Industry For The New Milennium

After the financial fiascos of the past year or two, it should be clear to everyone that 'finance' should be a means to an end, and not an entire industry to itself. And any economy based solely on financial institutions is doomed to failure when those institutions fail - just ask Iceland or Charlotte, NC. Our economy shouldn't be based on imaginary dollars moved from one place to another, we need to get back to making stuff, our economy needs to be the sum total of goods moved and services provided.
   "But Don," you say, "the auto industry has failed just like the steel industry did. And the time for railroads was two centuries ago. What could the United States possibly make that the rest of the world wants to buy?" Well, thanks for asking, I have a few suggestions.

Garbage-based Deodorant. Americans generate a lot of garbage, and much of the rest of the world smells bad (pretentious Eurotrash, I'm looking your way). All we have to do is figure out a way to make our garbage smell better than stinky foreigners and it's an instant growth industry. And, let's be honest, we don't have all that far to go.

Discarded CD Solar Reflectors. Steve Jobs was right, the iPod changed everything; it killed an entire industry, as a matter of fact, which makes you wonder why pretentious record store douchebags were the first to go digital. Who buys CDs any more? And once you load your music onto your computer what do you do with the old ones? Solar is a growth industry, and they need shiny stuff. CDs are shiny and otherwise useless. Picture acres upon acres of worthless copies of 'Pocket Full of Kryptonite' shining valuable sunlight back into solar cells. Brings a tear to your eye.

McMansion Holidays. We have a glut of hastily-built, overpriced, immense homes all across the country, standing vacant and waiting for banks to realize they're never going to make back the money on those overextended mortgage notes. People in developing countries will have money for vacations, and rather than stay in an impersonal hotel that looks like every other hotel on the block, they can stay in an impersonal home that looks like every other home on the block. Oooh, look, granite countertops! And a jacuzzi in the master bath!

Soylent Green. Just hear me out on this one... the developing world is hungry, and the best innovations in the next century are going to come from third world nations, as long as they get enough to eat. Here in the US we have an overabundance of 'reality' performers whose only claim to fame is that they once showed up on TV. We take our surplus, make Soylent Green out of them, a high-protein easily-digestible food, and 'voila!' problem solved. I think the first to go should be Jon and Kate, then the big-booty Kardashians.

   I'm available for consulting, once the 'captains of industry' catch up to me.