Slashdot Mirror
Whither America's Technological Edge?
baldass_newbie asks: "Ben Stein wrote an editorial titled, 'How to Ruin American Enterprise'. To me, technological innovation is a big outward sign of a successful economy. Sometimes it appears like the U.S. is losing its edge in technology. Well, I was wondering what the Slashdot community at large thinks is wrong (or right) with the U.S. and technological innovation?" The article deals less with technology and more with the society on which said innovation is based, and the problems that may bring it down around our collective ears. Give the article a read, and share your thoughts on whether or not you think it's an accurate assessment on the current and future situation of America's technological advantage.
Every time some new, cool tech gadget comes out here, i talk to my friend from Tokyo and he tells me he had it a year ago.
How long can America keep pumping out students whose test scores are in the cellar for industrial nations and expect to maintain an edge in technology? As it stands, a lot of our brains are already imported from India and China.
I live in CA, which should stand as a dire warning to the rest of the country: They limit their property taxes, their schools go underfunded, and as a result California natives largely end up working to repair the cars and wash the floors of the well-educated from elsewhere.
The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Well, that's easy. Big business doesn't like innovation. They like the semblance (sp?) of innovation to encourage you to buy "new" things, but completely and truly new things cost money, take away from the bottom line, and transition periods are where big companies tend to get replaced. Thus, we have to fight for innovative products, no matter how useful they are, and we only get them because some company "goes rogue" - such as portable MP3 players.
The only innovation we get is innovative ways to protect the old guard - like copy protection that arguably erodes consumer rights (I say consumer in the global sense, being a non-USian so I can't really say my rights as a US citizen
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Give the article a read, and share your thoughts
But that violates the /. tradition of posting your thoughts and never reading the article! Heck, some members don't even think about what they're posting.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
We get better performance for the IT dollar this way.
Note to mods:
This is not a troll. It is satirical and possibly unfunny, as it reflects a sad ironic observation about technology funding. A "troll" in the classic, USENET sense, is hallmarked by its intention and context - not by its content. A "troll" is successfull, because it is a perfectly acceptable message designed to provoke unacceptable attention or responses.
Thanks for listening!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Its being beaten by Europe and south asia, dont forget chinas determined efforts.
Poor Ben Stein.
... "Give control of the coutry back to the rich becasue they know whats best"
Born and raised in privelage then appointed to work for Nixon as an economic advisor. Soon thereafter we had the worst economy since the depression. A lawyer who hates lawyers (except the corporate ones). This is the man who will destroy our nation and destroy any hopes of innovation. "End the common right to sue, then we'll have innovation" "End the teachers unions and privatize the schools"
In essence
Sorry Ben no sale. Even with the accasional liberal attitude your allegiance is clear.
"I pledge allegience to money !!!!"
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
Increase even more the number of lawyers per inhabitant, and top it off with the highest number of police, military, security agencies, and journalists like Mr. Benjamin J. Stein.
I think one of the biggest problems that stifles innovation in the technology sector of the US, at least, is a distorted understanding of how patents should work.
7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school.
This IMHO is the big one. I went to school in England until about age 12, and then came back to a private school in California. Overnight, I went from doing trig, chemistry, latin, greek, french, to gluing fucking popsicle sticks together. I kid you not, our schools are WAY behind the rest of the world.
If you're an American parent, PLEASE either ship your kids over to Europe, or home school them yourself. American society is way too fucked up to allow for anyone to get a decent education. You would not believe the social pressure - I remember it well, and I had to fight it tooth and nail in order to succeed.
Ben Stein's comments seem to be reasonably accurate, if you read them. We do indeed live in a country with a crippled education system, general contempt for intellectual activity among the bulk of the population, etc. I don't agree with absolutely everything he said, but overall, it is hard to argue.
All the foul language and no-nothing replies I've seen here in response to his article are evidence for his contentions, by the way.
- Work at McDonalds.
- Become a car salesman.
- Do nothing until the economy comes back (if they actually saved money while they could).
- Innovate something new and get the economy moving again.
I hope that the smart downtrodden will choose #4. And I hope that a few of those people will succeed.Sex - Find It
I will be the first to agree that the USian tech sector is not what it once was, but to say that it's "whithering" seems a little pessimistic. We're in a slump, but I'm sure we'll bounce back, stronger than before.
How can I be so sure? Simply because nobody else has what it takes to match us: a devotion to free enterprise, a strong workforce, a wealth of natural resources, social mobility, and a government and military that will do whatever it takes to protect those things. Many places have some of these characteristics. Asia has free enterprise, but locks workers into slave wages, offering no motivation to work efficiently. Europe has decent working conditions, but lacks natural resources and smothers industry. South America and Africa don't have the strong governments necessary to protect economic interests.
In the end, the US is the only nation that can give the technology industry all that it needs to flourish.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
technological innovation is a big outward sign of a successful economy. Sometimes it appears like the U.S. is losing its edge in technology.
America lost it to the Japanese several years ago. America is actually showing signs of catching up again.
And now for an addendum
6a. Specifically construct laws so riddled with inaccuracy of purpose, incomprehensibility of intent, impossibility of execution, immorality of effect, and plain lack of common sense, that everyone is criminalized equally, and proven innocent $ub$antially due to their per$onal $olvency. Particularly good results may be achieved if the laws in question are ignored as technicalities by the traditionally moral masses.
inspiration for this post, and the poster believes the original article, was gained largely through understanding the logical basis of the works of Ayn Rand, all credit as it is due
Not everything Stein says is correct.
Nor is Ben Stein.
Ben Stein is anti-abortion. He also claims one the greatest problems facing inovation today is the inheritance tax?
Clearly Ben Stein is a right wing conservative pain in the ass. Teachers unions create stupid children? I don't think so.
Remember this is Ben Stein and he is massively biased to the hard right.
Summed up: Greed and lawyers will ruin the prosperity and freedoms that so many people before us gave their lives trying to achieve. It's sad really. Lawyers make the laws instead of enforce them. Microsoft, Disney, RIAA, MPAA, just about every large corporate presence employs armies of lawyers to make sure that as many freedoms as possible are converted to "subscription liberties". I fear for our children, for they will be relegated to living their lives amongst mindless, mediocre drones. Our tech indistry will implode because before long, there will be more lawyers managing software licenses than developers creating software. We have diluted almost everything in life to nothing more than a quick fix for quick personal satisfaction. It's really too bad.
Well, to start with, we can include the current state of anti-trust legislation in, for example, the Microsoft anti-trust case and the access that enough money has in determining legislation and legal opinion.
In yet another example of questionable practices in our legal system, the Washington Post is reporting that given the states budget crisis, Microsoft would not only fight any appeal the states chose to make in the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit, but the company would also contest any legal costs states might be able to recover from litigation. However, if those states and the District of Columbia were not to appeal, Microsoft would be happy to cover the legal expenses and provide an extra amount of money to "help enforce the settlement deal".
I would argue that this continues the stranglehold that Microsoft has on innovation. What does this say about our legal system and technological innovation? Perhaps another question from this would be: How does one distinguish between appropriate settlement money and outright bribes?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Ever notice how much our technological edge gets dulled by the fear and power of the religous right? No cloning, stem cell research, animal organ transplant research, all because, "it goes against God's will." To which I say if God had wanted us to be illiterate, cave dwelling, dying at 30 idiots, then we'd all still have fur, and the skyscrapper would be a foriegn as the airplane. Religion has dulled America's edge and will continue to do so, so long as we fail to stop using it for a crutch.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Looking at Russia, and the rest of the former Soviet Union, we can see that technical ability and an educated society does not necessarily mean a thriving economy. Though, I strongly feel that they will rebound stringer than ever because of those two things.
ALL YOUR BASES BELONG TO US
How do we win his money??
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Whatever you might happen to think about our current immigration policy (I don't like it much myself), there's no getting around the fact that this is hyperbolic bullshit. The vast majority of illegal aliens in the US are migrant workers from Mexico. (Following Mexico are El Salvador, Guatamala and Canada. You have to go all the way down to #17 before you find a country with any substantial terrorist activity: our "ally" Pakistan.) Say what you will about Mexico, but it is not exactly a hotbed of anti-American radicalism.
The rest of this article is exactly the sort of mixture of over-stressed common sense and batshit insanity that I would expect from a former Nixon toady.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Well this is traditional conservative thought applied to technology. What's new here is the focus, not the methods.
Export tech jobs, import people to do tech jobs.
If we look at the economics of the situation, there is no reason for anyone to become a programmer anymore.
There is only an incentive to become a pencil pushing manager or a lawyer.
I'm not trying to troll or to get flamed here. If you think about it, this is a huge reason why we have all these problems!
13) Encourage powerful, monopolistic companies to rest on their fat assets (pun intended) and squelch any competition by their sheer size and market domination. Allow them to stamp out any potential competitors before they become a real threat to the established company. This will discourage innovation and widespread use of better products.
3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control this from the man who said mmorpg's should be illegal because his son was 'addicted' to them. cute.
Oh yea?! I might not know what I am posting about, but I think you are dead wrong about me not reading what you think I am posting about or responding to you, and you responce. Wrong.
Fuck Off And Die.
The best electronics come from Japan. The best cars come from Europe. The Koreans build the biggest supertankers. The best jet fighters come from Russia. The Indians have all your IT jobs anyway. And the thing that no one on this board will argue with...the Finnish write the best operating systems. It's over guys...you've lost. You're just cruising on momentum now, and friction is kicking in.
The real problem with CA schools is bureaucratic inertia and waste. LA, for example, has approximately one administrator for each teacher on its payroll. And guess whose salary is higher?
Sure, they have Sony, Matsushita, NEC, Toshiba, etc.*
We've got Intel, AMD, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Apple.*
I think there's a lot more visible innovation going on in the United States. The average joe doesn't hear about the latest and greatest in commodity hardware, but they see commercials for the iMac or whatever every day.
I think it may just be a matter of preception.
*Obviously not all-inclusive lists, sorry if I left your favorite out.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
I think that this might be better worded as:
11') Have a corporatized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to propaganda and scare tactics, and discourages drug companies from developing innovative new therapies for important conditions by instead making it more profitable to litigate patents in courts, spend billions on "marketing" and "education campaigns" that are propaganda at best and kickbacks and bribery at worst. Have an employer-oriented system where it is more profitable to take the premiums and run, where there is no long-term liability since most people will change jobs or retire before they will incur the health penalties for neglected care in their youth.
Summary:
Follow the rules.
Educate kids
Work hard
I think this entails a lesson that good parents have taught kids for years.
However I do feel that these 3 truths of society are degrading in North America:
Educate Kids Each passing generation of children moreso regards homework as punishment than the previous, much unlike their asian counterparts. Children will only learn as much as they want to, not based upon how much cash you put into a school.
Follow the rules When you ask someone about piracy, they say "If I can get something for free, I will.
Work Hard It seems everyone wants the job which they work the least in.
Microsoft (thanks to Bill Gates and cronies)
Software Patents (thanks to Bruce Lehman and lawyer cronies, formerly of USPTO)
Tail-wagging-dog Politics (i.e., Congress-people succumbing to copyright stakeholders special interest taxes on CD media, etc.)
Status Quo Mentality from top (e.g., RIAA, "safe" bet managers deploying MS) and bottom (e.g., job security minded grunts recommending MS).
-=-
A little more business integrity, legal industry integrity, congressional knowledge and integrity, and IT staff knowledge and integrity!
Of course, many (not necessarily US) efforts are countering some of these issues including Linux, other open source projects, and even the Mac OS X which seems poised to set a higher standard in home/small business/enterprise client computing.
Read the story below this one and ask the question again. Amercian corporations spends more of its time on restricting technology than inovating.
A quick visit to the Your Rights Online section of this very website shows how the legislative and judicial enviornment of the country is completely biased in the direction of existing monopolistic policies and companies.
If we want to encourage innovation, we need to remove the laws that treat each American individual as a suspect if they do anything outside a scientifically created generic American profile.
But what do I know, I'm just a open-source developer of cryptography solutions... :-)
13) Protect entrenched industries from innovative upstarts. Favor licensed spectrum over ultrawideband, copyright cartels over internet companies, etc.
That was one looong rant.
But I have to say I agree to more of it than I'd like to admit (I don't much like economist...)
I must say I totally agree with him on point nr. 1, the basis for a innovative society is quality education for the whole population. He may not have said so, but that was what point 1 boils down to.
As for his 2, and 3, I think he's a bit of base. Granted the legal system in the US is quite fucked up, but businesses beeing targeted by lawsuits when harming others (through neglect or intentionally) is hardly the biggest problem.
As far as I can see he doesn't talk about the *real* dangers to innovation in the US. The totally fucked up patent system, and big monopolic players in important technology sectors. When you have players with much power and influence working activly against innovation (MPAA, IRAA) and owners of ridicolusly broad patents going after everyone and his grandmother for patent infrignation. Well, the US ends up a nation of lawyers, not inventors.
Now, that was my rant.
---- Sig. gone.
You mean I'm not the only one on /. that reads the post, hits 'Read More', and tries to figure out what the article has in it by what other people reply with? I don't feel so alone now!
Can all fish swim?
- Mexico
- Germany
- Phillipines
- Italy
- Canada
Not exactly Al Qaeda's hordes there.News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I think I'd rather import smart people than import stupid ones.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"Big business doesn't like innovation. They like the semblance (sp?) of innovation to encourage you to buy "new" things, but completely and truly new things cost money, take away from the bottom line, and transition periods are where big companies tend to get replaced."
IBM spent 5 billion dollars last year on R&D. Microsoft just announced a boost to 5.2 billion dollars for next year.
A company like Ford would do anything they could to develop a substantial innovation over GM and DB.
Big business is always looking for an edge just
like the next guy.
This has nothing to do with big business, it is about the leisure class gone amuck.
Unfortunately for Neal Stephenson's forecasting record, it may no longer be fast pizza delivery (Domino's got sued (see Stein comment #3)), or software (lots of the kewl open source stuff is, indeed overseas -- can you say linux? [I can't pronounce it right no matter how many times I try -- leenooks?]), but it's still entertainment.
1) Fun: We still produce more films than anyone but India, and not many people outside of the subcontinent watch those anyway. A substantial amount of the television shows (Emeril!) music, video games, theme parks, etc. still come from the good ol' US of A.
2) Pharmaceuticals -- now careful, I'm not lumping these with Entertainment. Prescription drugs are mostly innovated here.
3) Microprocessors -- sure they're manufactured where the labor is cheap, but Intel, Moto, IBM... they're developing the stuff here.
4) Industrial Design -- The shiny new cars that are manufactured by foreign companies use US design teams. Why do you think Daimler bought Chrysler?
Design for Use, not Construction!
Most of that article is rightwing propganda with a little on tech to gloss it over. Here is a list of ways we can do to help....
1. The duh answer of them all of course is increased school funding. I relize however, if everyone got a decent education, we would have very few people willing to join the military and those who did would join one loaded with officers, and no cannon fodder, I mean elisted men.
2. Not everyone needs to get a four year degree. There needs to be many more professional opportunities for people with 2 year degrees. It would increase tax revenue to have a better paid population, and reduce the burden on four year universities who can better use the money on people who need to spend the time in college.
3. Companies that spend a sigifigant portion (~75%) of thier R&D money in Univeristy based Labs would recive an huge tax break.
4. Medical Advancement: Place a 20 blackout on the production of generics and in return drug companies must reduce prices by 75%. New drug prices are high in this country because a company must recoup the billions it spent on R&D in the first 3 years to make any sort of profit, because after 5 it can be made by anyone dirt cheap.
This give companies much more capital and incentive to innovate instead of copy what the other guy did and sell it cheaper.
5. Government Funded Hard Science: If we rely only on corperations to fund research, then we are going to be limmited to innovations that will make a profit, and we will be worthless as a civilization.
Many comments from people have said we have already lost our innovation! Well, if you read the first paragraph, he says we are ALREADY down the road on a LOT of these ideas! He acknowledges right at the beginning we are already falling on our face.
If you can get better IT from offshore, this is a huge problem. His editorial proves the point that we are losing out due to the things he mentions. To criticize Ben Stein on his point that we've already lost any innovative advantage is to PROVE HIS POINT!!!!!
Mostly Microsoft and the content companies.
Thanks to MS, our computers our standardized, but on the other hand, they haven't changed much from 10 years ago except for speed and 3d buttons. The palm computer was the only major advance, no thanks to MS.
Thanks to the media corps, I STILL buy a flat plastic disc to listen to music. Sure, I "install" it in my mp3 dir and put the disc in the closet but they even want to take that away from me!
Napster and MP3's music locker service, both had the potential to raise the efficiency of media distribution dramatically. Where are they today? Where is capitalism's reward for efficiency?
Everywhere you go, "terms of service" and other unsigned contracts lock you into the groove. In the old days, a 10-year old could take apart an engine, learn how it works, and maybe invented a new one. These days, he stares at his computer with an inscrutable CPU and closed-source software. If he dares to reverse-engineer, he faces court trail thanks to the DMCA. When I was young, I took apart everything in the house and learned how it worked. These days, you "take apart" your DVD player and you get your house raided and you go to court.
The conservatives are right on many issues, but only by coincidence. The core of the issue is not "the family" or any BS like that, but too much government regulation. That INCLUDES overly-broad patent and copyright law.
-. Make sure you provide the rest of the world, especially those far behind our country, with the tools, material, and examples needed to learn and further their own technological advancement beyond your own. Let our brightest minds teach the rest of the world so that they can compete better in technological fields.
We see this all the time. People see terrible things going on and think that all they have to do is point at it while loudly raising alarm, and they have contributed to the solution. Well, it ain't true. Yeah, the education system sucks, but it isn't because those running it want it to suck. TV is a vast wasteland, and always has been, but what, if anything, can be done to improve it? Even offering a solution is dangerous enough, but fixing a social problem without a plan will certainly lead to disaster.
Utopians consistently excel in discovering faults, but those who actually try to fix them usually end up with a situation far worse than the one they were so alarmed about.
Information is not Knowledge
The guy has few good points, scattered among a lot of diatribe. He manages to undercut one of his points when he attacks the idea of holding coprorations liable for their misdeeds.
Yes, there have been some cases of coprorations forced to pay excessive amounts in lawsuits. But far more common is for corporations to settle for ten cents on the dollar, or to never pay at all.
Congress has "reformed" personal bankruptcy law for individuals, will still leaving it easy for corporations to evade their debts.
Anyone suggest other similar books?
Poor Ben Stein.
Born and raised in privelage then appointed to work for Nixon as an economic advisor. Soon thereafter we had the worst economy since the depression.
I don't know if it's fair to blame the Nixon recession on conservative economics. LBJ had left Nixon with massive military spending on a war in Vietnam and new Great Society spending. And then the Arab nations began their oil boycott.
All three of these factors led to massive inflation (massive spending on the military; massive spending on domestic programs; more young people in Vietnam and fewer young people in the work force; and a rising price of oil, a key price factor in many products). In response, Nixon instituted price ceilings. NOTE: Price ceilings are not a conservative, free-market response to inflation. It is a response generally associated with the left-wing, in fact.
More specifically, blaming Ben Stein for the Nixon recession is foolish - Ben Stein was a speechwriter in the Nixon Administration, not an economic policy advisor.
I managed to get a decent education in the US. My parents were great motivators, and I grew up believing that the only way to ensure a good life for yourself was to be educated.
Since I hit my 20's, I've basically regretted listening to them... society has been steadily dumbing itself down, and I can't stand it. I could've spent so much time just drinking beer, eating pork rinds, watching NASCAR and wrestling, and listening to country music, and everything would've taken care of itself as the lowset common denominator sank lower and lower around me.
Ignorance really is bliss. I'm so pent up over the way things are going in the world, all this nonsense with terrorism, Iraq, Korea, nuclear proliferation, global warming, the shit economy, my freedoms evaporating, etc... sometimes I want to go get a lobotomy, so I can just forget about all those things and focus my attention on enjoying The Osbournes and American Idol II, like the rest of the idiots in this country.
??????
PROFIT
TEACH KIDS SMARTS ARE UNIMPORTANT, REWARD THOSE WITH WORTHLESS ATHLETIC SKILLS - i mean, really , when was the last time Lebron James helped you at work?
Yeah..me work hard for bobble head toys
Hightlights:
And last, but not least...
Paul
You sound as if the teacher's unions are good organizations. What a joke -- they are much more interested in their own jobs than the education of the nation's children. On top of that, they protect the thousands of moronic teachers who can't even pass the standardized tests that they are supposed to be preparing their students to take. Privatization of the schools couldn't be worse than the situation we have now.
You know what? I'm not putting away $15,000 a year for my son's college tuition for nothing.
You know what? I could afford that but my parents never could have. I'm glad the issue never came up. Higher education is a basic right.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
>Make sure that society's idols are men and women >who got rich from being sexy in public or through >GAMBLING or playing tricks, not from hard work or >patience
Interesting quote from a game show host.
Hm.
I spent half this year living in Washington DC. As a foreigner, I came over to get work experience in emergency management, and spent most of my time doing terrorism related work. And yes, I am from one of these friendly countries, I like to think of myself as educated, and yet I could not get the appropriate visa to get paid - so I've got first hand experience with the visa point. But I digress.
What I really wanted to say is that the US is not alone in this situation, nor does it apply solely to technology - it may just be one manefestation. It is eroding the very fabric of society, and not just the United States.
