The biggest point is from here, that the income-through-jobs link is becoming more broken every day as we see sci-fi robots become reality, as forseen in 1964: http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm """ The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures--unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S.
The existence of this paradox is denied or ignored by conventional economic analysis. The general economic approach argues that potential demand, which if filled would raise the number of jobs and provide incomes to those holding them, is underestimated. Most contemporary economic analysis states that all of the available labor force and industrial capacity is required to meet the needs of consumers and industry and to provide adequate public services: Schools, parks, roads, homes, decent cities, and clean water and air. It is further argued that demand could be increased, by a variety of standard techniques, to any desired extent by providing money and machines to improve the conditions of the billions of impoverished people elsewhere in the world, who need food and shelter, clothes and machinery and everything else the industrial nations take for granted.
There is no question that cybernation does increase the potential for the provision of funds to neglected public sectors. Nor is there any question that cybernation would make possible the abolition of poverty at home and abroad. But the industrial system does not possess any adequate mechanisms to permit these potentials to become realities. The industrial system was designed to produce an ever-increasing quantity of goods as efficiently as possible, and it was assumed that the distribution of the power to purchase these goods would occur almost automatically. The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand -- for granting the right to consume -- now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system. """
Some of this may be that you are seeing the part you want to see and trying to pigeon hole these arguments. Here is a good essay for a broader perspective: http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm """ To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constan
If you read the essay I wrote linked below, a major point is that most millionaires themselves would be better off living in a society with a basic income, and I give a list of reasons (better medical care especially in disaster times, a better love life, a better family life and less worries about their children, less stress, happier communities and safer streets, more friends, less regulation in having businesses with employees, more free music and free software, and so on). http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html But, a lot of it has to do with what sort of society you want to live in.
Also, there are a lot of ways such a system could be paid for other than direct taxes. As I wrote there: "The US government has a lot of assets. It controls the broadcast spectrum and can rent it. It can rent fishery rights. It owns about a third of the land in the country and can get royalties for mining and forestry rights. The government controls water rights. The government can assess fines for risky or anti-social behavior (as it could have done to Wall Street instead of a bailout.:-) In Alaska, there is a Permanent Fund that gives one to two thousand dollars a year to every Alaskan resident based on royalties from oil development, as well as paying for the operation of the Alaskan government (so, no income or sales taxes). There is also control of the money supply, which needs to expand as commerce expands, and the extra money needed can be printed by the government inflation free. So, there are various ways the government can fund a basic income, even without a wealth tax. "
The core issue is, does every human have a claim to some of the productivity of the industrial commons and ecological commons by right of being alive? If you answer that yes, then you get a basic income or some other sort of similar thing however it is implemented (until we move entirely to a gift economy). If you say no, then in an age of robots and computers being able to do more and more of what humans do, what is the alternative to starvation for most people without lots of capital? Eventually, all those who can't sell their labor for less than what robots cost to operate or for what other desperate humans are willing to work for as the human-labor requiring jobs go away: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
And, eventually, these economic dislocations may even effect most millionaires, since a million dollars is not a lot of money these days, especially in times of social unrest and economic turmoil.
As for getting over materialism, why do most billionaires still work or do other volunteer things, when they could retire and play golf all day and live in a big house? It is the natural inclination of healthy humans to want to do positive things. It is not a misleading comparison to look at stressed out people beaten down by school or work or prejudice who look for pain relief in television or drugs and then say this is how everyone would spend any leisure they had.
Our entire society can produce so much wealth that everyone can have as much as they need, or even, for the most part, as much as any healthy person would want. So, is materialism "human nature" or is it a culture that has been promoted by a particular form of economic arrangement that even the poor have been socialized to support against their own interests? More ideas on this theme:
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's" http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47 """ Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for t
Thanks for the great reply. You make some great points. And it is true, most people in the USA have not been socialized to be self-regulating or self-directing. Example: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm "I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"
So, yes, we need to rethink what education means and all sorts of other things. James P. Hogan's novels touch on some of these themes, especially Voyage From Yesteryear. People may need some time to adjust having all their assumptions about the world change.
On money and debt, see the second version of a related film, the YouTube part of the second version (Starting at 2:40) covers some of a rethinking of that: http://www.moneyasdebt.net/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxo_XPdpI_s But sure, there are imperatives in the financial system that drive this too, things like tying executive compensation to growth and not sustainability. Some of that can be fixed by mild inflation or demurrage, to keep money moving. But ultimately money is about rationing, and, as Iain Banks said, a sign of poverty.
Using a phrase like "our standard of living" covers up the fact that some people get the benefits of automation, but others pay the costs (directly or indirectly). Marshall Brain wrote about that here: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
On labor saving:
"The Original Affluent Society" http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm "Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied. The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo."
With robotics on the way, what are people going to do when there are no jobs in construction?
"USC's 'print-a-house' construction technology" http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html "Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, is starting to support research on the "Contour Crafting" automated construction system that its creator believes will one day be able to build full-scale houses in hours."
Or even, next-to-no jobs in medicine? Or software? Or music? Because even if human do those things, automation lets less people do so much more?
"Robot doctor gets thumbs-up from patients" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4946229/
It's a big like something in Isaac Asimov's story "The Last Question", when it was asked, if you are in a rainstorm, and you take shelter under a tree, what are you going to do when the tree gets wet through and starts dripping on you? Do you say, I'll go under another tree? When robots can automate much of construction, are we going to get jobs again in agriculture or miming or driving trucks or delivering packages?
"[p2p-research] 60 jobs that will rock the future... (not)" http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004216.html
"[p2p-research] Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)" http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
The US is in the midst of vast and increasing unemployment. Many jobs probably are not coming back. Most services are frivolous and related to guarding or make-work. http://www
People can take mortgages against illiquid assets to pay taxes. Native Americans are a special case of cultural genocide; to disprove your point, there are about six million millionaire families in the USA -- are they all drug addicted? This study shows most addictive behavior is environmental: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park You have a good point on relative affluence, except that, as James P. Hogan suggests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear once wealth ceases to matter as status, people may find more worthwhile things to do with their time (like, the fact that someone might be unable design and construct their own handbags might be seen as a sign of shame?). The economy you describe, requiring economic slavery to force some people to clean other people's toilets, is on its way out one way or another:
"Ladybug robot cleans restrooms" http://pinktentacle.com/2007/11/ladybug-robot-cleans-restrooms/ Gandhi had a lot to say on that toilet cleaning issue too.:-) People should vote in a good way for their interests. And they will see the consequences. If people had more free time from a basic income, many could become more informed voters and more active in various decision making processes. The health care issue shows that -- other industrialized countries have cheaper and in many ways better health care for most people than in the USA. (Granted, health care for the ultra-rich or certain others in the USA can be good within some expensive areas like cancer treatment, even if cancer treatment is often slighted and more dependent on good research for everyone.) http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml By the way, vitamin D deficiency may help explain the addictive behavior and other health problems you see in darker skin sun adapted Native Americans in Arizona who have adopted an indoor mainstream US lifestyle (including working in casinos):
"Vitamin D insufficiency in southern Arizona" http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/87/3/608
You make a lot of good points, and sure we have seen a lot of change in the last few hundred years (including multiple genocides of people like the Native Americans who were in the way of change to the land they claimed). The older historical evidence is that in a place like Rome with a slave economy, you were pretty much either a wealthy land owner, a merchant, or a slave. There was maybe a little wiggleroom for an underclass who competed with the slaves and of course there was the military. (There was not much of a "middle class"). As James P. Hogan suggests in his sci-fi books like Voyage from Yesteryear, we are undergoing a "phase change" to a new economic order. If robots can do work about as good as most people for less cost, and better design means most work does not need to be done, then where does that leave everyone who is not a wealthy land owner (or some equivalent in today's USA, owning some other monopoly on something like patents and copyrights and mindshare so on)? With robots and computers as the new intelligent slaves (until they revolt?:-), who needs humans to be physical slaves, merchants, or soldiers? How can you have an underclass that can survive if they are competing with robots who can do everything much cheaper? It would be a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, as Marshall Brain outlines, with a very few left owning everything and all other humans in concentration camps. Unless we have a different social order that moves beyond the notion that a right to consume has to be linked to productivity through formal employment. http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/ http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
Everyone could get a basic income, even millionaires:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective? " http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html "One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?"
