At 1:20 of the trailer, Jude apologizes for his apparent apathy in the anti-war effort by claiming that while he wasn’t the man with a mega phone, he was communicating the message through his art. This didn’t seem to appease Lucy, who had just asserted that she would lie in front of a tank if it meant ending the war. My immediate thought was “would I lie in front of a tank if I needed to” to which I answered “if I had the right reason, I would”.

My ambiguity is not cowardly as much as it’s reflective of not being able to relate to the idea of things being that bad. While there are many things worth fighting for today, I have not personally encountered the type of things – tyranny, revolution, invasion, prejudice – which others have historically faced or are currently facing in spheres of the world far different than mine. All things considered, I have unconsciously enjoyed the sheltered life that my beautiful country has afforded me.

So having answered that, sort of, the next thing which fascinated me about that particular scene in the movie and the Chinese Government’s (henceforth ‘China’) actions was regarding communication. Lucy did not see that Jude’s ‘megaphone’ was his paintbrush and China sees liberal communication as a threat rather than an opportunity. Both are dead wrong.

Although China’s actions were not related to the recession, their decision speaks volumes about why their country will struggle and why we’re at a significant advantage. By inhibiting any forms of communication, China is retarding creativity. By creating barriers to communicate and collaborate, China is preventing itself from growing beyond the Manufacturing Age.  Let’s even disregard for the moment social media sites that were blocked like Youtube, Flickr and Twitter and concentrate on Hotmail. How can people be encouraged (let alone be enabled) to create if they can’t communicate?

Recently, many people have compared western governments’ intervention in the economy to that of China’s arguing that we are moving away from the era of free capitalism and towards a more China-like approach. Enter socialism fear-mongering.  I contest that it’s not socialism as much as its survival. Had our government not propped up certain industries and become the main instigator for new jobs, what would have happened to our economy? It was survival and the economic alignment with China, therefore, is temporary because our ability to be creative and debate freely will always ultimately differentiate our sphere from theirs.

When playing a part to kill the recession, remember the asset of free communication and all the things, like creativity, which are a by-product of this.  There are no limits to how we can communicate and it goes well beyond social media and the internet. For Jude it was painting and in this absolute must see video, it was dancing.  For Richard Florida and Kevin Stolarick, the Martin Prosperity Institute provides a well connected channel to evangelize the rise of the Creative Class. For Bruce Mau, the Institute without Boundaries is a brilliant way to communicate the power of design, creativity and people to a young audience.

The point is: there are no limits or boundaries to how you can communicate, create and collaborate. It sounds simple but depending where you live, it’s far from the case.

But another important thing to consider is how bailouts impact the creative class.  I believe that the two – bailouts and creativity – are inversely related. So as bailouts increase, creativity is suppressed and it’s not hard to figure out why.

If we save GM, not only are we propping up a company which has shown a tendency to avoid being creative – which is one of the reasons why its where it is right now – but our lifeline is accompanied with a short leash on what they do. They are more likely to consider how to fix their old errors than open up into a territory that they are unfamiliar with. They are, in other words, very adverse to creativity.

If GM was left to face its inevitable decline, on the other hand, it would create a vacuum for new industries to emerge that are ultimately better suited for today’s economy. Take the airline industry as a good example of this. Almost all Canadian airlines (except, for some inexplicable reason, Air Canada) are not provided with the same lifeline that we are currently dishing out and accordingly, almost all of them have failed. Because of this, WestJet was created with a creatively divergent business model (which they can actually credit SouthWestern Airlines for) and has comparably flourished in this airline-hostile market. They haven’t been without their own problems but the point is that the death of one corporation means that many others will follow until the right formula is found.

I’m not particularly an advocate of the Austrian School of Economics which argues that we should just let everything fail and re-start again. I’m also not particularly a fan of complete and utter government intervention (i.e. rampant socialism) that seems to be going on right now. I am a fan, however, of the idea that we don’t bailout for the sake of bailing out and really consider where we put our lifelines. I wonder if rather than giving GM 6 billion, what that money could do if it was up for grabs for entrepreneurs and small business owners in the auto realm. Would this not create the same job creation that we are fearful of losing? Would this inspire more people to think creatively about building companies for tomorrow and not saving companies from yesterday?

Creativity is a risk, I’ll admit it. But at some point we all decide that what we have isn’t worth fixing. I think this is one of those times.