I read these points and a large number (probably 75%+) of them apply to my own country. So whilst the article was written with US-centricity, don't think for a moment that you are alone, or are even leading the bigger societal trends. You're not.
The corollary is that the solution is not likely to be developed by one country, but multiple as we are all facing very similar problems. Only the specific solutions to each country may require tweaking because of legislative and other details.
What if he wants to be an artist? Why shouldn't he be a doctor?
Your son is not your property.
Wow, I see you give your child all the opportunities a geek's son could want. He's not even out of elementary school yet and not only do you already have his future profession picked out, you know where he's going to go to college! What a lucky boy.
*This page intentionally left pointless*
The absurd patent laws encourage people to take out frivolous patents, just so that other people can be harassed. Genuine innovators shy away from patenting ideas because of the difficulties involved. Also, a corporation with a lot of lawyers and a few patents can probably punch holes in the patents held by others and make then redundant. There was also the case of a drug company that would not develop new drugs based on its new patents just because the earlier patents had not expired and they wanted to make as much money out of the patents before developing new ones.
I'm sorry, you can claim all you want that Japan is eating our lunch technologically, but they have severe problems on the horizon. Their economy is in shambles. They've essentially stagnated for the last ten years (from back when their stock market imploded) and it's going to get worse as their population ages. Unlike the USA and to a lesser extent Europe, Japan doesn't have immigration. This I'm sure has helped them maintain their "Golden Age" a few more years, but just like their previous economic policies the check is going to come due. In fifty years or so China might become a serious rival but by then Osama will have detonated his backpack nukes so it's a moot point.
That if Ben Stein had posted that rant here on :)
slashdot, he probably would have been modded -1
troll
Don't rock the boat baby. Everything is ok. The US
rocks! We will win the war on ______!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
You! Didn't I just get done flaming you about bluetooth TVs? Now I see you over here limiting your kids opportunities! So what if he wants to become a corrupt back alley plastic surgeon or intellectual property (or better yet, a spammers') lawyer? Let your kid's dreams soar! Maybe you should ask your EE kid to design that bluetooth remote for you, so you don't have to wait the year. Think about it. Good call about the 'outsourcing', though.
* Handing out laptops to everyone is not the answer -- most of those countries that beat US schools don't have access to current books, let alone laptops.
* The internet will not teach your children -- while it's true there is a fountain of knowledge at your fingertips, there's a ocean full of crap to sift though.
* Stop focussing so much money on organized sports when your school is graduating illiterates.
* Kids using Powerpoint is not the answer. Unless the question is -- How do we raise a nation of Marketing drones!
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Unfortunately, one area in which there appears to be no gap is the right-wing rhetoric arms race.
The way I took this -- and I could be dead wrong -- is that US companies watch these newer, cool gadgets get released into foreign markets and sit back and watch. I'm sure they do studies on how well the products work and what could be improved. Once the product has been proven a success, improvements are made and bugs are flushed out, then the product is release in the US.
I'm also pretty sure that the every cool gadget that Japan gets before we do, there are a dozen gadgets that fail miserably quickly in Japan and would never see the light of day in the US in the first place.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
My list need not end here but I got tired of typing. And anyway, I even agree with one or two of Mr. Stein's points. But just as Mr. Stein did I realized that my list was already the program of many of our elected officials. (Hmm.)
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
They'll burn you at the stake if you interpret it the wrong way!
The founding fathers would retch to see us now and the intelligent people I meet always seem to be talking about moving to Europe. Off the top of my head I propose:
1. Abolish federal taxes of individuals, the federal government can only tax items coming in and out of the U.S. and must get the rest of their funding from the states.
2. The legal code needs drastic simplification, all laws must be written in plain, yet precise, English. All laws that individuals are expected to obey must be posted in public and taught in our schools.
3. Corporations are not people, the owners and CEO's of corporations must be held accountable for the actions of that corporation in order to encourage more responsible behavior from executives and investors.
4. Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation rather than encouraging it. Patents must be applied only to devices, not ideas, methods, or discoveries. Terms of both must be shortened and both should require renewal every two years including proof in the case of copyright that the work will be available to the public for a reasonable price.
5. Political appointees and elected officials are not allowed affiliations with charities or lobbying organizations. A fixed amount of money may be spent on election campaigns. Political parties are not allowed to accept donations from commercial companies, foreign governments, or religious organizations.
6. Elections should be done in a more round robin fashion such as most progressive countries. In our current election voters must worry about voting for the most popular candidate with views similar to their ideal. It is much more reasonable for everyone to list the candidates in order of their preference and then reduce the selection to the two runners up and each vote goes to who is whomever is higher on the list.
7. Major issues should be brought to a referendum and decided by the people rather than left to the elected officials who have proven themselves unreliable.
OK, so there are some ideas. Anyone have any thoughts?
the us has the right telling it to limit genetic research for religious reasons. stem cells, cloning, etc.
absolute nonsense.
and the us has the left telling it to limit genetic research for environmental reasons. frankenfood, algeny, etc.
absolute nonsense.
europe is under a similar voodoo curse of the ignorants. the uninformed and fearful dictating policy.
china has no such constraints, and will the lead the world in genetic research in a matter of 10-20 years.
it's really kind of sickening and depressing. of course a lot of bad things can be done with genetic engineering. but does that mean we have to stick our heads in the sand? a lot of good can be done too! i applaud the technocrats in china on this issue, and the children and grandchildren of the know-nothing do-nothings in the west will reap the benefits of chinese researchers.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Companies see themselves as Multinational, not really caring where the breakthrough or new development is created because it benefits them no matter where in the world it is created, and if they can have it created for less money but still selling it to the same first class markets (First World Markets) then to the company it doesn't matter.
We developed many products outside the United States that could has easily been developed inside there but for 3 times the money and are now selling these products for the same price points as if they where developed inside the United States which allows us to make 3 times a much profit.
What I didn't foresee was this exact situation arising, which is the country I live in loosing its technological power because people like me, in some small way, have allowed the other competing countries to get a handle on the experience and knowledge that we have over the last 20 years built up.
Now I fear my fellow executives have become too addicted to the gravy that flows from this process and it will be very difficult to bring it back to the way it used to be, even if people are willing to pay more for the product, because all they will do is continue making it and developing it outside and charge your more.
Just my 2c worth
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
You are a fool. Send him to law school. My B.S. is in robotics from UCSD. I even possess a P.E. Both are useless now. My M.S. is in comp. sci. I have co-developed products which achieved MVP status. I teach college (comp. sci.) part time and work for a big bonehead company. If I could go back I would apply myself in a direction rewarded by America. The number of students in my classes are going down (they get it) and it gets harder for me to understand the "new hires" at work. The time and money poured into this career is hardly worth it - is it?
While you may not agree with the ideology of the man, he does make valid points. Many of his arguments cross party lines. Speaking as an Independent (Liberterian leaning) I see myself as someone who agrees, our country has already gone too far down this path. I don't think there is anyway to recover from it. Just hope that enough independent, intelligent, socially responsible people remain to balance out the ignorant masses.
The educational system needs stronger standards. It also has to let students fail and repeat. I went through school (in a "smart" state, Wisconsin) unchallenged and graduated with minimal effort because it was too easy. The sad part is I graduated a 3.0 cummulative GPA, and I was a slacker!
This shit shouldn't happen. I know of some people in my class that should of never passed.
Karma whorin' since 1999
This has nothing to do with big business, it is about the leisure class gone amuck.
There is a story that a traveller from another land (I'm being polite and not saying which land) arrived in America and was about to depart the means of travel. He commented to someone, "Ah, America. It's a pity it has no leisure class."
This did not go unanswered. An American replied, "But sir, we do have a leisure class." There was a puzzled look. It was further explained, "We call 'em bums!"
Things seem to have changed...
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
this is wrong as all social comentaries are wrong. .01$ gets to the school. the rest is taken by usless adminnistrators. if you give more money to the system , they will simply hire more high levell admins and no extra money will go to the children. the real solution is fire all the administrators, and give the money directly to the school, let pta's and teachers decide on what rescources are used. if you did that withought giving one extra penny to the schools you would find that there is more money than needed. giving more money to schools is wrong and should not happen its like giving money to a crack addict and expecting them to do something good with it.
education
1) for every dollar only about
Law and legislation
2) short of a major revolution there is no way to fix this, 90% of the laws today didnt exist 50 years ago. Frank herberts assesment that buracracys sole aim is to continue its perpetuation is true, there is no reform for laws and lawyers, police and legislation, the entire thing needs to be destoryed. if you really sit down and think about it there is no other way.
3) MTV is not the problem. mtv is not good but its not the problem. as long as children believe that doing drugs and screwing eveything thas not nailed down is the goal then we are truely in a bind. they should highlight scientists ( show that smart people have sex too) an adolesent only understands one thing every one else is having sex except for me , i need to do whatever i can to increase the amount of sex that i can have.
4) defence is the cause and condition for all of our technowlogy. it needs to be encuraged. star wars was a good idea the people who kiiled the programm were verry bad men.
One of the reasons my fare country, the United States of America, sucks is because of education. Our education system is eroding more and more every year.
Why?
That's actually quite obvious. There are people, probably all neo-cons, that want privatization of our schools. They are vehemently against anything resembling socialism and will fight to the death to privatize everything.
Capitalism can only succeed if we have a mix between private corporations and some socialist programs. Schools should be available to everyone without the contamination of corporations, libraries should available to all, health care to everyone.
So the plan is let the public school system crumble to the ground, show the success of school vouchers for private schools, make public schools private. It's so freaking obvious it's not even worth debating. The Republicans want everything to be driven by capitalism and will stop at nothing to achieve it. The Democrats are too scared to do anything about it for fear of not getting re-elected. The average American doesn't have the time to worry about it because they are working 50-60 hours a week with 1 week vacation and trying to figure out how to afford sending their kids to college.
I hate to say it but we are fucked. We are going to be fucked for quite some time, until the average dumbass figures out he's working harder than his dad did and making less money and paying more taxes while corporations don't pay shit in taxes. It's only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan but I am afraid it will be a few years before the dumbasses realize the situation and a few more years to get it fixed.
LoRider
One section summarizes RIAA et al pretty well, and their impact on innovation (along with the DMCA...). Too many laws = stifling innovation. Also too many laws can easily lead to flouting of laws as they become too cumbersome to enforce.
Section 8, not just America, but I would say most western nations where family values are almost nil. Strength in family? Maybe. Stifling innovation? Absolutlely. Got a head full of ideas, yet lack any confidence to do anything with them.
But, the real issue is...What can be done to save the US? These issues could do more damage to the US economy than any terrorist attack (maybe this is the evil peoples main success; make the US scared so it feeds upon itself with Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt).
StarTux
LBJ had left Nixon with massive military spending on a war in Vietnam
You're kidding, right? We all know that Johnson's decision to burn up a trillion dollars in deficit spending in the jungles of Viet Nam had nothing at all to do with the economic woes of the Nixon years. Nosirree!
What I see is that the techonlogy jobs went outside the US (India, China, Eastern Europe), ont so much because the cost of the labor there, but mostly because of good suply of young, highly educated people.
One must be blind to fail to see that.
US has low replacement levels, population here is aging. If you use schools to brainwash youth over population control, use it for recuitment to gay lifestyles and spend hours on social engeneering and oxymoron subjects such as "Social Sciences" - rather than math, you can expect any advanced country to decay to a third word country in less than 2 generations.
Petrus
The reason for that is because Microsoft has bound the industry. No one can move forward technologically, because they are stuck in the path the Microsoft imposes upon them. It is only when Microsoft is broken up, and companies are free to innovate and implement new technology that America will gain its techonological edge again.
-BrentWhen a foreign, non-American citizen, comes to the United States to attend a university, it is pretty much in order to obtain a top notch education that could not be obtained at home.
When an American goes abroad to study, it is nominally to fuck off and gain "cultural perspective".
So, what was the topic again?
Allow schools to fall into useless decay.
.com millionaires and the damage wrought by that economic boom.
Let's first address the physical decay facing our nation's schools. The current conditions facing most students and teachers are appalling. We spend more money decorating the White House for annual holidays than most school districts budget for building maintenance.
Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors.
Standardized testing and federal guidelines must challenge our nation's students. In the last 15 years, federal regulations and state authorities have enacted a wave of PC rules that force schools to combine students of varying learning abilities into one large class. In that class, is expected that a student with a reading ability of an 8th grader to complete the same work as a student with a reading ability of a 12th grader.
What happened to Remedial and Honors classes?
Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.
There is no question that this country needs to address Tort reform. In addition, we as a nation need to recognize that regulation is not what the founding fathers had in mind when writing the Constitution. I don't need the FCC protecting my children or me from televised orgies; I am most capable of regulating my children and myself. I don't need lawmakers asking what is popular with the country. I need lawmakers that are not afraid to do what is right, even if it is not what is popular.
Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries.
We must encourage and teach our children to take responsibility for their actions. Simple as that. If you drink and drive it is not the responsibility of the bartender, it is your responsibility.
Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust. Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from being sexy in public or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered about where real success comes from.
Continue making music videos that display a non-reality. For example, Jay-Z does not make 10 figures a year and selling 10 millions albums does not make you rich: ask TLC. In addition, be honest and open about the
Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.
Halliburton. WorldCom. Enron. United Airlines. But why are we upset? Why are we surprised? This is not the first time that CEOs have raped us. Oil companies did it in the 70s. Savings and Loans did it in 80s.
While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.
I don't imagine that a 31 year-old black woman who shoplifts $5100 in merchandise from Macys would receive probation and community service. I don't imagine that anyone but a star baseball player would be charged and convicted of DUI, possession, and assault 4 different times before seeing the inside of a jail cell. I don't imagine that anyone but a star basketball player could physical assault their coach/boss, and then be offered a 7 figure yearly income with another team/job.
Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.
It is sad when video games outsell books. It is deplorable that most teenage boys can spew more slang for a woman's genital region, than he can name past Presidents.
Mock and belittle the family. Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.
Why do my wife and I pay a higher percentage of our income in taxes than single people?
Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:
First tax it as income.
Then tax it as real or personal property.
Then tax it as capital gains.
Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death.
This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed world. This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once again, encourage disrespect for law.
There isn't anything I can add here. Ben Stein is dead on. As a young couple and making over $100K a year, my wife and I still don't know how we are going to afford a house, retirement, etc... It sounds far-fetched, but given taxes and more taxes, there is very little that we can save.
Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
If you don't think we have socialized medicine in the US, then explain to me what an HMO is.
Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
Because it is important that we return school prayer. Forget that schools cannot afford textbooks and some children cannot afford lunch, we have to work together to return school prayer. School prayer will make everything better.
And make sure that we give equal time to Darwin and the Book of Genesis when discussing the origins of the Universe.
But I stopped at a dozen because I realized that this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place, and the rest of the agenda is under way.
Enough said. Out.
That's right, the legal immigrants to the US are mostly from bordering nations or countries where the US sends hordes of 18 year olds to live for a few years with no parental supervision or has in the recent past. Personally, I think this is probably a more fun way to influence nations than having our guys shoot at people. Besides, if the INS had data on Al Qaeda's hordes then we probably wouldn't be having a problem would we?
Games is one software area in which a lot of innovation is coming out of Asia (esp. Japan).
People innovate in areas they really enjoy. I wonder if the lack of innovation in productivity software is due to the difficulty of using the awkward asian language input mechanisms along with the dominance of American companies.
To me, technological innovation is a big outward sign of a successful economy.
If technological innovation is a sign of a successful economy, and the US is losing it's technological edge, then I guess Ben Stein is right.
US universities have more money than a lot of their foreign counterparts and they attract better professors accordingly no matter where they're from. The US HAS to have good universites because it's primary education system is so awful.
When an "intelligent" high school student needs to ask where South Africa is or what season is it in Australia you know that there is something wrong.
Just like here I was told that Henry Ford invented the automobile. And the speaker refused to accept that he was wrong - even when presented with the facts by Brits, Australians and Germans.
if you read gibbons' rise and fall of roman empire, you will see many striking similarities to the US. i am a history teacher by trade, a geek by wishful thinking. mr. stein hits the nail on the head. sorry if what he says offends you, but it is true.
/. readers, you might find this gleeful. fine. this article concerns america. sadly, we shot ourselves in the foot. can we heal. yes. last election looks like we are on our way. maybe there is hope.
like the romans, we have political corruption at every level, social debauchery and immorality is the norm, we have no respeoct for the rule of law, and no respect for ourselves. we have a fractured culture, are becoming a mix of disparate, competing groups, hoping to score at the public trough.
to the foreign
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I can agree that there are horrid stupid no-responsiblity lawsuits out there.
My current favorite is the asbestos suits in which the companies have been utterly destroyed, but the true needy victims will likely get no money because the industrial-sized law firms have methodically looted the funds for relatively undeserving clients.
However, lawsuits have been the most effective way to force companies to build safety into their products. If there were full tort reform as Stein and his ilk would like, then killing people with exploding car gas tanks would just be another cost of doing business.
Responsiblity cuts both ways- the populace should take responsibility for their own foolish or immoral actions, but not at the expense of being able to make sure larger organizations are responsible too.
How about this change- lawsuits must pass more stringent tests to not be deemed frivolous, and are limited to realistic damage levels, but company officers who do harm either through negligence or willful contempt of safety are criminally liable.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
I'm seriously considering emmigrating somewhere cheap. Think of it. The only reason Indian programmers can undercut American programmers is the cost of living is cheaper there. Two can play at this game. Any suggestions from expat programmers out there?
Except that this isn't happening in a single school district in the United States, and never has.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I was just in Tokyo on my way to Guam, and I visited a technology store bent on buying something. It was huge, like 8 stories, and it took me almost 4 hours to walk around it. But I walked out with nothing. This is odd for me. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places or maybe it was the signs in Japanese but I found nothing that I had any desire to buy.
a. ...and a government and military that will do whatever it takes to protect those things.
... don't have the strong governments necessary to protect economic interests.
b. South America
well to a large degree b. can be attributed to a. the us has a tendancy to "encourage" corrupt people to stay in office because we can control them. take for example the recently failed coup in venezuela. this was a coup which our government supported. we are talking about overthrowing the democratically elected president of a soverign country.
our government has the gall to look down apon dictators of other countries when we've happily supported dictators when it was convenient for us.
-- john
Ben is right on target here.
Interesting that home schooling, as carried out by diligent and disciplined parents, addresses his points 1,3,4,7,8.
The family is the fundamental unit of an organic, growing society. Jeopardize the integrity of the family and the state will, sooner or later, lose unity itself.
Behold, an American welfare system that rewards single mothers, an American culture that looks down upon those who pursue a life of dedication to their family, and an American public education system that is in tragic need of overhaul.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Since when do we take economic advise from a man who hosts a game show on Comedy Central?!
Seriously...
Isn't that how they do that in all these places that are supposedly overtaking us? Thanks, dude!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Instead of answering his very excellent points, you sidestep them and go on a classic liberal attack of the messenger.
Next, you'll attack me.
If you've got anything against his article, state what it is and why you disagree. Oh, I forgot. Slashdot is not the place for such intelligent discussion. I guess I'm wasting my time.
Ben's father was the Nixon economic advisor. Ben worked as a speechwriter. ALong with such luminaries like Pat Buchanan (gag) and William Safire (heave).
Stable 2 parent families are important for society. I have seen a number of friends who have had to work through some serious issues because their childhold family had serious problems with broken marriages being the most common issue. Check out the book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce for a psychologist's startling findings.
The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Bernes-lee. Not an American.
:o)
You are using it right now
Somebody want solutions to the education problem? A few humble suggestions, not easy ones:
1. Require national standard minimum skills tests for EVERY ACCREDITED MAJOR before a degree is granted. Get professors and top hiring managers to design the test. This helps keep our universities from graduating every single person they possible can. Really, where else can we find a financial incentive for our universities to flunk more people and graduate less of them? Degrees should not be a dime a dozen.
2. Make grade school HARD. If it takes little Johnny an extra 3 years to graduate, so be it. Holding back brighter kids so the less able ones don't feel bad has to stop. I honestly want my second grader learning Intro Chinese, Solar System basics, Ecology (where litter goes), math that isn't memorization, etc. etc. No more whole days spent on Red+Blue=Purple.
3. Simple one: Make it VERY HARD to become a teacher. This is what the AMA did for doctors. This gives us better teachers who we know are motivated. It shrinks the teacher pool so we are forced to start paying more for teachers. Sure, it hurts initially when class sizes grow, but it pays off in the long run, and still 40 kids to one great teacher is far better than 10 kids to one lousy teacher.
These 3 steps could be implemented without spending much taxpayer money, and the benefits would be easy to see after a few years.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
American enterprise invents YOU.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
"9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion."
This is so true. I am Polish and Poland is
one the most pro-American countries in Europe
and world yet American Embassy in Warsaw
treats people like junk. I am currently
in the US and I wanted my Polish girlfriend
to come and visit me but after bad experience
she had with the embassy we gave up and we
will go for vacation elsewhere. And this
is for tourists invited by someone having a normal, legal job in the US - the way they treat those who want to immigrate is much worse.
America, keep on getting folks with completely
different culture like plane hi-jackers
from Saudi Arabia while protect yourselves
from Europeans sharing the same culture!
I am
Pooh
I've given it some thought and here is my conclusion.
How can a society innovate when the schooling process lasts into the mid 30s? How can someone with massive debt and competing against an ocean full of sharks hope to have the peace of mind required to innovate anything? What does innovate mean these days? A color LCD on a cell phone so you can play GAMES ON A TELEPHONE?????
