and higher each year. Based on the drastic differences between the
funding and innovations of the private scientific sector versus the government
based agencies, Stossel affirms that in modern times, government simply
“can’t.”
Scientific funding is a relatively recent issue in politics. The industrial
revolution caused a boom in financial need to support the new methods of
research, and for awhile, these methods worked. Since the 1940s, the National
Science Foundation has funded approximately 11,000 new projects each year.
Unfortunately, this governmentally supported system no longer accommodates the
financial requirement of scientific research labs.
The best example of this comes from
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA. Last
year, President Obama terminated the shuttle program as part of his plan to end
wasteful programs. Since as early as 2005, NASA as a whole has been in danger
of extinction. Although NASA lives on, it continues to experience financial
instability and has lost its biggest component—improvement of space travel.
Shuttles were not worth the time and money they were costing the government.
During that time, however, Sir
Richard Branson and the private sector of science have been working to create
civilian shuttles and more. Brason’s Virgin Galactic, the space division of his
company, started researching shuttle designs as early as 2004 through the
X-Prize foundation. Since 1995, this non-profit organization gives scientists a
chance to invent new technologies in competition for a high money prize.
Stossel substantiates his theory that individuals can succeed more than
government through the idea of the X-Prize: because a prize is offered, a wider
variety of scientists will be enticed to create products quickly and
efficiently.
Currently, Branson has a fleet of
four space crafts—two of which are space buses with more than 550 ticket
holders. As NASA slowly lost government funding and support, Branson built his
fleet by combining his own money with intelligence from top scientists
throughout the world. Individuals and private companies have the power and
wealth to support these scientists in their efforts, which leads to more
cutting edge products in a shorter amount of time, no matter the financial
condition of the country.
The financial shortcomings of
governmental science only account for half of the problem. Within the past 30
years, the government has slacked on not only the funding of science, but the
innovation. In order to succeed in the economy today, science labs need to
create new technology in short amounts of time—an expensive prospect. This is
the reason why so many labs have requested government aid. This leaves the
government floundering for money and drowning in rules, regulations, and
paperwork with no time for its own research. The complexity of its system is
what prevents new technologies to emerge.
A great example of lack of innovation
came with the BP oil spill in 2010. The government immediately stepped in to
save the day, but used the same system to clean the oil as the one used 21
years ago to clean the Exxon Valdez spill. This left the government looking
like saviors even though the technology gap thwarted the speed and efficiency
of the clean-up effort. The government requires mass market cars to be 35 miles
per gallon to help the planet, yet it is reluctant to change even the most
serious of its global pollution solutions.
In the private sector, improvement
has not been stalled. The X-Prize and other private companies have held
contests not just for space travel, but for high miles per gallon cars and for
oil spill cleanup. In the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive contest,
X-Prize offered money to the team that could create a car with 100 mpg, low CO2 emissions,
and potential to be manufactured by the mass market. The winning team not only
achieved this, but created a car that runs 102.5 mpg on high efficiency,
ethanol blend fuel. Similar to this, Wendy Schmidt sponsored a $1
million X-Prize to create a newer, more proficient way to clean up world oil
spills from tankers and ocean platforms after seeing the devastating effects of
outdated government methods in the 2010 oil spill,. The winners were able to
update the government’s technology and triple the speed and effectiveness of
oil cleanup. These contests, sponsored by private companies looking to improve
the science of modern times, have together created more new technology for the
world than anything the government has done in a long time.
Yes, the government may provide
financial support to various labs around the country, but that will never be
enough to get America into a new wave of scientific discovery. Government money
is too little and spread too thin to accomplish anything significant. But in
the private sector, individuals and companies with money and means can take
their initiative and create useful, cutting edge equipment in half the time.
They not only have more money to spend, but have the world’s brightest
scientists under their employ. Because the scientific funding and innovation of
individuals has readily surpassed the government, I believe Stossel is correct
when saying that in modern technological times, the government can no longer
handle the responsibility of scientific discovery.
Congratulations Bri!!!
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