Chapter 27. A Modern Information Commons

The technology is at hand to educate a population for as little as 5-to-15% of what is considered normal today. Here the developing world has the opportunity to make an end run around wealthy nations. Restructuring in the developed world is prevented because information is monopolized by the financial power of the three primary subtle monopolies, land, technology, and finance capital. To open the channels of communication to the masses as suggested herein is to open the door for the slight legal changes necessary for emerging nations to avoid those monopolies.

Control of information controls people (albeit without their realization), which in turn protects these subtle monopolies. This process ensures that the distribution of wealth will remain in the same channels going to approximately the same people. Wealth will circulate among a predetermined group of people as they each intercept a part of social production. These social-control-paradigms are kept firmly in place through subtle monopolization of the communications industry. And it requires no conspiracy. Each one does just what you or I would do: they fiercely protect the source of their livelihood and their opportunities to gain wealth.

Make no mistake about it. Powerbrokers will use all the deceits and power at their disposal to prevent or delay the economic efficiencies outlined below that are possible and they may succeed.

Efficient, cheap, Communications may Eliminate Monopolization

Communication is considered cheap. Yet a fully Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) wired nation, region, or world tied into the Internet will have 10 times the communication capacity for 10% the cost as when wired with fiber-optic lines and cables. Assuming the world can break out from under all the many forms of monopolization being continually structured in law, this means a 99% reduction in cost per unit of communication capacity is possible.

It is possible for a nation, or the world, to establish a communications system where everyone can talk to anyone anywhere in the world for the penny per minute calculated 30 years ago. With operational costs now cheaper than accounting, such low costs can be borne by society.

Already Skype users use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to speak to each other all over the world for free. This is spreading so rapidly that phone companies will soon be under pressure. Competition will quickly lower the horrendous overcharges for high speed dialup and cable access while efficiently structured Wi-Fi eliminates them altogether.

Not only can all phone calls then be free but, once Wi-Fi is installed, to keep their customers every TV and radio station will also have to stream their programs over the Internet. All stations having access to every viewer through beaming over Wi-Fi eliminates the need for satellite stations. Consumer choices will expand by hundreds of times as these now stand-alone stations design and produce new programming and overseas program feeds join the list of choices. Most satellite stations formerly carrying programming of primary stations will suddenly become redundant.

No longer needed, telephone and cable companies will wither on the vine. The shakeout within TV and radio stations will be rapid. Every radio station, each with varied program content, will have equal footing with Clear Channel Radio which now monopolizes the nation’s airways relaying the same non-varied programming to their current captive audience.

Likewise with TV stations. With each streaming their programs over the Internet, the only way to keep viewers is to provide more interesting programming. The market for programming without advertising will trump the advertising stations and the now-out-of-work TV and radio stations will have to produce programming for target audiences willing to support them.

The five major news networks, currently habituated to parroting the same very incomplete news, will suddenly face the full brunt of competition as alternative news from around the world becomes available to all. Democracy Now, Link TV, Mosaic, BBC, AlJazeera, INN Report, Indymedia, documentaries, and news from all countries in all languages would present a view of the world that many citizens are totally unaware of and those major news networks will have to address those discrepancies or become irrelevant. Twenty four hour news channels, currently presenting over and over little more than that presented in the 22 minutes on the evening news, will face enormous pressure to present all the news. The ability to propagandize populations will be severely constrained.

As few people can handle such an overload of choices, sports will gravitate to one group of stations, music will gravitate to another block of stations and further subdivide into regional music and other subdivisions. Another group of channels will play movies.

No longer able to charge monopoly prices and unable to compete in a highly saturated market, stations forced to close will be picked up by NGOs and political groups for pennies on the dollar. Always forced to the margins in the past, dedicated progressives (environmentalists, those researching sustainable living, permaculturists, the peace movement, minority rights, labor rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, antipoverty, and a thousand more causes) will be able to reach the masses with the messages such as you read throughout this book. Politicians now must address questions brought up that previously were kept off the table. Viewers will have hard questions, those answers will be available and will be found and understood. Propagandists can no longer create justifications for war and full and equal rights with peace and prosperity for all will be possible.

Communication eliminates Intermediaries and reduces Trading Costs

Wal-Mart superstores appear the peak of efficiency. However, using modern communications technology to bypass retailers altogether for moderate to higher-priced items offers even greater savings.

The difference between manufacturing cost and the consumer price measures the major cost of most products—distribution. Typically, manufacturing costs are under 20% of the final selling price of a consumer product.1 With mail-order shipping charges from 2-to-5% of retail price, no one would pay intermediaries 3-to-5-times the production cost when it is feasible, in this Wi-Fi age, to study the products on the Internet, contact the producer, buy the item, and have it shipped directly.

With today’s communications system, one’s share of the wealth produced can be earned doing office work over the Internet. Over that same Wi-Fi wired computer, one can search for, and order electronically, one’s share of what others produce. This would substantially reduce the 1.9 people distributing for every one currently producing.

Shopping requires information and middlemen are primarily in the information business. Utilizing Wi-Fi’s integrated communications system, it would be possible for producers and consumers to trade directly and cheaply again, just as in those first face-to-face trade’s thousands of years ago. The subtle monopolization of distribution with its army of intermediaries would be largely eliminated.

Trades over the Internet, directly between the manufacturer and consumer increasing 80% a year up to 1998 (to 3% of all sales) is still surging 22% a year by 2005. Those sales increases will continue to expand and direct trades for middle-priced to expensive items will be the norm by the first quarter to the middle of this Century.

Currently America has 10 square feet of retail floor space for each shopper and, with four stores opening for each one being closed, they are headed towards 12 square feet. For comparison, Britain has only two square feet per shopper. That surplus retail floor space can only mean higher costs even as Internet shopping is rapidly lowering costs to a fraction of its current level. A great shakeout of the retail industry is inevitable.

The savings to the developing world through establishing direct trades between consumer and producer will be enormous. The buildings and support infrastructure for at least 30% and possibly 60% of what the developed world today considers necessary for distribution do not have to be built.