And for this you need a PhD in EE, for which you probably had to give up the most beautiful years of your life to that CULT called university?
Then there's the people like that poster who proudly boasts of saving 15000$ a year for education for his kids. How can you innovate if the only ones who go to school are the rich ones? And then when you DO get to school, how can you innovate when you are surrounded by people who either
1)Never had an interest in the field, but since university has managed to brainwash everyone into thinking it's ESSENTIAL to have 15 years of post-graduate work for an entry level job;
2) Rich kids who couldn't care less and have Daddy's money to fall on, and when THEY get jobs, the cycle of 'university degree required' continues, garanteeing debt for all, and jobs for buddies.
Universities used to be for the best and brightest. The dedicated, the talented. There used to be a time when you could actually earn a living WITHOUT having gone to that cult, but those days are over.
How can you expect to innovate when you are locked into the cycle of 'higher education' till your 40's, and when you are finally done with the cult, your best years are behind you (harsh, but sadly true)
How can you innovate when you are in your 40s, have a family, more debt, and then even MORE pressure to go BACK to the cult because of the pressure of immigrant labor?
How can you innovate when you are busy just fighting to get a normal job?
So fuck you and your university, fuck you and your capitalism, fuck you and your corporations. Also, fuck your 'innovations' of faster video games and color LCD telephones.
You wanna innovate Mr. 15K a year for his precious children?
How about minimum living conditions for all? How about minimum USEFUL education for all? How about medical care?
How about innovating in medecine, where it's needed? Those priests in medecine need their asses kicked by the engineering mind set, THEN we'll have innovation.
Keep universities for people that actually will USE WHAT THEY LEARN, and not just use it as some sort of virtual, artificial barrier to employment, reserved for people who can afford the money, and put up with the bullshit.
"Moving at Internet speed, the House and the Senate approved legislation Tuesday to increase non-immigrant H-1B specialty occupation visas to 195,000 for FY 2000 through 2002." Full article here.
That was courtesy of the Clinton administration. THIS YEAR we are importing 100,000 foreign technology workers to compete for your jobs, due to the incredible shortage of workers we have in the current technology bubble. What, the bubble's over? Too bad...
These workers must keep their jobs, or they are deported. "You don't mind working 80 hour weeks do you? I thought not...". Plus 40K a year is a fortune to many of these folk!
Second is the abysmal rate at which we're turning out math, science and engineering graduates in the US. The US (if memory serves correctly) will turn out about 50,000 EE grads this year, of which 2/3 are foreign citizens likely to leave with their new expertise at some point. Mainland China alone will graduate over 600,000 EE grads this year, of which the vast majority are Chinese citizens. Also, in 2001 Mainland China opened ten shiny brand new software engineering universities. India is another large counry with a vast potential tech workforce.
I think there are legitimate worries regarding America's technological future.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
What if he wants to be an artist? Why shouldn't he be a doctor?
Your son is not your property.
I agree - the child is not my property. The tuition funds ARE, however. That should be the first 'real world' lession...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The fact is that the average American student lags behind the average student in most developed countries through secondary school.
However the top 10% of US students are equal to the top 10% of the highest ranking secondary educational systems in the world.
Moreover, the percentage of American students who go on to post-secondary education is far greater than any other country. And American universities are as good or better than any in the world. Most of the Noble Prizes since WWII were awarded to people working at American universities.
The result is that top students graduating from top US universities are fully equal or better equipped to compete on an international playing field compared to any other country.
And also despite having a higher percentage of it's workforce employed than other western nations, and a more diverse workforce, US worker productivity per hour is as good as any nation. If the educational system as a whole were failing, this just would not be so.
No, the issue is not the education system, but rather the way the US economy works. In particular we do not reward real innovation enough. The stock market is interested in what is going to happen 6 months from now, when in fact most innovations take 5-7 years to get to market.
This comment brought to you by, The United States.
"Holdings company of the World!"
One of the biggest problems from my perspective is that the entire purpose of patent law has been undermined by the expansion beyond the original intent of trade secrets and copyrights.
Trade secrets has allowed companies to essentially patent the unpatentable and protect concepts and ideas far past the patent limit.
Copyrights are even worse in that they have allowed companies to publish software and legally protect it without actually publishing the source code.
Consider Microsoft's successful squashing of any 'unauthorized' books regarding API calls. To me Microsoft would be truly covered if all the API calls were actually published and therefore copyrighted, but they are not. So what is covered is not actually known to the public or described in any public way, yet Microsoft can continue to have them and be legally protected by just copyrighting the distribution of the executables.
This is an abomination of the entire point of having a patent or a copyright system- to encourage innovation by giving the user exclusive use and rights legally protected for a time in exchange for having the body of knowledge published publically.
Why bother to patent when trade secrets or copyright can protect you longer with no public release of knowledge or concepts?
We have drastically erred on the side of use and rights without the fair exchange of public knowledge. Until we fix this part our innovative tech base will continue to suffer.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Note: I also blame low standards, grade inflation, madatory teacher certification, absurd union rules, social promotion, backwards education philosophy, and other issues....but that's another story.
I like Ben Stein's TV show, but I'm not sure he's someone who should be steering our nation. His arguments might carry more weight if they weren't dripping with political ideology.
s ch .html
1) Schools
I think many of us can agree that some schools are getting worse. But we might just as easily raise the topic of privatising education, the way that schools obtain revenue, the influence of the religious right on school syllabuses, the easy access to guns, or the hopelessly failed war on drugs as key issues, versus before arguing that it's unionised teachers or a syllabus that questions aspects of US history. If Ben Stein were in Japan he'd probably oppose teaching children about Japanese war crimes during WWII.
2) Trial Lawyers
Another right-wing hobbyhorse. Sure, many on the left probably take pleasure in the trials and tribulations of Big Tobacco. And yes, we're probably hoping that the courts will do what the legislature has consistently failed to do. But why not at the same time argue for campaign finance reform (since it's election-funding that has largely kept Big Tobacco from being dealt with by legislation)? Yes, the courts should not make law. Yes, the polticians should. Fix both.
3) Lack of Personal Responsibility
I have no arguments with Ben on this one.
4) Hard Work and Thrift.
Ditto.
5) Corporate Responsibility.
Ditto.
6) Respect for the Law.
Ditto.
7) Anti-Intellectualism.
Well, I have to say it but the Germans and French have probably got the most pro-intellectual cultures on the planet. This hasn't stopped them providing widespread support at various times for openly fascist regimes, massacring minorities from time to time, or falling behind the US technically.
Today despite its anti-intellectualism, the USA has 3676 engineers and scientists per million people, versus 2891 for Germany and less for France.)
(I can't vouch for these statistics, but they're from http://www.freeworldacademy.com/)
8) Mock and belittle the family.
I think this is Ben's way of being against child care and welfare moms. Go for it, let 'em starve.
9) Suicidal Immigration Policy.
Well if anything US immigration laws have become less inclined to allow "angry, uneducated immigrants" into the country over time. Each wave of immigration to the US has brought with it ethnically flavored organised crime, etc. etc. When we had waves of Irish immigration, many of them were angry and uneducated.
As for "countries that hate us". Countries don't hate people. People hate people. The people who run Iraq, say, may hate us, but that doesn't mean all Iraqis hate us.
10) Tax the Rich
It sounds like a good idea to me. Apparently, in the US the rich pay roughly the same number of cents in the dollar in taxes as the poor. Which is not what a progressive tax system is supposed to do (i.e. tax the wealthier harder) but it's a closer approximation than my former home (Australia) where the rich pay far fewer cents in the dollar than they do here. Still, if that seems harsh and draconian, by all means vote against it.
Note that in general the rich GET a lot more from the government than the poor do. E.g. it costs more to maintain the roads in wealthy neighbourhoods (especially per-capita). Also, poor people don't own defense contractors.
11) Socialised Medicine Destroys Technical Progress
If you look at small countries with socialised health care systems, they contribute FAR more to medical research per capita than countries without. But it's hard to find small, well-run countries that don't have socialised health care systems. Indeed, it's hard to find large, well-run countries except for the US that don't.
In the following paper:
http://www.uibk.ac.at/sci-org/voeb/texte/kolbit
We see that from 1991-95 the USA publishes 2388 papers in medical research per million inhabitants, versus 2825 for the UK, 3620 Sweden, 2342 Canada, 2845 Netherlands, etc. etc.
Now this is hardly a perfect measure, but note that all these latter countries are poorer than the US, are probably getting better healthcare outcomes than the US, and have socialised health care.
What the US's health care system does really well is treat "diseases of the rich". Thus, we have a lot of money going into research into chronic diseases of the affluent, and little or none going into acute diseases of the poor. No new vaccines or antibiotics, but a ton of stuff to make wrinkles and acne go away.
Meanwhile for a lot of research, the US's completely disorganised healthcare system has to turn to countries like Sweden, with socialised healthcare, to get useful epidemiological data with which to develop new drugs.
Should be fairly easy to see. Lets see what the US companies are patenting compared to the patents in the rest of the world. Hmmm, 1 click shopping patents, patents on how to use a swing etc..
OK, lets compare, if all the idiotic patents were not listed and then compared to the also non-idiotic patents owned by non-US interests we should be able to determine fairly easilly how far the US has dropped in technology.
I think the biggest things holding the USA back are:
1) Legislation
2) Infrastructure
#2 is usally "aided" by #1.
Throughout the late '80s and early '90s, I witnessed a tremendous downturn in knowledge and creativity amongst the engineers being hired by the major corporation I worked for at the time. The schools were the same, the grades were the same, but the depth and breadth of the basic knowledge had greatly decreased. Strangely, they thought it had gone up. They had been taught "skills" that were supposedly newer, but were in fact idealistic theology that had nothing to do with practical engineering and didn't work. The workload shifted more and more to the older engineers who eventually said "uncle" and left. Now the company is adrift at see and will likely have no clue why they can't engineer anything truly new when/if they finally wake up and realize it.
To put it simply, engineering the world over is a victim of the dumbing down of education and greatly reduced (overall) fundamental R&D spending in the '90s. We concentrated on the Net and let everything else drop. Now we're stuck in an economic downturn fundamentally caused by the lack of truly new innovation in recent years and aren't even smart enough anymore to know that is the problem.
Oh, what a brave new world.
Instead of trying to state why he is wrong, you simply attack him by association to others who you imply are also the epitome of evil (but again, no evidence or proof-- you just puke away to make your un-point).
Funny how people who have no intellectual response always resort to name-calling and similar tactics...
I wrote a column about this a couple of weeks back; this is one of my current fascinations.
You can farm out the manufacture of Nike shoes to free trade zone workers in Myanmar for a thousand years, and it is unlikely that you will ever see them rise up and make better shoes -- the entire structure of the shoemaking industry is set up in such a way as to prevent this from happening.
But if an Indian or Taiwanese or Chinese programmer spends enough time writing code, he or she will learn to innovate. It's an unavoidable fact of knowledge work -- the worker will, inevitably, gain knowledge.
Of course, it is also an unavoidable fact that corporations are more likely to use outsourced overseas contract workers than Americans. Why? Because the overseas contract workers will work for a fraction of what Americans do. Does this suck? Sure. Does the fact that it sucks change anything? Not at all.
Developing nations are beginning to take an active interest in information technology as an economic solution. The most obvious reason is that IT is completely independent of natural resources. Anyone can be taught to code, even (as some people I've spoken to claim) illiterates. With the advent of wireless networking -- which is both cheap and more architecturally robust than wires, at least in places where military coups happen on a semi-regular basis), this willingness to move towards an information economy is suddenly a lot more viable than it was back in the bad old days -- y'know, five years ago -- when wiring a nation like Ghana was prohibitively expensive.
There is also the concern that the American government is overlegislating the American technology industry -- crypto as munitions, anybody? And it's certainly true that the Feds have shown a marked tendency to come down on the side of Hollywood in the Great Content Vs. Technology War. Not that this is terribly surprising -- Hollywood, unlike the software industry, has a century-long history of buying the political clout it needs.
Personally, I'm more interested in the speculations that some American companies will be increasingly setting up operations offshore to avoid the reach of Congress, the IRS and Hollywood. Anybody else ever heard the rumor that the reason Microsoft has invested so heavily in Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor is so that they could up ship and move if the federal heat got too serious? I find such a possibility fascinating, if a bit far-fetched.
We shall see.
If you try to force him, he's likely going to major in Philosophy and have long hair and learn to code on his own and write only GPL'ed software.
Oh yeah, and he'll probably spend a lot of time on Slashdot. In fact, he's probably going to look at these very comments in Google Cache one day, so be careful what you say.
Amazing magic tricks
most of the major technical advancments took place during war time or when national security was at risk?
ARPA was founded in response to Sputnik. The world wars brought so much technical advancment its hard to imagine ( radar, A-bomb, modern flying machines ect.. ).
I bet if you plotted technical advancment and U.S. national risk over the last 100 years the graphs would be identical.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Yuck. It's been a long while since I've read something so mixed-up and vicious. I knew Ben Stein was a conservative, but I had no idea he was quite this reactionary.
...
... except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit.
Going blow-by-blow:
Allow schools to fall into useless decay.
I'll give him that -- American public education is definitely on the decline.
Do not teach civics or history
Indeed, far too little of both.
WTF? Have you been in a high-school history classroom lately? Sure, the curriculum now tends to include slavery, genocide against Indians, and so forth, but I've yet to see anything of that caliber in a history text. Even the famously leftist (but wonderful) People's History of the United States comes off making the people (if not the government) of this country look pretty valiant.
Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors.
Hold it right there. We all know teachers' unions can sometimes be a little reactionary, but they're not what's ruining public education today. The biggest threat is precisely the implementation of endless "standards," in which pointy-headed administrators tie teachers' hands in the classrooms and turn learning into nothing more than a series of Scantron answer sheets. You want a capable workforce capable of innovation? Good luck accomplishing it by making them into test-taking robots.
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services.
Funny fact -- we actually filed more lawsuits-per-capita in the 19th century than we do today. These endless campaigns to do away with our constitutionally-protected recourse to the courts are nothing more than a greedy attempt by powerful corporate interests to make sure they don't have to pay for the consequences of their misdeeds. I suppose you're driving a Ford Pinto to the game show every day, Ben?
Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.
Alternately, use public funds to do life-saving research at the National Institutes for Health, then turn the results over to the drug companies for them to patent and make a killing. Ensure that the FDA is packed with industry insiders who don't understand the very meaning of the word regulation, and then use your profits to engineer a political consensus against any sort of price-controls for prescription drugs. Watch as columnists for business magazines tow the party line.
Promulgate the pitiful joke that Americans are hereby exempt from any responsibility for their own actions--so long as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.
I suppose the fact that the above-mentioned deep pockets constitute Forbes's readership is totally incidental...
5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.
In the interests of fairness, here is one area in which Stein is dead-on. Although the problem goes far beyond the lack of adequate standards -- it is really a structural problem in which corporations are not accountable to their workers, consumers, or the public at large. As for union leadership, the biggest problems with unions in this country is that they're too weak, and their leaders compromise too much and don't represent the interests of their members. Ongoing efforts towards union democracy may help that.
Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened.
This is Republican propaganda. The so-called marriage tax penalty was highly questionable to begin with, but it's now been repealed.
9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion.
I can't begin to comprehend what the argument is here, beyond racist invective. Most immigrants (documented or otherwise) to this country are hard-working people who do work that most native-born Americans would never care to do.
10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:
First tax it as income.
Yes, because income taxes are inherently fair, in that those who are benefiting most from our economy are in turn paying a greater share of the costs of making it work. (Sorry, Libertarians, but the market doesn't keep itself afloat.)
Then tax it as capital gains.
Capital gains is income for wealthy people who can make money without working.
Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death.
Sorry, Ben, but the estate tax only applies to estate in the millions of dollars. Besides, if you're four-square in favor of hard work, why give the children of the wealthy a free ride in life?
11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
A SOCIALIZED medical system? Geez, Ben, what country are you living in? We have one of the least socialized health care systems in the developed world, and as a result it functions extremely poor. It is grossly inefficient (some amazing percentage of our health care dollars go toward bureaucratic overhead), and puts us somewhere behind Cuba, according to the World Health Organization. We're in the middle of a huge health care crisis in this country, and it's been brought to us by greedy HMOs and drug companies. (Also, see above about corporate welfare for the drug companies.)
12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
This country was built by people of a variety of different faiths, frequently persecuted in their homelands, who came here seeking a place to practice their religions freely, and have an opportunity to govern themselves. Our task is allow everyone in America to bring the highest values of their traditions (whatever they may be), to make a society that works for all. Or, we could simply engage in intellectual elitism, pointing and laughing at those we consider backwards.
Never worry, Ben Stein and his ideological allies can bring us back from the brink of disaster, to build a country where everyone is fearful, rule by the rich goes unquestioned, and cultural pluralism is a thing of the past.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
I always thought that Japan was ahead of the U.S. in terms of tech innovation.
geeks wasting precious "innovative time" listeing to some misinformed crackpot instead of coding
I'm a foreigner (French), so of course my external POV is biased but I disagree on several points on the article:
- point 3. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke.
Sorry, but this is very bad exemple, while I agree that in the US there are too many litigations, I also believe that tobacco companies do try to compel innocent people to smoke by running ads targetted to young teen.
In France, after a long battle, the problem has been solved in a radical way: any advertisement for tobacco is forbidden in any media.
- point 12. Uh? I've always seen American people as being in general higly religious which apparently haven't prevented the US from being the richest nation.
I don't really thinks that the nature of the religion is important wether it is catholicism, mysticim, or other things (except sects of course)
But I'm an atheist, so I'm not very knowledgeable into religions and I don't care, to be honest.
Also the article somehow insists too much on the technical side of the affair: US has not have the best student or best researchers for a long time, still the US is still the first nation on a big number of field, why?
Because the transformation of new idea into industries which sells works very well in the US whereas in the other country usually it doesn't work so well.
And another thing: the article didn't list the patents as a highly dangourous thing: they could slow down inovation very much..
Hands down, America can re-distribute its economic resources to what really counts economically.
For awhile there, it was expanding the presence of the Web. Right now, its transferring capital to make a more liquid real-estate market due to all the new-found wealth.
The free flow of economic resources it what makes America Great, and at the same time, rutheless!
Excitingly rutheless.
You'll never see the ready public acceptance of mass layoffs anywhere else in the worl.
Tech workers need layoffs, they are economic resources. The re-distributing to higher demanding positions.
"The world needs plenty of ditch-diggers!"
In the private business market in America. You don't see money being thrown at things that won't produce profits. For instance, satellite consumer products are tough to make money on. Most of the recent satellite based consumer products being dreamed up, aren't here in America. They just don't make enough money. They quickly fade away, for instance "Irridium".
Internet satellite radio seems to be fighting a slow death, but in reality, it's a mere flash in the pan. The internet does just as good a job without a satellite (for instance www.Spinner.com)
Bah, your just afraid that you won't be able to go to school cause you can't win his money
The problem with maintaining our "technical" edge is the same with maintaining any other sort of advantage. When you play chess with good players often enough you get good. They will improve at a faster rate that the better player. We Americans do not hold a lock on intelligence, innovation or initiative. Two of the things that help America maintain our advantage are our education and immigration systems. Our education system attracts the best and brightest from around the world. Some of these people return home to help their countries, but a lot stay here and improve ours. Our Universities could not maintain the level of research without foreign students. Could our system be better? definitely! But not everyone is going to be a Nobel Prize winner no matter what we do. A vast majority ( person observation) of people I know do not have strong problem solving skills and that is not limited to Americans. and I personally do not feel you can teach this. Given the choice how many students take Physics, Calculus or other "hard" class in high school? My physics chemistry and calculus classes in high school were a lot smaller than shop classes. We can not continue to only blame our schools and teachers for under prepared students. We as parents need to make sure our kids are doing it. You can't just send them off to school and call it good. You have to follow up, check their work, encourage them. Our Immigration system also helps us out a great deal. If you are published and hold an advance degree it is a lot easier to emigrate than if you don't. I have several friends with multiple PhDs from Russia and India and they want to stay and raise their families here. Very few of them talk of returning home. Roger
I grew up in the Fulda Gap, where did you?
I'll probably get flamed for saying it, but, who says you have to learn latin at age 12 to be ahead of the game of life? Who cares if 4 year olds in Japan are building model fusion plants? What difference does that really make?
Freedom to find one's own way through life is all that really matters. Freedom to express ourselves, as janitors or CEOs.
I expect the US to remain an economic super power, and be joined by all the other free nations of the earth at the top.
My kids learn a little bit at school, a little bit at home, and a little bit on their own. They try things, move on to new things, move on to different things, and work out for themselves what they like and don't like to do.
Which really brings it down to this: The most productive (and inventive) people are the ones who are most happy about where they are in their lives. Any free nation will do.
I think one of the BEST THINGS about the Earth today is that it's NOT just the USA at the top of the heap anymore. We've helped other nations to the top (Germany, Japan) and we've been joined by nations that have helped themselves (India).
The more the merrier. So, I'm not worried one bit. Whether the USA keeps its edge or not is not even meaningful in the new world order. We're all in this together now.
Well, for all that's worth...
...or maybe not.
Innovative products always fail:
1. Beos can't grow its market share due to microsoft and apple monopolistic attitudes
2. Gobe Productive gets lost due to the extreme market dominance of microsoft office and its proprietary formats
Please do not mention Linux/BSD as a "innovative". They offer nothing new. OTOH, Beos was innovative, and Linux pundits will never acknowledge that.
