by Dr. J.W. Smith
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One cannot hold the club of "uneducated" and "unskilled" over the head of any society today. Using modern satellite technology, it is possible to reserve a bank of TV channels to quickly educate a nation's citizens for from 5% to 15% of the cost within the industrialized world. Training a labor force to operate a factory is already done relatively quickly in countries all over the world.
A TV is one of the first amenities of a modern life a family will purchase. With lessons from the finest teachers in the world available on the TV at home, schools established for the small amount of time necessary for hands-on learning, and central points established to provide tests and certificates of education level, a society can be quickly educated. It is not necessary for poor nations to build all those schools, print all those textbooks, train and pay all those teachers and support personnel, or provide transportation to and from school each day for both teachers and students.
Just as a society can be quickly and cheaply educated, the developing world can utilize modern communication technology to establish a production/distribution system in which consumer needs are provided for roughly half the costs (measured in labor time which is the true measure of cost) as in the industrialized world.
While food and other low-priced items are best distributed through a modern supermarket, medium-priced and high-priced items can be distributed far cheaper through master databases accessed through a modern communications system. 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 accessing a database of different manufacturers of the particular product in which they are interested.
This index 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 master index, 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 in an audio-video electronic buffer, laser recorder, or 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. If one was not available at a distribution center close by, buyers would choose delivery from the factory.
The bank account number, thumbprint, and/or 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 labor. Capital is but stored labor and those costs are reduced even more.
Product guarantees would be handled much as they are now, while maintenance and repairs would be taken care of by local private enterprise under standardized guarantees. The secret of successful direct trades between manufacturer and consumer over the Internet, and the resultant elimination of distribution intermediaries, will be high-quality products and full guarantees.
From the initial information request to the completion of a trade, the communication arteries would only be in use for a few seconds. There would be tens of thousands of simultaneous communications. 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 automatic and instantaneous transfer of massive amounts of information would mean an infinitesimal labor and capital cost per communication. This would conserve millions of acres of trees and eliminate 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.
Monopolization of information would be eliminated. 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 systems, there would be only a small charge for entering the product information in a retail database computer. 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 monopolization of production and distribution 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.
What we have outlined is returning the wealth of nature, communication bandwidths, back to a modern communication commons where all will have full rights of use. Those bandwidths are a part of nature and all are entitled to a share of the wealth produced, or saved, by that natural wealth.
It is impossible for the developing world to accumulate its own capital without-on the average-owning its own resources, having equality in trading currency, owning and running its own factories, being paid equally for equally-productive labor, and the right to sell through established markets. It cannot develop a healthy economy without broad-based local buying power. It is, after all, consumer purchasing power-adequate wages, adequate commodity prices, and profits from efficient industry and efficient traders-that determines who ends up with the world's wealth.
The only way the impoverished world can ever attain a secure quality lifestyle is if all understand how they can utilize modern communication technology to leapfrog the wealthy world. Inform your friends, form your discussion groups. People are good. Prove to philosophers and negotiators in the wealthy world the efficiency of a modern communications commons and many will recognize they have been misinformed and support you.
In our next columns we will be addressing how to gain full and equal rights to land, technology, and money (all fundamentally a part of nature's wealth properly used in common by all).
That subtle-monopoly capitalism is efficient is a fable imposed upon us to protect wealth and power. Regaining full and equal rights to nature's wealth (land, technology, money, and information, the subject of our next columns) through a modern commons will increase efficiency equal to the invention of money, the printing press, and electricity. Through restructuring to that efficient/productive economy, the undeveloped world can leapfrog the developed world.