THE HUMAN RACE AND OTHER DIRECTIONLESS THINGS

Anybody who’s ever read my books knows I make the occasional jibe at good ol’ Homo Sap. What’s bothering me is that it’s such an easy target. Everything’s a messy exercise in either greed or stupidity, and more often both. The almost incomprehensible optimism of the postwar years and the grand visions, both propaganda and idealistic, have resulted in a pole to pole slum.

Nobody could describe Earth in the early 21^st century as much more than a junkyard with delusions of grandeur. The West and something called The Developed World has Sitcom-Paradise for a benchmark, and the rest of the world has Applied Poverty with assorted tyrannies. The prevailing motif is capitalism, and not much else.

Capitalism per se is the descendant of the rise of the merchant classes in the old societies. It varies a little, but overall it’s property oriented. Property, as most of the world (except apparently the IMF and the World Bank) knows, is a limited commodity. Capitalism is accepted largely on the basis of its enshrining of the rights of property. Not much of an achievement, and not much of an ethos, certainly no Utopia in disguise. It’s not really much more than a common medium of societies.

The limitations of capitalism are endless. I think Karl Marx missed the paradigm completely. As anything but property, it’s an obstacle to meeting human needs. The grotesque transformation of human health issues into costing exercises is one of the more glaring examples. Expensive education is a further sickening form of capitalism as a truly lousy value system. I would suggest that a healthy, trained person is far more valuable to himself and his society than the alternative. Result, so far, a lot of sick, untrained people, who are spending more on medication than education, and can’t really afford decent lives.

This is where humanity has found itself. In the midst of a series of processes which miss any conceivable target of a functional society, and paying through every orifice for the privilege. Is this really where the human race wants to be? Capitalism and the society it has produced is like a machine gun without a target. It just blazes away, and those in the way get hurt.

Now- what is the human race trying to achieve? Prosperity? Freedom from material needs? Happiness? Personal human rights? Personal freedom? Healthy kids? Good education? Meaningful lives? Efficient society? A future?

I ask because what has been achieved isn’t anywhere near any of those goals. Nothing like, and getting worse. No planning, no infrastructure, no workable cost systems, no guarantees of human rights in practice, no planetary management systems, no real answers to the hideous situation of 60% of the world’s population.

There is a very slight, feeble, explanation for the present situation, in which the rise of postwar populations simply swamped the old systems. Saturation level consumerism and demand, expanding trade, massive increase in manufacturing and freight, all added their ever more complex weight to a society which changed beyond recognition in 50 years. Add to this the various elements of demands on revenue, and the infrastructure to carry this gigantic un-housetrained economic gorilla, and you have the makings of “a fine mess” indeed.

It’s not much of an excuse, though. Capitalism is like fire. If your house gets burned down, it might be because you didn’t have the sense to make sure the fire was under supervision, or couldn’t put it out when it got loose. Secondly, if your sole method of motivating people is to tell them to make money, why be surprised if that’s their top priority, and instead of going and getting buckets, they just follow the breadcrumbs, oblivious?

The fact is that capitalism isn’t particularly good or evil. It’s just poorly managed. It isn’t the great cure-all, or the real source of the disease. The problem is that the way it’s used is creating the disasters. That machine gun isn’t going to hit any targets if you’ve got thousands of ways of misdirecting the bullets.

Say you set a target of 100% global literacy by the year 2040. A useful, rational use of resources for a worthwhile goal. How would you achieve that? What would you need? How would you pay for it all? Anybody hear the word “logistics” sneaking around?

OK, let’s take it apart:

You’ve set the target for literacy due to the mystic revelation that a planet full of illiterates simply will not be able to operate at all, and all your high priority, must-do work in the sciences, medicine and industry will collapse due to lack of trained people. This is a global situation, because of the realities of trade, science and commerce. Everyone has to be able to work effectively in this marketplace, or everyone else suffers for the inefficiencies. For that reason it has been decided that all children under 18 will be taught by the same method to create a standardized level of education. That means that your required level of literacy has to hit a particularly high standard in which people will have the fundamental skills to train to the desired level. Therefore your training in literacy will have to be intensive, and particularly thorough, reaching academic standards in high school or preferably earlier, to save time, because literate kids can learn faster and teach themselves up to higher levels.

