Reclaiming the Information Commons

Communication technology in the developed world is so efficient that the total communications traffic of America is handled on less than 5% the currently installed fiber-optic/satellite communication system. That communication efficiency provides the key to fast development of any regions that ally together for development.

As a region electrifies, the first household item purchased will typically be a television set. Looking towards educating their citizens well at 5-to-15% the cost in the developed world, priority should be given to establishing a satellite/fiber-optic communication system in the developing world and beaming education programs to entire continents.

Forty-to-50 communication bands should be assigned for a region's education with each class taught many times throughout the day. The best educators in the region, several at each grade level for each subject, will produce documentary education-edited for maximum simplicity, clarity, and comprehension-for all classes and all ages, preschool, primary school, middle school, high school, and universities.

With their lessons free on TV and in a database downloadable to video-recorders, these high-quality teachers will be spending less time teaching than any one of the tens of thousands of teachers they replace. Every teacher for every student in every class will be a gifted teacher. Through the fictions and omissions of economics, political economy, and history being challenged, researched, and corrected, their students will be much better educated. Teachers become role models for students and many students will strive to emulate these superior teachers.

Education is a deeply felt universal need; most students will watch those education programs intensely. Those who cannot afford video-recorders or pencils and paper will acquire a keen memory, many will graduate equal with their peers, and that early memory training will be an asset throughout their life. Students will be able to work at home, or at a job for the well-being of the family, and study in their free time. Adults could educate themselves in their free time. The already educated could further advance their knowledge.

Timidity, feelings of inferiority, peer pressure, obsolete textbooks, overcrowded classrooms, moderately competent teachers, the occasional incompetent teacher, and overcrowded classrooms-great impediments to education in current schools-would not restrict these children's education. Parental interaction, advice, and support will greatly enhance a child's education.[q]The cost of building and maintaining schools, purchasing textbooks, paying teachers, and transporting children to and from school is avoided. Facilities must be built for the occasional subject that will require hands-on learning for that small part of class time.

Testing centers should be established to issue certificates of scholastic achievement. When students feel they have advanced to the next level, they will go to the testing station and take the appropriate test. The brightest students will advance one grade every four months or faster. Many will have the knowledge of PhDs at an age when today's students enter college. Arts and skills of all kinds would expand as all used their free time for the maximum gains to their life.

Judgments would be made while still young and idealistic. All this would be gained while enjoying the irreplaceable quality time between parent and child. Some talented students who do not have parental support would find a surrogate family by immersing themselves in education.

Eliminating Political Corruption by the Wealthy and Powerful

Currently only politicians in office or the wealthy have access to all citizens in a region. Ten to 20 TV channels should be reserved for all who desire to run for a political office. With free access to the masses, any funding of politicians would be recognized for the corruption it is and every politician would be watching other politicians every move. Those who took money would risk defeat at the next election. Most politicians are fundamentally honest and would rather not be beholden to wealth to fund their campaigns anyway.

As the public could now be reached cheaply with the message if a politician accepted special interest money, corruption would rapidly decline. Few politicians would risk the voters' penalties through accepting election funds. Election funding would be recognized for what it really is, buying votes within the law-making process, and made illegal.

A Modern Communication Commons converts wasted Time to Free Time

In a modern communications commons, groceries and inexpensive frequently-traded items will be available, as now, at the supermarket and corner store.

Currently big ticket, infrequently-purchased items (cars, appliances, furniture, farm equipment, industrial equipment, major tools, et al.) are purchased primarily through prior knowledge and experience of use. Sales of these expensive items do not require intense advertising. Manufacturers of each product need only index their product in a video database with all pertinent information-price, energy efficiency, hours of useful life, noise level, et al.-to make an informed decision.

Every qualified producer would have the right to place his/her services or products in that databank and pay a minuscule percentage of gross sales out of cash flow for that right. With the enormous costs of advertising eliminated, small producers can compete with large corporations in many products and services. Their low prices for quality products and services would insure low prices by the major producers who normally enjoy the high prices of monopoly protection.

Buyers would study specifications, styling, engineering, and actual use of the product on their computer or television at their leisure. A purchase would be made by typing in the model, color, accessories, delivery address, and credit card number that is protected by infrared thermogram images of thumb prints, palm, artery, vein, and eye pattern, or signature scanning. The item purchased would be shipped that day from the closest distribution point or the factory.

With access to a database of products ready for shipment, independent truckers can compete with large trucking companies. The price of that major item would be reduced by much lower advertising costs (paper saved would save billions of trees), almost no sales force and much lower inventory and storage costs. Guarantees, maintenance, and repairs can be handled by local private industry.

Manufacturers' on-time delivery of parts to the factory that greatly reduces storage and finance capital costs will have been expanded to on-time shipping to consumers. Instead of time spent in warehouses and retail stores, the products would be immediately packaged, addressed, and shipped from the factory directly to their home (larger items to a distribution point near the customer). On-time delivery of finished products would eliminate most wholesale and retail buildings. The cost of inventory, insurance, heat, electricity, stocking clerks, sales clerks, maintenance workers, building repairs, and security will drop precipitously.

Under the above guidelines, distribution efficiency will double, meaning distribution costs will drop by half and inventory costs will fall even further as a nation's ships, planes, trucks and railroads settle into a postal flow pattern just as with Christmas packages today. Purchases would be delivered just as a nation's Parcel Service does today or consumers could, upon notification, pick up their products at a freight terminal. Products that formerly were stored for months in warehouses and showrooms will now be in transit and storage less than a week, reducing inventory costs, and many prices may drop by half.

With each person having to work only 2-to-3 days per week for a quality living (that drop in price is primarily the labor saved), those with artistic abilities and dreams will have time to study and hone their skills. Music, painting, sculpturing, sports, writing, inventions-virtually every skill and the enjoyment of those arts-will expand exponentially.

An unseen and unfelt Money Transaction Tax

The cost of an efficient modern communications industry can be covered by an infinitesimal transaction tax on the circulation of money within and between banks.[r]The costs would be so small they would not even be noticed by the individual and the savings to a nation or region will be nothing less than reducing education costs to 5-to-15% of what is normal today and reduce product distribution costs by half. Each of those cost reductions represent reductions in the labor and capital necessary to educate, produce, and distribute.

With the developed world frozen by custom into expensive education and distribution systems, this is the opportunity for the developing world to leapfrog the developed world and establish a truly efficient society with a workweek averaging no more than 2-to-3 days.

That Population can be stabilized without Coercion has been proven

If an allied developing region is really serious about sharing the world's wealth so all attain a quality life style, population issues must be considered. It is much cheaper to guarantee the elderly food and shelter in old age than to care for an increased number of children on which elderly parents would have to depend upon in their declining years.

Population stabilization is possible without any attempt to control citizens' decisions; Japan has 1.53 births per family, Germany 1.51 births, and Italy 1.29. These are birthrates that could reduce their populations by half in roughly 50 years while doubling the amenities of life for each citizen with no increase in use of natural resources. A steady increase in technological efficiency during the same time span could more than double the amenities of life again and all that gain would be without increasing hours of labor, consumption of resources, or pollution of the environment. With fewer members per family, the amenities per person that can be purchased on the same income rises even more steeply than these figures indicate.

Here again a modern communications system explaining the great per-capita gains and reduction in resource use possible from a reduction in population is the key. The most Catholic country in the world, Italy , has the lowest birthrate. So the citizens of all countries will reduce their birthrates of their own free will once they realize the high quality of life possible by a reduction in births.