That's the innovation problem here. The primary reward for doing anything under the U.S. economic model is money. Sure, there are other rewards, and not everyone is greedy, but alas!
From what I've heard from the inventors I've spoken with, it's rather difficult to make money inventing things. The current logic is, "If you can't make money doing it, you shouldn't do it." Therefore, innovation is wasteful.
The only time innovation seems to work in the US is when it generates more revenue.
It's quite amazing: the U.S. has slowly shifted its focus from intellectual/personal freedom to "economic" freedom. If your level of avarice is high enough, you can succeed and be a "good" American; if you've just accomplished some scientific/artistic feat, who cares?
Its harder to introduce something in the US. simply put, people dont really want something that will impact their lives in major ways. Little changes are accepted, and sometimes embraced. (now I dont know where these things were thought up, just some examples of acceptance).
/. don't fit into the "masses" category. The rest like to troll.
The Swiffer. Its no big deal, really. Just an electrostatic cloth on a stick. I mean, how many of these things have they sold? Even I have one. Its not a big change from a broom, not interrupting anyone's life.
Electric cars. Have you ever met someone with an electric car? I haven't. Hybrids, yes... but not a real electric car. Even hybrids aren't that common really, or alternative-fuel ones. Americans like their big cars. Fuel guzzling, view blocking, unnecessarily large vehicles thet people don't really need. Some people do have valid uses for large vehicles, but for the person who just goes to work every day, they dont need it, its just engrained in them that they need a huge vehicle. Lots of people won't accept something that's more efficient. Not to mention the corporations aren't exactly geared up behind them. The biggest hybrid seller in the US is from Honda. The Big 3 dont have reason enough to make something else.
The Metric System. This one is always brought up. I used it in high school. Once I got out, the only time I see it is when I buy a 2 liter of DP. Not only would it require a massive infrastructure change, but it's something we just don't want to get used to.
There's lots of examples, but in the end, its the monumental things people dont want to get used to. The technology age still hasn't caught up with some people. How many people do you know just got a computer recently, don't have one, or just know how to use hotmail? They haven't made the computer part of their life. (then again, we're a bunch of geeks, and have our own views about computers) It took a while for people to get used to the idea of having transportation that isn't animal powered. At one point, people believed that your head would explode if the train went over 27 mph. (or something around there) The US is set in many of its ways, and being so large, its hard to introduce something, have it be uniform all across the country, and then get people to accept it. Some changes are just hard to implement due to the size of the US. Look at people's reaction to the new paper money. They're really going to freak when they change it to color.
In Japan, or Europe, they've had all sorts of new, cool devices that we'll never see in the US. And some others that will take forever to get here. Go to Japan sometime, and see all the electronics there. They have devices you've never imagined. (okay, you've imagined them, but didn't think anyone would make them) When Sony introduced Linux for the PS2, where was it sold first? Japan. Its easier to introduce things there, since they're more willing to accept new ideas. In the US, there are still places that have 'Blue Laws,' passed down from old puritanical ideals. We just have a hard time letting things go sometimes.
Another major factor I see is that in the US, things are geared towards the masses. aka Sheep. They deal with whatever is given to them. They don't want change, because it requires too much thought. This is everywhere in the world, but they just seem to be louder here, since the government is 'by the people'. Look how many people bitch when they come up with stricter pollution controls on cars. In Europe, they have vehicles that put the SUV to shame. Just check out the euro car websites. And there was also the story the other day about the 1L car. 1 liter, 100 km, or something like that. Here, we dump 10x that or more or a regular basis. Which ends up putting the middle east in our political sights far too often.
Yes, i know this is going to get a lot of "Oh, that's not me" replies, but I'm not talking about you. Many of the people who read
The other thing I see is money. Yes, the big corporations do a lot of R&D, but they also try to squeeze every penny they can before they have to get something from R&D. Best example? The Intel 386. Development finished ahead of the 286, but they didn't want to put it out since they could get money out of the 286 first, then get it again with the 386. The car companies and their gasoline combustion engines. They would have to dump lots of money (far more than they are now, c'mon... look at the jokes they've come out with) into developing better engines, electric, other fuels, etc. but they want to get their money out of the gas engines.
So yes, the corporations are at fault. And yes, the people are at fault. And I saw posts about the schools, and yes, there's probably something in there too, but that's based on the culture issues we've got going on, and I need to get back to work.
Solutions? I don't know. Come up with something, patent it. In 17 years, after the patent runs out, maybe someone will implement it.
Any society will respond to what is valued either through the marketplace or socially. Ours is no exception.
We do not value little smart gadgets like the Japanese do, so we do not make them as well or as consistently. The Japanese do not have per capita square footage like we do, so anything that gives them more capability in a small space is prized. Electronics are also a very profitable item to ship, so it was an excellent arena for the Japanese to specialize in.
Being behind in consumer electronics is not new. Our broadcast standards have been absolutely behind most of the world for decades, for instance. But a clear picture wasn't as important to us and so we have lagged until HDTV.
On the other hand we feel a need to have a strong military. So we put our money into all sorts of hideous toys that are so far ahead of everyone else's that Pax Americana is an absolute fact. No matter how much Japan or France or Russia or China may want to, they simply cannot build an F-22 for a long time to come.
Unfortunately F-22s do not readily translate into consumer products, but items like BOMARC and B-52s translated into the 747, still a world-beater product.
I'm not suggesting that the military-industrial complex is our technical salvation, but since we prioritize and pay for it we get that kind of technical edge. If we want innovation in other sectors of our economy, we will need to prioritize that, either as a government initiative or the natural course of market desire.
And we need to stop whining if we don't absolutely dominate every global industrial endeavor. As long as we can offload the commoditization to Japan or the Little Dragons and keep the innovation in-house, who cares if we all have Playstations instead of Ataris?
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Ok, I read the article and Ben Stein is all over
the map.
the culure elevating stupidity, and coolness thru
sex and violence. I agree , but this has been going
on for decades. It is just worse now.
But then we get a typical right wing rant against
"socializied medicare" The us is even close to
haveing one, and if it did it intelligently it would be a good thing.
Not really worth the read.
Just a lot of mixed up right wing cliches.
I wanna win his money!
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
I appologise for posting as an AC, i cant find my password list on this machine. As an engineering student, i have to agree fully with what Mr Stein Says. The school system in this nation sucks. I went to what was (at the time) one of the top 20 public schools in the nation. 2 years of physics there didnt do JACK SHIT for me. I ended up being retaught everything, cause it was either dumbed down, or just plain taught wrong. and that's in one of the best schools in the nation, i feel really sorry for the suckers who's parents dont live where the pubic schools are 'amazing'. as for the 'common right to sue' somethign is wrong when i can get sued for creating a toaster that kills someone if they stick a fork in it. seriously, if you stick a fork in your toaster & die, the engineer who designed that is gonna GO TO JAIL. as for your summation: In essence ... "Give control of the coutry back to the rich becasue they know whats best"
I cannot agree. My feeling is that this is a call for a return to personal responsability, Solid science, and good education.
I think you're confusing Ben Stein with his father Herbert Stein (who WAS an economic adviser to Nixon).
If you're going to shoot the messenger instead of the message, at least get the right messenger.
Education is not profitable.
Why mix socialism and capitalism? Why not just do away with capitalism? Let's face it, the system doesn't work, and it doesn't work because of capitalism and greed. Replace it with a system that does work. Replace advertisements with information about science and technology presented in a fun and entertaining way. Make me want to learn physics and latin and how to program. And offer me a proper environment to learn and work. I wouldn't mind going to school for 10-14 hours a day if I had comfortable chairs to sit in, computers connected to networks filled with all the info I'd ever need, and my purpose for being there was to learn instead of pass tests or get a grade.
Life could be so much simpler without the overhead of managing money.
And what does that mean?
I worked in a program to help migrant farm worker's kids get a better education, not to mention that I have met a lot of Mexican people. Not a single one of them has ever expressed those views. That's like pulling out KKK literature to say that the US is a hotbed of facist aryans.
- sigs are for wimps.
Innovation is done by people, not money.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In 2014, any HR Manager who signs off on a domestically-educated IT worker will be fired on the spot.
....annother 9.356% are misapplied.
I hereby declare this 11% statistic null and void....
Really, I dont know if this statistic is correct or not, but Im sick of people ripping statistics that the media has contorted, mangled, and misrepresented, and reusing them in an even more misreprestnted way.
Here's a proposal: Anytime you quote a statistic, make sure you link to a reference so that anyone reading your post can read the research for themselves and decide if that statistic really applies.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
This isn't my experience. Klein Highschool in Houston Texas, for instance, has a truely massive campus. It's the size of six football fields. The only trouble is that it has three football fields, a soccer field, and a baseball field. There are typically 35 students to a classroom.
The real emphasis on sports over education actually comes from grading system. There are four levels for most classes: Basic, "normal", Advanced, and Honors.
Basic classes move at 1/2 the pace of the normal classes, requiring two semester to complete the same material. These classes usually feature up to 2/3 of the class sleeping, heads on desk, because the pace is so mind blowingly slow. One assignment per day, maximum, in a two hour course. Doing homework in class is punished. Homework counts 60% of your grade. Test count 10%.
The normal class is just that, normal. These classes are usually 40 or more to a class, so many students are bumped to basic to make room. Homework counts 40%, test 30%.
Advanced and Honors are basically the same. Usually "Advanced" is what colleges call "honors-option" courses, where extra work is given to Advanced students in a normal class. Advanced courses are usually reserved for students that participate in extra-cirricular activities. Namely, sports. Varsity are usually given Honors classes. Both of these classes count Homework as 10% of the grade, and tests as 40%. Class participation, including in-class assignments, is 50%. Doing homework in class is encouraged as productive, even during instruction.
Students who take certain extra-cirricular activities are also rewarded with an improvement to their gradepoint average. Klein Highschool typically graduates around ten students who have a 10.0+ gradepoint average. Yes, this is on the 4.0 gradepoint scale. Klein says that this tells colleges which students went "the extra mile" with school activities. About a third of the entire student body (over 5,000) graduate with greater than a 4.0 average. Those who do not participate in after-school activities can not surpass 4.0.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
I'm a utopian... Anyway, there are solutions to solve all our problems. Most of them developed over the last 5 years.
Pointing out the problems so loudly that you can no longer deny them is the first step in building a discussion, which is necessary in finding the proper solution. Without discussion, which our current political system discourages, we end up debating the same issues for decades and get nowhere. Why wasn't our school system a hot issue for debate at the last election? Because we're too concerned with money. And I believe if you look at all these problems people keep pointing out you will find that all of them are related by 1 thing, money. People sell out and take the get-rich-quick scheme because that is the goal of American life. If we weren't persuaded by money, if we didn't cater to money or care about money we wouldn't be posting on this article and our school system would be designed properly for our kids. Unfortunately I think the only way to get our minds off of money is to do away with it completely and instead use computers, databases and networks to manage our resources efficiently.
C'mon, this is obvious:
How long can America keep pumping out students whose test scores are in the cellar for industrial nations and expect to maintain an edge in technology? As it stands, a lot of our brains are already imported from India and China.
I live in CA, which should stand as a dire warning to the rest of the country: They limit their property taxes, their schools go underfunded, and as a result California natives largely end up working to repair the cars and wash the floors of the well-educated from elsewhere.
The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.
I hear this stuff all the time, and used to believe it myself on occasion. Its simply not true. The educational system was NEVER intended to make people smart, it was intended to make the intelligent human masses comfortable working in factories doing boring, repetitive work and acquiesing to the demands of leaders. Education as we know it, is a system which originated in fascist germany as a way to school better, more obedient and selfless soldiers.
Make no mistake. Schools are doing EXACTLY what they were designed to do. Think about it. Have you ever gone to a neighboorhood in the US which was constructed in the 19th century? How is it houses were constructed to be not only durable, but beautiful as well? The parks, museums, sculptures... All built long before public schools. Have you ever read civil war letters? The average 15 year old infantryman in the civil war writes far better than 99% of the people who post on slashdot. Could you imagine any book by Charles Dickens being on the bestseller list today? Why are so many schools named after the industrial magnates of yesteryear, like Carnegie, Colgate... Why were so many colleges funded by the industrial elite?
If you really think about it, it just doesn't add up. Schools make you DUMB, this is what they were supposed to do. It makes a people easier to control, and less prone to nasty rebellions. Humans are innately intelligent, it is only warping their minds through years of social conditioning they became mad, lost, and inhuman. Carnegie, JP Morgan, Frick, all of them sat around and thought about how to make free men content to work in their god foresaken factories, and like it. They made it so, and now we are living with that legacy.
The forced educational system must come to an end, it is time for this system of class control to collapse and for the average american to recapture the American dream that was stolen from him by the fascist powers of a century ago. We sit here and rip on the US educational system, even though the educational system is the single largest industry in the United States, both in capital expenditures and employment percentages. How is it people in India and China can do as well as us, even in the midst of an anarchy which can barely pave roads let alone build schools. They are better because they are NOT schooled.
To all who are interested, I highly suggest you read the online version of a book entitled The Underground History of American Education by one John Taylor Gatto. The book gives a well written account of exactly how the free minds of the United States were perverted into the drones we have today. It is rare I read a book that is truly eye opening, but this book will make it all make sense.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Of course he pledges allegience to money, the guy's a fucking kike. We all know those hook-nosed Hebes jerk off to pictures of banks.
$15,000 a year? Every year for how many years? Or are you assuming a quality education will still only cost $15,000 per year in X years?
And why not "allow" your son access to the medical profession? I know a good lawyer with high ethical standards (she works as an asst solicitor general for the state I live in), so a blanket condemnation of either profession seems short-sighted and foolish. I work in IT and know lots of people in my profession that I find shallow, authority-whipped, disengaged from life, etc., so making broad assumptions like you did about other professions is witless.
To really mess things up (these roughly match the topics of the corresponding ones from the article):
/. crowd something to think about.
[1] Demonize the teachers who are now doing the work not only of the schools of 50 years ago, but also of most of the parents (both parents have less time for their kids than they used to) as well as of many employers (who can't afford to invest in training a highly-mobile workforce). Make the teaching job as hard and unpleasant as possible, too.
[2] Provide immunity to all large organizations from any harm they cause to common folks, using the sleaziness and irrational pay structure for lawyers for cover. Reinforce this by institutionalizing bribery under the name of campaign contributions and ensuring that elections are so expensive that people who are unbribed and unrich can't get public notice.
[3] Blame any complaints by people trying to raise a family on low-wage jobs or live on Social Security as being class warfare. Give enormous publicity to rare weirdo legal judgments (and supress some of the facts about those).
[4] Sneer at attempts to help other people, especially via dignity-preserving mechanisms like the minimum wage. Encourage people to ignore the needs of their relatives and neighbors, and punish those (like many Hispanics) who share rather than concentrate their resources.
[5] Don't hold the rich accountable for productive social use of their wealth. Drop taxes on wealth and property, tax stock gains much less than earned income (and exempt it from social-security taxes), and expand rather than plug tax loopholes. Don't even think about interfering with the overseas tax havens that prevent any national government from dealing with this problem.
[6] Ensure that laws lack public support by using them to proscribe drugs (except for a couple of favored ones). This also provides alternate funding for law enforcement both through bribery and no-legal-recourse confiscations. Make prison sentences long enough to be a world leader in the fraction of population in prisons.
[7] Force schools to concentrate on dull standardized tests and sanitized materials, and don't listen to what teachers have to say about the effects. In particular, don't tell kids the interesting truths about science (evolution), history (genocide, slavery, fanaticism) or their own future (learn to be useful if you want to have a happy life), and don't encourage the creativity that will make them troublesome, strong people (like, heaven forbid, good programmers) rather than "good workers".
[8] Pay lip service to families, but forbid any deviation from the standard man-plus-wife-plus-offspring definition. Mock people who choose to build their lives around non-kin friends and children (like those evil teachers in [1]). Also ensure that families bear all the costs of medical care for their children, and avoid any programs that transfer money from singles or kids-already-raised folk (I am both) into the hands of the parents who are actually doing the work of raising tomorrow's kids (in addition to having the highest paid-employment workload in the industrialized world).
[9] Sabotage the economic and social development of the rest of the world by siphoning off as much of their talent as possible, by blackballing for loans any countries that try to protect their own industries or workers, and by using patents to force tribute from poor countries before they are permitted to use new ideas.
[10] Keep tax rates on the wealthy at the lowest level in the world, and enroll all the gonna-be-rich fools in protecting privileges they will never get to use (except for a handful lottery winners).
[11] Figure out a way to cover up the fact that the US medical insurance system has managed to develop all the faults of both badly-run government systems and of heartless private ones.
[12] Having correctly identified anti-scientific attitudes (fundamentalist, new-age, or just mindless) as a central danger to the US's greatest contribution to the world -- secular freedom guaranteed by constitutional law -- throw this insight away by attacking all attempts at unifying our society (or worse, the world) along those lines by providing a common core of free public services (schools, social security pensions, medical care, daycare and family allowances) whose sharing would force people to broaden their horizons.
Wow! Rants are fun! I never would have gotten that far in one sitting if I had been talking to someone, since each of these points would take a a book to properly present and defend just my point of view (and there is more than one "other side" in most cases). But maybe this outline from an old lefty will give the libertarian
And the corporations will stand for an independant "innovator"?
Give me a break. If someone nowadays sits down and really DOES come up with something innovative, they rarely bring it to market. It usually gets swallowed whole by some megacorp and buried.
(I'm not naming names, but the corp I'm thinking about in particular is the one with the biggest history of abusing the word "innovation").
most of the noble prizes that go to US universities are OFTEN to foreign scientists.
l
http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/index.htm
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
BTW- MS / IBM do not subsidize that research :-)
Do not be confused if you are neither black nor white (left / right / etc..) You are surrounded by a spectrum of possibilities and a spectrum of interrelated interests and policies. These topics are related, and must be analyzed in many contexts to gain understanding. Academically speaking, the conspt is often referred to as "multi-disciplinary", and most establishment forces do not want to see it perpetuated, except amongst the brood of the "elite". Public schools suck, so the internet is where your education will come from unless you are rich. It *is* the red pill. You have to read. Go read Rothbard, Hayek, Von Mises, Greenspeak, Jefferson, Jackson, Noland,.... go read rense.com for that matter (get some new sources and ideas, and never mind the flying saucers if that manner of flight scares you). Read and look to see if the history you have been taught is correct. Learn to challenge, verify and know, do not settle for half baked beliefs learned thru context. Do not simply parrot and perpetuate the lies of scientists in the think tanks, selling their certifications. Collectivism is, and always has been, slavery. Fostering competition is a subtle art, and a critical component of life, liberty and the pursuit.. Socialism / collectivism is uncompetitive, it is BAD news, and it is the dominant societal model currently, but it is on fire- breaking at the seems. An age ends, and what comes now is up to you. Look not to the "prophets" who control established media channels as they are false. Good luck.
what a troll.... there are plenty of VERY ethical and VERY practical reasons for treading with caution on those particular issues you mention and they have little or nothing to do with religious context...
a) screwing our gene pool
b) screwing the balance in our environment
c) eugenics
d) animal abuse and/or the legal conundrums introduced by man/animal hyrids
sure, religious practice is supposed to resist change to an extent... but the above are things that can't be just gleamed over by any governing factors... we can't afford to fix these problems after the fact... it could result in extinction...
you have to move slowly in some cases.
m.
College Admission officers will notice this and adjust accordingly; however, most college Admissions Officers also will give deference to a student with extracariccular(sp) activites over one with none. I speak from experience. I went to a top 15 university and played DIII sports. I have seen several students who would have stood no chance of going to that school without their athleticism get in because of it. These students also gave back quite a bit to the university, more than those they displaced would have. These students also did just fine in the classes they took (better than many worthless "Smart" kids I knew). One, a quarterback, entered with a 900 SAT and exited with a 3.7 GPA.
The point is that there are many factors besides grades that Admissions Officers look at, they don't usually get fooled by padding of grades. Besides that is what tests and prior knowledge are for. People do learn.
To me, reading Ben Stein's article is like reading an article about how wonderful and intricate the human eye is, or how complex nature is. These types of articles typically ignore how all the great things and all the stupid things (such as the asinine idea that we should breathe and eat out of the same orifice) came to be.
Simply put and IMHO, societal evolution has put us where we are today. You can't blame any one individual, corporation, process or ideal. You would have to blame everyone from the president to the illegal immigrant for fifteen generations back.
I'm not advocating monarchy or fascism any more than I'm railing against democracy. I just don't believe that the course of evolution can be altered by what Ben Stein would seemingly advocate: quick patches to existing, evolved law designed to treat all the symptoms he enumerates. They may fix the symptom but no doubt the cure would be worse than the disease.
The only thing that *might* divert our societal evolution into a different path is to change the criteria of success, cover, and let simmer for a few hundred years.
To change the criteria and to determine what those criteria may be are exercises left to the student
I think money is mismanaged. Cut education part, funnel to administration salaries and football.
..). Biggest reaccuring expense paying teacher salaries.
I've wondered what would happen if you cut school to the bare necessity of teaching: rooms to conduct class, teachers to teach the subject matter, school materials like books, paper, pen/pencil, being taught how to learn & critical thinking applied to the subject matter(language,
math, science, history,
After all the hard work of the kernel folks, you seem to expect them to be perfectly happy with having to support binary modules that they can't debug, and that fall in a grey area of the GPL.