Walk into the heart of any city, look up at those huge skyscrapers, walk in, look at the plaques on the doors, and, when one understands monopolies intercepting, as opposed to producing, wealth (besides this work see The World’s Wasted Wealth 2), one realizes the entire building (and the next ones) are unnecessary, as are the companies which built them, those that built the furnishings, and those who service and clean them. Those offices managing monopolies disappear under the full and equal rights of a modern communication commons. Not only are many skyscrapers unnecessary but, under democratic-cooperative-(superefficient)-capitalism, 30% to 60% the retail infrastructure is destined to disappear.

Bill Gates, who accumulated $60-billion (April 1999) because he understood communications technology better than most, said, “The information highway isn’t quite right. A metaphor that comes closer to describing a lot of the activities that will take place is the ultimate market.”2 This chapter is an outline of that “ultimate market.”

Big-ticket, Infrequently-Purchased Items

Autos, appliances, furniture, farm equipment, industrial equipment, and major tools are all big-ticket, infrequently-purchased items whose buying requires accurate information but not the promotional/persuasive advertising that hammers at us incessantly. We trust and get information from direct experience and we make the most important decisions by observing products in daily use. In a modern communications commons, customers would make purchase decisions by dialing a database of different manufacturers of the particular product in which they are interested.

This database would have basic information about all the manufacturers of that product required to make an informed decision—energy efficiency, noise level, hours of useful life, price, and other features. (Note the pressure this would put on manufacturers to make the most efficient products and stand out in this all-important master index.) From this database, the consumer would choose brands and models from moving pictures of that item in use. A computerized telephone would dial the product databank, request the information, and receive it to an audio-video electronic buffer/computer—all in seconds.

Buyers would, at their leisure, study engineering specifications, styling, and actual use of the product on their television or computer. Once a decision was made, they would only need to punch in the code for the desired order—model, color, and accessories—and a databank computer would instantly note the closest distribution point where that item was available. Or buyers could choose delivery from the factory.

The bank account number, thumbprint, eye-scan, thermogram palm images, and signature of an Internet shopper would be verified by a master computer and that account instantly debited. If a credit line had been established at the local credit union or bank and recorded in an integrated computer, credit needs would be handled simultaneously. The entire process need not involve advertising, sales, or banking labor, and would greatly reduce storage and transportation costs.

Product guarantees, maintenance, and repairs would be taken care of by local private enterprise under standardized guarantees. Direct trades between manufacturer and consumer, and the resultant elimination of distribution intermediaries, will be guaranteeing high-quality products.

Both seller and buyer would save time and labor, as verbal explanations and mailing of information are largely eliminated. The current time-consuming exchange of information would be handled in split seconds. This would conserve millions of acres of trees and eliminate tens of thousands of jobs currently manufacturing paper, producing brochures, and distributing that information, including salespersons and a large percent of the labor servicing and maintaining retail establishments as well as the retail establishments themselves.

Every qualified producer would enjoy the right to place his or her product or service in the databank and pay the charges (a percentage of gross sales) out of cash flow. In place of millions of dollars up front to advertise through the present openly monopolized newspaper, radio, and TV system, there would be only a small charge for entering the product information in a database. To eliminate clogging the databanks with useless information of producers no longer in business, regular payments would be required to retain the privilege of selling through this integrated communications network.

This would break the subtle monopolization of our production and distribution system by wealthy corporations. Currently only those with large financial backing can pay the monopoly charges of the media and gain access to the public; all others are financially excluded. Starting up a truly productive industry would become quite simple. A new company’s advertising would have full billing alongside that of major entrenched producers. A few wealthy corporations would no longer decide, through promotional/persuasive advertising, what the public wants or what is good for them. Consumers would have easy access to all choices.

Several large corporations have established just such databanks. They are, however, individual databanks for each corporation without that all-important master index used in common and thus are an extension of monopolization.3 Without that master index, individual databases will be relatively hard to find and that one crucial aspect, the ability to compare, would be lost. Harbor freight’s 70% price reduction on moderate-priced and high-priced tools (addressed in Chapter 11) proves this consumer product price reduction in a modern commons is possible.

Inexpensive, Small, Frequently-Traded Items

The markup on perishable groceries is about 100% while the markup on small nonperishable consumer durables is several hundred percent. There is a competitive sales monopoly at work in the latter. Taking full advantage of modern communications would remove all purchases above an intermediate price range out of the wasteful, duplicated retail outlets. Simultaneously, the consumers’ choices would be increased by access to these products through databanks.

If traded directly between distant producers and consumers, individual shipping and handling costs would be too high for most small, frequently-purchased items. Thus groceries, household supplies, cosmetics, knickknacks and most small, inexpensive consumer items would be most efficiently distributed through the present retail outlets. The breakeven point would be in the lower range of the intermediate-priced occasionally-purchased items.

In Japan, “A housewife can switch on her personal computer and scan the list of goods available for sale…. The order will be delivered strictly on time.”4

Offices at home are a continually expanding phenomenon. This reduces traffic, requires fewer expensive buildings on valuable land, and the savings are quite apparent.

Wholesalers of small-ticket consumer items would keep the quality and price of all products posted in a databank computer. Purchasing agents would periodically analyze this information. Once initial trust had been established, a retailer would check those updated bulletin boards for the best buys. This would eliminate the need for many jobbers and other salespeople.

Shopping as a Social Event entails a Cost

Shopping is recreation for many people and a status symbol for others. Direct communication between producers and consumers would change society’s psychological profile. If enough people decided they wished to do their shopping socially and expensively, that would be their choice. They would have no trouble finding merchants to accommodate them. To compensate for the additional labor, showrooms, and storage, the products would cost more. The added unit costs would be properly accounted for under socializing and recreation (like Tupperware or Avon), or social status (like Tiffanys). The majority would surely choose to save their money by using the most direct and least labor-intensive (cheapest) method of completing a trade. As direct trades would be only for intermediate to big-ticket items, this would in no way impinge on local coffeehouse-type trades where socializing is the primary activity.