We are not running out of stuff or energy by any means. The human imagination is the ultimate resource (as Julian Simon suggests). Are you suggesting optical fiber uses more energy that copper?
On earth, we can recycle and use renewables (or other energy sources even -- whether nuclear or coal), and there are enough resources in the solar system to support quadrillions of humans at a higher than current US standard of living, building thousands of Earth's worth of area in space habitats. How can we be running out of, say, metals when we just need to mine the landfills to get them back? The US auto industry has also become a *net* producer of metal as people downsize cars. And if we switched to electric cars, we would use less electricity (since it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than it takes to make an electric car go the same distance as a gasoline car).
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user" http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Try James P. Hogan or Iain Banks or Ursula K. Le Guin for something different in sci-fi.
This sci-fi book from 1982 explores a lot of these issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear "Since the availability of power from fusion reactors and cheap automated labor has enabled them to develop a post-scarcity economy, they do not use money as a means of exchange, nor do they recognize material possessions as symbols of status. Instead, competence and talent are considered symbolic of one's social standing - resources that cannot be counterfeited or hoarded, and must be put to use if they are to be acknowledged. As a result, the competitive drive that fuels capitalist financial systems has filled the colony with the products of decades of incredible artistic and technical talent, and there are no widespread hierarchies. No one person or group of people can know everything, so no one person or group of people is expected to speak for all. They have no centralized authorities; some would say they have no government at all."
Iain Banks "Culture" series explores these themes too.
Healthy humans only need so much stuff. Automation may be good for firms that do it, but if demand is limited, jobs disappear in the system. That's why capitalist systems must grow continually, to create new jobs to make up for productivity increases. The problem is, too much stuff actually can get in the way of a good life, since good human relations are generally the most important part of a happy life and too much stuff distracts from that. Also, right now, much stuff has negative external costs involved in its creation (though we may someday move beyond that).
Here is some sci-fi on ironies in a world of abundance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World ""The Midas Plague" (originally published in Galaxy in 1954). In this new world of cheap energy, robots are overproducing the commodities enjoyed by mankind. So now the "poor" are forced to spend their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots' extravagant production, so that the "rich" can live lives of simplicity. This story deals with the life of a man named Morey Fry, who marries a girl from a higher class. She is unused to a life of consumption and it wears at their marriage...."
But, that would still be a big shift from what we have now, which is based on the idea that people only have a right to consume based on the value of their labor. This was talked about back in the 1960s in a letter sent to President Johnson in 1964: http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
To deal with increasing automation destroying the value of most labor given limited demand, what we need more is a global sharing of the wealth produced by an automated industrial commons, which means taxes for a basic income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income or transitioning to another economic model like a gift economy or a subsistence economy or something else. The big issue is not so much automation (although there are aspects that are negative of loss of control or loss of joy in hands on work that you may love) but the issue of how the fruits of automation get distributed. Related on three different visions of work we need to bring together for the 21st century: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html
Think of this example: someone sets up vending machines powered by solar panels in every community, and these machines print wood shaped to order for very low prices, and the machines take next-to-no labor to keep going. Basically, what you outlined, only even better (maybe the devices just suck carbon and water from the air to make the wood). Your company can't compete with the prices and quality and speedy delivery, so everyone you employ is laid off. The owner of this enterprise, who owns all the patents and who gets all the money, decides to pile it under his or her mattress, or alternatively, gamble it in high stakes poker games (called derivatives:-) that just move to higher and higher stakes. Where are the new jobs there? Sure, that company may make a few new jobs, but overall, lots of labor is saved, so there is a net negative as far as jobs, because healthy people only need so much wood. The only reason to even worry about jobs is this issue of the right to consume, as well as government enforcing monopolies on land or patents or copyrights, since otherwise there is so much abundance we could organize the economy differently, like GNU/Lin
The conclusion there: "Dealing with a jobless recovery presents global society with some difficult choices about values and identity. A straightforward way to keep the current scarcity-based economic system going in the face of the "threat" of abundance (and limited demand) resulting in a related jobless recovery is to use things like endless low-level war, perpetual schooling, expanded prisons, increased competition, and excessive bureaucracy to provide any amount of make-work jobs to soak up the abundance from high-technology (as well as to take any amount of people off the streets in various ways). That seems to be the main path that the USA and other countries have been going down so far, perhaps unintentionally. Alternatively, there are a range of other options to chose from, whether moving towards a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy, or strong local communitarian economies, and to some extent, the USA and other countries have also been pursuing these options as well, but in a less coherent way. Ultimately, the approaches taken to move beyond a jobless recovery (either by creating jobs or by learning to live happily without them) involves political choices that will reflect national and global values, priorities, identities, and aspirations."
So, what did people do before money was invented then? Pick fruit off the trees and grab fish from the rivers? Oh, right, yeah that's what they did.:-)
Well, that's how positive feedback loops work though -- you can start out with a little of a problem and watch feedback create a big problem. Consider even gaming or other computer use. Staying indoors a lot causes vitamin D deficiency, which may cause depression, which gives you less energy to go outdoors, and leaves you in more pain, and so you turn to the computer for pain relief, again as a positive feedback loop producing increasing dysfunction. This may be an important aspect of our current widespread social dysfunction in the industrialized world, especially the USA.
Anyway, some link to the science about vitamin D and mental illness, that is still emerging: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml """ We propose vitamin D plays a role in mental illness based on the following five reasons:
1. Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
2. Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
3. Mental illness shows a significant comorbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
4. Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
5. Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness. """
Things like depression in children can often manifest themselves in various ways other than withdrawal.
But sure, you're right to be wary of oversimplifications. Here is another big part of the problem, which is more social and cultural: "Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine" http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711 "The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. By not seriously confronting societal sources of despair, American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The good news is that age-old wisdom and legitimate science -- uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of pharmaceutical and insurance corporations -- have much to inform us about revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture. Surviving America's Depression Epidemic provides an alternate approach that encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformation more likely."