:)
Citation?
I, for one, believe that mandatory athletic programs for ALL students is a good thing.
[...]
feeder program at most of these schools) but that everyone that wants to play a sport should, even if it is 3rd, 4th, or 5th string.
Mandatory does not mean you get to play if you want to. Mandatory means you play whether you want to or not. I, for one, did not.
Many of the problems in the schools are a result of lack of participation.
I'm not sure I agree with this or not, but *forcing* kids to participate (in anything) isn't going to accomplish anything either. The reason kids don't "participate" is generally not because of a lack of opportunity; it's because they don't want to.
Note: I also blame low standards, grade inflation, madatory teacher certification, absurd union rules, social promotion, backwards education philosophy, and other issues....
I'll agree with you there!
and your point?
...importing or exporting your talent?
For as much talent as the US imports, we export virtually none, and we ARE the argest pool of talent on the planet by far.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Among Ed Yourdon's many bullshit predictions, he predicted in "The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" (1994) that programming would move substantially offshore. He was wrong, and published a subsequent book admitting as much. (Yourdon has apparently found the fount of infinite material -- the Nth plus one book must simply point out the flawed arguments of the Nth book.)
The flaw in Yourdon's argument was that he looked at raw numbers of programmers, not at the inventiveness of what they were creating -- it's not terribly interesting that India has a billion people writing Java if JVMs are still developed in the US. And indeed, every core innovation domain is dominated by US companies. (Example domains include microprocessors, operating systems, computer languages, databases, and virtual machines.) Which isn't to say that they're dominated by Americans -- it remains true that the very best talent in every country in the world ultimately finds its way to Silicon Valley to be among their ilk, and much (if not most) American innovation is due to those born outside her borders.
So until the next AMD or Sun or IBM or BEA or whomever is coming out of India, the dire Stein preditions apply not to American Innovation per se, but rather only to those stubborn Americans who believe that being born in the land of innovation automatically entitles them to a piece of the action.
I don't agree. Schools with massive organized sports (like all of Texas) also tend to have the largest problem with what some would call nerd bashing. The result it the sides of the bell curve are squeezed in so the jocks end up towards the top of the curve and everyone else is excluded.
Football does have its purposes. It helps to make good foot soldiers and its a training ground for military tactics which rely on discipline, following rules and doing what one is told by the pack leader as well as encouraging a bit of free actions as long as its for the promotion of the team.
If memory serves, my own highly mediochre (witness my spelling) private school was about $14,000/yr by the time I graduated...
NYC in the 1980's - has to be more now.
You bastard. Let your kid do what he fucking wants. You say he is going to graduate in 2014, i.e. 12 years! So he is what? 10 years old?
People like you piss me off. I will not let my kid go to medical or law school, so he must be an engineer. What if he wants to be a musician, an artist, hell even a politician? What if he runs away to Cuba to escape you and cut-throat profit-before-everything, taking your precious money with him?
Tell me, do you tell your son that he must be in the football team, that he must be the best player, that he must play baseball as well and must score a home run, then come home and must learn to play the violin?! You sir, are an absolute cunt. I genuinely hope that your son tells you to fuck off.
I'm an mech engr in business running a couple of CNC machines for a living making a variety of parts for local telecom, recreation, and misc industries. I've got all of the cool stuff that you need to be in this business, but I've recognized for some time that the balance of manufacturing power has shifted to Asia. This isn't a bad thing in an economic sense, and Americans and the west benefit greatly from the low priced products originating in Asia, and more specifically, China. One could argue that it is western technology, and a massive Asian manufacturing economy that together fuel this expansion. What does concern me though, is that Americans have come to expect, that we as a people, will somehow defy socioeconomic law and continue as an economic, and singular military superpower, ad infinitum. One need only look at the manufacturing lead that Americans held at the end of WWII, to realize that much of the American Century was fueled by the fortune of a geography that shielded our continent from the massive destruction of both world wars in Europe, Russia, and Asia. This lead has, over almost 60 years time, diminished, with the prospects, if not occurence, of reduction in the standard of living for the middle and lower class. It is not too great a stretch to see an Asian future in which rising manufacturing prowess fuels a greatly expanded appetite for innovation, and wealth creation. How will the people of America respond to this economic and social challenge? My own take is probably not well.
Sony has the advantage because the Japanese are closer to the product!
You are expecting us to read the article before posting an opinion? I think you posted to the wrong website. Us Americans are too busy innovating to read more than a few sentences at a time. What was the subject again?
Anyway, there are solutions to solve all our problems. Most of them developed over the last 5 years
I would be very interested to see a link to these solutions. I would hope such a link contained information that included the proposed detailed day-to-day operation of the solution, once impemented; the detailed plan for making the transition from where we are to where the solution means to take us, including how to deal with the inevitable opposition; the means by which we'll get to the point where such a transition is even seriously considered; and finally, why anyone thinks the solution would work any better than past utopian solutions.
I think the only way to get our minds off of money is to do away with it completely and instead use computers, databases and networks to manage our resources efficiently
This, also, make me want to see a plan. It reminds me of the Socialists' claim that all would be well if the workers were in charge. I have never seen nor heard of a detailed economic model that gave any hope of actually succeeding in managing a nation's resources efficiently, wisely and fairly. Such a model may well be within the capabilities of human ingenuity, but I'd be a little surprised if such a thing already existed, given my understanding of the state of technology.
Information is not Knowledge
While Ben Stein's inflammatory screed gets lots of attention, one is better served reading what the National Academies have to say about this. Also enlightening is the 2002 IEEE Employment Survey, with enlightening facts such as: About one-third (36%) would recommend engineering to their son or daughter; 35% are not sure; and 30% would not recommend it at all.
I agree with you wholeheartedly...but I wouldn't hold my breath on waiting for the US legal system to do anything about Microsoft. They won't.
The only hope we have of ridding ourselves of Microsoft is a genuine paradigm shift--we need the "next big thing" to appear. Microsoft has invested themselves completely in the current dominant paradigm--so much so that inertia alone will ensure their doom. When a new paradigm appears, Microsoft will be unable to change.
The problem is--where do we get a new paradigm? It's sort of a chicken-egg kind of thing. We need people to sit down and THINK.
When I look back at the history of aviation, autos, and even electronics it is amazing how much (especially original work) came out of back yards and garages.
We need 1) garages and 2) time to work in them. With most Americans working the longest hours on Earth for lower and lower pay; who has time to invent anything in a garage?
Besides inventing the cotton gin, Eli Whitney also invented replaceable parts (for use in muskets) and the assembly line (to make musket parts). Before Eli everything was hand made. Unfortunately most Americans know Whitney only as the inventor of the cotton gin.
American history as taught in high school is usually formulated by a committee and almost always contains a large number of inaccuracies, such as Ben Franklin getting loans from the French. But that's another story.
A hypothetical question for you: if one of our students were the author of the essay How to Ruin American Enterprise, and had turned it in to you as a paper, how would you grade it? Would you feel that the essay had enough concrete examples? Would you feel that it addressed possible opposing points of view, showing where those points of view were incorrect? Would you feel that it presented a balanced, considered opinion, or would you possibly feel that the essay strayed too much into unsubstantiated zealousness.
If you would have given this paper a good grade, I'd like to sign up for one of your classes: I need the "Easy A".
-Miko
Miko O'Sullivan
We have a fundamental basic flaw in the method by which we educate our children. The vast majority of teachers out there have never applied nor used the material they teach. When was the last time your child's chemistry teacher spent any time in a research lab? Is his english teacher published?
Our children are getting their information from someone who is teaching it exactly how it was taught to them by someone who was taught that way forty or fifty years ago. Like a copy of a copy, a little bit of information is lost in every generation of teachers.
Example: My high school chemistry teacher (years ago) taught us the exact WRONG way to do redox reactions. His professor had taught these future teachers a trick that worked in very few cases. This method was taught as THE way to work a redox reaction. Lo and Behold, I almost failed that section in College Chemistry because we had moved beyond the narrow scope of my high school class.
Yes, I agree that we should pay teachers more, but those teachers need to be worth the money we pay them.
My very best teachers, both in K-12 and University, have been ones who have "been there and done that" Let's stop teaching by rote and start teaching by application. Only then will the material be worthwhile enough that the majority of students MIGHT find it interesting enough to pay attention and actually LEARN something.
The way to ruin American Enterprise is...
Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?
(Okay, I apologize, but I just watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off last night. In case you don't get it, Ben Stein played the overly boring teacher)
My father once told me that the politicians in the US today stole all political power from his generation and the ones to fallow. I believe him. Today's politician is an old $%& that has been in office since before World War 2. They have les knowledge about technology then any in the county and legislate accordingly. If there is anything that can destroy the tech edge in the US, it is this horde.
1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay
I am not sure the schools have much to do with it. Most school stuff is buzy work to train people to tolerate cubicle-based repetition.
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions.....
The authors attacks are too specific. The legal and Intellectual Property issues are indeed probably the biggest problem we face, but the author is too focused on drug lawsuits. I agree though that companies should not be punished when users are clearly stupid and abuse a product.
Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries.
I think there is some legitimacy to this. There is improper labeling and disclosure, and the food industry keeps finding ways to reject "nutrient density" (ratios); using grams and the arbitrary, useless "serving size" instead.
If it takes lawsuits to fix it, then so be it.
Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust.
That is reality, not just the US. "The Art of War" is an Asian work, I would note. (It talks about winning through psychological manipulation instead of brute force".) It should be required reading for anybody bound for cubicle-land.
Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.
Why not? All the "smart" jobs are going overseas where the labor is cheaper. The US is becoming a nation of managers anyhow. Managing is mostly a social function, not a technical one. That is only reason it too is not shifting overseas.
9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion.
This person has no clue what an H-1B is.
If you flood the simple jobs, then it will encourage people to get educated. But, if a programmer has to work at McD's because an H-1B took his/her job, then there is little incentive to be a programmer anyhow. Why is flooding skilled labor better than flooding unskilled labor?
Table-ized A.I.
... still sometimes remembered as "the kid who chewed gum during Nixon's resignation".
Miko O'Sullivan
This is especially pronounced when growth has been too rapid for the culture to develop ways of dealing with this type of wealth. Conversely, it's this lack of rules and rigidity that allows such wealth to be created. That's why a very old culture like in Japan has some stability when it comes to balancing individual wealth with socialism (in the same way individual rights are balanced with responsibility).
Don't give poor access to learn technology by arresting people who provide books and software for free without permission of the megacorp which owns the copyright on it.
That's a lot of replies!
> > 9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations
> > and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us.
>
> Can I moderate Mr. Stein -1 Flamebait?
I agree that he is addressing the issue in rather hyperbolic terms. He's got a very valid point, though.
Two years ago, most of the foreign grad students I know were planning to stay in the US after graduation. Now, the large majority say they no longer feel welcome or comfortable in the US, and will leave after graduation. They're half the CS PhD students in the country (in the top schools I've been in), and a large fraction of them are being pushed out of the US by the current approach to foreigners.
The US economy relies a great deal on its tech edge. Scaring off 20% of the minds that'll help you maintain that edge in the future is, if not suicidal, then at least very foolish.
Oh yeah, that's why so many teachers have extra toaster ovens, as their premiums from the recruitment organizations.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
In terms of (secret) military technology, the US remains dominant after over 50 years as top dog. We farm out lots of subsidy contracts to foreign companies, like those in Japan, who can then turn the technology towards other products. In terms of tech available to the general public, I'd say S Korea or Taiwan is #1 with Japan close behind and the US about 2-3 years delayed. This has to do as much with domestic corporations and cartels (like the RIPAA) interfereing with products that may hurt their business (DVD-Rom RW drives/Blu-light CDs) as anything else. But in terms of military applications and overall tech level, I'd say the US is 10-15 years ahead of anyone else. Hence the level of tech is 25 years ahead of that available to the civilian populace. Does anyone disagree?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
article says "Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us"
We may bring in lots of uneducated immigrants, but I doubt the majority could be described as 'angry'.
13) Make sure as many technical jobs as possible are "outsourced" to Third World countries so that companies can double, triple or quadruple their profit margins in the near-term, while scaring any U.S. citizens or recent immigrants from choosing a career in technology, and dooming said companies to failure for the long-term.
With the emerging protectionism of some predatory companies on the expence of newstarters the innovation regarding to computers have almost grinded to a halt. Damn, our computers is still based on 1950 technoloygy when better ways exists but no one seems willing to take a chance and implement it with such entrenched companies as Intel and Microsoft at the helm. The USA needs aggressive enforcement of antitrust, oligopol and kill the DMCA in its cradle. The DMCA pretty much cements certain oligopols and monopolies by law.
All these stupid decisions gives the ball to other countries to play with. I think the USA can very well go the same way as Japan did in the 90's. With current leadership in the states that is dangerous as hell. Bad economy? Start a war and focus the citizens on another direction.
It happens right now!
HTTP/1.1 400
Perhaps losing our technical edge isn't such a bad thing...
Has anyone else noticed how we use our technological edge? Particualarly on a global scale? Things such as Echelon has not made things better.
Don't get me wrong. I am a patriot, but I believe in the Constitution, not the current... um... well, maybe I shouldn't say that, this isn't being posted as an AC.
Maybe we should imagine what would happen if the USA didn't have the edge over the rest of the world. Who knows, without a bully on the playground things might get better.
I think we should- Just a sec, someone's at the door. Hey! What are you doing! That's my cable modem connec-
NO CARRIER
"Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority." - Dr. Who
What technological advantage? The Japanese have out-innovated the USA since WWII, even the Wright brothers were not the first to fly. All your production has been moved to the third world, and any innovative ideas are mostly coming from outside the USA, then giants like Micro$oft buy them out and claim rights to it.
A substantial amount of the television shows (Emeril!) music, video games, theme parks, etc. still come from the good ol' US of A.
Our biggest export is probably porn.
Table-ized A.I.
Now, I'm not so sure.
I started college as a physics-English major. I later dropped physics, as I was unable to pursue all of the courses I wished. I also struggled with the math, but I'm happy to say I maintained passing grades.
What Fastball (a baseball-loving liberal arts major! I wish you were a girl, so I could date you...) swings and misses at is the realization that college should be used to refine the skills one learns in high school -- and those are not merely facts like who won the Battle of Waterloo.
The metalesson college offers is refining one's ability to learn and reason, and providing an intellectually nurturing environment to do just that. With all due respect, stating that he had to "waste away" for two semesters of calculus is itself a waste. Think Snow Crash: you're training your mind to accept knowledge, even if that knowledge isn't being processed yet.
(This argument applies also to the specialized training you can receive in college - even if advanced HTML is not offered, I would argue that a basic comp sci course offers the principles needed later.)
Moreover: what job should college prepare you for? I would wager that there are many people who would have never predicted that they would end up in the job they are now.
Isolating yourself intellectually from something you find "stupid" and "unnecessary" is itself a waste, similar to the argument that living your whole life in Bumfuck, OH is acceptable because the outside world has nothing to offer.
1987, right?
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Its Columbine, CO Mr Dumas....
IMHO, part of the problem is not only embracing new technology, but also applying the enormous amount of perfectly functional technology that came out of the last tech boom to current problems.
Maybe that's because of copyright/innovation stifling measures... I can't say for sure, but I do know that too many good things are going to waste. Innovation happens when you make what you have better... we need to improve more than just our chip speeds and HD sizes, maybe spending time investigating better ways of integrating technology with business processes to widen our advantage?
Just a thought..
BeOS gave us phenominal performance in video/sound applications and a cool, functional user interface. Unfortunately, Microsoft's criminal behavior destroyed any chance it had with the public in general.
Linux and *BSD gave us multiuser/preemptitive multitasking on commodity HW at a low price and popularized the Open Source and Free Software movements.
Title has a typo. See above for correction.
...and you miss the point.
The point is that Stein worked for a failed criminal Presidency. He was born rich and now acts like he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
And it seems to me that there is no "free-market" response to inflation except "let it ride." That means inflation will be under control IN THE LONG RUN...So our government's job is to fix things without having to wait that long since we could loose critical markets and perhaps the friggin country "in the long run."
I want to be alone with the sandwich
Could it be that the rich do have some idea of how to make money? Could it be that the educated have some idea of how to educate? Could it be the successful know how to let others succeed?
No, let the masses vote us bread and circuses instead. I always wanted to be run by the Barbarian hordes anyway.
Long live the Emperor, Long live Rome!
Canada has a bunch of overeducated kids with no jobs to go to.
America has the need for an educated workforce, but high school students who couldn't tell you what 2+2 was if their lives depended on it.
Solution: keep on doing what you've always been doing - import people from Canada and elsewhere to do the work, and go into management.
Once the multiculturists (read: cultural marxists) infect engineering and science curriculums, it's definitely over at the university level in America. Up until now, it's been mostly the liberal arts and humanities that have been poisoned with this stupid brand of "liberalism". Once they get their tentacles into the hard sciences, you can kiss any innovation goodbye.
If you think this is just some silly conspiracy theory, you either are willfully blind or you are not paying attention. They have already been successful in replacing classics with texts that push Marxist theology.
...easy!!! Because the teachers and their unions are mostly Democrats. From a neocon perspective (which is the only way Ben Stein can think) that is the REAL problem with public ed today.
And don't tell me that he cares for inner-city folk and schools. That is nothing but a neocon ploy to make it seem like they care about anybody else but themselves. If the teachers were a Republican voting block - there would be no "problems" in our public schools - from a neocon perspective.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
WHO CARES! Quit being a prisoner of the hit parade and work on helping the whole world become a better place.
We are one species.
We all matter.
I don't see any reason why that should change.
Mind you, if it *does* change, I'm sure those of us in up-and-coming tech economies will welcome the payrises and prosperity the Americans traded for DRM and Palladium.
Bring it on. I could triple my salary overnight if I moved to the USA
I would be very interested to see a link to these solutions.
Are you a politician? Such a plan would require mountains of paperwork to satisfy your intellectual curiosity Since you are smart enough that you can verify if such a plan would be capable of working then why don't you sit down and hash it out for us? What I am saying is the technology is here to hash out such a plan IF we have our brightest discuss it in an open forum where everyone can comment equally, unlike current political debate on CNN or Fox or your favorite news channel. I'm certainly not smart enough to write a simple plan to revolutionize the economy. But I know where I'd start.
So WTF? You think our current economic model manages our resources efficiently, wisely and fairly? Or you just like to discourage others from exploring the possibilities?
I'd rather hear a counter arguement about how it is impossible to create such a system using current technology than simply discrediting my opinions because I haven't written up a website with enough words to prove it to you.
Prove to me that all would not be well with the people in charge. Show me an example of how people have tried to implement such a society with current technology. I doubt there ever has been such an experiment. They certainly didn't have current technology 100 years ago.
There they go again, damn commies trying to take away our jobs.. (people shouldn't have to work... technology can help make that a reality)
Price ceilings are generally associated with the left-wing, but that doesn't make them good left-wing policy. There are much better leftist approaches to the problem.
They're a classical example of the leftist stupidity, thinking that you can solve all problems by legislating them away.
(For the record, the right-wing stupidity is pretending market externalities don't exist).
Electric Car Pros
Negligable polution at vehicle use point
Allowed in Car pool lane with single occupant
Social Feel-good factor
Regenerative braking adds safety reduncancy to brakes
Electric Car Cons
Butt Ugly (easily fixed of course)
Shorter range
Lengthy refueling times
Lower maximum velocity
Lower maximum acceleration
Higher vehicle Cost
Batteries wear out faster than IC engine
NiCd batteries are toxic waste dumps
Pb Acid batteries aren't much better from a poison point of view and have crappy power output
Nickel Metal Hydrides have crappy power output
Li Ion batteries are bombs waiting to be overcharged.
Now a hybrid hydrogen combustion/Sterling engine rechargable by Electrolysis powered by onboard Solar Cells and/or externally supplied electricity would be a major win. And if the external electric power source was a stand alone battery of Solar Cells or a Solar Heat powered Sterling engine instead of the Existing electric grid that would be even better.
so that gives us what?
I thought it was the research into new technologies.
This guy quotes Reason mag. not an independent source. Why mod this guy up? And 1/2 of $9,267.00 is $4,633.50. So you are going to find a "top flight" private school for that much? Is that a religious school?
Also, public schools have to educate everybody. They do not get to pick and choose who they want to educate. Private schools with well-to-do motivated students have a hell of an easier time than a public school located in a poor inner-city.
Stop modding this kind of Republican Propaganda up...
I want to be alone with the sandwich
This guy is a neocon. He hates teachers because they are Democrats.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
The question isn't "Why can't other countries contribute to the World Economy?" its "If the United States is able to contribute to the World Economy, why is it's companies sending the Design/Dev jobs to other countries?"
...but that's because I'm working on a corona after finishing my prob and stats final (last final for the semester).
Ben Stein's personal political affiliations aside, I think he makes some really good points about the dumbing down of the masses and over-litigation of big business. However, I think the biggest point that he makes is that people need to take responsibility for their own actions. If your school sucks, then why don't you take some personal responsibility and go out and educate yourself? How many people here learned how to program computers or fix cars or whatever you do solely in school? I'd be willing to bet not many. A lot of people go out and learn things that interest them, then go to school to further that knowledge. Even in middle and high school my friends and I tweaked around with little electronics and Ataris and whatnot, then learned some basic programming, then went out and learned C and C++. This type of thing wasn't really ever taught in my public school, but it didn't stop us from learning it.
