Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Price of Civilization

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes
Robert has been taking a look at the new book by Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price of Civilization.

Robert wants to like the book, but he’s hesitant to give it a full endorsement.  Sachs wants to be a sage.  To paint in large strokes the societal, cultural, financial, and political reasons why the U.S. is going through hard times right now.  And how it needs to change.  He wants to be gracious to the spirit of the US citizenry. He points a few too many fingers to suit Robert.  

The book is worthwhile for the nuggets of common sense and clarity that it provides amongst some longwindedness.

Here’s a few primary themes of the book.

Capitalism should be managed.  A middle road taken.  Markets are reasonably good at allocating most goods.  The government needs to provide a safety net, public infrastructure, and to stabilize the macro economy.  Opposition to central planning should not be confused with a dogmatic laissez faire [free market] attitude.  Quoting Hayek, the correct position is “in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of compettition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are.  It is based on conviction that, where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other . . . [It does not] deny that, where it is impossible to create the conditions necessary to make competition effective, we must resort to other methods of guiding economic activity.”

Decline of Government. Beginning in the 1960’s, the government’s roles as a solver of complex problems in a complex civilization began to be diminished and dismantled.  Government began to be distrusted. The faith in federal government dissolved as we moved further from The Depression and World War II, (two important shared rites of passage), increases in immigration and civil rights advances created wedges within American society, the result being a rejection of the Federal government’s role as problem solver and the ancillary Reagan-era tax revolt. Reagan was all voodoo economics.

The Divided Nation. The civil rights movement (desegregation and forced busing) caused a swift and decisive political realignment throughout the country.  The Deep South and the Southwest became politically ascendant and helped user in an era in which shite opposition to federal programs had an underlying racial component.  “Before the civil rights era, federal social spending was mainly for white voters.  Federal support for farmers, home owners, and retirees introduced in the 1930’s to 1950s overwhelmingly benefitted the majority white community and was precisely designed that way.  When Social Security was introduced in the 1930s, it excluded farmworkers and therefore most of the poor African American population in the South. With the success of the civil rights movement and the rise of anti-poverty programs in the 1960s, federal benefits increasingly flowed to minority communities.  the political reaction was a sharp turn of many white voters away from government’s leadership role.” But, still, the data shows that Americans share many values. According to Sachs, “[o]ur politics feel divisive not because of a raging battle in middle America but because there is a vast gap between (1) what Americans believe; (2) what the mass media tell us Americans believe; and (3) what politicians actually decide, no matter what Americans believe.”


A Hearing Aid that Cuts Out All the Clatter

 Here’s an article about T-Coil, which is becoming a key part of hearing aids.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/science/24loops.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

After he lost much of his hearing last year at age 57, the composer Richard Einhorn despaired of ever really enjoying a concert or musical again. Even using special headsets supplied by the Metropolitan Opera and Broadway theaters, he found himself frustrated by the sound quality, static and interference.

Hearing loops are being placed in subway fare booths in New York in what will be the largest installation in the United States.

Then, in June, he went to the Kennedy Center in Washington, where his “Voice of Light” oratorio had once been performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, for a performance of the musical “Wicked.”
There were no special headphones. This time, the words and music were transmitted to a wireless receiver in Mr. Einhorn’s hearing aid using a technology that is just starting to make its way into public places in America: a hearing loop.
“There I was at ‘Wicked’ weeping uncontrollably — and I don’t even like musicals,” he said. “For the first time since I lost most of my hearing,  live music was perfectly clear, perfectly clean and incredibly rich.”

A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.

But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.
This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.