Surprise! You’ve got a billion kids to train to a set standard, and you don’t have an allowed margin for acceptable levels of failure. 100% was set as the target, and 100% is what you really need to deliver, because illiterates are effectively invalids in your society. Even 1% failure would leave you with 10 million wrecks. You start looking at the logistics of this horror, and you discover that if you use existing methods, you won’t need a budget, because no amount of money could do that.

Each kid needs:

1. Three good text books for their readers, a computer network, related software, and about 150 hours of personal tuition for own-language phonics and other rock bottom-line learning. Add to this the various exercises in comprehension, spelling, construction of sentences, and use of logic in languages, another 200 hours for the under 10s.

2. They need to be able to learn uninterrupted, in a secure environment, with no wars, massacres, or other sporting events.

3. A lot of them will need to be able to eat, wear clothes, and drink.

4. Medical support may be needed in some areas.

5. Many will need to be taught a foreign language, because it has been determined that use of one of the five or six basic language groups reduces the need for multiple translations, and improves own-language skills by enforcing meaningful use of language.

The teachers need:

1. Wages.

2. A roof over their heads.

3. Security.

4. To be able to teach properly, and to the necessary depth.

Now, your costing:

Each kid will require training to the point whereby they do pass their tests. So methods that don’t deliver are out. Thankfully, educational software is now a holy grail of software manufacturers, and the standard is pretty good, and more importantly, trustworthy. Also thankfully, they’re not averse to large orders, and a relatively minor bit of upgrading has them able to produce ongoing high quality material.

You have made a point of not being encumbered with instantly-obsolete teaching materials, all of it can be upgraded and enhanced under contract to meet your needs. The overriding demand of fundamental education is to teach kids how to learn, so this has been the primary focus of your targeting. You now have a system designed to teach a high standard of literacy, because you simply referred your suppliers to the set standards, and they didn’t have to diverge into the usual commercial bells and whistles.

Secure environments have been set up for the most impoverished students, literally dragged off the garbage heaps and out of the sewers and brothels, cleaned, fed, housed, and ready to rejoin the human race. There weren’t many objections to that. Strict enforcement of children’s rights has been imposed and only reliable people are allowed anywhere near those kids, oversighted by independent community groups, doctors, lawyers, and police. Food, water, and clothing are provided under voluntary and commercial agreements. National governments are required by treaty to supply either medical support or facilities for medical support, depending on their abilities.

Foreign language teaching, using the main groups of English, Chinese, Latin, Slavic, Hindi, Arabic, with German and Greek as options, are run parallel to own-language teaching. Meaning the kids are at the same standard in both, and receiving essentially the same lessons in both. Because languages tend to synthesize from each other,(English being the notable example) the projection is that all the traditional languages will survive, and that the global language eventually created will be a form of idiomatic slang, understood globally.

The teachers have been provided with resources for both in-house and remote area teaching, allowing participation by kids in remote areas on a face to face basis, to reinforce the teaching practice. Their wages are shared by the participating governments, meaning a lower overall cost. Class sizes are small, because it’s now affordable. Thanks to technology, ongoing monitoring of problems is now a lot easier, and students can be given ways of dealing with the usual spelling and comprehension difficulties without destroying their confidence or motivation. Dyslexic students are identified early and given the appropriate remedial tutoring, in synchronization with their required standards, so they don’t wind up educationally “hospitalized”.

Security is absolute, attendances are religiously checked, and “problem students” receive attention at age 5, not age 35. The old military idea of setting standards of personal performance has worked, as usual, encouraging self discipline and self motivation. In kids, it means not being left out, or looking ridiculous, so it always works, and teaches them some basic social skills which poverty and ignorance somehow don’t allow.

So what was your real cost? X dollars per year, shared. Less, probably, than the amount spent on bird seed in a year. Cost benefit is whatever those kids can produce. That’s probably in the many trillions per year, and it can’t happen if they aren’t trained.

