The World Around You

     When you look at the world around you, what do you feel? Are you impressed by the breadth of technology, the widespread adoption of gadgets that have digitized nearly all major aspects of our lives? Are you somewhat disturbed by the implications of it? With the amazing progress we have made on a technological front, we have reached a crux in which our ability to share information has met head on with the security issues of sharing information. Where on one hand movements and protests are organized through social networking sites, those same movements and protests are closely watched through those same networks.

     What I want is very easy to ask for. I want things to change. But a question that vague will only net an equally vague answer. What do I want to change? At one point in time, banking was a profitable business through the use of investments, now that business model has changed to include fees for use that all but stifle the working poor. Why did this change? We allowed it to, banks complained that credit and debit transactions were costing them money and they needed some method of compensation for all the small transactions. Low to zero yield accounts with the attached convenience of a plastic card that allowed you to better manage your money. The elimination of guesswork involved in checkbooks. There certainly had to be some compensation provided to the banks for the extra services we were given. It seemed fair. Except hold on one second, these accounts are generally non-interest bearing, which means that the bank is paying out no interest on the money they’re holding, certainly an increase in profit for them over traditional savings accounts. Perhaps people would have been less amenable to the addition of transaction fees had the banking industry been forced to identify it as an additional revenue stream (and develop a reasonable pricing structure under that definition), rather than a substitute revenue stream for investments.

     A large part of my issue with modern American government is the disconnect between the will of the people and the actions of politicians. While there is some recourse for criminal or unethical conduct in political office, our basic recourse for "You’re doing a bad job" is to wait until the next election and vote in someone else who, all campaign rhetoric aside, is likely to do the exact same things as his predecessor. There is too much to gain in not rocking the boat in congress. Careers are made off of maintaining a status quo that is currently unappealing to a large number of Americans. Somewhere along the road we stopped demanding leadership and started accepting pacification. We were all implicit in it, we are all responsible for it, and it will take all of us to change it.

     So what else would I change? I agree that our system of taxes is necessary, however, I don’t agree with the disproportionate rates at which some of us are taxed over others. If 5% of income is fair for someone making ten grand a year, what is it about making a few million a year that suddenly makes it unfair. I’m certainly not demanding an equal distribution of wealth, I firmly believe that capitalism can work. But what doesn’t work are the trickle down theories, the corporate tax breaks that are supposed to create jobs but have instead left the middle class U.S. citizen bearing a very large percentage of the tax responsibility. The market will adjust to fair percentage based taxes, simply because even if businesses pass those taxes back down to people through higher prices, those people will be enjoying a lower tax rate and the additional money would go to our country’s coffers, where it could be invested back into the infrastructure of ours that has fallen so far behind on development. A few other changes are necessary for a system like this to work though, more stringent laws on how tax dollars are spent is one. A financially incentivized government contract system where given companies bid on contracts using both price and quality as a basis for making decisions is another.

     Education. It is in the worst state I have seen it in my entire life. While the general intelligence of the population is in fact increasing (which can certainly be at least partially attributed to improved educational standards) the amount of federal money that goes into education should be increasing proportionate to the increased costs of furthering education. In such a computer dominated world, every child should have access to computers if we expect them to have equal opportunity for success. With the incredibly low manufacturing costs of basic computers now, there is simply no excuse for schools to not be equipped with one per student. The money that could be saved on textbooks alone would nearly justify the cost, offsetting it enough that only continued maintenance would be a financial issue. Computer maintenance as an available resource, however, would increase exponentially when all children have access to the technology. And consequently, the cost of having computers maintained should drop with the addition of more people into the workforce with the capability to operate a computer fluently.

      We are at a crossroads, half-embracing every new technology that comes out, while half stifling it with our stubborn refusal to adapt to the present and future. We spend 2-4 years complaining about our elected officials, only to go back in November with the same limited knowledge of the candidates we had to begin with. How much of any campaign is the truth? How many times have we voted for the policy, only to find the man didn’t have the backbone or capability to stick to his guns. Gone are the days when America can be defined as having a single voice, in these days of crowd-sourcing and group think, we must adapt or die out. If you’re willing to stand up and protest, then show us that you’re willing to change the future.  Hell, consolidate the issues we’re facing as a country, the growing pains involved with this new commodity, and embrace the crowd. We still have the freedom to speak for ourselves, and my opinion is that we should throw all this data at those best suited to solving the problems. Post it up on a website or wiki and give ourselves the knowledge from which we can base our decisions. Give ourselves a forum dedicated to dissecting and eventually solving these problems, something  everyone from protester to CEO can weigh in on, and in turn, allow the people to guide this country through the recession and back into a fair, free-market, bustling economy.

     We’re smart enough, and we want to train the next generation to be smart enough, and so we need to start answering all the questions we’ve been asking. No one man can tell us what is best, but if we put our brightest minds (both known and undiscovered) together, then perhaps we can assemble some sort of road map to recovery. The president can’t do it, congress can’t do it, but we can, and that is a right that we desperately need to put to use.