A Modern Communications Commons Doubling Distribution Efficiency

When a manufacturer produces a product, it is normally ready to use, and customers already understands how it operates. All that is missing for potential consumers is complete information on where the best quality product is available at the lowest possible price. In the United States, once direct contact is established between producer and consumer, it would only require roughly 100,000 railroaders, possibly 1-million truckers (down from 1991’s 1.3-million), and a system of organized freight terminals to distribute the nation’s production. It would be quite simply a freight postal system just as with Christmas packages today. The item would be delivered just as United Parcel Service or the Post Office does today or consumers would receive notices of the arrivals of their purchases and pick them up at the local freight terminal.

There are normally several trucking companies in any moderate-size city, each complete with loading docks, storage capacity, dispatching equipment, and staff. The following shipping pattern is already operational:

(1) Shippers punch into a common-use database loads to be shipped;

(2) truckers with Wi-Fi computers punch in their location, freight preferences, and where he or she would like to deliver the next load;

(3) the computer instantly shows where the loads are, the type of freight, the required pickup and delivery times, the rate per mile, et al.;

(4) the trucker chooses a load, informs the computer, and records his or her identification number;

(5) and the computer records the acceptance, removes that load from the databank, provides a contract number to the trucker, and informs the shipper.

Minimal dispatching costs will eventually reduce freight charges and recording and billing are handled automatically by computer. There is no need for duplicated dispatching services, loading docks, storage facilities, equipment, and personnel. This does not restrict any trucker or company from signing contracts outside the national computerized dispatching system. It does, however, break the competitive monopoly created by the minimum capital requirements for a trucking company. Each independent trucker is on an equal footing with corporate trucking companies.

When producers and consumers trade through a communications commons operated by public authority, just as they now transport over publicly maintained transportation commons, costs drop precipitously. The competitive monopolies of retail outlets for intermediate-to high-priced products will eventually be eliminated. The nation’s freight will quickly settle into flow patterns and be moved as regularly as mail by the cheapest combination of rail, truck, ship, and plane.

It might take a consumer from three days (small items) to 10 days (large items) to receive a purchase, but, at possibly 1/2 the price, they are well paid for this wait. The actual transit time of products between producer and consumer would be a fraction of that currently taken through jobbers, wholesalers and retailers.

Manufacturers’ on-time delivery of parts to the factory that greatly reduces storage and finance capital costs will have been expanded to on-time shipping to consumers. Instead of time spent in warehouses and retail stores, the products are packaged and addressed and go directly from the factory to the truck which takes it to a distribution point near the customer. Local delivery will deliver to the home or office. On-time delivery of finished products would eliminate most wholesale storage and retail buildings, as well as use of heat, electricity, inventory, stocking clerks, sales clerks, maintenance workers, building repairs, security, and so on.

Those within the retail system who formerly bought, stored, and sold these products are available to engage in productive labor. Society will eventually attain an undreamed-of efficiency. Over 50% of these intermediaries between producer and consumer will eventually be eliminated and, assuming society was alert and restructured labor’s working hours, all would be free to share the remaining productive work and each need work only 2-to-3 days per week.

If the world’s citizens had equality and opportunity instead of daily battles for survival feeding on the fringes of these massive subtle monopolies, family trauma would decline rapidly, fewer children would be abused and neglected, prisons would shrink, more than 70% of the insurance industry would disappear even as society was better insured, the medical and law industries would shrink to a fraction of their present size even as those needs were better cared for (proper eating, exercise, and nurse practitioners can handle 80-to-90% of all medical conditions; with full and equal rights the legal system will shrink an equal amount), the arts will expand rapidly to utilize the free time, other nations would produce their own food and developed world agriculture would shrink accordingly even as the world’s citizens were more secure, equities markets would shrink to a tiny fraction of today’s trades, the arms industry would disappear, and on and on. The world is far richer than we realize; currently much of our wealth is wasted. a

Once those productive jobs were shared, the average workweek reduced, and labor fully paid, the small amount of time necessary to labor for one’s share of the nation’s wealth would be the proper measure of the price of products and services. Our previous research concluded that an efficient economy using modern technology of production and distribution could reduce its labor time by well over 50%.5 That potential reduction in costs through elimination of unnecessary labor and fully paying labor is the meaning of Adam Smith’s little-noticed insightful statement, “If produce had remained the natural wages of labor, all things would have become cheaper, though in appearance many things might have become dearer.”

Trades should still pay for “Free” TV

As most families watch TV and all purchase products, the fairest source of funds is to collect them through consumer purchases, just as advertisers do now. Companies will have paid for advertising products or services through paying for listing on indexes and databases within society’s integrated communications system. Producers using this service need only calculate the price markup necessary to cover a communications surcharge on gross revenues. Advertising costs will largely disappear.

Utilizing efficiently installed Wi-Fi, TV and radio transmission charges would be minimal, and most of the funds collected would go toward programming and entertainers. All producers, manufacturer or studio productions, would have access to every consumer. Impulse buying would be greatly reduced, creating more savings for society. When people wanted or needed something, they would buy it without being pressured.

Reserving TV Time for New Products

While innovations on a familiar product would be readily presented to the public through a databank, totally new products are expensive to market. Innovators would require special access to the public. To complement other methods of familiarization, some TV channels should be specifically reserved to promote such innovations. Novelty buffs comprise a large segment of the population, and there are few of us who do not have some interest. A program demonstrating these creations would be quite popular.

Once a production/distribution infrastructure is in place with society energized to produce and accustomed to that standard of living, promotional/persuasive advertising becomes wasteful. Rather than titillate the consumer with thousands of toys to be played with and discarded, it would be much more socially efficient to abandon promotional/persuasive advertising and permit people to advance to a higher intellectual, social, and cultural level.

The low cost of reaching the shopper through databanks gives society these opportunities The maximum average living standard within the capabilities of the earth’s resources and ecosystem can be calculated. Society could, and should, use those proven promotional/persuasive methods to educate people about eliminating the waste of the current distribution systems. Shoppers would decide what products they want by observing them in use or scanning the databanks. Any item that is truly useful will become a common household item. There would be fewer nonessential products sold and those resources currently wasted on titillating toys would be diverted to producing for the world’s needy. In short, just as many in the developed world have already abandoned the “conspicuous consumption” lifestyle, a rational lifestyle would be made popular. Once a rational lifestyle was established, peer pressure would tend to encourage it.

