One estimate of the cost for bridging Knik Arm is $600 million. But such an immense amount of capital could fuel many other megaprojects. Has imagination finally failed Alaska, land of the Last Big Dream?
Here’s one better way to knead that dough.
Great civilizations once erected great libraries. While Alaska mayn’t qualify as a particularly fine civilization (or even an outlying shanty town on the fringe of an semi-nice burg) we now might have the chance to create what could be the greatest library of the Far North.
If we throw up such a thing, with the world’s knowledge housed, catalogued, filed, posted and stored for their use, they will come by the thousands. And they will stay to build houses, start businesses, raise children, seed ideas.
Think this is unlikely? Consider the somewhat controversial eddy in economics called new growth theory — which argues that increasing and shared knowledge is the real driver behind the modern economic engine.