Also, if people took responsibility for their own actions, we wouldn't have so many frivolous lawsuits. The lady who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald's should never have won that case. She should he realized that drinking coffee and driving is not a recommended activity and it wasn't McDonald's fault. People who smoke have no grounds to sue tobacco companies, its not like we haven't known cigarettes were bad for at least 20 or 30 years. As Denid Leary says, "Whoa, these things are bad for you, I thought they had Vitamin C in them and stuff" C'mon people wake up.
Seriously, if people would take responsibility for their own actions and be a little self-motivated when it comes to learning we would be a lot more innovative. After all you can't learn innovative thinking in schools, you just have to go out and do it.
As a sidenote, I didn't really agree with his point about elevating voodoo and shamanism being a bad thing, but then again that's part of that Right Wing propaganda that I said I was going to ignore anyways.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
This is nothing but Rush Limbaugh style drivel that all Limbots everywhere automatically agree with.
Miko O'Sullivan
I'd rather hear a counter arguement about how it is impossible to create such a system using current technology than simply discrediting my opinions because I haven't written up a website with enough words to prove it to you.
Far from discrediting your opinions, I am hoping to gain some insight into them. And when I ask for a link, I do not necessarily mean a web link. You say that, in the past five years, solutions to all our problems have been found. I did not and do not think it was hostile of me to ask for a little more information, nor to indicate my hope that descriptions of these solutions include how they would deal with some of the more pressing problems they would face.
If, on the other hand, they all boil down to "we should let technology save us", your hostility is understandable and no more need be said.
Information is not Knowledge
The problem is the current state of man's mind. His lack of a social conscious. His lack of morality. His fundamental greed and selfishness. The world's values are simply not where they need to be. Humans are still driven by self-preservation rather than the preservation of humans as a whole.
.. rather than taking advantage of one another and ourselves.
Let's face it. With matters of conscious... money means nothing. Politics means nothing. "Education" is only knowing details.
The truth is that everyone should be taking care of eachother as a unit. As one people. As a big machine. People should not be primarily concerned with how much money they make. They should not be primarily concerned with what kind of car they drive. We should not be concerned about any such bullshit.
Our primary goal should simply be to care for one another. To make eachother happy. I should be working to keep the machine going... because it helps our fellow man. Not enough people in this world understand the absolute joy in caring for others... likewise... being cared for by others.
Mankind simply does not understand that there are more than enough resources in this world... that could ensure that every person is taken care of. Food. Clothing. Healthcare. Everything.
And that is all that matters... nothing else comes close. But I'm doubting that mankind will evolve to the level of understanding that our primary values should rest in taking care of one another.
I'll address his lists point by point. Probably the one most obviously fallacious to Slashdot readers is "Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations". So raising the H1-B cap to 195,000 is keeping supposedly educated people out how? I guess he's mad that the H1-B cap isn't 300,000 or 400,000, and that IT wages have only fallen a little, and that there still are a few job openings that pop up once in a while. Stein is nothing other than a commissar for the powers that he serves, of whom they are is obvious from the publication he is writing in (Forbes). Then he bashes Mexican immigration but neglects to mention that Steve Forbes is a big booster of Mexican immigration for a variety of reasons - I guess Stein is smart enough to not bite the hand that feeds him, and try to make people think the Teamsters union was all for NAFTA and all that or something...
1) It's true American schools are bad, although not for the reasons he gives. The US has imported hundreds of thousands of skilled workers from countries who have socialist education systems (mainly India and China) because according to tech business leaders, American schools are not putting out the type of students needed. The fact that hundreds of thousands of H1-Bs immigrated to the US shows that their education system is superior, but their pay system is inferior (e.g. it can't pay the workers what they can get here).
2) He only picks on trial lawyers, I guess corporate lawyers get a pass. Lots of horrible things have been created in court, like the modern corporation with the rights of a person, I doubt he would have a problem with that type of court back door use though
3) Slashdot often posst article where some big corporation sues some individual over some minor infraction. In Stein's world, the corporations are the victims, at the mercy of small individuals suing them. Imagine calling tobacco companies (who are more or less drug dealing mass murderers) victims of the law, tobacco companies are the most lawsuit-happy entity in existence, they prevented Sixty Minutes from airing a piece on tobacco for a long time by strange legal threats. Goodbye open society and free press, stopped by the drug dealers like Phillip Morris and co. It's disgusting how the right rushes to defend tobacco drug dealers and portrays them as victims but then turns around and sends guys selling marijuana on the corner to prison for years on end.
4) Where does real success come from? Look at who has the most important job, the president. He got bad grades, bad SAT scores, got into an Ivy League school anyway, got C's there, got into Harvard anyway and so forth. If you look at the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, the majority got there by inheriting the money. It's true that all wealth comes from as the classical economists said, workers working, and creating wealth, but that is covered up by his buddies more than anything.
5) The rich, who are the controlling shareholders/owners of corporations seem to be unable to control their top executives. The reason for this is pretty obvious, they all want immediate, unreasonable returns from their executives and as time goes by things become more unmanagable. This is a byproduct of the economic cycle as it goes along but people like Stein don't see it that way.
6) Yaa laws like it's OK to drink liquor and sell tobacco but not marijuana. And you're not allowed to get a BJ from your girlfriend in certain states. Plus about one million intellectual property laws. The law is bullshit, it's purpose is to protect Stein and his ilk, if he wants people to respect the law they should stop passing stupid laws.
7) In England television is controlled by the government with BBC, in America it was handed over to corporations, with the help of conservatives like Mr. Stein, so instead of seeing "quality television" you have MYV selling things using sex, violence or whatever. He made the bed, now he has to lie in it.
8) I always hear people talking about how the family is belittled and mocked and how they are all for the family...this is pretty stupid it's like saying you're for mom, God and apple pie and other people aren't...rhetorical masturbation. Even Marilyn Manson got married.
9) Right, the H1-B cap is raised to 200,000 a year but he's not happy. And as I said, the workers must be imported from countries with a socialist eductaion system (China/India) since ours is going down the tubes. Steve Forbes said Mexican immigration to the US was a "good safety valve to quell domestic discontent down there" and factory owners love them and only get a slap on the wrist when caught hiring them. So who is encouraging this illegal immigration. I guess Stein wants the H1-B cap at 300,000 or 400,000, because tech salaries haven't gotten low enough and there still might be one or two job openings till popping up here and again.
10) Stein's president has been telling people to go out and consume, which I presume means spend the money don't save it. So who is doing this pushing to spend instead of save? If Stein is high on saving over spending there's a lot of Republicans he better go talk to.
11) A socialist medical system? What country is he writing from? The US has the least socialized medical system in the industrial world.
12) As far as promoting fundamentalism, Stein should once again look around the Republican party, which through out "E Plurubus Unum" as the national motto and replaced it with "In God We Trust", and which wants to stick the Ten commandments and other crap in every public facility in the country.
I know what mandatory means full well; the two statements are not mutually exclusive. I believe that it should be mandatory that every student plays some sport or some other school activity (e.g., drama), except for when the student has a genuine handicap, is participating in other rigorous activity that cannot be played within the school (e.g., semi-pro tennis), and so on. I also believe that students should be able to play any sport that the school offers, within reason (e.g., willingess to compete, reasonable health, etc). The problem is that most public schools in the US only offer a varsity and (somewhat less often) a junior varsity team which only accomodates a mere fraction of the number of students that are interested in playing. There are a good number of private schools, on the other hand, that offer 5 or more strings of every major sport and everyone that wants to play has a good shot at getting involved with the school. In other words, it scales with demand. There may be some sports that do not have enough space to accomodate every student but that deficit is generally not enuogh to field a team. My point is that not only are sports at the public schools merely not mandatory but that they are effectively closed to all but the so-called jocks. What's more, this serves to isolate both player and non-player from the school.
I disagree. This same argument can be made for school work. We shouldn't require it because students don't want to play? Well, I went to two (well technically 3) different high schools that had different philosophies about sports. The one that required it, whether you believe it or not, generally had a willing and excited student body that wanted to play their sports (and that's been my experience with similar schools today and with the historical experience) You might chalk it up to a feedback effect and a certain critical mass...just as you might with academic performance at a good school. No? I was also gave somewhat short shrift to some of the other benefits like the fact that students that are busy generally do not get in nearly as much trouble, tend to be psychologically healthier, have lower incidence of disease, have fewer discipline problems on campus, etc.
13) Stifle innovation by granting overly broad patents on ideas that were previously discovered or published, or that are obvious even to the novice in the field, and by granting copyrights that last essentially forever. Be sure to encourage the patent and copyright holders to sue anyone and everyone.
14) Encourage large corporations to snuff out competition. It may help in this to encourage monopolies and structural impediments to marketing new products. Be sure to put laws and regulations in place that will make it difficult for people to compete at all.
15) Pass laws restricting free speech, freedom of association and granting law enforcement essentially arbitrary rights to search and seizure of property, and to arrest and imprison people. Since it is likely that the government cannot do all the law enforcement necessary, pass enabling legislation allowing corporations to enforce laws where it relates to their commercial interest. Let them create their own law enforcement agencies (the rights of bounty hunters clearly establish precedent).
16) Encourage foreign nationals to come study at graduate schools in the US. Make sure that they are favored with jobs and grants and make it easy for them to change student visas for work visas. After all, those spendthrift american youth who managed to get into debt getting their undergraduate degrees are clearly not good candidates for graduate degrees. Obviously, since the US spends money on them as grad students they should not (by any means) return to their countries to help their countries to achieve technological or economic development or democracy.
17) Baloney and cheese ball sandwiches. How could the US be complete without them, hmmm, Pip?
of education is to "show up all those European and Asian kids!"? Nooo, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with things like "creativity" or "social worth" - after all, if you can't give a multiple choice test on it, it obviously doesn't exist!
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
In my not-so-bloody-humble opinion, America started losing it's edge when we first started putting the emphasis on process instead of product. All of the ISO-9000's and CMM level 5 stuff just makes the developers care LESS about the product. Since the bean-counters only care about the beans, it means that NOBODY is left to care if the product does anything that the user would want it to do. (And don't reply saying that the fine folks in Quality care... They don't care about the product, they only care that you did what you said that you were going to do.)
I find it curious that most Slashdotters interpret the question "Is America innovative?" to mean "Does America make nifty gadgets?". We're talking about a more general concept here, or at least we should be. Here are some other components of innovation:
Financial innovation. Does money get to the people who can best use it, so that individuals and businesses can maximize their return? Here America has been extremely innovative: mutual funds, REITs, individual stock investing, "junk" bonds, and so forth. America's innovative capital markets are often cited as an important contributor to America's long-term productivity growth.
Organizational/business process innovation. Can businesses and governments reinvent themselves to face new competitive challenges? When they fall behind, do they innovate out of problems or look for a handout? America has traditionally been very open to new business models and processes, however sometimes nostalgia wins out (e.g., farm subsidies).
Cultural innovation. At a commercial level one could look at worldwide sales of "cultural products" including TV, movies, and books. At a deeper level, does a culture have the ability to learn from others and make new immigrants feel included? America's report card here is quite complex; there is sometimes a disparity between what Americans aspire to and what they achieve.
1) The process of learning
2) Specialized curriculums
3) Education-Employment relationship(s)
1) The process of learning. There's no doubt in my mind that rote, absorbing learning at a young age is key. E.g., children are better at picking up foreign languages than adults. Why? It helps that they aren't worried about credit card debt or a girlfriend missing her period, I'm sure. No, a young mind is just so beautifully uncluttered. You know, like a blank whiteboard, shiny and pure. There's no better time to fill it with facts and ideas, before responsibilities and anxieties poison it.
However, getting in high school and college, so much more of what we learn comes from social interaction. This time is better spent keeping the hell out of the kids' ways. College is two things to every college student: his GPA and his dick (or the female's erogenous zones, her vagina, tits, and ass--God it's not fair you ladies have three zones!). The world wants his GPA, and he wants the world to have his dick. It's just a paradox that every kid goes through. Thank God for Cliff's Notes; if it weren't for Cliff, I wouldn't have had time to discover my dick. I would have been bogged down with Bronte's Wuthering Heights or some other fscking coming of age drivel.
2) Specialized curriculums. I don't know about you, but I have read and written exponentially more since I finished college. Many more subjects and genres too. We may be having an agreement here. I too am a fan of a broadening one's knowledge of more subjects. However, I don't think regimented syllabi, attendance, and essay exams (*shiver*) stimulate a person's desire to understand the subject. Maintain a GPA maybe, but not understand the subject. I always felt the quicker I get away from college the more time I would have to think. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but think about... :)
3) The education-employment relationship(s). I agree that many folks end up in a line of work they don't conceive themselves taking up or has little to do with what they studied in college, but is that necessarily good? Are they happy? Do they pine for something more or different? College curricula exacerbates this problem, because so previous little material covers real-world processes and situations. Of course, looking at this from the outside in, most jobs in America require very little specialized, trained, enhanced thinking or skills. My personality dictates that I anger at ceremonial requirements like learning Dijkstra's algorithm and Hamming code when all I want to do is register a domain, set up a DNS server, and build a web site. I don't like doing things, because everyone else is doing them.
Here's how I look at it. With so much of what I do for a living learned on my own time, I cannot justify the tens of thousand of dollars required to take up cross-cultural requirements and other sixteen week death marches. I agree with you, writertype, that honing one's ability to learn and reason are important. Experiencing unpleasant (read: stupid) things can be educational and enriching. I fumed during the first two weeks of a required pre-1800 English literature course. It turned out to be one of the more interesting genres of literature (Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels reached me despite the longwinded prose). But these pleasant revelations were sparse compared to the "just get through it" courses I suffered. When a 30% on a physics exam scales to an A, understanding evaporates.
And for the record, I started college as a business finance major. Struggled through the freshman requirements, then got a 98% on my first accounting exam. Got bored with the rest of the sophomore classes' filler material and nearly flunked out in spectacular fashion. Switched to CS the next year and labored through logic gates and big O notation in class while building a 486 and discovering the nuances of Linux at home. I had a reputation as an ace essay writer in my fraternity house (another story altogether though I have a tattoo to show for it), and after earning an A for a friend's twenty-five page grad school history paper, I switched to English. And the rest is history...
BTW, don't worry about dating me, because I've got one foot out of MLB's door. If they reinstate Pete Rose, I quit. That coming from a kid who wore his number in grade school and saw him break Cobb's record with 4192 in Riverfront Stadium. Really. MLB is a fucking disgrace, and letting a known tax cheat, hot dog of the first order, a man who charges fans large lumps of $ for his autograph despite riding an overwhelming wave of their support, and a man who explicitly put the earnest competition of a major league sport into question by gambling on his own team constitutes an absolute withdrawal from honest sporting competition. Not that MLB has given a damn about that for over a decade now by allowing a Dixie cup strike zone, turning a blind eye to rampant performance enhancing chemistry, marginalizing the playoffs with the wildcard, and doing anything else for the Almighty Buck. I intend to spend every spare minute this Summer enjoying everything else but major league baseball.
Phew. I'm sweating now...
They must be suffering terribly, having to put warning labels on their products! And god forbid their newfangled moneydrug should cause spontaneous combustion in 1 in 10 of the millions of people whose doctors were "gently encouraged (with non-monetary rewards)" to prescribe that medication - my god, they could be forced to actually test their products for a reasonable amount of safety!
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
And that's why they never got beyond making cheap copies, back in the '50s.
They didn't innovate, create, organize, perfect... nothing.
They just kept doing things by rote - including production management.
Sure.
The US military is far ahead of anything else technology wise. The SR-71 was designed and built in the 70s, yet civilian sectors are not even close to matching it in 2002. Just think about what the military has now. Didn't like the invisible Bond car? I'd bet the US military has invisible airplanes.
Contrast this with the situation amongst the better private schools. Here you have a multitude of sports offered each season and everyone that wants to play can play, by and large, providing that there are enough players to field a team. Furthermore, virtually everyone in the school is playing a sport or is actively involved in some other program (e.g., drama). What's more, the varsity athletes are generally not allowed to get away with murder. Oh yeah, and I forgot one other thing, no one is just playing one sport all year round, even the varsity athletes are expected to participate in a sport (necessarily a different sport) every season and not merely lifting weights to get ready for football or what have you. They're still held accountable for their grades and it's understood that that is what will get them into a good college ultimately. The end result here is that participation is roughly 100% and that everyone is playing about the same amount.
Before you argue that this is necessarily expensive, I'd argue that it need not be (from experience) and that it can pay for itself. At many private schools the teachers are encouraged and often required to coach at least one sport a year. At some they're even trained to drive buses so that THEY can shuttle their team to and fro. You rarely have the fancy stadium(s), weight rooms, trainers, physicians, etc. There is generally also less vandalism, fewer incidents of misbehavior, fewer kids getting mixed up in bad things, etc--relative to those schools that do not require it.
I know of one graduate department in computer science that much preferred to have grad students from abroad (most notably china and india - odd that the two professors most involved with the graduate program were chinese and indian). Indeed, the department chair claimed that americans were lazy and shiftless.
The grad students would come in, spend a few months, get some contacts, get a job and a green card and leave the university.
I think they did get A Top Notch Education in how to get a job in the US.
I used to like his show, then one night I heard him talk about abortion and I was disgusted forever. Nice try Ben. You're funny and all, but underneath you're just a BIG CONSERVATIVE FUCK LIKE DICK NIXON.
They are when you want to win an election!
Nixon begged Eisenhower to slash interest rates in 1960 to instigate a temporary boom. The resulting recession probably cost him the election.
Years later, Nixon had his shills in the Federal Reserve slash interest rates while he instituted price ceilings just before the 1972 election. The economy boomed, and Nixon won. After the artificial price ceilings and interest rates were taken away the economy remained in recession for the next three years.
And more recently, President Bush recently instituted 30% steel tariffs -- in swing states.
Remember, the ideology of the free market stops counting when you're afraid that you don't have enough market power.
than in foreign lands like Russia, China, or India.
What happens if we tomorrow we are in war? Your new
factory in Russia would have been a 5-Billion dollar mistake.
It is not only war: the US has had predictable and business-friendly government
for at least 100 years, we cannot claim that for almost any other major country
Furthermore, the US has been subsidising drug development and low drug prices in Canada and Europe by allowing high drug prices here to drive innovation. As long as we're chasing pie in the sky, let's force those socialist free riders to start paying their fair share!
Too bad you don't have decent facts to back that up. A study by the Cato Institute shows that given the same usage patterns, Canadians would pay 3% more[PDF file] than their U.S. counterparts.
There's even a minority staff report[PDF] from the U.S. House of Representatives that states, in part:
"The drug industry's own testimony indicates that despite the high drug prices in the United States and the low drug prices in other countries, many drug companies are moving research from the United States to other countries," and that "more than two thirds of new drugs are developed by countries headquartered outside the United States."
Also note that some reasons given for the drugs that are lower priced in Canada include reduced liability for pharmacomps, which means reduced risks; and stricter controls on pharmaceutical marketing and advertising, an activity in the United States that pharmaceutical companies are spending amounts equal to or greater than they are spending on research and development.
Never mind that a majority of the research done by and for drug companies is done by the NIH, which is entirely funded by taxpayers. The drug companies take the most promising/profitable looking developments from them finalize what research is left to do, apply patents, and profit for the next 20 years (or 25 with patent extensions). Then they reformulate ("Now take only once a day!") and re-patent.
Get out of the mindset that drug companies care about your health. They don't. They care about making a profit - and if that means applying a submarine patent to a cure in order to prevent others from developing it, and marketing the hell out of something that temporarily relieves the symptoms until their lucrative patent is up, don't think they won't do this.
You want innovation in the drug industry? Shorten the patent protection period while broadening the coverage, so that a minor change in an inactive component of the drug doesn't qualify for a whole new patent.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I think something is broken with the system when it's all the earliest posts that get the most karma - from the exact users that don't read the article!
Confession time: I couldn't figure out why my posts were never modded up, time and time again. Then I started posting early, most often without reading the article. Booya - I was up to excellent karma in no time at all. Does anyone else see a problem with this? What if we tried something like no moderation allowed for the first 15 minutes after a story was posted? Well, I guess we'd have a lot of trolls. How about no positive moderation? Just food for thought.
Random is the New Order.
No, no, no. What we NEED is to REQUIRE moderators to view at -1 threshold, flat, most recent first. Then, it all gets modded at an even rate (assuming constant moderation)...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Ah don' see whar it matters, 'cuz he jus' gonna work in the bodyshop wid his daddy!
This is true. Add to that, the design chiefs at BMW, VW/Audi, and most Japanese firms are all American. And most of those are graduates of Art Center College of Deisgn in Pasadena, CA.
I always thought of the US as Asias marketing department. Do Americans actually have ideas?
Unfortunately, no one can be told what my sig is...
I'm posting as an AC because I just moderated here.
My thoughts about the US (and it's edge)
1. Your country at the moment is run by a Cabal of less than holies. Someone tell me why so many Nixon era politicians are attempting to rule the world and cut off your freedom now.
2.Your media leaves no room for a view of the rest of the world.
3.Americans tend to see the wolrd in terms of black and white IMO.Automatically thinking of France as Communist or Germany as Nazi seems to be a standard practice. Words like "socialism" are automatically seen as dirty or evil. Whatever happened to pragmatism?
4.Someone has to pay for your enormous national debt and your massive armies. At the moment, I think that this is your average American wage worker in the form of taxes. Conquering Iraq is not going to improve life for these people. This may improve the military's tech edge but it doesn't automatically translate to an improved tech sector outside of the military.
