The Educatocracy
Feb. 13th, 2009 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueSo, as a country the UK is a little island. We're about a fifth the population of the US, with about a 50th of the land area.
Our production over the last centuary started out as heavy industry, but has shifted towards banking and finance - London being the banking capital of the world and all. This is mostly what has kept our economy afloat.
In a world where emerging markets are the place where cost per raw man hour are much lower, and the cost of living in the UK is high, it's hard for us to be competitive in that area - our natural resources are few, and even if they weren't we'd have to shift a bit to balance cost of living, minimum wage and make it possible to out-produce China and India.
So what does the rest of this century leave for us? Banks aren't doing as well as they were.
So I'd like to propose that what the UK can do in a serious fashion, is become the largest University in the world. We're small enough that connecting the whole country with fiber optics clocks in at about5 billion 29 billion. Every house has a TV, more or less, and a very large proportion have game consoles and desktop computer systems.
And there's the Open University - lets extend that. Let's finance it, and make it's course cheaper. Even better, we make them not just _free_ but actively pay for people who do well at them - Maybe not a large sum - maybe we skew that by how much a skill is 'worth' in the world economy. But we ramp it up. We kick this notion that somehow 'being clever' is a bad thing, and instead try and convert everyone in the country into a scholarship student in some degree.
Let the process build upon itself, and sell this education service internationally - we're already a very popular country for international education - can you imagine how much better this would be if every man on the street was working towards a degree to supplement his unemployment benefit?
Yes, we'd devalue education a bit - we'd raise the bar on employment, because if everyone has a degree, you're nothing special any more. But at the same time, we'd be pushing forth the best educated people in the world, and focussing our collective culture on becoming the research and design powerhouse of the world. That's something that's very hard to value, much like banking services are - information is finally reaching a cusp of being an infinitely scalable resource, so lets start thinking about spreading it.
Maybe you'll still get people who never work, and instead spend all their time getting money from the education system. I can't help but feel though, that's infinitely preferable to the world as it is today - where we're effectively paying our people to breed ignorant and feral children.
Our production over the last centuary started out as heavy industry, but has shifted towards banking and finance - London being the banking capital of the world and all. This is mostly what has kept our economy afloat.
In a world where emerging markets are the place where cost per raw man hour are much lower, and the cost of living in the UK is high, it's hard for us to be competitive in that area - our natural resources are few, and even if they weren't we'd have to shift a bit to balance cost of living, minimum wage and make it possible to out-produce China and India.
So what does the rest of this century leave for us? Banks aren't doing as well as they were.
So I'd like to propose that what the UK can do in a serious fashion, is become the largest University in the world. We're small enough that connecting the whole country with fiber optics clocks in at about
And there's the Open University - lets extend that. Let's finance it, and make it's course cheaper. Even better, we make them not just _free_ but actively pay for people who do well at them - Maybe not a large sum - maybe we skew that by how much a skill is 'worth' in the world economy. But we ramp it up. We kick this notion that somehow 'being clever' is a bad thing, and instead try and convert everyone in the country into a scholarship student in some degree.
Let the process build upon itself, and sell this education service internationally - we're already a very popular country for international education - can you imagine how much better this would be if every man on the street was working towards a degree to supplement his unemployment benefit?
Yes, we'd devalue education a bit - we'd raise the bar on employment, because if everyone has a degree, you're nothing special any more. But at the same time, we'd be pushing forth the best educated people in the world, and focussing our collective culture on becoming the research and design powerhouse of the world. That's something that's very hard to value, much like banking services are - information is finally reaching a cusp of being an infinitely scalable resource, so lets start thinking about spreading it.
Maybe you'll still get people who never work, and instead spend all their time getting money from the education system. I can't help but feel though, that's infinitely preferable to the world as it is today - where we're effectively paying our people to breed ignorant and feral children.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 06:41 pm (UTC)Not that this in any way really invalidates your argument.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 07:48 pm (UTC)"With punters all across the UK mad for some ultra-fast broadband action, the Broadband Stakeholder Group got out its big calculator and after a lengthy session of frenzied tippety-tapping, put the cost of rolling out fibre-optic cable across the UK at a whistle-inducing £5.1 billion, potentially climbing up to an astonishing £28.8 billion depending on the technology used."
So... yeah. Sort of.
Either way, I don't care. Far better value than a bank bailout IMO.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 07:50 pm (UTC)http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/223332/288-billion-bill-to-fibre-every-home-in-uk.html
Fiber to cabinet: 5bn
Fiber to home: 28bn.
Either way, money well spent IMO :)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 09:57 pm (UTC)Argggh! It's not the frickin' same, for crying outloud!
The banks have not been given a penny* by the government, we've invested in them. It is not the same as spending the money; not in the blinkin' slightest.
* - Northern Rock is slightly different, but should still turn a profit.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 11:58 pm (UTC)It may not be the headline numbers, but it's still a big number.
(On the upside, it's good to see banks in national hands at least - and there's always the cost of doing nothing.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 08:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 01:01 am (UTC)I'd love to be proven wrong.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 09:26 am (UTC)Perhaps your commentator was referring to the size and scale of the problem and perhaps they were flying a kite for their own preferred scheme.
There is a honest disagreement over which course to take next. There is a debate over whether insurance schemes or a bad bank or nationalisation are the best solution. The debaters are men and women of good character and sincere reputation, they are not loonies or gold crazed apocalypse watchers. Hopefully during the next 2 months of summits one group view will be adopted and the world will collectively help each other.
When a bank is in extreme trouble the govt can step in and back it. But if the banking system is so large in relation to the rest of the economy then the country itself can be threatened. Which countries could that be? Certainly Iceland, Ireland and Switzerland. While not as bad I would say that US, UK and the Benelux countries also get a stern looking at.
Historians will note that the Benelux nations with their tightly integrated economies had many banks that needed to be bailed out, Dexia, ING, Fortis, etc. The UK, through RBS, took on responsibility for the giant ABN AMRO. Just how much extra strain could they and the eurozone tolerate if they had to support one more wafer thin bailout?
I, for one, will be expecting a valentine's card from the Netherlands.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 10:57 am (UTC)