Cure vitamin D deficiency, while also improving our society with more face-to-face interactions in healthy communities with humane values, and with everyone getting nutritious food to eat, and the world would be a much much better place for everyone. And we have more than enough resources to do that, if we did not waste them all fighting over perceived scarcity and dealing with all the craziness that comes from artificial scarcity (like an artificial scarcity of sunlight by forcing kids to be indoors all the ti
I agree that the OP point on sunlight not being good enough is fishy, although on a practical basis you are just not going to get enough vitamin D from sunlight living the typical mostly indoor life in the Western world. But, the OP does indirectly bring up a cutting edge area of research about what is normal vitamin D levels and how have humans evolved in different settings to process different levels of vitamin D (like in the plains, the forest, the seashore, and the frozen icy wastes of the ice ages, and with different skin pigmentation in each setting). So, there remain a lot of unknowns.
But, the rest of it as far as recommendations is legitimate according to the emerging science, even if there are, as you suggest, caveats that for some few people with rare diseases issue that may be made worse by supplementing.
Here is one 2009 study that is there: "Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention: Global Perspective" http://www.oncologystat.com/journals/review_articles/AEP/Vitamin_D_for_Cancer_Prevention_Global_Perspective.html "RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: It is projected that raising the minimum year- round serum 25(OH)D level to 40 to 60 ng/mL (100–150 nmol/L) would prevent approximately 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer each year, and three fourths of deaths from these diseases in the United States and Canada, based on observational studies combined with a randomized trial. Such intakes also are expected to reduce case-fatality rates of patients who have breast, colorectal, or prostate cancer by half. There are no unreasonable risks from intake of 2000 IU per day of vitamin D3, or from a population serum 25(OH)D level of 40 to 60 ng/mL. The time has arrived for nationally coordinated action to substantially increase intake of vitamin D and calcium."
For most people in industrialized countries who spend most of their time indoors, to get that level, you have to supplement in the range the OP mentioned. However, as Dr. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council suggests, http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml you need periodic blood testing to be sure you are getting the right amount. Here is another blog entry from the blog the OP mentioned on this too; http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-rda-for-vitamin-d.html
Another resource:
"A Consortium of Scientists, Institutions and Individuals Committed to Solving the Worldwide Vitamin D Deficiency Epidemic" http://www.grassrootshealth.net/ They have been coordinating blood test results with supplementation levels.
Experts still disagree about the best level for vitamin D in the blood, but in general, it is way higher than what most people have. Here are Dr. Mercola's suggestions, which are close to Dr. Cannell's , but higher than the Grass Roots Health groups: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2002/02/23/vitamin-d-deficiency-part-one.aspx Dr. Mercola suggests sunlight is the best source.
Like everything, there are probably limits to this advice. In that radio interview Dr. Cannell mentions one person (Trevor Marshall) who disagrees. Here
Too bad the people who wrote this study did not look at the vitamin D connection: "Schizophrenia in black Caribbeans living in the UK: an exploration of underlying causes of the high incidence rate" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2418996/ "The incidence of schizophrenia in black Caribbeans living in the UK is substantially higher than in the white British population. When first reported, these findings were assumed to be a first-generation migrant effect or merely the result of methodological artefacts associated with inconsistencies in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in black Caribbeans and doubts about population denominators. More recently, it has become clear that the incidence of schizophrenia, based on standardised diagnosis and sophisticated census methods, is higher still in second-generation black Caribbeans. The largest study to date has demonstrated a ninefold higher risk of schizophrenia in UK-resident black Caribbeans: findings that are of concern to black Caribbean communities, to their GPs, and to health service managers responsible for resource allocation."
Contrast with: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/the-black-community.shtml """ Vitamin D deficiency discriminates based on race, or more precisely, the amount of melanin (pigment) in the skin, which is an effective and ever-present sunscreen. The vitamin D theory of autism predicts that autism is more common in children born to darker-skinned mothers. Such studies are difficult as they raise sensitive social issues, although 3 of 4 recent U.S. studies found a higher incidence of autism in black children—sometimes appreciably higher. [Bhasin TK, Schendel D. Sociodemographic Risk Factors for Autism in a US Metropolitan Area. J Autism Dev Disord. 2007 Apr;37(4):667–77. Croen LA, et al. The changing prevalence of autism in California. J Autism Dev Disord. 2002 Jun;32(3):207–15. Hillman RE, et al. Prevalence of autism in Missouri: changing trends and the effect of a comprehensive state autism project. Mo Med. 2000 May;97(5):159–63.] """
Or: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-and-schizophrenia.shtml """ Before I describe the remarkable paper from Harvard, I want to compliment researchers at the Saint Barthomew's Hospital in England for almost saying what most psychiatrists already know; the incidence of schizophrenia is much higher in people with dark skin. In the 1970s and 80s, that was an accepted fact, until charges of racism were leveled against the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The spineless APA promptly did retrospective chart analyses and announced the incidence of schizophrenia is exactly — precisely — the same for Blacks as it is for Whites. The ethnicity question is important as the Vitamin D theory is not tenable unless darker skin means a higher incidence. [Coid JW, Kirkbride JB, Barker D, Cowden F, Stamps R, Yang M, Jones PB. Raised incidence rates of all psychoses among migrant groups: findings from the East London first episode psychosis study. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008 Nov;65(11):1250–8.]
Actually, in 2007, a group at Columbia University appears to be the first to break with the APA's political correctness. Dr. Michaeline Bresnahan and her colleagues followed 12,000 children for up to 28 years after birth. African Americans were 3 (three) times more likely to develop schizophrenia than whites and socioeconomic factors could not explain away their findings. [Bresnahan M, Begg MD, Brown A, Schaefer C, Sohler N, Insel B, Vella L, Susser E. Race and risk of schizophrenia in a US birth cohort: another example of health disparity? Int J Epidemiol. 2007 Aug;36(4):751–8.] """
I wrote to the author of the first linked study on this (but no resp
It is possible that some of this vitamin D deficiency disaster could have been prevented with more information sharing. As I wrote here: http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005081.html """ Ryan pointed out to me the University of Wisconsin has patents related to Vitamin D. So, were people perhaps denied Vitamin D as an example of a public institution being funded by public dollars privatizing research results? Same as I can't easily see that study above on the web....
I don't know for sure, but I'd suspect most of this research is funded at least in part by public dollars.
I'm assuming, because the University of Wisconsin says they make a lot of money still from Vitamin D, that lawsuits might start flying if someone else starts using Vitamin D therapies without a license for various illnesses?
Is it possible this is a case of the patent system linked to profit-oriented non-profits damaging the health of billions of people globally? Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
If the global health care costs of treating all the diseases that have been suggested related to Vitamin D deficiency each year in whole or in part were totaled up, from flu through cancer to schizophrenia, it might total in the trillions of dollars per year in costs.
If people were somehow getting less Vitamin D because of the societal consequences of patents (including competitivenesses among researchers, but also making techniques to costly to use or delaying their widespread adoption), it is possible the the consequences of proprietary knowledge from just this one issue might have cost our global society many trillions of dollars and untold personal suffering. Enough money to fund endless researchers making more free knowledge. Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin got a little bit bigger.
Obviously, I'm all for the Vitamin D researchers at the University Wisconsin as well as other universities getting all the resources they need to do good work. But, there may be a huge problem here with public funding strategies for research. The proprietary approach to research knowledge may literally have been costing trillions of dollars a year (in current dollars) for decades taken across the globe. For the past fifty years, at two trillion a year in excess medical costs, this might add up to US$100 trillion in excess medical costs due to such medical knowledge being proprietary and researchers not cooperating more.
