The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.
You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.
I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes.