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In the real world, the "pipeline" of jobs into this very high-knowledge level of R&D is tiny--only a few thousand new people a year are needed for research, and only a few thousand positions can be supported. To perform research at this level of technology, PhDs are required, and few of us are capable of reaching this level of academic accomplishment.

In the real world, sudden shifts in technology can render thousands of highly paid people redundant. When drug research was largely chemical in nature, then thousands of chemists worked for global pharmaceutical companies. With the advent of monoclonal antibodies and other biotechnologies, the chemists were fired.

As for nanotechnology, we already have a nano-technology industry: it's called the semiconductor industry. Yes, a small group of highly trained researchers are needed, but refinements and new "inventions" within this technology only serve to lower costs and move further away from the factory paradigm of "job growth."

When the healthcare system seizes up in insolvency, then who will be paying $1,000 per dose or handful of pills? If the pharmaceutical companies' revenues are slashed by 80%, then how many researchers will they be hiring?

Much of the research is ultimately funded by the Federal government. As the central government totters toward insolvency (or its currency is debased to near-zero, which is ultimately the same end-point), then the "free" money machine grinds to a halt and the funding for costly research dries up.

The same can be said for the military-industrial complex: the era of $300 million fighter aircraft is over, and the era of $3 million pilotless drones is here.

If we subtract what the U.S. has borrowed publicly and privately from its net output, we are faced with the jarring reality that the U.S. as a nation has been living beyond its means for decades. That profligacy is about to end, one way or another. We can only spend what we create in surplus.

Education, like every other "industry," will have to do more with less. What principles should guide the reinvention?

1. The responsibility for educating our young does not fall on some distant amorphous bureaucracy, but on parents and the community. The notion that it's the "school and teachers' job to educate my kid" is false. Teachers are hired to teach a curriculum chosen by a community; the mis-education or education of the young people is still the responsibility of the parents and community at large.

Parents will have to collaborate closely with teachers and schools. The role of parents in home-schooling may be far closer to a practical model for education than the "professionalization" of education which follows the "factory model" (see below).

As borrowed money drains out of the system, the idea that schools should feed kids, manage their life crises, etc. will fade along with the funding. Parents and the remaining paid staff at the school will have to actively recruit community collaboration and participation.

Note that collaboration implies a free exchange within a non-autocratic structure. Telling people what to do is not collaboration. Autocratic bureaucracies depend on endless sums of "free money" spent with little accountability. Once money is not longer "free" and accountability increases on how it is spent (i.e. education spending is slashed along with all other government spending), then autocratic authority structures will be bypassed or wither as collaborators (and taxpayers) opt out of participating in variations of the "this is our fiefdom and you are our serfs" game.

2. Full-spectrum prosperity is the template. This can be summarized thusly: your health, knowledge, skills and purpose are your responsibility. We can give you the basic tools but the rest is up to you.

Since the citizenry will be responsible for their own health, and since knowledge of food, nutrition, diet, and health are so poor, then perhaps the biology curriculum should be organized around an integrated understanding of the food/nutrition/health chain. Plants use photosynthesis