Hm. That was easy. Well, why wouldn’t it be? Everybody had agreed that it needed doing, and that there were massive global benefits. Note, however, that it’s also at some remove from the way most people are educated, and the way training is approached at a social level. Current practice is like getting on a bus; you arrive at your destination, prepared or not. You may miss your stop, and have to go miles out of your way to get there. The fares keep changing, and as a commute, it’s a frustrating and sometimes risky business, not worth what you paid for it. At least this way you’re getting a definite result, and skills to a standard accepted anywhere, relevant in a world where country-hopping is normal. This is the difference between setting a social target and “Guess whether your new employee/doctor/financial advisor/research assistant understands what you’re saying.” It’s also a damn sight cheaper than the likely disasters of incomprehension, to start with.

Capital contributed, but capital wasn’t the real means, nor the real end, which is a workable society. In that sense capital is more tool than trophy. Ironically, in terms of the present situation, capitalism survives better in efficient societies. This is “social capitalism”, the recognition of social resources as assets over and above capital values. People live a lot better in societies where every little thing isn’t a form of patience-draining, sanity-defying, time-cannibalizing, accountancy. Costs can be shared to the point they’re minimal.

Social assets and their values kick in at just about every level of human life. If you’re a service provider, providing 100 million dollars’ worth of something at top rates, and making an arduous, contentious, penny pinching, debt-collection and lawsuit-riddled, 50 million “profit” by virtually killing yourself and costing yourself 20 million in grief just to collect your money, wouldn’t you rather have a system where you make a healthy profit of 35 million but don’t have to spend the extra 20? You’re already at least 5 million better off. Better yet, what if your service, being infrastructure, is seen as a social asset, and you can get guaranteed profit on a lower cost base, and offer lower prices, and retool to better efficiency with no cost? Bit different, isn’t it?

Look at it from the other perspective, and the lawsuits, penny pinching, debt collection, strange valuations, and the rest of the soap opera are just a form of industrial and social constipation. People buy your service because they need it, and their own businesses are affected by your rates. An efficient society, and an efficient business, doesn’t create problems for itself by imposing overheads and added costs and roping in third parties to clear up the messes. Nobody benefits. The law isn’t enhanced by more civil spleen. Important issues are obstructed and resources used dealing with avoidable problems. The businesses, yours and theirs, are just writing open cheques to the world with every incident. “Making money” could be described as wishful thinking with one incident.

This has got a lot to do with where the human race is going. Costs are making life a lot harder than it needs to be for everyone. It’s blocking the development of the whole species. Capitalism can only work well in profitable modes. This crap isn’t helping anyone make a profit. Therefore a society based on pure capitalism is creating problems for itself with every cheapskate, bitchy, nitpicking transaction it allows. Greed isn’t good; it’s expensive. You can make a fair profit on anything, if you cost properly, and if you don’t get blown out of the water every five seconds by someone else’s desperate efforts to contain their own margins.

Health is the classic case whereby medication, an important social asset, is now “worth” more than platinum in some cases. Result, sick and/or broke people, trying to earn a living while sicker than most dogs, real or conceptual. The society therefore pays to clean up the slaughter yard of mistakes. That’s now costing the world trillions a year, both in blunders and medical expenses. Social capitalism would say, “We need healthy people and a health system not being crushed by generations of patients who have treatable diseases; so we come up with a way of providing cheap, prompt, health care, and make sure people get what they need. We also need to ensure prevention of as many diseases as we can.”

This is just common sense. No society can afford the equivalent of multiple world wars in its health system, year in, year out. Another word for it is “sanity”. TB alone has killed more people than the wars of the 20^th century. Malaria is worse. HIV, Hepatitis C, the resistant pathogens, the various sexually transmitted epidemics, depression, and the various viral outbreaks, make this arguably the most dangerous period humanity has ever experienced. Adding a thousand dollars or so to every disease isn’t exactly helping.

However- medications don’t make themselves, usually. The corollary to this is a workable process whereby they can be marketed at rational prices. This is another version of logistics, the facilitation of necessary social functions. Whatever anyone thinks of the way drugs are costed, the industry has to be able to both produce and develop. In this case the social priority has to be prepared to add value to the asset. Not simple, not necessarily popular for various reasons, some good, some bizarre, but it needs doing. Look at it from the point of the intended goals, a working civilization with good standards of human life, and it makes sense. Look at it as a form of accountancy, and it becomes the useless catfight it’s been for the last couple of decades.

These issues have been used as examples largely because they make the strongest contrasts in practical approaches to the development of the human race into something worth living in. There are other, much bigger, strategic issues about where humanity is going, and they require an efficient global society to achieve them.

