Lessig: We Are Squandering Away The Future

Illissius writes "Lawrence Lessig has a new article up on Wired, with the title Our Kids Are in Big Trouble. I suck at summarizing, so here's a choice quote: 'Gone is the sense of duty that made so compelling Kennedy's demand "ask what you can do for your country." We don't even ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids. The rhetoric of self-interest so deeply pervades politics that an ideal as fundamental as building a better future has been lost.'"

Comments

Squandering, or ...

[Tanktalus]

Obviously, this is an op-ed piece. Not really news. Then again, this is the politics section of /., so I suppose it fits.

The more politically-aware of us have ideologies which we believe are larger than ourselves. They dictate things like taxes, spending, abortion, stem-cell research, etc. So I won't even pretend to agree with TFA on all points.

To me, the only universal point was to ensure that we think about the consequences if we do something, but, unlike the article, we need to think also about the consequences if we don't. We endanger ourselves to years of extremists terrorising us if we stay in Iraq. Something tells me that if we didn't go in to begin with, we'd be in a worse position after a generation or two of no consequences to committing terrorist acts.

Oh, and I always cringe when a political statement involves "think of the children" mentality. Of course we all care about our children. Too often, this cry is followed by an appeal to do things that otherwise really don't make sense, and are very, very shortsighted.

Progressive Income Tax

[Marxist Hacker 42]

GMHowell's JE had a topic on this today- how our forefathers paid a larger top rate income tax and built the middle class. My generation, Generation X, however, saw this tax rate cut first just as we were being born, and again when we were in our teens, and again when we were in our twenties, and again now that we're in our thirties. Can anybody truthfully say that the middle class is better off for all of these tax cuts? The article asks, sort of, the following question: Was it always like this?

It may always have been like this. I don't believe in "golden age" histories; the past was not always better than the present. But somehow it seems that we have lost an ethic. When your grandfather spoke of building a better world for you than he knew himself, you believed him. And when you look into the eyes of any 1-year-old child, you may understand what he meant.

The reason we believed our grandfathers is because our parents had a better world than they did- but our parents did not return the favor, as the 7 generations of Americans before them did- and thus we've got the mess we have today.

Re:Progressive Income Tax

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Umm there was no federal income tax until the last century. So if by forfathers you mean the past 90 years then yes they paid a higher rate but government became too addicted to spending where it should not and thus rates for the lower and middle class raised. But the nation ran just fine for more than 100 years w/out a federal income tax..

My grandparents (note the quote from the article) were alive and economically active in the 1950s- and are no longer. As for the hundred years previous- sure it ran just fine if by just fine you mean a major run on the banks every 20 years and a collapse of the economy bringing major deflation every 5-10 years. The real boom time for the middle class, in all of the history of the United States, was from 1947-1965. My suggestion is that we return to the tax structure of that time.

How do you go from:

[N3WBI3]

"Ask not what your country can do for you" to complaining "We don't even ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids."

Kennedy was talking about sacrifice in that speech. Sacrifice, it seems, few Americans can stomach. more than 8k per kid is not enough for school? what people might have to save for retirement? what unemployemnt only lasted a year? bulderdash! we need free health care, double the spending on education, unlimited terms on welfare, and G*d help us if we dont start giving money away on $cause, after all its for the children.

Re:Libertarianism and the failure of selfishness

[Illissius]

Well, as I see it, the fundamental philosophy of Libertarianism isn't "greed is the ultimate good" as you say. Rather, it recognizes that people are fundamentally greedy, and attempts to design a functioning society with that in mind. That's what I like about Libertarianism -- in stark contrast to other 'idealist' philosophies like, for example, communism, it designs for the worst rather than the best case scenario; rather than assume that human nature will conveniently step aside, it specifically exploits it. It's as if it were designed to actually work in practice.
Now, so far I've just been trying to clear up a misconception; I'm not saying a Libertarian government/society would necessarily avoid the pitfalls mentioned in TFA. We don't have a Libertarian government, nor has there been one recently; there's no way to know. However, it's certainly possible that one of the reasons for the current situation is that people are fundamentally greedy, and we currently have a system that doesn't account for it.

A New Worldview

[David Greene]

I am a memer of the ISAIAH organization, an interfaith coalition of churches in the Twin Cities and Saint Cloud, MN regions. We use faith-based organizing to work for social justice. We do this because our faith calls us to do it.