The only major problem I see with teachers unions is that they can operate to prevent bad teachers from being hired (particularly once they get tenure). But then again, we'd have a lot better teachers hired in the first place if we paid them better.
"Accountability" is one of those buzzwords in education that makes me very nervous, because what it winds up boiling down to is "we trust bureaucrats more than we trust teachers."
What accountability should mean is a shared partnership between students, teachers, parents, and the community to make sure that educational system is serving everyone well.
Instead, what we get is political pressure driving endless standardized testing, so that everyone can have a number to look at it. It doesn't seem to matter that those numbers don't mean sh*t, because, by and large, standardized testing doesn't work, as any good teacher can tell you. (Unless the goal of standardized testing is to make money for the testing industry -- which is huge -- and to program children for a lifetime of menial answer-giving. In that case, they work great.)
What standardized does do is handcuff innovative teachers that truly care about their students and want to give them a love of learning, not a series of facts to memorize and drills to take. Often, it simply drives them away, particularly from schools in poorer and blacker neighborhoods (because standardized tests are statistically proven to be race- and class-biased).
Meanwhile, school district bureaucrats' solutions to these problems (and to bad test scores) is to micromanage teachers' classrooms and implement "one-size-fits-all" solutions that they think will look good to voters, like regularly outfitting every classroom with ever-newer expensive A/V and computer equipment.
What we need in our public schools is smaller schools, smaller class sizes, better teachers, and more flexibility. The first three of those requires a lot of money, which taxpayers are hesitant to pony up (despite being willing to pay billions for weapons systems even the military says it don't need, and build prisons which wouldn't be necessary except for the drug war).
Note that vouchers will not solve these problems, only funnel money away from public schools and put them into private schools which are _totally_ unaccountable (and I don't mean on test scores). Charter schools might help, but only if they're run by community organizations, not for-profit corporations.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
Well, at one time anyhow.
In fact, if you go look at ETS's TOEFL home page, you'll see that they've cut almost forty percent of the TOEFL testing center locations because students are not coming like they used to. Most Americans aren't aware of this because it's not a big news story, but it's a fact. The United States WAS the destination for every other kid in Taiwan a few years ago, but that has changed quite abruptly in the most recent two years.
The long and short of it folks.. if you haven't been a student for a while, you can't really say much about the quality of education. The previous generation has always complained about having to do calculus at age 11 and walking uphill both ways to school (in the snow - year round), and how kids these days are dumb and lazy.
But, as a fairly recent graduate of our fine education system, I can assure you that all is decently well. Could be better, but overall, not bad. The problem, if there is one, comes from the lack of motivation of certain groups of people. They do not care much about learning, or being successful, or respecting authority, etc., and tend to be pregnant and permanently burger-flipping by 15. Really, this isn't such a bad thing.. you see, you always have to have menial labor. No matter what, there has to be someone to seat people at restaurants, to change your car oil, and so on. There will always be 'stupid' people, and this is absolutely necessary!
But then, there is the middle class of high-school kids.. the ones that try, and care about what is going on, but also want to have a social life and have fun too. High school for them means studying before finals, doing most homework, maybe play a sport, maybe have a job. These people will go on to State University, or a technical school, and will sell insurance, or be in marketing, or grade school teachers, or whathaveyou. Altogether necessary jobs, and ones we cannot function without.
Now then, we come to the upper-class of the intellectuals; and here is what sets america apart from the rest of the world. I assure you, this segment is not dead! These are the kids that don't always study for a test; they already know the subject enough to get an A. They take difficult classes in high school, then are leaders of clubs and organizations after school, then play a couple of sports before heading to work 30 hrs a week. These are the overworked, underappreciated, future of our nation. This was me in high school, and my friends were the most popular kids in school.. and they were brighter than myself in many cases. There are still those with a passion for learning; those that want to find out how something works just for the thrill of knowing, that will read and tinker and experiment because doing so is inherantly good.. do not despair! What would india do if everyone there was a research scientist, biologist, or computer programmer? Starve, because no one would be a farmer. There are plenty of bright americans here.. thank you. We will do our damndest. But, if you want to bring in outside talent, that isn't such a bad thing. My great-grandfather came from Italy; that does not mean you should throw me into some immigrant-trash heap. We're all a little foriegn here in america, a total mixture of all the rest of the world, and for us to fail would mean all of the rest of civilization would have to also.
A lot of this stuff is uninformed rambling. And the whole structure of the piece is really weasly. He does not say that all of these points are true, he says that they may or may not be true ("I think the reader will agree with me that we are already far down the road on many of them"). Just so he can cover his ass and say "I was talking hypotheticaly" when he is forced to own up to something. It is a typical tactic of people that like to make questionable controversial statements to rouse emotions.
I think he has some good points. But some of the stuff is just plain misleading, especially that about providing financial incentives for people to live alone, or capital gains tax being equal to taxing the same money twice. Or that inheritance taxes' effect is to discourage saving.
Point 9 is just plain xenophobia and racism. Similarly point 12 is plain exploitation of peoples fears. I dont think anything like this is in danger of happening. Of course it would be interesting if he included christian fundamentalism in that, but he does not have the guts to do that, so he puts in a phrase about hard working men and women to make sure the christian fundamentalists dont feel they are part of that group.
All in all a calculated statement made in order to stir up passion, and without any substance to it. I am getting pretty disappointed from ben stein. It seems like Nixon has rubbed off on him.
as of this moment, on Yahoo (where the news is hosted) there is 103 comments;
/. there is over 900, 868 legit (i.e. >= 0 in score)...
on
hmm...
and another one - seem like he used the phrase "hard working men and women" many times. I wonder if he is trying to appeal to somebody (everyone)?
I think it's like the saying about "perfectionist" - if you ask people individually, almost EVERYONE will think that they are a perfectionist (like over 90% (non-authoratative)) - but they all know that there are actually very few (of the REAL ones) out there. Makes it easy to identify with people if you can "guess" this trait of theirs.
(good at picking up girls too, or so I hear, since the percentage is even higher amongst the female)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Why does inaccurate troll bait make "5" and accurate information make a 1?
Perhaps, grossly lacking education is one reason the US lost some of its' edge.
I am a software engineer from India, with quite a few years in the software industry with a voracious apetite for news pertaining to world economics/IT trends/physics/medicine etc. I currently work for an American MNC, a technology leader, at its India office.
Mr. Stein's article contains a lot of facts the Americans must ponder over and I think their implementation will help stem the rot of American culture greatly. But it and the subsequent remarks by fellow slashdotters do have some factual incrorectness about them. This remark refers to comments on the "technological edge" and the "immigrants".
America does have a "technology edge", if we consider the seer number of Nobel prizes the Americans have won, the sophistication of the American arsenal, the kind of animation that hollywood churns. Yes, there is a lot of hype about many of their achievements, Nobel prizes too can be manipulated, their technologial superiority gets magnified hugely by the combined efforts of their media and their armed forces. But keeping all that aside, if we try to gauge the number innovations coming out of the US, the number of new ideas that that country has produced in the last century, there is an overwhelming feeling that America has been the heart that pumps not only money, but also technology throughout the world (It has pumped more than its fair share of destruction also).
I attribute the American edge to two factors, "freedom to think" and "freedom to enjoy a decent life" even though you are an immigrant in the US. This has helped America become the beacon of bleeding edge technology that it is today. Most of the technological advances by Americans in the last century have the immigrant Europeans, the Japanese, the Chinese and to some extent the Indians behind them.
The kind of labour that is handed out to the IT operations flourishing in India is yesterday's technology. Even if the Americans were to manufacture the space shuttle in India, they would have little to loose. Because the space shuttle is 25 years old. Today's technology e.g. nano-technology, inter planetary missions, JSF, LASER beams that can destroy an incoming missile in mid-flight, sustainable fusion, quantum computing etc. will take more than 25 years to come to India and the Indians are in no mood to play catch-up.
The American technological edge will continue to exist till the Americans continue to use their brains, till they continue to embrace and till they have the hunger to learn.
Businesses accept a certain level of risk when they invest their money in things to grow their business.
Technology is one of the most dangerous risks to take. Not only are you pouring money into something that has never been done before, but you are doing it for a product that has never been created before. Usually, the results of your investment will not be seen for several years or more.
Ben Stein is right on the money. Those things that liberals want to do -- uproot our society, change the way everyone lives over night, and throw away everything we built our country on -- means that the future is unpredictable.
Conservatives have had it right all along. We should be building on the past, not tearing it down and starting from scratch.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Wait, something wrong there, let's try rephrasing it. "If you can't believe a lawyer about..." no. Um...
I'll say this, though, I like his point #4. I approve of working hard and I approve of thrift, and I can see how this is not rewarded by our society though I strongly disagree with his notions of how society is to be fixed.
I also like #5, wanting to punish corporate crime more severely. Funny how Ben's OTHER opinions indicate that on the other hand, he wants the corporate upper class to have more money, to be able to wield it in society and in the legal arena more freely, and that he wants them to leave it all to their children, furthering the steady shift from class society to flat-out caste system. According to Ben, if you ARE in the wealth caste, at all costs you should be protected from the lower classes using society's mechanisms to get a share. Oh, but if you are naughty you should be punished! Assuming you don't simply use your money and power to evade justice, which of course you will, what else would you do?
Never trust a man who is both a lawyer AND a game show host. QED ;)
As a firm believer of introducing free market competition into public education system, I believe school vouchers will work its magic. Obviously the Superme Court and state of Ohio know that, see:
. vo uchers/
9 /p 1/article.jhtml
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/27/scotus.school
http://www.findarticles.com/m1061/2_109/5927071
AND IT does, in fact, appear that today's voucher programs are succeeding, at least from the perspective of the families taking part in them. Though isolating the deciding factor in improved test scores is a notoriously difficult business, studies by Harvard's Paul E. Peterson and other social scientists have found that students with vouchers perform at least as well--and often much better--than their peers in public schools.(*) Looking at the question from a different angle, John F. Witte of the University of Wisconsin reports that voucher recipients in Milwaukee have resisted the "normal pattern" of declining achievement among inner-city students,
jpenguin AT the google email service
During the '60s and '70s, when the space race was in full flight, many young people in the USA decided to study science and technolgy to be part of space - the final frontier (sorry, I just had to). Now the space race is over. Man is not going to the stars any time soon. The upshot of this is that fewer young people in the USA are going into science and technology. The large number of TV programmes about lawyers and doctors and other non-science/technology fields are compounding the problem. At the moment the USA gets around this problem by importing scientists and technologists, but this can't continue forever. Unless the USA can find a way to motivate another generation to study science and technology, it will lose its leadership.
Why do so many of the points mention drug manufacturers? It is a crying shame we cannot do more to guarentee their profits.
Let me guess.. you're talking about HP?
On the contrary, I think economists have shown that an inheritance tax boosts productivity. And Ben Stein claims it's *way too high*, when only a vast minority of estates qualify for it. You essentially have to be a millionaire. Granted, a million bucks sure aint what it used to be. Let me pull out my tiniest violin for you. I always thought of Ben as a stand-up guy, but this really shows him to be a selfish Republican hack. Granted, he did serve in the Nixon administration. Most of what he is proposing seems to be standard Republican party line.
Quoth the article :
(Story continues after advertisement)
-DoctorB
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Following Ben Stein's implied prescription as to the cure to what ails America would do it once and for all. If he'd ever done anything constructive with technology for a living, he might be clued enough to make his perceptions about what makes technological innovation of value. Reading his article makes him wonder what planet he moved to after his job with Nixon quit him. As well as why he returned and why Forbes decided to give him a public forum.
As a casual observer of what makes this country work and what stops it cold, I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century.
His suggestions might be worth something if he'd ever gotten closer to real technologists than any article in the financial press could have taken him.
I think the reader will agree with me that we are already far down the road on many of them:
1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit.
He wants schools to leave the Nixon era out of history books? Not that I blame him, he's one of the guilty parties, he was on the Nixon staff. But he isn't important enough to be mentioned by name.
Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics.
A couple of hours ago, I helped an average high school student in an average suburban high school make a model of the sodium atom. In large part, the science textbooks are finally becoming adequate and much better than the ones I used in high school (graduated at mid-term in 1972).
Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge to other nations that make a comprehensive knowledge base a rule of the society.
We're going to lose our competitive edge to the RIAA/MPAA cartel long before the educational system has time to do what he describes.
While public education is in serious disrepair, the problem (at least in California and other states which are finally enforcing some) isn't standards, it's structure and methods. The standards for high school graduation in a local California school district I reviewed are perfectly adequate. I'm at something of a loss as to how their educational methods are going to accomplish this, from what I've been able to see, the teachers are using homework not to reinforce the classroom instruction given during the school day, but to force parents to provide the instruction the teachers weren't able to provide. The money is probably adequate, but is dissipated in "administrative expenses" having little discernable relationship to classroom instruction.
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.
I'm a hell of a lot more concerned about the unrestrained influence of the lobbyists of the Hollywood content cartel than I am about tort law, which has largely already been reformed in the direction Mr. Stein asks for. The factors that restrain innovation in the pharmaceutical industry are more that companies have found that paying lawyers to build patent portfolios from previous work is more profitable than hiring scientists and engineers.
We're finding that entertainment industry executives are even less safe technology gatekeepers than trial lawyers ever were. If he wants to point a finger, he should look to his own employers.
3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries. Encourage a legal process that can kill a drug company for any mistakes in self-medication.
IIRC, the overweight person got his fat ass kicked in court, and he can't name any drug companies that have gone out of business over a patient's fuckups any more than you or I can. However, the evidence is simply inconclusive. I can cite examples where these cases got tossed out of court and cases where the plaintiffs won.
Make it a general rule that anyone with more money than a plaintiff is responsible for anything harmful that a plaintiff does. Promulgate the pitiful joke that Americans are hereby exempt from any responsibility for their own actions--so long as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.
4) Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust.
Does anyone know of any examples of people who've gotten seriously rich (say, over $100M) solely by hard work and thrift? It's rather telling that Ben doesn't know of any, either. We know this because he didn't cite examples. Hard work only counts when one is doing the right things, and thrift is only a good thing when one economizes on the right things... i.e. don't spend $1K of your investors' money per employee on office furniture in a high tech startup, and DON'T try squeezing nickels when it comes to picking server hardware when your site is already getting 1M hits a day.
Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from being sexy in public
Presumably, he means entertainers. Hmmm... why are we using the badly informed remarks of an entertainer as a basis of public debate?
or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered about where real success comes from.
Anybody sufficiently interested in finding out can discover where most individual fortunes came from, including the parts the founders of thse fortunes would really rather we didn't know about. Of course, knowing where wealth comes from doesn't necessarily imply that one can make it even if one has the knowledge and talent to create intellectual capital. Knowing who Ann Winblad is doesn't mean she'll give you the time of day, unless you encounter her through the right "insider" VC community channels.
Hint: If Bill Gates hadn't had substantial family money behind him, would we have ever heard of either him or Microsoft?
5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.
Odd that he got that one almost right. Now why did he personally invest in Enron and Worldcom to begin with?
If he's as well informed as he pretends to be, he'd know that the reason for the spectacular stock swindles perpetrated by Enron, Worldcom, and many other companies was reduced oversight by the SEC, which the Bush Administration insured by gutting the agency's funding. Corporate leaders will cheat if they can get away with it, that's why the SEC was invented in the 1930s. Why is he putting Ben Stein's money into funding the GOP if he really believes there's a problem?
6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long- term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.
No argument here. However, he's a former scriptwriter for Richard Nixon, who left the White House barely in time to avoid public trial for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The GOP is the very center of the cultural imperative that says the law is for everyone except the wealthy. A good argument, but is he really the one to make it?
7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV- land.
Still whining about youth culture after all these years. I guess he figures that he fooled the public during the Nixon era with this, (the 1972 Nixon campaign was basically an attack on youth culture) he can still get away with it. He will be happy to know that the current version of youth culture is just as likely to turn out amoral suits to provide the kind of "innovative" business leadership he seems to be looking for as any idealism out of the hippie era.
The PC he presumably typed these grave pronouncements on and the ones we're reading and writing this on are as much a product of the 1960s youth culture as acid rock and love beads. Those of you who are too young to remember this from being there can pick up the history from Hackers by Stephen Levy. Though looking at pictures of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak around when they started Apple should give you the idea. Those of you who are a bit older will remember when I say Whole Earth Catalogue gave Homebrew Computer Club its startup funding. And the world indeed changed as a result.
What will the current participants in the current revision of youth culture come up with in the way of technology? There are more young computer programmers around than in any time in previous history, and most of you are probably here. Isn't it sad that Ben Stein doesn't like your musical tastes?
8) Mock and belittle the family.
Last time I heard, The Osbournes are still the hottest show on TV... the family might not be the one that Ben Stein grew up with and Ozzy Osbourne isn't exactly Ozzie Nelson, but the family actually seems to work.
Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.
Let's be polite here and figure that he botched this one on the basis that he stopped doing his own income taxes as soon as he could afford to do so, probably in the early 1970s. The rest of us need only flip through our form 1040 booklets to figure out what tax breaks families get that singles aren't eligible for.
9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion.
He's never heard of H1B and we're supposed to take his pronouncements on how immigration law works seriously? Perhaps Forbes should have gotten Madonna or Eminem to write the article instead. I don't see how they could have done a worse job. Where the hell does he think the casual labor that keeps his yard in good shape comes from, under a cabbage patch?
10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:
First tax it as income. Then tax it as real or personal property. Then tax it as capital gains. Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death. This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed world.
We also have the lowest total tax rate in the developed world once all these layers are added up, and those who invest as companies in technological businesses can pick up an R&D tax credit. If he were qualified to speak on technological innovation, he'd know it.
This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once again, encourage disrespect for law.
Tell that to Bill Gates. Fortunes are still being made in America. Though Gates doesn't have much to do with innovation, there are others who've made high-tech fortunes in the system he condemns, and a whole lot of us who'd be happy to give it a try given access to venture capital.
11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
Which country does he think he lives in? The USA has the most expensive medical system in the world on either a per capita basis or in terms of total dollars. Attempts to introduce universal health care have been uniformly squelched by millions of dollars spent by the US health care industry and in particular, insurance companies who would be forced to stop profiting from health care if the US health care system became "socialized".
12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind.
With the exception of the Xtian fundamentalists, all the groups he's whining about are very well represented in technological innovation. Anyone who doesn't quite get this should try googling for:
technopagan VRML
Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
If he'd had the guts to go after fundamentalist Christians pushing "Creation Science", I'd agree with him. As far as I know, this is the only significant example of religion overriding science that's going on right now.
My list need not end here.
Would it be uncharitable to suggest that it ended because he'd run out of ideas? Perhaps a few more hours of listening to Rush Limbaugh would have given him some.
But I stopped at a dozen because I realized that this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place, and the rest of the agenda is under way.
The only agendas I see in progress right now are that of restricting civil liberties in the guise of "protecting us from terrorists" and the Hollywood content cartel's anti-tech agenda. Either are as dangerous to America's ability to innovate and compete as the decline of public education. Ben Stein deals with neither. If Ben Stein got paid for this article, Forbes should retract the article and try to get their money back from him.
Ben Stein was practically the only GOP contributor among the ranks of Hollywood entertainers, look him up. (search under individual donors, enter STEIN, BENJAMIN)
Benjamin J. Stein is a lawyer, economist, writer and actor, and host of the game show Win Ben Stein's Money.
If Ben Stein ever devotes a show segment to public policy and has an honest judge score the contestants, he's going to lose a bunch of Ben Stein's money. The guy does have style, but I never realized before reading his article how little he's got to back it up with.
Tech Public Policy stuff
dat is some insightful shit.
Well since that leaves you with only the atom bomb, the telephone, cotton gin and the laser..
Some inventions cannot be attributed to a single nation or person; laser is one of them.
'"Basic work in quantum electronics leads to the inventions of resonator and amplifier based on maser-laser theory", Townes, A.Prskhorov and N.Bason of Lebedev Institute in Moscow were awarded together the Nobel Prize of Physics of that year.'
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
OK, I read the article. Nothing I didn't already know.
The only salient point in there was the idea that we are too busy blaming someone else when we fall down. That's the kind of Victim attitude that is being fostered in this Welfare State we call America. Ideas like we are all entitled to something or we are dis-enfranchised from something else is all a bunch of whining baby-talk. We did not get to where we are today by being a bunch of sissies. We did it by having more back bone than that.
We won't get anywhere tomorrow at this rate. We are declining all our strengths because we are to busy Consuming the goods we have available to us. No appreciation for the work.
I'm not the least bit surprised that a lot of people outside of the US don't like us. We're jerks. Have you ever looked at how Americans communicate with Europeans on the internet? We think that the entire world should cater to our every whim because 50 years ago we beat the shit out of some dick-head in Germany. Maybe we did a Good Thing, but not that good. We are well on our way to becoming the Emperialist that we so dispised in past generations.
We cannot continue unabated on the notion that we are going to steer the world. Look at the good it's done for Microsoft. We should reconsider our direction and start taking some ownership and make some contributions to the Good Things that are out there.
I am reading too much in the news of other countries who are coming up with not only cool gadgets, but cool technologies and cool science. We're failing. We're getting fat, lazy, and stupid. We're more concerned about our cell phone covers and our SUV's than we are anything else.
and yes I am aware of how many karma points I just threw away...
Nope, it wasn't a technology article in any sense.