If people are so dull that a society with a respectable living standard cannot function without promotional/persuasive advertising (which we do not believe), society would analyze advertising for essential and nonessential products for the desired standard of living. After all, many items (cigarettes, alcohol, and chemical-laden processed foods) lower the quality of life, spending social funds on their promotion is economic insanity. Even when spent by private industry, advertising for cigarettes and alcohol are still social funds. Those costs are recovered in the sales price. The public pays the bill for the debasement of their lives.

The same holds true for nonessential, resource-consuming, and environment-polluting lifestyles. Driving a $60,000 automobile while others are driving $20,000 cars may draw admiration today, but if society were taught that this was at the expense of humankind’s survival it would incur broad disapproval. The resources saved and pollution prevented by that refocused social mindset would be substantial, and essential to the survival of thousands of species, to humankind’s quality of life, and most probably to our survival.

When radio first came on the scene, plans for public education were sidetracked by commercial interests. When cable television arrived with its potential for hundreds of channels, idealistic planners again tried to establish an education medium. Powerful interests again subverted the public interest and monopolized these valuable media for commercial interests. The chance for society to become truly informed was lost. When CBS’s brilliant scientist, Peter Karl Goldmark, was proposing just such uses for TV as we are outlining, CBS was so worried about his plan that it offered him $75,000 a year to do nothing (which he turned down).6 As their monopoly will be lost, communications corporations are similarly busy trying to prevent all the above from happening.

Rather than being radical, the following suggestions are similar to the original plans for radio and cable television and are only one of the many ways these hundreds of TV channels could be organized.

Music, Sports, Movies, and Game Shows

Music, sports, movies, and game shows have an established market and draw large audiences. Fifteen to 20 Wi-Fi channels should be reserved for each of these interests. Only pennies per viewer, paid painlessly through consumer purchases, would bring in millions per broadcast to the investors, stars, directors, managers, and support labor. There would be adequate channels to guarantee all promising entertainers the opportunity to present their shows for a probationary period. If successful, as shown by automatic computer recording of viewer interest, their shows would be made permanent.

With communication channels now open there would no longer be monopolization through high-priced promotion. With these equal rights, it would be talent that counted. There would be many more able people investing, designing, producing, and starring in many more shows. Along with more time to enjoy TV, viewer choices would rise, and the truly talented artists would be well paid for their efforts. All would have a reasonable opportunity to prove their abilities.

A formula of gradually reduced pay per million viewing hours as a show increased in popularity would compensate performers relative to their popularity, little different than now. With access to the public for new performers, monopoly control of entertainment industries would disappear.

Investment and Job Opportunities

Several Wi-Fi channels should be reserved for direct communication between those offering investment opportunities and investors looking for those opportunities. As everyone with savings would have common access to this investment information stored in databanks, the subtle money monopolists would be totally bypassed. Individual investors would put their risk capital in innovations that went unrecognized by regular loan institutions. If the entrepreneurs’ insights and talents were truly productive, investors would receive much higher than average returns. However, if their claims to insight were not valid, they would not be able to hide behind the protective shield of subtle monopolization.

An entrepreneur who had obtained community approval and initial investment capital from the bank (nothing new; they need both now) would deposit a prospectus in a databank. Investors would study the various investment plans, buy shares in the most promising ventures, and have their accounts automatically debited—all without intermediaries.

Talented workers would look over prospectuses, which would include labor needs and incentives, and, if they saw where their talents would be used productively and profitably (and assuming they had fulfilled their contract to train a replacement), they could transfer to that new job. Labor would be mobile and free (not dispossessed as in a reserve labor force), with rights to their share of the efficiency gains of technology. (In a modern industrial society, each worker would work only 2-to-3 days per week. See the work of Charles Fourier 180 years ago and Thorstein Veblen, Bertrand Russell, Lewis Mumford, Stuart Chase, Upton Sinclair, and Ralph Borsodi in the first half of the 20th-Century. Late-20th-Century writers describing the same phenomenon are Juliet Schor, Seymour Melman—Samuel Bowles, David Gordon, and Thomas Weiskopf—Jeremy Rifkin, Andre Gorz, Hans-Peter Martin and Harold Schumann, numerous European authors, and this author’s The World’s Wasted Wealth 2 and Cooperative Capitalism: A Blueprint for Global Peace and Prosperity.)

If a replacement were not immediately available, other workers at the factory could double their pay by working four days a week, or triple it by working six days. Strict rules, however, would have to be followed. To permit doubling up on established jobs would appropriate the labor rights of others and subvert the entire economy through again creating a superior class with superior rights. The unemployed would be denied their rights to a share of social production while those working excessive hours would have more than their share.

For their risk, the original innovators and investors would receive the initial higher profits plus the increased values of a successful company. Through sharing in the profits, workers and management who bought stock through deductions of 10-to-20% of their wages would be well compensated. The profit potential would increase their desire to maximize efficiency and provide incentive to look for new industries to develop and again share in the profits.7

Assuming society had eliminated subtle patent monopolies as discussed above, others would quickly analyze and duplicate the innovative production or distribution process; prices would fall to just that required to compensate the innovators, labor, and capital. Through low priced products, society would be well compensated. The reduction in the price of consumer products will match the lower income of fewer days work so wage rates would stay the same.

If a communications commons within democratic-cooperative-(superefficient)-capitalism reduced production and distribution costs 60% and adequate compensation to the innovators was 10%, the public would quickly benefit by a 50% reduction in the price of consumer products. Through the reduced income of a shorter workweek matching the reduction in living costs there would be no loss in living standards. Societies which decided to forego a throwaway society and opt for hybrid car/bicycle economy and other efficient transportation systems would provide a quality lifestyle with even less labor.

The subchapters “Creation of Money,” and “Accumulation of Capital through Democratic-Cooperative-(superefficient) Capitalism” (Chapter 26) expand upon these principles.