Of course, then the huge public health bills are used to justify *increasing* the proprietary aspects of medical knowledge to create more artificial scarcity -- which is a tremendous and sad irony. """
Here is one study of the cost to Western Europe of vitamin D deficiency, and it does not even included costs for excess mental illness: "Estimated benefit of increased vitamin D status in reducing the economic burden of disease in western Europe." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19268496 """ Vitamin D has important benefits in reducing the risk of many conditions and diseases. Those diseases for which the benefits are well supported and that have large economic effects include many types of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, several bacterial and viral infections, and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Europeans generally have low serum 25-hydroxyvit
Vitamin D in the human body is produced mostly by the effect of sunlight on the skin, which creates the version called vitamin D3 (which is the best version to supplement with, usually from fish oil in gelcaps).
Essentially, as people in industrialized countries have been spending more time indoors at home, work, or school, often at computer screens; and as people have been following well-meant advice from dermatologists to stay out of the sun; and as we all drive more instead of walk or bicycle; and as children are less allowed to roam freely outdoors through fears of stranger abductions or whatnot, we have ended up vitamin D deficient as a society. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with a variety of issues, including cancer, depression, diabetes, obesity, schizophrenia, autism, heart disease, tooth decay, asthma, allergies, osteoporosis, and even influenza. Ironically, vitamin D deficiency may be causing even more skin cancers in office workers, because being vitamin D deficient cripples some of the immune response that prevents cancer cells from getting out of control. Modern window glass has also been "improved" to let through less UV-B rays to prevent carpet fading; so now we have faded people instead.:-(
Consider that vitamin D deficiency is related to behavioral issues like depression that can manifest themselves in different ways in children. If kids misbehaves in school, they are often denied going outside at recess into the sunshine. If kids misbehave more, they are denied being outside all summer in the sunshine because they have to go to summer school. If they are really bad eventually, then kids get set to juvenile detention and then prison where they may be mostly indoors for years. Sadly, that is a negative spiral of vitamin D deficiency. Homeschoolers at least have the option of being outdoors more and getting more sunshine.
I wrote some on that connection here: "ADHD or lack of Vitamin D? Albany Free School connection?" http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005083.html "I have no doubt such a play-based curriculum is a good thing and better than compulsory school for most kids. I love learner-directed education, where public schools would become more like public libraries. But, what if some of the magic with the kids labeled ADHD at the Albany Free School is that, instead of getting Ritalin, that kids who have been labeled are allowed to play outdoors in the sunlight a lot? Especially African American kids in that more northern area of the USA who will struggle more with getting enough Vitamin D at that lattitude? The Free School has an outdoor courtyard at the school kids can use when they want, and they allow kids to go to the nearby parks, plus they have some rural lands they go on field trips too."
Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council site also calls these "Gilchrest Fractures" after a dermatologist: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-nov.shtml """ Your son had what I call a "Gilchrest fracture." About 30 years ago, dermatologists like Barbara Gilchrest at Boston University, began telling Americans, including children, to stay out of the sun, lather on the sunblock, and to "drink milk" if they are concerned about vitamin D. The problem is that your son would have to drink at least 40 glasses of milk a day to get enough vitamin D if he followed her sun-avoidance advice and it sounds like he did.
Gilchrest fractures are vitamin D deficiency fractures in healthy people that occur after normal activities. Two studies have clearly linked such fractures to low vitamin D levels. A recent Finnish study found Gilchrest fractures to be almost four times more likely in young soldiers with vitamin D levels below 30 ng/ml (75 nmol/L). An earlier study of Israeli soldiers showed the same thing. The surprising thing about both studies was none of the men were obviously vitamin D deficient, indicating—once again—that current lower limits of vitamin D blood levels are set too low and that serum 25(OH)D levels should be maintained at 50–80 ng/ml, year-round. [Ruohola JP, et al. Association between serum 25(OH)D concentrations and bone stress fractures in Finnish young men. J Bone Miner Res. 2006 Sep;21(9):1483–8. Givon U, et al. Stress fractures in the Israeli defense forces from 1995 to 1996. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2000 Apr;(373):227–32.]
The rates of Gilchrest fractures, even in young people, have been steadily increasing over the last thirty years, since dermatologists have been handing out their pathological advice. For example, the incidence of fractured wrists in American kids went up 32% in boys and 56% in girls between the years 1970–2000. [Khosla S, et al. Incidence of childhood distal forearm fractures over 30 years: a population-based study. JAMA. 2003 Sep 17;290(11):1479–85.]
A study in Great Britain showed a clear latitudinal variation with the lowest fracture rates in sunnier southeast England and the highest rates in of Gilchrest fractures in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. [Cooper C, et al. Epidemiology of childhood fractures in Britain: a study using the general practice research database. J Bone Miner Res. 2004 Dec;19(12):1976–81.]
The good news is that your son only suffered a broken foot by following Professor Gilchrest's advice. As you will see below, others have lost their lives....
All this leaves us with a question, "Are physicians responsible for their advice?" When dermatologists or other physicians subvert the vitamin D steroid hormone system by telling patients to avoid the sun, do they assume an affirmative duty to assess and maintain the vitamin D system they have subverted? Do they have a duty to inform their patients about relevant risks of sun-avoidance? Do they have a duty to inform their patients about relevant risks of vitamin D deficiency? How many dermatologists even bother to check vitamin D levels in their pale-as-ghost patients? How many bother to advise vitamin D supplements? If they do advise supplements, how many advise enough vitamin D to compensate for lack of sunlight? These are questions for tort lawyers. """
Most people in the USA are vitamin D deficient, and it has been linked to depression, schizophrenia, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, autism, influenza, and more. More on getting the right level of vitamin D through using D3 gelcaps or other means: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
An excerpt from "The Underground History of American Education": http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm """ Solve this problem and school will heal itself: children know that schooling is not fair, not honest, not driven by integrity. They know they are devalued in classes and grades, that the institution is indifferent to them as individuals. The rhetoric of caring contradicts what school procedure and content say, that many children have no tolerable future and most have a sharply proscribed one. The problem is structural. School has been built to serve a society of associations: corporations, institutions, and agencies. Kids know this instinctively. How should they feel about it? How should we?
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
Schools got the way they were at the start of the twentieth century as part of a vast, intensely engineered social revolution in which all major institutions were overhauled to wo
Slashdot Mirror
If goverments were so bad, why is much of Western Europe with more intervention but more democracy overall generally happier than the USA?
http://web.archive.org/web/20080119001830/http://www.adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Generation_Fcked_How_Britain_is_Eating_Its_Young.html
The biggest point is from here, that the income-through-jobs link is becoming more broken every day as we see sci-fi robots become reality, as forseen in 1964:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"""
The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures--unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S.
The existence of this paradox is denied or ignored by conventional economic analysis. The general economic approach argues that potential demand, which if filled would raise the number of jobs and provide incomes to those holding them, is underestimated. Most contemporary economic analysis states that all of the available labor force and industrial capacity is required to meet the needs of consumers and industry and to provide adequate public services: Schools, parks, roads, homes, decent cities, and clean water and air. It is further argued that demand could be increased, by a variety of standard techniques, to any desired extent by providing money and machines to improve the conditions of the billions of impoverished people elsewhere in the world, who need food and shelter, clothes and machinery and everything else the industrial nations take for granted.