However, if you want to knock the legs out of American technological progress all you have to do is allow the DMCA and other DRM grabage to run thier courses.
Violation of freedom of speech (yes current overlong standard copyright law, and absurd patents do this), will stifle all progress.
The quick coffin in casket will be taxation of everything. As European users know the Governments run trucks up and down the streets day and night monitoring to see how many televisions are in each house and assessing taxes for each.
I can envision this happening in the U.S. with WIFI.
Online ordering needs to remain tax free, the seconf that changes, the internet will become the next "CB Radio" has been fad.
ISP's need to keep thier hands off charging bandwidth caps, and blocking and charging extra for ports.
Greenspan proved that you can kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Utopians consistently excel in discovering faults, but those who actually try to fix them usually end up with a situation far worse than the one they were so alarmed about.
:"think that all you have to do is point at it while loudly raising alarm, and you have contributed to the solution" ?
:)
So, what are you planning to do with the problem that you are raising ? Surely you don't think you can just (quote, "you" substituted for "they")
Hah ! If you didn't see that one coming, I worry that you haven't really understood your own point.
Intellectual Property is a mixed bag, it gives incentive to technologists and capital markets to bring new technology to market on one hand, but creates limited monopolies that can stifle innovation, particularly incremental advances, on the other. When these two interests are adequately balanced, these rules make for killer economies.
However, the latest trends have led special-interest driven legislation to destroy that delicate balance and create what is no longer intellectual property, but special-interest technology regulation, such as the DMCA (which gives patent-like protection to unpatentable non-technologies), Dilution (which grants ownership of words), the upcoming broadcast flag regulation and more recent attempts such as "the Stupid Hollings Bill with Many Initials" to pass laws making computers non-computers.
These tech reg laws will destroy our competitive edge, in the name of protecting an industry more than adequately protected by existing laws. The content industry had their best year in recent history, and then they killed Napster, whining that Napster was killing them, and only then did the bottom fall out of the market. Permitting special interests to protect "turf" rather than permitting the free market to make dinosaurs of dinosaurs is killing us, only slowly at first, but it will be the end of technology at the end of the day.
Nobody is more pro-IP on this forum than myself. And I remain willing to defend traditional Copyright, Trademark and Patent law principles. But technology regulation is a gross error, and one that is subtly having a devastating impact on our economy.
The same goes for IT. How many IT slashdotters living in U.S. are not born in the USA, or work with someone that is not? With all that HB-1 visas and the like?
I mean, in the long run, what happens when you keep buying brains and muscles from elsewhere? Other countries are going to get better generation after generation, and unless the foreigns got laid in US, the new citizens will not affect the U.S. gene pool at all. They generate revenue in the short term, but unlike a retired stallion, there's nothing else if they go back home after a while. Sad but true.
If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
it's no mystery why this country is falling apart. Go read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. You might learn something and god knows you might even enjoy it.
I take it you're a CA graduate? $9.3k/year for twelve years is only $770 a year!
You think you can get into a 'top flight' private school for $192 a semester?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I notice a few people proudly pointing out things that America has done for the world technologically, and then other anti-Americans shooting it down and claiming that things were actually invented in other countries first. What's their point? Why do they want to defame our country?
and US would lose its edge fast. The best minds of the world are immigrating to the US, and that means the US is dominating in most fields of science and technology.
If the unions succeed in stopping this immigration, it would mean a huge setback for the industry, and would cause large unemployment among the members of the same unions.
However, it might help the rest of the world, as we might be able to keep more of our brightest minds at home.
Ben Stein was a speechwriter for Nixon. The economic advisor was his father, Herbert Stein.
[this
Relative to Africa? Yeah, maybe. But I think a dock worker who built a house now affordable only to the top .5% of the US population speaks for itself.
Yeah, it says "I'm real estate in NYC". Anything in NYC will fetch a rediculous price.
Anyway, I don't know about 120 years ago, but today doc workers are in the top 1% of american wage earners.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ben Stein starts his piece with the usual malarkey about America's "competitiveness and innovation" and then proceeds through the rest of the usual (mostly) libertarian malarkey.
The one thing he doesn't note the two keys to America's competitiveness and innovation: 1) the products of mostly hopelessly ideological (China, et al.) or hopelessly elite (India) foreign school systems; 2) the English language.
There is basically nothing in the American system that encourages competitiveness or innovation. After all, the U.S. has had a competitive industry arise in a long time. Microchips is the only one left. Everything from aircraft to telecom to power generation to consumer electronics is being led by other smaller, less commodity-rich countries speaking a multitude of relatively obscure languages.
The minute America loses its ability to bully the rest of the world with its weapons and provide a "safe harbor" for wealth, the game is over.
is the importance that is placed in American Society on the need for and the importance of the middle and lower echelons to independently collect information and make decisions for the good of the "enterprise" (be that military unit, community, or business). The American middle-class is a phenomena practically non-existent in the rest of the world. Europe has a decent middle-class, but the classes in Europe are far more adversarial. Here, in America, the middle class generally believes that it is a major part of the American "success" story and revels in its newfound culture. The reason for the American edge in anything has nothing to do with its technical superiority. America has no superiority in any science or art. What it has is enough room for each man or woman to either make something of themselves or to hang themselves. Happy Holidays.
Hey, you misspelled "wither" in the title.
Im not sure how it is in PC land California.
.. no air conditioning thought - its already in the heat/air unit, but they don't hook it up .. because kids learn fine in 100+ degree weather.]
.. up until a successful law suit this year .. teachers who work in 'targeted' schools [ie .. low -> no income schools] may only transfer to other targeted schools. My wife has been turned down on *two* occations for transfers to schools that are closer to our house (one was right across the street), and in both cases - new teachers with no experience were given the job.
.. on average .. a student in her school gets 6mins and 41 seconds of education.]
.. just for ha-ha's
.. and don't forget she gets NO vaction/sick time during the year. If she has to take time off if she is sick - her pay is docked.](42 weeks) .. with a 15 min lunch, and no breaks. 4 days a week she has afterschool activities which brings her home at 5:00 (1.5 hours per day X 4) This doesnt count Parent Confrence nights (about once a month) or the production nights on the plays she does, etc.
.. she gets roughly $9.28 an hour (did i forget to mention that she only gets this much because she has her masters ?) Thats with a MASTERS DEGREE! In one hour she teaches (average again) 67 students.
.. your kid's education from her is worth about 0.13 cents. [Again, this is flat math, obviously it would be slightly LOWER during the day, and much higher in the afterscool activities.]
.. makes less than a manager of a McDonalds. [Where 3/4 of the kids wind up anyways .. on both sides of the counter.]
.. for #1 on the list .. I have to say he is dead on from my point of view. Bad schools = stupid kids = more crime & less progress .
But here is Baltimore the public school system is Horribly Corrupt. [as evidenced by my spelling *chuckle* thats a joke, not a slam on society]
My wife teaches in a middle school in baltimore county 'suburbs' and it is a nightmare. most of the classrooms in her school do not have windows. they have plywood. This year breaks the 3 year record her room did not have heat. [they just replaced the heater
Her school is part of whats called 'targeted' schools, which means
Last year, the principal's aid, and 2 other secretarial staff were indited for embezzlement. They had been doing it for over 6 years, but no once noticed until payroll checks started to bounce.
This year her school was forced by the county to drop 4 positions due to budgets. Bringing the class sizes between 40 and 50 kids per class. meaning that in an average class period of 40 mins, my wife has approximatly 55 seconds per student. [meaning that in a 7 period day
Now lets talk about pay. Teachers get paid horribly, just like cops and firemen. My wife has been teaching for 7 years now. And just reached close to 39k a year. In order to reach that amount, she had to do two after school activities, and direct her entire department. (otherwise it would be more like 36k)
Lets break that down a bit
{these are all rough calculations mind you.}
39,000 a year
and she works about 10.5 months of they year.
[teachers work about a week after the students leave, and start about 2 weeks before the kids come back. - oh
That means she brings home roughly $928 a week (before taxes)
she works from 7:00-3:30 each day
So she works roughly 9.75 hours a day (10 if a student asks her questions at lunch - ill use 10 just cause its rounder for now)
So
meaning
Isn't that Kind of scarey ?
A professional (and she is actually a very good teacher) with a MASTERS degree
She also works longer hours, and takes her work home (both emotionally, and physically - tests have to get corrected some times.] Don't forget, that if there are addional needs for her classroom, that comes OUT of her salary - maybe it will get reimbursed at the end of the year - if its approved and the school isnt over budget.
The alternative of course, is to divide her $1200 a year budget for art supplies among about 300 students a day. [you can see where THIS is going]
So
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
I went to a fairly bad school in New Zealand, and I learned trigonometry at age 13, and calculus at 15. If you didn't start trig until your GCSEs, when on earth did you get around to calculus? I would've loved to learn Latin, but my school didn't offer it. However, every student did have to take a semester of French in third form (13 years old).
the school I went to is in the top 5% of all comprehensives...but you're experience seems to have been a lot better than normal
Err, I think your school is probably quite relieved you don't name them, if they are ranked that highly, gave you a complete education, and you still don't know the difference between your and you're. And I'd have to say that this experience doesn't sound unusual given what I and all my friends and family experienced in schools throughout NZ, Australia, and England.
Yes, there is much technical innovation in the US, but this country certainly doesn't have a monopoly on technical progress --no matter how you define such things.
The key is to be able to recognize and use the discoveries of others, never mind who they are or where they came from. This is a strength of a multi-cultural homogeneous society. The "not invented here" syndrom should be less common in a society such as this.
What Ben Stein wrote was very simply a diatribe against a bunch of idiotic and luddite behaviors which various influential and powerful organizations seem to be perpetrating.
He nailed the issues on lack of ethics, ignorant politicians who don't understand the legislation they're proposing, teachers who aren't allowed to teach, bosses who squelch innovation for fear of a law suit, and so on and so forth.
The only question is not whether the US is suffering from this, but whether any other country is managing to stay ahead of these problems.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Balogna. The teachers are a very serious problem...
I have a friend who is a PhD that is in charge of teachers over a number of Chicago public schools. His job focus is making sure the teachers are teaching their kids how to read.
When he started he would go around to the classes and find that by 10am _most_ teacher WERE NOT EVEN TEACHING.
He'd find teachers talking on the phone, yacking in the halls with other teachers (what are their kids doing when they aren't there?) and even surfing the net.
After a year of him being their and cracking the whip at _lazy teachers_ test scores went up 12% across the board in 90% of the schools he was in charge of.
He is so sick of lazy and bad teachers he just wants to quit. The administration doesn't even support him on dealing with this issue. He says also that their aren't replacement teachers either, so the only thing to do is get these teachers to work.
He's not sure of a total solution, but for now there's; Manage the teachers better. Make them actually teach. Then make sure what they are teaching works.
Currently schools are teaching really lousy methods for reading. Of which the "whole language" method is used. This would be the equivilant of handing a first year CS student (with _no_ prior coding or computer skills) a sheet of printed code and then told to "absorb it".
I don't agree with many, many things GW Bush has done, but hopefully better expectations from teachers is one that will work/help our schools.
My friend is currently writing a grant for the Chicago school system to help them use the money they will get from the feds wisely (har har). At one point he lost it and chewed out 200 at an assembly cause they weren't listening to him. He says a group of "big" people are much worse to deal with than an unruly class room...
I live in the boonies in Minnesota. Small town schools seem to do fine for the most part and for my kids I am not concerned about the teachers, just other kids. It's the big city schools that seem to have most of the problems (and the west coast schools... ) which is one reason I left the big city and the west coast.
The first real step needs to be to enforce the most basic levels of work ethics and make sure that teachers actually stay in their class rooms during work hours and when in there actually teach their kids. And the administration needs to back up the teachers when they try to keep order in their class rooms.
[/rant]
-v
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
I don't care so much what the major* is. I do care she (in my case) is a solid student and can stand on her own two feet when she is done. Like the parent post, she is being groomed for college as well as life in general.
Paying for college is a tricky thing. My wife and I both paid our own way through school without any parental help while we were (mostly) single. A couple minor grants here and there, but I had to work, as did she. Not a four year plan, but did it with honors. I had friends who were given tuition, room and board, cars, etc... and they squandered it. So yes, I am saving - I call it my 'Porsche' fund, though I suspect 'LearJet' might be closer the way tuition continues to climb. She can opt to ignore school.... but I'm taking the tax hit to make sure I'll be the one squandering it.
(*) I am cynical about majors, knowing now how little the actual degree means in the real world. I wish I had done a Math major rather than BioChem & MicroBiology. A solid Music program - other than the cost of tuition - does not scare me.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
This country is run by monopolies who just steal every good idea from a private inventor then hide behind thier lawyers. THAT is was dulls the edge. The idea that only these corporations are allowed to innovate. If I invent something tommorow, chances are noone will ever know about it, I wont get UL approval or FDA approval, or make a single cent off of it. So, since all the power to invent lies in corporations, all the power to invent is ONLY used to MAKE MONEY by appealing to the MASSES. Not in doing any research to better humanity, or to help the planet, or to do ANYTHING other than make deep pockets deeper.
As much as I find I agree with this, there are some excellent technical innovations in the form of Video Games. Yes, Americans invented Video Games, TV, Internet, Radio, and everything else used to entertain modern man, but the Japanese have stolen the video game market away from us with excellent, creative and innovative games.
While this might be considered flame bait, Anime is also an excellent source of entertainment, however, it is far more derivitive and generally has little to offer in terms of inventive stories. (I like Miyazake and I did enjoy Lain... I also adore Juzo Itomi movies).
Sorry, its just that I'm passionately hostile about this subject.
So, to start off I think we need a public national database / web interface. If we could get everyone to connect to that page and tell us what they need, want, use, buy, etc. Then we can take all those different types of products and figure out what can be automated and what is going to require manual human labor. We would need contributors for all the jobs requiring human labor, until such a time that they can be automated. And those should be the first jobs on the list to be automated since nobody wants to do them. Then elsewhere in the database we can create the list of all the jobs people want to do for a living. There are many people who like the jobs they do today. These jobs won't need to be automated. So once we have this data we can begin work on the media system to promote education and the jobs people want to do. Create the proper environment to promote education and productive output. I see no reason why our universities could not be corporations. The problems we face right now is simply because we care about money. Leaving it aside for the moment you can see how similar a university and a corporation is. We can learn on the job as well as study all the theoretical info at the same time in the same place, more or less. This is a generalization, but I think you begin to get the idea.
This system could be implemented on top of the current system, but only after everyone has had a chance to think about the concepts involved. Right now it would be immediately discreditted since almost nobody believes a society can exist without money.
You can, however, send them to a fundamentalist workbook "school", where their faith won't be troubled by learning about biology or geology or physics.
I went to a catholic high school. Not all of the students were catholic. There was no pressure to be catholic. We learned about Biology (including evolution and AP level courses. I got a 5 on the exam.), geology, and physics. We also learned alot about various religions (not just Christian religions) that would not have been allowed to be taught in a public school. In fact, public schools help parents decide their children's religious beliefs by shielding them from other options, while the religous school I went to actually gave the students enough information do decide for themselves which religion (if any) was right for them. The only other significant differences between the catholic school I went to and the public high school were that the teachers actually took interest in every student, the standards for grading were higher, 95% of the students went on to college, we had to follow a dress code, and they didn't teach us about birth control (that's what parents are for anyway). The school met state curriculum requirements, and was ranked in the top 10% of schools in the state. I don't doubt that there are religously affiliated schools out there that have an adgenda other than giving their students a first rate education, but they're not all like that.
Oh, by the way, the tuition was $4800 per year. The school recieved no funding from the church. All the money came from tuition and alumni donations.
Now, if a private school can run so well on such a tight budget, why can't public schools do the same with twice as much? (Hint: think unions)
How would you deal with the situation where the sum of what all the people wants exceeds the sum of what all the people can provide? What if it turned out that the absence of money significantly reduced the inclination of people to work? Then the sum of what all the people provided would be a lot less than what is provided today.
How would you change contract law to deal with the absence of money?
How would you deal with the situation where there where not enough automation volunteers to deal with all the automataion needs; where nobody wanted to be a soldier, or a sewer worker, or a CEO?
What would be the advantage of turning a university into a corporation? For that matter, given the absence of money, what would be the nature of a corporation?
Information is not Knowledge
Kids would stay in school rather than playing sick and having wacky adventures.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
It's not so much the spending as the emphasis placed on sports by an institution supposedly devoted to acedemics. It tends to be visible everywhere in school.
For an example, in a school with a fair football team and acedemic teams regularly winning or placing, most of the students don't know the acedemic teams exist. This is because only the footbal team is deemed worthy of an announcement (even if it looses) and a trophy case in a public area (acedemic trophys were kept in classrooms, athletics had a trophy case in the main hall by the entrance).
Meanwhile, the school paid for busses for the varsity teams, everyone else chipped in for gas and car pooled to their events. I note that in many schools that football equipment is provided for in the budget, but most other extra curricular activities must be paid for by selling door to door. This is the sort of thing that sends the clear message that acedemic performance and even athletic performance in 'less popular' sports is unimportant.
There are many problems, and it certainly can't all be laid at the feet of the football team, but the imbalance of emphasis might explain a few of the problems. By all means, keep sports in the schools, but treat them a a part of a rounded education, not as the entire reason for school to exist.
The missiles were actually quite similar; the conditions were different. In 1991, we were able to detect SCUD launches almost immediately, which allowed air raid warnings to be issued several minutes before the missile arrived. That's enough to make a big difference; it allows people to get off the street, down into basements, etc. Even 30 sec warning is enough to dive under a desk or whatever-- duck and cover! -- which can give you much better protection from shrapnel. London didn't get advance warning. Plus, SCUD launches were all at night (to avoid getting bombed by the USAF), when few people were out and about. V2s often came down during the middle of the day. Much better trauma care in 1991 too.
I live in the boonies in Minnesota. Small town schools seem to do fine for the most part...
Unfortunately this is not universally true. I'm from a small town in South Carolina, and our rural schools are in pretty awful shape. I'd have a lot more use for the AFT and the NEA (American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO affiliated teachers' union, and the National Education Association) if they didn't support Bill Clinton's decision to put former SC governor Dick Riley in charge of the Dept. of Education. Riley's primary focus as governor was to improve education in SC. Unfortunately his policies left us ranked 51st in the nation, down from 49th. This is not the kind of results I want repeated nationwide.
Regarding the original thread comment, there have been numerous alternatives put forward by those interested in educational reform. I am less of a fan of vouchers than I am of relatively unrestricted charter schools. This addresses objections of some civil libertarians to providing government money to religious schools. However, the AFT and NEA have consistently opposed any charter system. Their chorus is 'it might be worse than public school education'. However, If you believe, as most Americans do, that American schools are not performing to expectations, there needs to be change, and if the AFT and NEA can't come up with their own proposals, then they need to stop shooting down ours.
Here in the Dallas metroplex there are people trying to illegally get into the rather terrible Dallas Independent School District because they're in school districts that are even worse. There's a clear demand for school choice, especially in failing districts. Yet apart from whinging that "people [are] bashing the education system without offering any constructive criticism," the AFT & NEA rarely offer real reform. If the teachers aren't the problem, then the current method of administering schools is the next likely candidate. So abolish the geographically isolated school district and make sure that any given location is served by at least two schools with totally separate administrative systems, so that everyone has the choice that the rich/upper middle class already have. Remember, school choice is a reality for those who can afford to move to better school districts or send their children to private schools.
One of the most damning indictments of the modern educational establishment is one of my coworkers' family. He has a much younger brother who's in 4th grade. His mother is a teacher. She is vehemently opposed to school choice/vouchers/charter schools. She feels they will destroy public education. She sends her fourth grade son to private schools because she has no confidence in her own school district's ability to teach her son. 'School choice for my son, but not for the plebes!' When a teacher, who uses private schools, says that the poor students in her school district shouldn't be allowed to leave the public school system and go to the same private school she uses for her family, I have trouble finding a rational explanation for that behavior. To my mind it smacks of a patronizing attitude at best, and racism at worst.
Admittedly I find Ben Stein pretty funny, and usually fairly well-spoken and intelligent, but this little screed was too whiny for my taste. This smacked way too much of the 'America is going to hell in a handbasket, and my political enemies are to blame' racket that has never held much sway with me. Saying all that with clear concise reasons why its going to hell in a handbasket (examples of initiatives that have been blocked by the teachers' unions and so forth) is OK.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Just look at history. Everything R&D'd in US can be copied overseas cheaper. So, should we shut down and starve? The CEOs and brainiacs selling our country to the lowest bidders are committing TREASON. Quick profits can be gained, sure. Anybody can make a buck in technology theft. But none of these players will be in the game in 5 years. If anyone has H-1B / L-1 visa or "offshore" layoff stories to tell, please send them to me. I will keep them strictly confidential for class action attornies' eyes only. Best of wishes in the New Year, Dana Rothrock Porter, TX http://www.Geocities.com/H1BAction/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/H1BClassAction/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NoMoreOffshore/ http://www.Zazona.com/ShameH1B/ http://www.AutomationMatrix.com/ http://www.h1bprotest.com/ http://www.NoMoreH1B.com/ http://www.it-usa.org/ http://www.familyinjustice.com/h1b/ http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
When I read the article, I noticed that the Christian Science Monitor linked BACK to this article ... could this be an attempt at "reciprocal Slashdotting"???
utter rubbish
"I will not let my kid go to medical or law school, so he must be an engineer."
Are those really the only choices you are already making for your son?