Education

Since the desire to emulate is the basis of all learning, educating children can be quite simple. Children want the approval of their parents and other members of society. They love to excel and desire equality with their peers. They are curious and, if not discouraged, love to learn. The present educational system puts too many barriers in their way; “half of all gifted children float through school with average or worse grades, never realizing their potential … almost 20 percent will drop out.”8

There are many reasons: a child may be timid and terrified of school, an inferiority complex may prevent a student from functioning, or excessive pressure to do well may be daunting. The school district may have obsolete books and teaching aids; the school may be understaffed so students don’t get the individual attention they need. Local peer groups (gangs) may replace parents and teachers as role models. Parents may not be involved enough in their child’s learning. Or the curriculum may be so slow it is boring. With elimination of these and other barriers, many currently with low grades will blossom right along with their peers.

Schools are a commons but they need to be restructured to a modern commons.b With 40-to-60 Wi-Fi channels reserved for education, every subject now taught at elementary, secondary, college, and university level would reach every home free of charge.c Each subject would have several teachers and be broadcast at various hours of the day. The competition would be intense for the teaching positions on such programs and, once picked, these best educators in the nation would be well paid. Each taped course would be edited for maximum clarity, simplicity, and comprehension. Reasoning is quite natural and nothing can beat a good educator whose taped lectures anticipate, and are carefully structured to answer, most questions. With all society having access, the fictions and omissions of history (especially omissions) would be challenged, researched, and corrected.

With their lessons on tape, these high-quality educators would be spending less time teaching than any one of the tens of thousands of teachers they replaced. They would concentrate on studying their own and others’ lectures for ways to improve. Modeling is the most potent teacher of all and these great teachers would be great role models.

The minimum equipment required for each student would be a TV set, while the local education system would provide workbooks to match the TV lessons. As these lessons would be in a databank accessible through the integrated communications system, a VCR or DVD recorder would also be desirable. With recorders and societal incentives, students would record the lessons and study when they had the free time and were emotionally ready. They could replay the lessons as many times as necessary for maximum comprehension.

So long as a student maintained an adequate grade average, a share of the money society saved on maintaining the present school system could be paid to each child’s family. Allowing, of course, for each child’s ability, it would be logical to pay this incentive for each subject and on an average of all subjects. This would be high motivation for families to restructure their time for home education. With spending money earned for each subject, motivated students would zip through many subjects. Developing nations do not have to deconstruct an entrenched, expensive educational system and their citizen’s motivation for education is high so there would be no need for incentive pay. But they would have high incentive to utilize their current classrooms as administrative and testing stations and educate their populations, children and adults, through satellite television.

With the 2-to-3 day workweek possible in a developed economy, there would be adequate time for parents to stay home and monitor their children’s learning. With rapport between parent and child, intelligent children would cover a current year’s education in as little as four months. The most intelligent and motivated would have the knowledge of Ph.D.s at an age when they would normally be entering universities—which, incidentally, would eliminate another monopoly.

Actually those students would have a much broader education than most Ph.D.s. Currently most doctoral studies are very narrow in focus. Without breadth of education, the answers to the world’s problems will not be found. Conversely, if universities emphasized graduate degrees that covered a broad spectrum of disciplines instead of narrow fields, answers would be found relatively quickly. Through free TV studies, students would have that broad education. This is proven by over 1-million American children already being successfully home schooled, doing well in universities, and their numbers are growing 15% a year, all without government support.9

Students would not be pressured to follow the teaching of any one professor. Other professors might have a different view on history or society and he or she would listen to many views. Judgments would be made while still young and idealistic. All this would be gained while enjoying the irreplaceable quality time between parent and child. Some talented students who do not have parental support would find a surrogate family by immersing themselves in education

Private or public day-care education centers would be operated for the few who could not function under, or who were unable to arrange for, home self-education. Those who were intellectually capable but failing would be required to attend specially structured classes and upon doing satisfactory work would still receive those incentive funds.

The compensations and identity received by siblings and friends for successful home schooling would be noticed by younger children and would provide motivation to avoid the formal school setting.

This is quite conservative. A first-grader would be proud to go shopping with their own earnings and it is hard to visualize many children being irresponsible toward their education if it meant losing both their freedom of choice and their spending money. They would quickly learn responsibility when it meant both financial and emotional rewards. Once in operation, society would quickly become accustomed to such a system and the need for brick and mortar schools would be minimal.

Children can be just as easily culturally trained to quality as they can to trash. All society would gain from more positive cultural training, so it would be logical to eliminate the senseless violence in today’s children’s programs. At the least, quality children’s programs could be assigned a block of channels so conscientious parents could maximize their children’s intellectual and moral growth.

Incentive funds, as a right, would in no way impinge on others’ rights. Those rights could only be exercised by obtaining a set grade average. Home education would save society far more than the cost of these incentive funds. In fact, those funds cost nothing; they go right back to the people from whom they came. Over time, society would become accustomed and such incentives would be looked upon as normal as wages.

Older students would soon learn to structure their flexible education time around their job. There need not be a sharp cutoff between school years and entering the workforce. The options of both pursuing education for a career and earning one’s living would be increased. Instead of a division between students and workers, the two would overlap until the young adults opted for a career.

Motivated children, youths, young adults, and adults would obtain most of their education at home and at their own pace. Curious children with a desire to learn, which is most of them, would find the field wide open. Left to their own devices, they would quickly learn that it was their time and labor that were being conserved by dedication and attention to the subjects being taught.

Many talented children’s potential, now lost through boredom and diversion to socially undesirable activities, would be salvaged. The brightest would attain a 12th grade education in less than eight years, the middle level in 10, and, with these motivations, even the slower group, which currently sets the pace of a classroom, would learn more quickly. There would be adequate resources and time to give special support to those who are unable to cope for various reasons. This would not only conserve society’s labor, it would economize students’ energy and time. This potential was shown by an experiment with interactive videos that reduced learning time while increasing comprehension 30%.10

Having watched great videos on Free Speech TV, Link TV, The Learning Channel, The History Channel, The Arts and Entertainment Channel, The Discovery Channel, public broadcasting channels, and an occasional quality program on other stations, we conclude that the statement, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” should be changed to; “One documentary is worth a million words.” The best of those documentaries combines the wisdom of many researchers developed by many lifetimes of study. All viewers will absorb that knowledge at some level. Avid reading will seldom bring one close to the understanding gained from a well-researched documentary. The gain for the slower and less avid readers could only be of much greater dimension. As opposed to being bored and discouraged, students will enjoy their education.