There is no question that cybernation does increase the potential for the provision of funds to neglected public sectors. Nor is there any question that cybernation would make possible the abolition of poverty at home and abroad. But the industrial system does not possess any adequate mechanisms to permit these potentials to become realities. The industrial system was designed to produce an ever-increasing quantity of goods as efficiently as possible, and it was assumed that the distribution of the power to purchase these goods would occur almost automatically. The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand -- for granting the right to consume -- now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system.
"""
Some of this may be that you are seeing the part you want to see and trying to pigeon hole these arguments. Here is a good essay for a broader perspective:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"""
To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constan
If you read the essay I wrote linked below, a major point is that most millionaires themselves would be better off living in a society with a basic income, and I give a list of reasons (better medical care especially in disaster times, a better love life, a better family life and less worries about their children, less stress, happier communities and safer streets, more friends, less regulation in having businesses with employees, more free music and free software, and so on).
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
But, a lot of it has to do with what sort of society you want to live in.
Also, there are a lot of ways such a system could be paid for other than direct taxes. As I wrote there: "The US government has a lot of assets. It controls the broadcast spectrum and can rent it. It can rent fishery rights. It owns about a third of the land in the country and can get royalties for mining and forestry rights. The government controls water rights. The government can assess fines for risky or anti-social behavior (as it could have done to Wall Street instead of a bailout. :-) In Alaska, there is a Permanent Fund that gives one to two thousand dollars a year to every Alaskan resident based on royalties from oil development, as well as paying for the operation of the Alaskan government (so, no income or sales taxes). There is also control of the money supply, which needs to expand as commerce expands, and the extra money needed can be printed by the government inflation free. So, there are various ways the government can fund a basic income, even without a wealth tax. "
The core issue is, does every human have a claim to some of the productivity of the industrial commons and ecological commons by right of being alive? If you answer that yes, then you get a basic income or some other sort of similar thing however it is implemented (until we move entirely to a gift economy). If you say no, then in an age of robots and computers being able to do more and more of what humans do, what is the alternative to starvation for most people without lots of capital? Eventually, all those who can't sell their labor for less than what robots cost to operate or for what other desperate humans are willing to work for as the human-labor requiring jobs go away:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
And, eventually, these economic dislocations may even effect most millionaires, since a million dollars is not a lot of money these days, especially in times of social unrest and economic turmoil.
As for getting over materialism, why do most billionaires still work or do other volunteer things, when they could retire and play golf all day and live in a big house? It is the natural inclination of healthy humans to want to do positive things. It is not a misleading comparison to look at stressed out people beaten down by school or work or prejudice who look for pain relief in television or drugs and then say this is how everyone would spend any leisure they had.
Our entire society can produce so much wealth that everyone can have as much as they need, or even, for the most part, as much as any healthy person would want. So, is materialism "human nature" or is it a culture that has been promoted by a particular form of economic arrangement that even the poor have been socialized to support against their own interests? More ideas on this theme:
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"""
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for t
Thanks for the great reply. You make some great points. And it is true, most people in the USA have not been socialized to be self-regulating or self-directing. Example:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"
So, yes, we need to rethink what education means and all sorts of other things. James P. Hogan's novels touch on some of these themes, especially Voyage From Yesteryear. People may need some time to adjust having all their assumptions about the world change.
On money and debt, see the second version of a related film, the YouTube part of the second version (Starting at 2:40) covers some of a rethinking of that:
http://www.moneyasdebt.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxo_XPdpI_s
But sure, there are imperatives in the financial system that drive this too, things like tying executive compensation to growth and not sustainability. Some of that can be fixed by mild inflation or demurrage, to keep money moving. But ultimately money is about rationing, and, as Iain Banks said, a sign of poverty.
Using a phrase like "our standard of living" covers up the fact that some people get the benefits of automation, but others pay the costs (directly or indirectly). Marshall Brain wrote about that here:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
On labor saving:
"The Original Affluent Society"
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied. The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo."
With robotics on the way, what are people going to do when there are no jobs in construction?
"USC's 'print-a-house' construction technology"
http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html
"Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, is starting to support research on the "Contour Crafting" automated construction system that its creator believes will one day be able to build full-scale houses in hours."
Or no jobs in burger flipping even running the machines?
"Robot Chef"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSKMGurrPI
Or even, next-to-no jobs in medicine? Or software? Or music? Because even if human do those things, automation lets less people do so much more?
"Robot doctor gets thumbs-up from patients"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4946229/
It's a big like something in Isaac Asimov's story "The Last Question", when it was asked, if you are in a rainstorm, and you take shelter under a tree, what are you going to do when the tree gets wet through and starts dripping on you? Do you say, I'll go under another tree? When robots can automate much of construction, are we going to get jobs again in agriculture or miming or driving trucks or delivering packages?
"[p2p-research] 60 jobs that will rock the future... (not)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004216.html
"[p2p-research] Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
The US is in the midst of vast and increasing unemployment. Many jobs probably are not coming back. Most services are frivolous and related to guarding or make-work.
http://www
People can take mortgages against illiquid assets to pay taxes. Native Americans are a special case of cultural genocide; to disprove your point, there are about six million millionaire families in the USA -- are they all drug addicted? This study shows most addictive behavior is environmental: :-) People should vote in a good way for their interests. And they will see the consequences. If people had more free time from a basic income, many could become more informed voters and more active in various decision making processes. The health care issue shows that -- other industrialized countries have cheaper and in many ways better health care for most people than in the USA. (Granted, health care for the ultra-rich or certain others in the USA can be good within some expensive areas like cancer treatment, even if cancer treatment is often slighted and more dependent on good research for everyone.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
You have a good point on relative affluence, except that, as James P. Hogan suggests:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
once wealth ceases to matter as status, people may find more worthwhile things to do with their time (like, the fact that someone might be unable design and construct their own handbags might be seen as a sign of shame?). The economy you describe, requiring economic slavery to force some people to clean other people's toilets, is on its way out one way or another:
"Ladybug robot cleans restrooms"
http://pinktentacle.com/2007/11/ladybug-robot-cleans-restrooms/
Gandhi had a lot to say on that toilet cleaning issue too.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
By the way, vitamin D deficiency may help explain the addictive behavior and other health problems you see in darker skin sun adapted Native Americans in Arizona who have adopted an indoor mainstream US lifestyle (including working in casinos):
"Vitamin D insufficiency in southern Arizona"
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/87/3/608
You make a lot of good points, and sure we have seen a lot of change in the last few hundred years (including multiple genocides of people like the Native Americans who were in the way of change to the land they claimed). The older historical evidence is that in a place like Rome with a slave economy, you were pretty much either a wealthy land owner, a merchant, or a slave. There was maybe a little wiggleroom for an underclass who competed with the slaves and of course there was the military. (There was not much of a "middle class"). As James P. Hogan suggests in his sci-fi books like Voyage from Yesteryear, we are undergoing a "phase change" to a new economic order. If robots can do work about as good as most people for less cost, and better design means most work does not need to be done, then where does that leave everyone who is not a wealthy land owner (or some equivalent in today's USA, owning some other monopoly on something like patents and copyrights and mindshare so on)? With robots and computers as the new intelligent slaves (until they revolt? :-), who needs humans to be physical slaves, merchants, or soldiers? How can you have an underclass that can survive if they are competing with robots who can do everything much cheaper? It would be a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, as Marshall Brain outlines, with a very few left owning everything and all other humans in concentration camps. Unless we have a different social order that moves beyond the notion that a right to consume has to be linked to productivity through formal employment.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
Everyone could get a basic income, even millionaires:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective? "
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
"One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?"