Not least of the big issues is what the (insert as many expletives as you like) do we think we’re doing with this world? No pig would be seen dead in a sty in this condition. You wanna find some meaningful work for a couple of generations, cleaning up the planetary sewer we’ve created would be a good start. That’s also very important science, and will become more so as the degree of difficulty in dealing with quantities and complex wastes increases.

Then there’s production to meet the population growth, another happy heirloom. Sustainable production reduces the impact on industry at all levels. Forget the jingles. Sustainability is easy. It’s also cheaper. In some cases it reduces production cost and retains product value. Food production, for one, would actually benefit, and become a lot cheaper, from less processing. Humans still have the prehistoric metabolism. Dietary needs are still pretty basic, and demanding of a lot of the trace elements which are innocently leached out of them using water. Simpler will probably be better, and definitely less of a strain on industry. Steaming is a simple way of doing the same thing, and if you’re using boiled water, with less ions, it doesn’t leach like that. You can reuse the water, too.

(One of the things that really infuriates me about the last few decades of ideological name-calling regarding production is that it has achieved so little, with so much wasted paper. If you want to approach an industry about its production methods, don’t just rock in to the office and call them all criminals and pin medals on yourself. Go in with a costed, workable, idea, and the data to back it up. Something that makes sense, is doable, and cost-effective, not just more rhetoric from the Big Book Of Blue Sky Babble. Ideals have to be practical to mean anything to anyone.)

Another little issue we might like to start taking seriously is space. That’s a direction humanity isn’t going to be able to avoid. We’re going there, whether we like it or not. This is one of the areas where capitalism and social capitalism have a lot of common ground. The possible benefits are enormous, and so are the costs, at this stage.

Currently, using rockets, we’re using more fuel than payload. That reduces efficiency to a bare minimum and causes a lot of heartache in trying to decide what to send. There’s a lot at stake here, and a lot more chips will be on the table soon enough. “Space” as a word has a certain aptness about it. One of the big problems of Earth is that there’s only so much space available, and that it’s used so haphazardly. The huge areas we use for energy production alone are bigger than some countries.

Imagine: All our factories and heavy industries off-planet. In space. Where the machines don’t have to spend 30% of their energy just fighting gravity. Where a toxic spill can be cleaned up with the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner, not 20 years worth of budgeting.

Imagine also; Jupiter sized amounts of raw materials, as distinct from ripping up the planet on a routine basis.

To do that, and to use the resources available in the Solar System, we obviously need something much more efficient than rockets, and a much better payload/fuel ratio. That’s not news to anyone in the space game, but it might be to those not exposed to the long saga of thinking in the field, and the economics of space exploration. At the moment the ion drive, the logical successor to rockets, is in its diapers, and looking forward to a trip or so outside the bassinet. This is a whole new practical method, and it will take some work to get it up to being an economic proposition. See any opportunities for capital?

It would be trite to pretend to predict the results, but the fact is that Earth isn’t going to be home forever. That is where humanity is going, either dragged screaming away from its ennui, or a la Star Trek. See what I mean about directions?

Just to add some level of real difficulty, there’s also the matter of the 5000 years of largely uninterrupted conflict Homo Sap. has managed to inflict on itself. This world’s getting much too small for the old fractures among human groups to be viable. This is probably the historical near-end of the Stone Age to future generations, looking horrified at the very shaky logic of their distant ancestors, fighting wars that don’t make any sense. Are we really determined to lug around these ancient nightmares with us forever? They have to go. I don’t know how, or even if, so many people can forget, or forgive, some of the appalling misery they’ve endured. But one thing they can do is just not pass it on to their kids.

One of the reasons that the world’s problems have never been solved is that nobody’s really tried. There’s nothing that can’t be done better, and very few things that can’t be done a lot better. The point is that they do have to be done.

Just as an exercise in pure bloody-mindedness, try thinking up what you consider to be a worthwhile direction for the human race. Then ask somebody else what they think. That’s the real issue. A trustworthy future will be one based on what can be agreed. A reliable society will be one that works. The ethical theory of a society is that it has some use to its members. This society has never been accused of that. Whatever replaces it will have to be pretty convincing to everybody… and have a real direction.