A central testing facility would be maintained that would issue scholastic level certificates and incentive funds. These achievement tests would be designed to educate children to compete with the best in the world. This would quickly equip all nations to compete in world trade.11 Since credentials are crucial for obtaining good jobs, all would have access to their scores, the right to analyze their answers, and the right to retake tests.

Classes that require hands-on learning would be held in a classroom setting just as now, along with supporting taped programs. Millions who dreamed of additional education would find it freely available in what was previously their idle time.

As no one’s knowledge is complete, every curriculum would be subject to review and correction. The Great Saint-Mihiel battle of WWI that never happened12 and other examples of fraudulent history addressed throughout this book are not exceptions. Severely distorted history is the norm and such failures to tell the full truth seriously retards democratic development. Correct and full knowledge of such events is critical to societies planning their future.

Every day we learn something new or reinforce what we already know. To waste huge amounts of resources and to inflict enormous violence, injustice, and poverty as we have been documenting—while continually affirming nice-sounding slogans about efficiency, justice, and compassion—seriously limits true knowledge. Redesigning society to produce and distribute efficiently would give children a better cultural education. Likewise with the centuries of proto-mercantilism, mercantilism, neo-mercantilism, corporate imperialism, and the wars they engendered as societies battled over the world’s resources and the wealth-producing-process. An education fully exposing the causes of this waste and violence would provide a much firmer foundation for the further evolution of society towards its stated goals of peace, freedom, justice, rights, majority rule, and a quality life for all.

It is not possible to get every student to enjoy learning for its own sake. If given a choice, most people would choose to do things that best support their need for identity and security, which for many is obtained in work, sports, and hobbies rather than in intellectual pursuits. There will be those who, though unable to compete across the board scholastically, will take great interest and do well in one field. These suggestions would give the maximum incentive to learn in the fields of one’s choice.

Schools, as now structured, do perform a babysitting function. But, if that is the criterion, society should be aware that the potential of many children is lost and that child care is what they are paying for, not education. One must also be aware that early industrialists hoped that “the elementary school could be used to break the labouring classes into those habits of work discipline now necessary for factory production….Putting little children to work at school for very long hours at very dull subjects was seen as a positive virtue, for it made them ‘habituated, not to say naturalized, to labour and fatigue.”13

Inspired Teachers for every Student

People feel insecure at any suggestion of fundamental change in their social institutions and most are closely attached to the institutions of education. But, in the current school structure, where is that all-important role model if the student has a poor, mediocre, or burned-out teacher? Under the system proposed here there would be many great teachers, each teaching his or her deepest beliefs, and their videotaped lectures would be freely available for all.

Students watching those videotaped lectures would judge for themselves what was closest to the truth. By eliminating the current monopoly on education (in the soft sciences—economics, political science, finance, some social studies, and, believe it or not, history—what passes for education is, unwittingly, really programming establishing an inaccurate “framework of orientation”).

Certainly, good hands-on teachers are wonderful, but how can they hold enthusiasm with 25 or 30 children to teach? Is not honest interaction quite impossible with even half that number? Would not the best possible teacher, backed up by professional graphics, be able to put on an enthusiastic performance and that enthusiasm be there forever on videotape? With an inspired teacher and professional graphics, even a slow student could learn more than in a crowded and socially isolated classroom. And why slow the others? Not being in direct competition, would not that slow or timid student have a better chance of not developing an inferiority complex, and thus do better?

Parents interacting closely with their Children’s Education

With their increased free time, motivated parents would enjoy watching their children learn and answering their questions. Children would ask an interested parent many more questions than they would a teacher. Would not that motivated parent go into deeper detail than the teacher who has so little time to spare for individual attention? Students too timid to function freely in class would function confidently in a home setting. In the upper grades, motivated parents would share the experience and learn with their children.

Better Institutions for Socialization

Socialization is of high importance but the elimination of this function of schools would free both timid and slower students for concentration on their studies. Youth social clubs would spring up and children would sign up voluntarily as opposed to the requirement to attend school. When children join a social club by choice, they would be bound by the rules of social courtesy, not classroom discipline, and would mix, relate, and learn social graces at a faster pace than in a school setting. Parents would automatically seek such groups to replace the baby-sitting function of schools. With so much free time, the arts (music, dance, sculptors, singing, painting, and many other skills) would expand rapidly.

Maintaining Curiosity, Creativity, and Love of Learning

Education freely available to all in their free time would bypass that greatest of all destroyers of curiosity and creativity, the straitjacketing of children into conformity. We cannot count on a great teacher in every classroom. We cannot count on even half being good. Witness Massachusetts, a state with much higher quality schools than the average, in 1998 over half the teachers failed state qualification tests. There are over 15,000 educational experiments yearly. Some show dramatic improvements in education scores. Yet the overall average of scores does not improve. Either these better teaching methods are not spreading to other schools or those schools do not have motivated teachers. Why not combine modern technology with the students’ abilities and desires and trade the constraints of the current system for the opportunity of a full and enjoyable education?

Certainly one can point to great teachers and the gains for their lucky students. But there would be no loss to those children in this proposed educational structure. Instead, the number of children educated to their maximum potential would increase by a factor of two or three, or more. With easy access to classes in their spare time, many adults would gain an education. Those who have a burning desire for another profession can gain credentials for their desired career even if finances are limited. Potentially great artists would now have the opportunity to discover their talents—painters, poets, writers, singers, sculptors, ad infinitum?

There are undoubtedly many latent Einsteins currently spending their lives in drudgery who would educate themselves and have their genius suddenly blossom for all the world to see and enjoy in the form of a book, a song, a new theory, an invention. A large percentage of society educating itself to a much higher level would develop an even more efficient and productive society while protecting the environment and natural resources.

