Some "quickie" analysis
Kirby Urner
Wrote this in a hurry. Guests coming, gotta clean the bathroom.
Feedback welcome. Apologies in advance for whatever typos.
Kirby
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During the Cold War, capitalism and socialism competed on two
fronts: livingry and weaponry. On the livingry front, you
want to show your system promises higher living standards, the
most sustainably secure lifestyles. On the weaponry front, you
want to show that you have the means to protect and safeguard
your interests.
The common wisdom today is that capitalism has proved itself
the most fit system, in a Darwinian sense. Some people thing
Star Wars was the final straw: the threat to build a missile
defense caused the Soviet Union to realize it could not win
over the long haul. Internal doubts caused it to
self-destruct, leaving the USA the last and only superpower.
The common wisdom is that capitalism is now a monopoly system,
and those who agitate for higher living standards for those
seemingly left out or exploited, have very little leverage,
because they have no competing system to point to.
Of course, the real picture is more complicated than this.
Reforms widely derided as "socialist" in conception, introduced
by FDR, and built upon by the Johnson administration under the
"war on poverty" period, still form the remnants of a social
safety net for many USA citizens. Food stamps, social
security, and medicare remain vital programs. Likewise,
government spending is still used to prime the pump in the high
technology sector, through military spending. Military
Keynesianism is alive and well as a part of both liberal and
conservative ideologies. So it's obviously not the case that
government is considered irrelevant to keeping the capitalist
infrastructure viable.
The USA is something of a laboratory for capitalism, as here
we have the opportunity to chip away at safety net
infrastructure, leaving capitalism to its own devices. Banks
are again merging with sister financial institutions, in ways
put asunder in the aftermath of the crash of 1929. Corporate
profits are very high, and the middle class is riding the stock
market wave like never before, saving little to nothing,
expecting high net returns on risk capital to keep them
viable. The lure of easy money is quasi-irresistable,
especially when one is "highly leveraged" i.e. facing large
debts.
What makes the future seem profitable and viable is the
explosion in high tech industries. Many of these have yet to
turn a profit in the traditional sense, but so long as shares
in these enterprises is highly valued, the volume of money is
increased, and the economy continues to turn at high speed.
The stock market is the new cash dispensing mechanism, with a
disproportionate percentage of the rewards going to those with
corporate 401(K) plans, or with stock options as a part of
their benefits package.
So the experiment is to find out to what extent the American
public can be wooed into a triage form of capitalism, wherein
those with the best living standards are willing to trade away
more of the safety net, which they don't see as directly
benefitting them in any case. In fact, it's the removal of a
safety net which motivates the disadvantaged to settle for low
paying, high productivity job slots. This, in turn, creates
two classes of people globally: those who need to toil very
hard just to make it from one day to the next, and those who
reap the rewards on their investments, and don't really need to
"look for work" in the prosaic sense. These form two ends of
the spectrum, with most people falling somewhere in between.
However, again the picture is somewhat complicated by the fact
that the explosion of high tech industries depends in large
degree on "public goods", technology contributed to the global
economy on something other than a "revenue from sales" basis.
In the digital arena, where infinite copiability of working
assets is the norm, the economy of "real estate" or "real
property" is difficult to enforce. The new capital is more
intellectual, and property law has more of an uphill battle in
this area. It's easier when the intellectual proprietors are
as possessive of their knowledge as land-owners of old, but
many are not. Many have a more academic or otherwise
"socialistic" outlook which motivates them to share
intellectual goods without securing the "normal" protections
against copiability. So, once again, practices which many
regard as "anti-capitalist" in some sense are very embedded in
the technology sector, and have to be factored in to explain
the success of capitalism.
In some, those who stereotype the current situation as one of
"capitalism victorious over socialism" are overlooking many of
the pivitol mechanisms in the current global economy which are
not especially "capitalist" in their underlying philosophy. In
actual fact, the USA experiment is disclosing that
"information" is intrinsically a "public good" in the sense
that it's one of those sharable, clonable "commodities" that
doesn't necessarily owe its existence to "revenue from sales".
And the information is providing mixed messages about what the
future holds on the economic front, i.e. to what extent our
institutions will be mirrored on previous century templates.
There's a sense in which the high technology sector is both
boosting profitability, and undermining the status quo at the
same time. People are as yet unsure what to make of this
development.
The information that higher living standards are indeed
feasible, including for the most disadvantaged, contradicts
some centuries of embedded Malthusianism. To the extent that
this information sheds the aura of empty pipe dream utopianism
and comes across as plausable, near future attainable, to that
extent people will not accept a dismantling of the safety net
to the point where their back is against the wall, with only
"wage slave" situations open to them -- all profits from such
labor going to those on the shareholder end of the stick.
