Crazy Idea #5 - Time Slipping

As a fair warning, if you have not seen the most recent season of Lost or you plan on watching Lost at any point in time, I recommend against reading this. If you're not a fan of Lost and have no plans to ever watch the show, there is something wrong with you because it is a pretty phenomenal show.

Upon much reflection, I have determined the best immediate way to solve Michigan's problems. Some people say "End Entitlement", others argue "Economic Diversification", still others promote education reform and entrepreneurship. These ideas all have their own merits, but they overlook the best and easiest path to success in overcoming the economic strife of Michigan. Time Travel. More specifically, time slipping, like we learned about at the end of Season 4 of Lost. At the end of the season, we were informed of several crucial components of the Lost mythology. Most importantly, the island, through the magical turning of a big frozen wooden wheel, can "disappear". We are not explicitly told what happens when the island disappears, but it is pretty clear that the island temporarily ceases to exist in the current time frame and reappears at some indeterminate future date. That is why that pirate ship managed to end up in the middle of the island - the island reappeared when the ship was sailing but at the geographic center of the island. Obviously. One key component of this disappear/reappear interaction is that while the world continues to age at the "normal" rate, time does not progress on the island. I don't want to spend too much time diving into relativity here, but it is kind of like what happens when something travels at speeds approaching the speed of light. Things traveling considerably slower than the speed of light (earth, turtles, my fastball) "age" faster than the thing traveling crazy fast, so it is kind of like time travel into the future. Going backwards in time is just silly, so let's not be ridiculous here.

Based on this principle, the solution to all of our problems seems incredibly simple. We figure out some way to make the state travel forward in time without actually traveling forward in time. Then, Michigan will return in 2010 or 2011 when the economic situation is resolved and people are ready to purchase products again. Problem solved. If we can not figure out how to make the state slip in time as an independent entity, perhaps we could figure out a way to move the state onto the island in Lost and then take advantage of the island's time slipping capabilities. In this day and age we need new ideas, and I think time travel should be considered at the top of the list. I don't have all the kinks worked out yet (like what do we do about technological development we will miss out on, non-Michigan based manufacturers will pick up all the available market share, etc.), but I would like to throw some of these questions out to the public so that we can work on jointly solving our complicated challenges within the framework of temporarily making Michigan disappear to then reappear in the future.

Here are the kind of ideas I'm looking for - before we make ourselves disappear, we have some sort of global auto summit that includes executives from all over the world. Then, when the summit is in its second day, we enact my master plan. Other companies will then have trouble capitalizing on the available market share because all of their quality leadership will be in time-slip mode.