You missed the revolutions in network connectedness (and global consciousness),
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
robotics, materials, genetics, and design tools. Examples of the state of the art in robots:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
Here is an index into stuff I wrote on why doomsters are wrong about material issues (but may be right about social issues):
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/thread.html#4123
We are not running out of stuff or energy by any means. The human imagination is the ultimate resource (as Julian Simon suggests). Are you suggesting optical fiber uses more energy that copper?
On earth, we can recycle and use renewables (or other energy sources even -- whether nuclear or coal), and there are enough resources in the solar system to support quadrillions of humans at a higher than current US standard of living, building thousands of Earth's worth of area in space habitats. How can we be running out of, say, metals when we just need to mine the landfills to get them back? The US auto industry has also become a *net* producer of metal as people downsize cars. And if we switched to electric cars, we would use less electricity (since it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than it takes to make an electric car go the same distance as a gasoline car).
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Try James P. Hogan or Iain Banks or Ursula K. Le Guin for something different in sci-fi.
This sci-fi book from 1982 explores a lot of these issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
"Since the availability of power from fusion reactors and cheap automated labor has enabled them to develop a post-scarcity economy, they do not use money as a means of exchange, nor do they recognize material possessions as symbols of status. Instead, competence and talent are considered symbolic of one's social standing - resources that cannot be counterfeited or hoarded, and must be put to use if they are to be acknowledged. As a result, the competitive drive that fuels capitalist financial systems has filled the colony with the products of decades of incredible artistic and technical talent, and there are no widespread hierarchies. No one person or group of people can know everything, so no one person or group of people is expected to speak for all. They have no centralized authorities; some would say they have no government at all."
Iain Banks "Culture" series explores these themes too.
Healthy humans only need so much stuff. Automation may be good for firms that do it, but if demand is limited, jobs disappear in the system. That's why capitalist systems must grow continually, to create new jobs to make up for productivity increases. The problem is, too much stuff actually can get in the way of a good life, since good human relations are generally the most important part of a happy life and too much stuff distracts from that. Also, right now, much stuff has negative external costs involved in its creation (though we may someday move beyond that).
Here is some sci-fi on ironies in a world of abundance: ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
""The Midas Plague" (originally published in Galaxy in 1954). In this new world of cheap energy, robots are overproducing the commodities enjoyed by mankind. So now the "poor" are forced to spend their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots' extravagant production, so that the "rich" can live lives of simplicity. This story deals with the life of a man named Morey Fry, who marries a girl from a higher class. She is unused to a life of consumption and it wears at their marriage.
But, that would still be a big shift from what we have now, which is based on the idea that people only have a right to consume based on the value of their labor. This was talked about back in the 1960s in a letter sent to President Johnson in 1964:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
To deal with increasing automation destroying the value of most labor given limited demand, what we need more is a global sharing of the wealth produced by an automated industrial commons, which means taxes for a basic income
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
or transitioning to another economic model like a gift economy or a subsistence economy or something else. The big issue is not so much automation (although there are aspects that are negative of loss of control or loss of joy in hands on work that you may love) but the issue of how the fruits of automation get distributed. Related on three different visions of work we need to bring together for the 21st century:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html
Think of this example: someone sets up vending machines powered by solar panels in every community, and these machines print wood shaped to order for very low prices, and the machines take next-to-no labor to keep going. Basically, what you outlined, only even better (maybe the devices just suck carbon and water from the air to make the wood). Your company can't compete with the prices and quality and speedy delivery, so everyone you employ is laid off. The owner of this enterprise, who owns all the patents and who gets all the money, decides to pile it under his or her mattress, or alternatively, gamble it in high stakes poker games (called derivatives :-) that just move to higher and higher stakes. Where are the new jobs there? Sure, that company may make a few new jobs, but overall, lots of labor is saved, so there is a net negative as far as jobs, because healthy people only need so much wood. The only reason to even worry about jobs is this issue of the right to consume, as well as government enforcing monopolies on land or patents or copyrights, since otherwise there is so much abundance we could organize the economy differently, like GNU/Lin
We will need to move to some sort of post-scarcity society. Some stuff I wrote here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
Marshall Brain wrote some ideas here:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I helped organize this article listing more ideas by various authors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
The conclusion there: "Dealing with a jobless recovery presents global society with some difficult choices about values and identity. A straightforward way to keep the current scarcity-based economic system going in the face of the "threat" of abundance (and limited demand) resulting in a related jobless recovery is to use things like endless low-level war, perpetual schooling, expanded prisons, increased competition, and excessive bureaucracy to provide any amount of make-work jobs to soak up the abundance from high-technology (as well as to take any amount of people off the streets in various ways). That seems to be the main path that the USA and other countries have been going down so far, perhaps unintentionally. Alternatively, there are a range of other options to chose from, whether moving towards a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy, or strong local communitarian economies, and to some extent, the USA and other countries have also been pursuing these options as well, but in a less coherent way. Ultimately, the approaches taken to move beyond a jobless recovery (either by creating jobs or by learning to live happily without them) involves political choices that will reflect national and global values, priorities, identities, and aspirations."
So, what did people do before money was invented then? Pick fruit off the trees and grab fish from the rivers? Oh, right, yeah that's what they did. :-)
This is probably the story you remember (Manna by Marshall Brain):
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
He proposes something like a basic income:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
But there are other approaches - a gift economy, or a local subsistence economy using 3D printers, or some other approaches.
Interesting point, especially coming right after the discussion of corporate speech.
Treatment guidelines are here, especially important for slashdot types (like me :-) who spend too much time indoors at the computer:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Well, that's how positive feedback loops work though -- you can start out with a little of a problem and watch feedback create a big problem. Consider even gaming or other computer use. Staying indoors a lot causes vitamin D deficiency, which may cause depression, which gives you less energy to go outdoors, and leaves you in more pain, and so you turn to the computer for pain relief, again as a positive feedback loop producing increasing dysfunction. This may be an important aspect of our current widespread social dysfunction in the industrialized world, especially the USA.
Anyway, some link to the science about vitamin D and mental illness, that is still emerging:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
"""
We propose vitamin D plays a role in mental illness based on the following five reasons:
1. Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
2. Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
3. Mental illness shows a significant comorbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
4. Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
5. Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness.
"""
Things like depression in children can often manifest themselves in various ways other than withdrawal.
But sure, you're right to be wary of oversimplifications. Here is another big part of the problem, which is more social and cultural:
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine"
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
"The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. By not seriously confronting societal sources of despair, American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The good news is that age-old wisdom and legitimate science -- uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of pharmaceutical and insurance corporations -- have much to inform us about revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture. Surviving America's Depression Epidemic provides an alternate approach that encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformation more likely."
