This month, the United States celebrated what is popularly considered its 250 th birthday. In reality, what was being commemorated was the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The United States was formally born in Paris on September 3, 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed which officially ended the American War of Independence, and where Great Britain recognized the thirteen colonies to be free, soveign and independent united states.

It is somewhat ironic that the United States was formally recognized as a country in France the spiritual home if not the founding home of the enlightenment. Life, liberty, and the natural rights of people were key words in the 17^th century enlightenment philosopher John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. They were words that Thomas Jefferson then echoed in the Declaration of Independence. Words that continuously shape and box in America’s political culture. Words that gave the United States an exceptional advantage in the age of globalization as long as globalization was driven by technology and not dependent on the protection of community.

Since America was the only major country whose political system was developed during the age of enlightenment and never checked by countervailing political and philosophical forces, Americans give much more credence to the rights of the individual than in other countries. In the eyes of America’s founders, the government was created not to watch over the individual welfare of its citizens but to guarantee their fundamental rights and liberties.

In Europe and Asia, modern governments were partly derived from the historic tradition of the king, queen or emperor being responsible for their subjects. Just look at America’s never-ending fight over universal health care, a feature that every other major economy had adopted years ago. Only in the United States has healthcare become an issue of too much government power or simply put, what right does the government have to tell me which doctor to choose?

 Although for sure America’s adherence to enlightenment philosophy has been detrimental to healthcare for many of its citizens, it is a perfect catalyst for technological innovation. Because of the perceived limited role of government in the United States versus that of other countries, two related concepts—creative disruption, observed by the Austrian economist Joseph Shumpeter, and disruptive innovation, by the Harvard professor Clayton Christensen—could essentially merge in the United States and allow tech companies to invent new ways of doing things without worrying that the government would interfere to protect established workers or industries that might be disrupted in the process. As an example, it would be very strange within American culture if the government protected printing houses against electronic readers or research librarians against Google.

 Shumpeter’s creative disruption outlines how economic progress is not gradual or peaceful but rather disjointed and possibly unpleasant. Whenever an entrepreneur disrupts an existing industry, it is likely that existing workers, businesses, or even entire sectors can be temporarily thrown into disarray. Christensen’s idea of disruptive innovation refers to an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market-leading firms and products.

 Neither Schumpeter’s nor Christensen’s concepts are illogical, but in the United States by tradition and by law these concepts are given free reign. By comparison, in Europe, the sovereign (government) generally sees as its right and its duty the protection of its “vassals” from destruction, maintaining balance within the society.

 With basically no limits on how disruptive innovation migrates through the marketplace, America’s most innovative companies have a built-in incubator and test market of 350 million people for their products. And because of the merger between technology and globalization, products that have been successfully test-driven in the American marketplace can then immediately go globally viral.

America’s philosophical heritage however has a very disquieting downside beyond healthcare. Simply put, when there is a crisis within America—whether it is because of globalization or due to the combination of automation and artificial intelligence or the results of a global pandemic—there is no automatic government response to try to ameliorate these problems. There is comparatively hardly even a basic safety net. Instead, the response is caught in a no man’s land between individual rights and government action. Just look at the comment of Kayleigh McEnany, the White House Press Secretary during the pandemic who labeled as "Orwellian" many of the Covid guidelines. She famously stated," That's not the American way, and we don't lose our freedom in this country. We make responsible health decisions as individuals."

For America’s political culture it was easy to be a world leader when one of the keys to leadership had been dominating the world in technological innovation. But the world has now turned much darker.  Can America continue to be a global leader when a significant portion of America’s society sees today’s globalized issues – pandemics, global warming, economic contagion – as individual issues? When America’s laissez fair governing philosophy was never able to see the destruction caused to America’s lower middle-income citizens by the combination of automation and off-shoring which politically directly led to the rise of popularism in the country.

Compare this to Europe where basically starting with Napoleon, enlightenment principles were merged with the idea that the state also exist for the welfare of the people. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not thrown away but had to be balanced with the welfare of the citizens. Thus, in Europe today, with its very deep social welfare net, and labor union membership, when faced with similar problems of automation and offshoring, the political system was not taken over by radical populist rage.

Before the pandemic, I truly believed that in the new world of human capital no other country had the cultural and political advantages that America had. With its intellectual freedom, respect for the individual and its ability to adapt to technological change, America possessed the magic formula for success in the knowledge-based world.  I would look at some of the Chinese students who were taking my course via Zoom and trying to write their term papers despite a blocked internet, wondering at what point without intellectual freedom would the Chinese economy fail to move to the next level.

But now I wonder if a similar question can be asked about America. Is America’s adaptable enough to fully confront the harsher side of globalization? Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was written is America’s political culture trapped in its founders’ philosophy of the relationship of the individual to the state?