Once Borderline Teachable Graduating at the Top of Their Class

Inspirational teachers and programs have proven they can parent impoverished children with damaged psyches into becoming successful citizens. One such teacher is Ms. Marva Collins in Chicago. She worked among her students, rather than from her desk. Each time one did well she would put her hand under his or her chin, lift the child’s eyes to hers, and say, “you are brilliant,” or give some other sincere compliment. Minority children in her class deemed borderline teachable graduated from the university at the top of their class, and went on to become professors, lawyers, and other successful professionals. Failures were almost nonexistent.

Charles Murray, in his infamous book The Bell Curve, cited Ms. Collin’s program specifically, pointing out that such programs could not possibly improve academic achievement or cognitive functioning. Having documented Ms. Collins successes 20 years earlier, Sixty Minutes went back after Murray’s book came out and checked on those 33 children. Those students were the roaring successes described above and thoroughly proved Murray’s thesis was racist nonsense supported by corporate hard-right think-tank money as outlined in Chapter six.14

While restructuring to a just society, such programs would be used to salvage such at-risk children. But, once all have equal access to a society’s benefits and opportunities, most will be good parents and, through modern technology, most children can be well educated.

Culture and Recreational Learning

Fine arts and recreational learning programs, such as are produced by public broadcasting stations (and an occasional for-profit show), are enjoyable to people and add to their knowledge. Fifteen to 20 Wi-Fi channels would be reserved for these high-quality shows. The social benefits of learning while relaxing are self-evident. Popular educational talk shows and good recreational/educational TV command a loyal audience.

Most of these shows, however, are on public broadcasting stations outside the system of collecting costs through advertising. They depend on grants and donations. One live commercial show can easily exceed one PBS station’s yearly cost for all of its taped shows.15 With their fair share of funds coming to them through a restructured advertising medium still financed by sales as described above, the present financial struggles of those who broadcast quality programs would be eliminated. As the rental costs of their taped shows would be minuscule compared to the original productions, this income would permit program expansion.

Minority Cultures

Twenty to 30 Wi-Fi channels would be reserved for ethnic minorities. They are now inadequately represented and participate in national culture only to a limited extent. With these new rights, they would quickly develop outstanding media and political personalities to articulate essential issues and challenge the social-control-paradigms that protect power-structures and keep them in bondage. With their own communication channels, equal access to land and jobs, and the right to retain what their labors produce, members of minorities would share the nation’s work and its wealth and participate in national decision making. Every citizen might at last attain and exercise the full rights of equal citizenship.

New methods of distribution and governing skills that contribute to social efficiency are as much a matter of invention as mechanical devices. Among the cultural and educational programs would be one or more channels reserved for introducing and demonstrating innovations (including governing concepts) and inventions. Alert, imaginative minds would relate their special expertise to other machines, production processes, distribution methods, and social policies, and along with new products would devise simpler methods of manufacturing, distributing, and governing.

Foreign Cultures

Guaranteeing representation of their views should apply also to foreign cultures. When the vulnerable are not present to defend themselves, managers-of-state, seeking followers for aggressive intent, can portray them as enemies. But with the world coming into all living rooms world wide through Wi-Fi wired communities it would be difficult for managers-of-state to hide their aggressive intentions as they create enemies to justify their wars.

By mutual agreement there should be reciprocal presentations of cultural programs between countries to provide cross-cultural information. Redrawn broadcast standards would limit propaganda. Beamed to every home, programs would show people throughout the world at work and at play. People would begin to appreciate—and thus respect—both what we have in common and what is distinctly different. There would be intense pressure to extend full rights globally once the world’s impoverished representatives would be able to explain how they are kept in poverty by the siphoning of their wealth to centers of capital. The careful documenting of the waste and inefficiencies of corporate imperialism would result in laws that would quickly rein in their excess power.

Local Television

Though their primary purpose is to transmit local shows and events, local stations would utilize Wi-Fi to broadcast nationally or internationally. On an equal footing with national networks, a superior production team could gain a national or even an international audience. Talented local people would have their chance at national exposure without the time, expense, and risk of leaving their local area and the security it provides.

But most local stations would be a source of community information and culture—ideally a medium for citizens to share ideas and experiences with each other. Local elections and community development would have complete coverage. There would be adequate time to broadcast local sports, concerts, plays, parades, and community information forums on a broad range of issues. Meetings of governing bodies, normally open to the public by law, would be beamed over local TV.

Elections

Many leaders are so busy leading their constituents down the path of confiscation of the wealth of the weak that they have, or take, little time for a sincere research of innovative ideas. In fact, politics as now contrived is hardly amenable to new ideas. As explained in the subchapter “Suppressing Freedom of Thought in a Democracy” (Chapter six) society is kept to the right of the political spectrum and elite-protective, social-control-paradigms (frameworks of orientation) keep political rhetoric within permitted-parameters-of-debate. To move outside those parameters is political and social suicide.

To break that control of information by the powerful, 10-to-20 reserved TV channels would be needed for serious leaders to present their views. Please consider the final chapter “Wi-Fi Empowering the Powerless” as an integral part of this chapter. There we describe how to break the chains placed upon the minds of the masses. Once those chains are removed, leaders sincerely promoting the rights of all people can come to the fore.

With politicians having access to the public through reserved Wi-Fi channels, there would be no need to spend private funds for elections. Such money makes the recipient beholden to that supporter. Private funding should be prohibited by law. Massive numbers of unused channels are available. Putting them to public use by law would cost almost nothing. With those running for office having free access to the public and elections becoming commonsense debates of the issues, the advantage would be with those who were most knowledgeable and articulate. Politicians want to be just as honest as anyone else and with free access to the voters taking campaign funds would be a severe handicap.

Without a crisis, few of the above reforms can become social policy. However, power may eventually shift to permit the claiming of these rights. During a crisis such as the Great Depression everyone would be looking for answers and the masses can reclaim their rights to communication channels and with those rights more rights will be reclaimed. Past social-control rhetoric establishing faulty “frameworks of orientations” will then be exposed.

