Posted on: Friday, January 4, 2002

Island Voices
The prize awaits if Islands seize it

By Guy Steele
Resident of Seattle

When I was an Island child some 30 years ago, Jan Ken Po was more than a way to pass time waiting for TheBus. It was a great arbitrator, settling playground disputes and deciding dodge ball teams.

There was an elegant simplicity to the rules. Rock pummeled scissors. Scissors mulched paper. And, completing the trifecta was the clincher: Paper suffocated rock.

Similarly braided are The Three E's: Education, Economy and Environment. Poor education hobbles an economy. A hobbled economy undermines the environment. An underminded environment burdens education.

Socio-eco-bio Jan Ken Po.

Less-educated youth perpetuates jobs with limited mobility. Better-educated youth often seek opportunities abroad in what is cheekily dubbed a "brain drain." The resulting economy requires fiscal belt cinching that, in turn, limits ecologically viable programs. In a state conjoined at the wallet with tourism, a compromised environment erodes the tax base and, ultimately, education.

Realizing that nobody was going to pay me to surf, I left Hawai'i more than 20 years ago to study business at Pepperdine University, where Jan Ken Po settled dormitory disputes and decided mock-debate teams. But business school was just a formality. Like Robert Fulghum, everything I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten.

I learned that one can judge a local economy by the number of construction cranes on the landscape. That, and the quality of pizza delivery cars. In a robust economy, there are lots of cranes and the Dominos guys drive rustbuckets. In a soured economy, cranes migrate to fairer skies and late-model sedan payments are often subsidized by night jobs, including pepperoni pie delivery.

Now is the winter of our opportunity ... time to abandon the status quo that has kept Hawai'i's nose pressed against the window of prosperity while 49 siblings ate cake.

As a Mainlander whose heart will always remain in the Islands, I ask Hawai'i to take a page from Economic Reform for Dummies: Reform (y)our economy with pervasive promotional campaigns. Provide tax abatements for developers seeking commercial real estate rehabilitation. Embrace the clean-burning engines of legalized gaming.

My dream is to retire in Hawai'i. I would love returning to a place where the Three E's are braided into a tapestry I once knew.