While not everyone is motivated by faith to work on these issues, most people share the common values that drive it. This past weekend, we got 4,000 people together to talk to our state and federal legislators about what matters to us.

Underneath all of this is an effort to change the current dominant worldview. We are constantly told to be afraid, that no one is there to help us -- we have to be self-reliant and go it alone and that there just isn't enough to go around.

We've been told this in many ways. Terrorists are going to attack us; we all need to take personal responsibility; individualism is supreme; taxes are an evil to be avoided at all costs; we can't afford to pay for schools.

4,000 people came together on Oct. 10 to reject this outlook. We put forth an alternate view: one of hope, community and shared abundance. We know there is enough to go around -- taxes are how we fund our society and we all have a responsibility to contribute. We know we are surrounded by community and by acting in community we have more power than acting alone. We have hope because we have put this vision into action with real results.

Some of our elected officials were "visibly shaken" according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. They did not expect ordinary citizens to declare such a radical vision and did not expect so many to support it.

I believe this new worldview is what Lessig is talking about. When we live and work in community, hope and abundance, we will provide for the future as well as the present.

It's time to define our own society and stop letting others define it for us.

To quote another president...

[Enzo the Baker]

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

List of significant challenges for kids

[justanyone]

Significant challenges for our children's generation will include:

• loss of biodiversity, especially oceanic
• at least one more large-scale nuclear "meltdown" (my suspicion, given current trends);
• Complications of Global warming
• Shifting from petroleum-based energy to other sources (inevitable) causing (yet) more instability in arab socio-political structures
• U.S. Social Security baby-boom-bubble shifting demographics placing a very, very high tax burden;
• increasing speed and longevity of communications means a silly photo at a high-school or college party or an ill-thought-out possibly-anti-(insert-minority-group-here) comment posted on a newsgroup can last until your first senate candidacy;
• Inability or reduced ability to 'reinvent' oneself after a life change due to increasing availability of personal info;
• possible deflation in U.S./world due to U.S. trade imbalance and rise of EU and China as global powers;
• economic and geographic dislocation if a bioweapon or other epidemic causes mass evacuations near population centers;
• Rising pro-"American Empire" (neoconservatism) causing wars that kill them;
• Rising religious fundamentalism (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Seikh, etc.) again causing inter-religion and intra-religion wars as there were in the 1600's and 1700's;

Yah, this list is kind of scarey, but I'm sure you can think of others more and less likely.

A Canadian Perspective

[Txiasaeia]

For better or worse, I keep on hearing this up here in Canada: Americans are concerned with individual freedom, Canadians are concerned with the freedom/good of the whole society. This is reflected in our subsidised child care, free health care, social programs for the poor, etc. I'm not sure if I agree with this blanket statement, but this dialectic is *everywhere* - media, higher education, politics, etc. Anyway, my point is that we, as Canadians, give up certain things (i.e. our money, as we're taxed to death) so that those who are well-off don't have to suffer as much.

I was watching SpikeTV yesterday & saw that they were having a contest for men: go to the doctor, get a checkup, and try to win a trip to Carnival. Apparently some people haven't seen a doctor in 10 years! I'm not well off by any stretch of the imagination (student, young family), but I also happen to be sick quite a lot and see a doctor once every month or so. I cringe at the thought of paying $100 per visit to the doctor (this is how much my folks in the US pay - middle class, no health coverage).

I know that /. is US-centric, so forgive me for pointing out flaws in the US, but without free health care I don't know what I would do. From the perspective of an outsider, Lessig is absolutely right. I'm glad that my kids, when they're starting out on their own too, won't have to sacrifice their health because of the health care system in Canada (if the current system holds) - then again, the way that we're screwing up the air right now, they're probably going to need it.

Re:Democrat and Republican spending patterns

[RobertB-DC]

One thing to keep in mind is that the interest on that debt doesn't just disappear. It goes to the banks that loan the money to the country.

Don't think of it as building debt... think of it as a bailout for Citibank, Bank of America, and all those poor, suffering megabanks who would have lost their taxpayer-funded handouts if the Clinton-era trend had continued.

Not to mention the whole "starve the beast" strategy -- make debt service so expensive that those silly social programs will simply die from lack of funds.

The parent poster's graph link shows pretty conclusively who's really behind the national debt, doesn't it?