Dr. Levine does not mention vitamin D though, but he does have a very tiny section on nutrition. Nutrition underlies a lot of this too. Here is one approach to dealing with resensetizing our tastes to healthier food:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
Cure vitamin D deficiency, while also improving our society with more face-to-face interactions in healthy communities with humane values, and with everyone getting nutritious food to eat, and the world would be a much much better place for everyone. And we have more than enough resources to do that, if we did not waste them all fighting over perceived scarcity and dealing with all the craziness that comes from artificial scarcity (like an artificial scarcity of sunlight by forcing kids to be indoors all the ti
I agree that the OP point on sunlight not being good enough is fishy, although on a practical basis you are just not going to get enough vitamin D from sunlight living the typical mostly indoor life in the Western world. But, the OP does indirectly bring up a cutting edge area of research about what is normal vitamin D levels and how have humans evolved in different settings to process different levels of vitamin D (like in the plains, the forest, the seashore, and the frozen icy wastes of the ice ages, and with different skin pigmentation in each setting). So, there remain a lot of unknowns.
But, the rest of it as far as recommendations is legitimate according to the emerging science, even if there are, as you suggest, caveats that for some few people with rare diseases issue that may be made worse by supplementing.
You can find a vast amount of scientific papers at this site:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
Here is one 2009 study that is there:
"Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention: Global Perspective"
http://www.oncologystat.com/journals/review_articles/AEP/Vitamin_D_for_Cancer_Prevention_Global_Perspective.html
"RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: It is projected that raising the minimum year- round serum 25(OH)D level to 40 to 60 ng/mL (100–150 nmol/L) would prevent approximately 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer each year, and three fourths of deaths from these diseases in the United States and Canada, based on observational studies combined with a randomized trial. Such intakes also are expected to reduce case-fatality rates of patients who have breast, colorectal, or prostate cancer by half. There are no unreasonable risks from intake of 2000 IU per day of vitamin D3, or from a population serum 25(OH)D level of 40 to 60 ng/mL. The time has arrived for nationally coordinated action to substantially increase intake of vitamin D and calcium."
For most people in industrialized countries who spend most of their time indoors, to get that level, you have to supplement in the range the OP mentioned. However, as Dr. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council suggests,
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
you need periodic blood testing to be sure you are getting the right amount. Here is another blog entry from the blog the OP mentioned on this too;
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-rda-for-vitamin-d.html
Another resource:
"A Consortium of Scientists, Institutions and Individuals Committed to Solving the Worldwide Vitamin D Deficiency Epidemic"
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
They have been coordinating blood test results with supplementation levels.
Experts still disagree about the best level for vitamin D in the blood, but in general, it is way higher than what most people have. Here are Dr. Mercola's suggestions, which are close to Dr. Cannell's , but higher than the Grass Roots Health groups:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2002/02/23/vitamin-d-deficiency-part-one.aspx
Dr. Mercola suggests sunlight is the best source.
An audio interview with Dr. Cannell on some of these issues:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/audio/dr-cannell-one-radio-network-interview-11-12-09.mp3
Like everything, there are probably limits to this advice. In that radio interview Dr. Cannell mentions one person (Trevor Marshall) who disagrees. Here
Too bad the people who wrote this study did not look at the vitamin D connection:
"Schizophrenia in black Caribbeans living in the UK: an exploration of underlying causes of the high incidence rate"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2418996/
"The incidence of schizophrenia in black Caribbeans living in the UK is substantially higher than in the white British population. When first reported, these findings were assumed to be a first-generation migrant effect or merely the result of methodological artefacts associated with inconsistencies in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in black Caribbeans and doubts about population denominators. More recently, it has become clear that the incidence of schizophrenia, based on standardised diagnosis and sophisticated census methods, is higher still in second-generation black Caribbeans. The largest study to date has demonstrated a ninefold higher risk of schizophrenia in UK-resident black Caribbeans: findings that are of concern to black Caribbean communities, to their GPs, and to health service managers responsible for resource allocation."
Contrast with:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/the-black-community.shtml
"""
Vitamin D deficiency discriminates based on race, or more precisely, the amount of melanin (pigment) in the skin, which is an effective and ever-present sunscreen. The vitamin D theory of autism predicts that autism is more common in children born to darker-skinned mothers. Such studies are difficult as they raise sensitive social issues, although 3 of 4 recent U.S. studies found a higher incidence of autism in black children—sometimes appreciably higher. [Bhasin TK, Schendel D. Sociodemographic Risk Factors for Autism in a US Metropolitan Area. J Autism Dev Disord. 2007 Apr;37(4):667–77. Croen LA, et al. The changing prevalence of autism in California. J Autism Dev Disord. 2002 Jun;32(3):207–15. Hillman RE, et al. Prevalence of autism in Missouri: changing trends and the effect of a comprehensive state autism project. Mo Med. 2000 May;97(5):159–63.]
"""
Or:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-and-schizophrenia.shtml
"""
Before I describe the remarkable paper from Harvard, I want to compliment researchers at the Saint Barthomew's Hospital in England for almost saying what most psychiatrists already know; the incidence of schizophrenia is much higher in people with dark skin. In the 1970s and 80s, that was an accepted fact, until charges of racism were leveled against the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The spineless APA promptly did retrospective chart analyses and announced the incidence of schizophrenia is exactly — precisely — the same for Blacks as it is for Whites. The ethnicity question is important as the Vitamin D theory is not tenable unless darker skin means a higher incidence. [Coid JW, Kirkbride JB, Barker D, Cowden F, Stamps R, Yang M, Jones PB. Raised incidence rates of all psychoses among migrant groups: findings from the East London first episode psychosis study. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008 Nov;65(11):1250–8.]
Actually, in 2007, a group at Columbia University appears to be the first to break with the APA's political correctness. Dr. Michaeline Bresnahan and her colleagues followed 12,000 children for up to 28 years after birth. African Americans were 3 (three) times more likely to develop schizophrenia than whites and socioeconomic factors could not explain away their findings. [Bresnahan M, Begg MD, Brown A, Schaefer C, Sohler N, Insel B, Vella L, Susser E. Race and risk of schizophrenia in a US birth cohort: another example of health disparity? Int J Epidemiol. 2007 Aug;36(4):751–8.]
"""
I wrote to the author of the first linked study on this (but no resp
It is possible that some of this vitamin D deficiency disaster could have been prevented with more information sharing. As I wrote here: ...
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005081.html
"""
Ryan pointed out to me the University of Wisconsin has patents related to Vitamin D. So, were people perhaps denied Vitamin D as an example of a public institution being funded by public dollars privatizing research results? Same as I can't easily see that study above on the web.
I don't know for sure, but I'd suspect most of this research is funded at least in part by public dollars.
I'm assuming, because the University of Wisconsin says they make a lot of money still from Vitamin D, that lawsuits might start flying if someone else starts using Vitamin D therapies without a license for various illnesses?
Is it possible this is a case of the patent system linked to profit-oriented non-profits damaging the health of billions of people globally? Related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
If the global health care costs of treating all the diseases that have been suggested related to Vitamin D deficiency each year in whole or in part were totaled up, from flu through cancer to schizophrenia, it might total in the trillions of dollars per year in costs.
If people were somehow getting less Vitamin D because of the societal consequences of patents (including competitivenesses among researchers, but also making techniques to costly to use or delaying their widespread adoption), it is possible the the consequences of proprietary knowledge from just this one issue might have cost our global society many trillions of dollars and untold personal suffering. Enough money to fund endless researchers making more free knowledge. Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin got a little bit bigger.
