Can "E Pluribus Unum" Last? | Juan Enriquez | Big Think

Can "E Pluribus Unum" Last?

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will the U.S. confront new secession movements in the 21st century? “Untied States of America” author Juan Enriquez hopes not—and offers suggestions as to how his book’s worst-case scenario can be prevented.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Juan Enriquez:

Juan Enriquez, a bestselling author, businessman, and academic, is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the economic and political impacts of life sciences. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy LLC, a life sciences research and investment firm, as well as the Managing Director of Excel Venture Management. He was the Founding Director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project and author of the global bestseller "As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth" (Crown Business, 2001). His most recent book is "The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future" (Crown Business, 2005).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Why do you believe America is in danger of balkanizing itself?

Juan Enriquez: So, I wrote a book called “The Untied States of America,” as opposed to the United States of America, in 2004 and published in 2005. I did so with one very specific objective in mind. I have extraordinary admiration for Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. The really strange thing is, over the last 60 years, as we tripled the number of countries in the developed and the developing world, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia. The Americas has been a relatively stable continent. The last truly new border we have is Panama in 1903.

I can’t tell you how unusual that is. During a period of time when Italy is talking about splitting northern and southern Italy, France is talking about splitting with Corsica and Normandy, England is talking about splitting with Wales and Scotland and England. And it goes on and on and on. This has been this oasis and anytime you see an outline of that magnitude, you have to ask yourself, why? Particularly given that Canada came in within about .02% of a vote of splitting itself. So, it could even happen to the north of us.

The second reason why it’s important to begin to even consider whether countries can become something that looks very different is because people tend to take their countries for granted. So, they assume, “It’ll never happen here.” One very simple example and one way to get students to thinking about these things; ask your friends how many stars will be in the U.S. flag in 50 years? And the reason why that’s a reasonable question is because there has never been a President of the United States who’s been buried under the same flag he was born under.

The U.S. started with no stars. In fact, it started with a completely different flag. The last two were added in 1959, Hawaii and Alaska. Until there’s a President born after ’59, that dies with no change in the flag and no change in the number of states, that will continue to be a true statement. So, if there hasn’t been continuity, why would you assume continuity over the next 50 years? And if there is incontinuity then you have to ask yourself, does it get bigger? Which is the history of this country, or, like almost every other country on the planet, except Brazil, does it get smaller?

And the first chapter of this book in 2005, unfortunately, said one of the things that the United States is going to face, and it’s going to be really ugly, is a financial crisis and it’s coming because of an excess of debt, because of an excess of leverage, because it’s going to be concentrated in a few organizations that have way too much power and very little supervision outside of us. And it’s probably going to be triggered by a real estate crisis. Because real estate prices are way out of whack with what people earn.

When people go back and they read that first chapter from 2005, it turns out to be not inaccurate, to use a double negative. I hope the rest of the book is not accurate. I wrote that book so people wouldn’t take their country for granted and make sure that their country – they start taking care of it. You don’t do that by increasing the national debt by $2 trillion. You don’t do that by putting out $24 trillion in loan guarantees. You don’t do that by not re-regulating financial institutions that were too large to begin with and now have gotten even larger and it’s even more dangerous for them to fail.

Read the full transcript at