Homes as Low-Budget TV Stations

Local TV stations can now be almost as cheap as their radio counterparts. Currently the U.S. government pays about 75% of the roughly $90,000 start-up costs for each station:16 The following quote is behind the times. Low-power TV transmitters (LPTV) can be beamed into local, regional, or even international Wi-Fi feeds. The loss of the monopoly structure of the former multi-million dollar TV stations brings their value down to the talent level of their producers:

Eight of the first 23 licenses went to minority firms. Both the lottery method and the sheer number of potential stations seem to favor greater access by radicals and reformers to LPTV than to standard TV, where the purchase price of a station in a major metropolitan area can run into tens of millions of dollars. Low-power television should increase access to the airwaves by minorities, women, political activists, environmentalists, workers, and other elements of the broad, loose coalition of the disenfranchised that has, of necessity, invented alternative media.17

Under the monopoly rules predating Wi-Fi where satellite stations transmitted the feed of major producers, corporations targeted specialty markets with ads and, as the profits climbed, the price of radio and TV stations soared. The need of satellite stations disappears in Wi-Fi wired communities. Monopolization will be replaced by intense competition as each station, radio or TV, beams their individualized programming into the Wi-Fi system. Professor Herbert Schiller explains how Americans have been “sealed off” from their own history:

How many movies did [corporate America] make about the labor movement? After all, America is made up of people who work. Where is the history of these people? Where’s the day-in day-out history of the African American population? Where’s the day-in and day-out history of women? Not just one program. Where’s the whole history of the people? Where’s the history of protest movements in America? Can you imagine the kind of material that could come from American protest movements? The entertainment people are always saying that they don’t have enough dramatic material. Who are they kidding?18

Just like the windmill, steam engine, and electricity becoming so cheap that the powerful lost monopoly control, Wi-Fi communications will be so cheap that African Americans, Latin Americans, environmentalists, the peace movement, labor, and all other politically weak segments of society will be able to reach the masses with the histories of their dispossessions and battles. It is then that the weak can claim their full rights.

Many documentaries address the frauds of the Cold War and the current hot wars. Although, in the U.S., American terrorism is largely untouched, other Western assassinations are being lightly addressed; one actually pointed out that, after the assassination of Trotsky, the Soviet Union established a policy of no assassinations outside their borders and broke that rule only once. Covert actions are heavily sanitized but they are occasionally covered. One documentary actually discussed that archives of the former Soviet federation demonstrate the Soviet Union did not exercise monolithic control over other nations within its sphere of influence, but instead they were frustrated at times by the policies of their satellites. Such information is, of course, a total antithesis of propaganda poured out by America’s main stream media. .

With each person having to work only two to three days per week for a quality living, those with artistic abilities and dreams will have time to study and hone their skills. Music, painting, sculpturing, sports, writing, inventions—virtually every skill and the enjoyment of those arts—will expand exponentially.

GNP and the average workweek would fall by possibly half even as, through sharing the remaining productive jobs, average living standards rise. Those reductions measure the wasted labor, wasted capital, and wasted resources under unrestricted private title to nature’s wealth. The money no longer flows through those low-productivity monopolies to provide a high living to those not producing.

Footnotes

1. These are the conclusions of Cooperative Capitalism: A Blueprint for Global Peace and Prosperity, this author’s research on the inefficiency of the subtly-monopolized American economy. Back to text
2. Workers in the developed world are tied to the enormously wasteful arteries of commerce of subtle-monopoly capitalism. Thus they cannot change easily. But, as addressed next, the developing world is not locked in and thus they have the opportunity to establish an efficient democratic-cooperative-(Superefficient)-capitalism and leapfrog the developed world. Back to text
3. Representative Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Edward Kennedy introduced bills which “would require the dedication of an entire channel on the new public-TV satellite to instructional shows aimed at preschoolers and elementary-school children” (Miriam Horn, “Can the Boob Tube Finally Get Serious,” U.S. News & World Report, August 24, 1992, p. 61). Back to text

Endnotes

1. Paul Zane Pilzer, Unlimited Wealth (New York: Crown, 1990), p. 44. Back to text
2. Steven Levy, “Bills New Vision,” Newsweek, November 27, 1995, p. 68. Back to text
3. William J. Cook, “Reach Out and Touch Everyone,” U.S.
   News and World Report (October 10, 1988), pp. 49-50. Back to text
4. Ivan Ladanov and Vladimar Pronnikov, “Craftsmen and Electronics,” New Times, no. 47 (November 1988), pp. 24-25. Back to text
5. J.W. Smith, The World’s Wasted Wealth 2 (http://www.ied.info/: Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994). Back to text
6. Bagdikian, Media Monopoly, 1987, pp. 138-40, 148, 229; William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 975.
   Back to text
7. Dada Maheshvarananda, After Capitalism: Prout’s Vision for a New World (Washington DC: Proutist Universal Publications, 2003), p.109. Building on the experience of Mondragon Cooperatives is sound. Back to text
8. Anne Windishar, “Expert: 20% of Gifted Kids Drop Out,” Spokane
   Chronicle, January 7, 1988, p. B7. Back to text
9. Rebecca Winters, “From Home to Harvard,” Time, September 11, 2000, p. 55. Back to text
10. CNN News, May 24, 1988. Back to text
11. Thurow, Head to Head, pp. 273-79, especially p. 278. Back to text
12. George Seldes, Even The Gods Can’t Change History (Secaucus, N.J: Lyle Stuart, 1976), p. 16. Back to text
13. Juliet Schor, The Overworked American (New York: Basic Books, 1991), p. 61. Back to text
14. 60 Minutes, September 24, 1995; Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 399. Back to text
15. Salt Lake City’s PBS station, $1 million per year rented all tapes. Back to text
16. Broadcasting and Cablecasting Yearbook; Stromnes, p. 9. Back to text
17. David Armstrong, Trumpet to Arms (Boston: South End Press, 1981), p. 340. Back to text
18. Herbert Schiller (Interview), “The Information Highway: Paving Over the Public,” Z Magazine, March, 1994, pp. 46-50. See also Peggy Norton, “Independent Radio’s Problems and Prospects,” Z Magazine, March, 1990, pp. 51-57. Back to text

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This is a chapter from the book, Economic Democracy; The Political Struggle for the 21st Century. Visit that link for more information about the book.