Those who pushed "socialism" in the past are therefore
exploring ways to massage the information in this direction,
but this time with the help of a certain breed of capitalist,
specifically those with high tech backgrounds. This is because
the high tech industry has typically treated its employes well,
on a more egalitarian basis then previous century industries.
So there's precedent for capitalism to understand the
motivations of those who push for public good expansion, the
the rising of living standards on the basis of mechanisms
which depend on something other than "revenue from sales".
The collusion between "left" and "right" from past eras is
something new, and is likely to change the political scene. A
lot depends on education and exposure to a shared information
base. Given we live in a digital age, fomenting this type of
exposure is a technical challenge we are prepared to meet.
Kirby
Kirby Urner
Here's something related to my "quickie" analysis above (which
I've subsequently polished a little, and posted to other
newsgroups (but you saw it first on alt.politics.org.cia)).
You may ask what this "math class" stuff has to do with the
CIA (I've posted similar content before). I think the answer
is obvious: intelligence pros are rubbing their hands, looking
forward to a next generation of federal employee given the
educational advantages spelled out below.
As it is, we have an uphill battle finding enough qualified
people, as many kids slacked off too early, and now don't
have what it takes. People just aren't "being all they can
be", either within the military or outside it. And more hot
war is not the solution.
But there's hope, even for today's couch potatoes -- we just
gotta have the right spending priorities, and make our
"entertainment know-how" work for us, instead of using it
just to make us fat and complacent, with a very tenuous
grasp on the "real world" at a time when the world very
much needs awake and aware people with smarts.
Kirby
===========================
21st Century Math Classroom
Nov 27, 1999
by Kirby Urner
4D Solutions
The math classroom on the drawing boards for the
coming decades will give each student a workstation,
and provide a larger screen at the front of the
classroom. The workstation screens will be recessed
in a "counter top" arrangement (console) so that
monitors cannot easily be knocked to the floor,
and will not be too obstructive of the student's
view of the front of the class.
The teacher will have a library of software and DVD
clips to choose from. Monitors and the projector
screen in front will double as computer screens and
TV screens. Also, any student monitor may have its
content projected to the main screen in front. The
teacher will, in many setups, be able to view what
is on any student monitor, and jump in with a keyboard
to assist. In some designs, headphones will be an
option (as in language labs today).
The console counters will be modular and allow easy
swapping of monitors, keyboards and other devices
in and out. Mice and other I/O plugs will be in
front, not behind. Cables will be inside the
consoles, not freely drapped where easily caught
on things. Some models will have removable plastic
insets, in place of which various optional panels
of controls (knobs, switches, instruments of other
kinds) may be inserted. This will open the computer
to live data from outside sources, via RS232 or other
I/O port. It will also give teachers opportunities
to explore programming around controls that aren't
simply on screen. Not every classroom will need to
invest in these "workbench" or "laboratory" options.
The layout is similar to what we think of as a
"mission control" design, although not necessarily
on such a large scale. Designs will differ depending
in part on whether new construction is involved.
Older schools will have fewer freedoms when it comes
to such variables as the slope of the floor.
Lesson plans will typically be presented in hypertext
format, in the context of thin client front ends
(browsers). Teachers will therefore be able to avoid
having to customize each desktop. The lesson plan
software will be centralized on a server, either
special to the classroom, or elsewhere in the school
building. Of course many times a lesson will take
students to remote servers via the internet. The
opportunities for schools to share digital assets
with one another has never been greater.
A central asset in this picture will be the DVD archives,
large collections of video shorts on myriad topics,
including math topics. Teachers will have thumbnail
previews of these DVDs, and the ability to retrieve
them by key word. Lesson planning will typically
involve coming up with a series of segues between
documentary segments, interactive workstation
activities, exercises of the traditional sort, and
Q&A. During Q&A, a teacher will be calling up DVD
clips in response to specific student questions.
Students will make their own DVD segments and educational
applets as well, and some of these will make their way
to the school's long term database. 3rd graders will
get to pull up drawings and essays written by their
peers years ago, or in other parts of the world. The
sharing of student-authored content over the net will
be one of the most exciting aspects of the 21st century
classroom.
Although my focus in this essay has been the math classroom,
students and teachers can well imagine how this same
technology will be useful in other subject areas as well.
Indeed, with such immediate access to video clips and
websites, it will be harder to keep all the subject
areas seperate, and many teachers will find their
lesson planning leads to a larger amount of overlapping
than ever before.