Obviously, I'm all for the Vitamin D researchers at the University Wisconsin as well as other universities getting all the resources they need to do good work. But, there may be a huge problem here with public funding strategies for research. The proprietary approach to research knowledge may literally have been costing trillions of dollars a year (in current dollars) for decades taken across the globe. For the past fifty years, at two trillion a year in excess medical costs, this might add up to US$100 trillion in excess medical costs due to such medical knowledge being proprietary and researchers not cooperating more.
Of course, then the huge public health bills are used to justify *increasing* the proprietary aspects of medical knowledge to create more artificial scarcity -- which is a tremendous and sad irony.
"""
Here is one study of the cost to Western Europe of vitamin D deficiency, and it does not even included costs for excess mental illness:
"Estimated benefit of increased vitamin D status in reducing the economic burden of disease in western Europe."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19268496
"""
Vitamin D has important benefits in reducing the risk of many conditions and diseases. Those diseases for which the benefits are well supported and that have large economic effects include many types of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, several bacterial and viral infections, and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Europeans generally have low serum 25-hydroxyvit
Vitamin D in the human body is produced mostly by the effect of sunlight on the skin, which creates the version called vitamin D3 (which is the best version to supplement with, usually from fish oil in gelcaps).
Essentially, as people in industrialized countries have been spending more time indoors at home, work, or school, often at computer screens; and as people have been following well-meant advice from dermatologists to stay out of the sun; and as we all drive more instead of walk or bicycle; and as children are less allowed to roam freely outdoors through fears of stranger abductions or whatnot, we have ended up vitamin D deficient as a society. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with a variety of issues, including cancer, depression, diabetes, obesity, schizophrenia, autism, heart disease, tooth decay, asthma, allergies, osteoporosis, and even influenza. Ironically, vitamin D deficiency may be causing even more skin cancers in office workers, because being vitamin D deficient cripples some of the immune response that prevents cancer cells from getting out of control. Modern window glass has also been "improved" to let through less UV-B rays to prevent carpet fading; so now we have faded people instead. :-(
Consider that vitamin D deficiency is related to behavioral issues like depression that can manifest themselves in different ways in children. If kids misbehaves in school, they are often denied going outside at recess into the sunshine. If kids misbehave more, they are denied being outside all summer in the sunshine because they have to go to summer school. If they are really bad eventually, then kids get set to juvenile detention and then prison where they may be mostly indoors for years. Sadly, that is a negative spiral of vitamin D deficiency. Homeschoolers at least have the option of being outdoors more and getting more sunshine.
I wrote some on that connection here:
"ADHD or lack of Vitamin D? Albany Free School connection?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005083.html
"I have no doubt such a play-based curriculum is a good thing and better than compulsory school for most kids. I love learner-directed education, where public schools would become more like public libraries. But, what if some of the magic with the kids labeled ADHD at the Albany Free School is that, instead of getting Ritalin, that kids who have been labeled are allowed to play outdoors in the sunlight a lot? Especially African American kids in that more northern area of the USA who will struggle more with getting enough Vitamin D at that lattitude? The Free School has an outdoor courtyard at the school kids can use when they want, and they allow kids to go to the nearby parks, plus they have some rural lands they go on field trips too."
Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council site also calls these "Gilchrest Fractures" after a dermatologist: ...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-nov.shtml
"""
Your son had what I call a "Gilchrest fracture." About 30 years ago, dermatologists like Barbara Gilchrest at Boston University, began telling Americans, including children, to stay out of the sun, lather on the sunblock, and to "drink milk" if they are concerned about vitamin D. The problem is that your son would have to drink at least 40 glasses of milk a day to get enough vitamin D if he followed her sun-avoidance advice and it sounds like he did.
Gilchrest fractures are vitamin D deficiency fractures in healthy people that occur after normal activities. Two studies have clearly linked such fractures to low vitamin D levels. A recent Finnish study found Gilchrest fractures to be almost four times more likely in young soldiers with vitamin D levels below 30 ng/ml (75 nmol/L). An earlier study of Israeli soldiers showed the same thing. The surprising thing about both studies was none of the men were obviously vitamin D deficient, indicating—once again—that current lower limits of vitamin D blood levels are set too low and that serum 25(OH)D levels should be maintained at 50–80 ng/ml, year-round. [Ruohola JP, et al. Association between serum 25(OH)D concentrations and bone stress fractures in Finnish young men. J Bone Miner Res. 2006 Sep;21(9):1483–8. Givon U, et al. Stress fractures in the Israeli defense forces from 1995 to 1996. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2000 Apr;(373):227–32.]
The rates of Gilchrest fractures, even in young people, have been steadily increasing over the last thirty years, since dermatologists have been handing out their pathological advice. For example, the incidence of fractured wrists in American kids went up 32% in boys and 56% in girls between the years 1970–2000. [Khosla S, et al. Incidence of childhood distal forearm fractures over 30 years: a population-based study. JAMA. 2003 Sep 17;290(11):1479–85.]
A study in Great Britain showed a clear latitudinal variation with the lowest fracture rates in sunnier southeast England and the highest rates in of Gilchrest fractures in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. [Cooper C, et al. Epidemiology of childhood fractures in Britain: a study using the general practice research database. J Bone Miner Res. 2004 Dec;19(12):1976–81.]
The good news is that your son only suffered a broken foot by following Professor Gilchrest's advice. As you will see below, others have lost their lives.
All this leaves us with a question, "Are physicians responsible for their advice?" When dermatologists or other physicians subvert the vitamin D steroid hormone system by telling patients to avoid the sun, do they assume an affirmative duty to assess and maintain the vitamin D system they have subverted? Do they have a duty to inform their patients about relevant risks of sun-avoidance? Do they have a duty to inform their patients about relevant risks of vitamin D deficiency? How many dermatologists even bother to check vitamin D levels in their pale-as-ghost patients? How many bother to advise vitamin D supplements? If they do advise supplements, how many advise enough vitamin D to compensate for lack of sunlight? These are questions for tort lawyers.
"""
More on this issue:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1521046&cid=30863854
Sorry, that was supposed to go under:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1521046&cid=30863642
Most people in the USA are vitamin D deficient, and it has been linked to depression, schizophrenia, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, autism, influenza, and more. More on getting the right level of vitamin D through using D3 gelcaps or other means:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Or another item on that blog on blood testing if you supplement:
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-rda-for-vitamin-d.html
Another site:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
A quiz on vitamin D:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2005/09/06/test-your-vitamin-d-knowledge.aspx
"Might Influenza be Little More Than a Symptom of Vitamin D Deficiency?"
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/10/21/avoid-flu-shots-vitamin-d-is-a-better-way.aspx
Many people suggest the right amount of sun exposure may still be best, but it is hard to get. If you have darker skin and work indoors, it may be almost impossible even in summer to get enough sunlight far from the equator:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/the-black-community.shtml
http://curtisduncan.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-michelle-obama-is-more-likely-to.html
An excerpt from "The Underground History of American Education":
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
Solve this problem and school will heal itself: children know that schooling is not fair, not honest, not driven by integrity. They know they are devalued in classes and grades, that the institution is indifferent to them as individuals. The rhetoric of caring contradicts what school procedure and content say, that many children have no tolerable future and most have a sharply proscribed one. The problem is structural. School has been built to serve a society of associations: corporations, institutions, and agencies. Kids know this instinctively. How should they feel about it? How should we?
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
Schools got the way they were at the start of the twentieth century as part of a vast, intensely engineered social revolution in which all major institutions were overhauled to wo