[p2p-research] newsweek on The Creativity Crisis

Tue Jul 20 16:58:15 CEST 2010

Michel,

There is a great deal of good basic science that is privately funded.
 Personally, I like that model.  States waste.  It's that simple.  Everyone
wants a free and easy living.  Who gets such a free ride should be really
carefully controlled.  Personally, I'd prefer to finance a microcredit bank
in Haiti to building the CERN accelerator which I seriously doubt will ever
give humanity any tangible benefit.  That said, if George Soros wanted to
build CERN with his billions, I'd be thrilled to read the fascinating
results.   Politicians and bureaucrats ought not to be the ones who
determine where and how societies spend their resources except in issues of
national emergency and economic growth--much as Adam Smith advocated.
 Social safety nets and national healthcare systems are far better
investments than research universities...and the research universities can
easily self-fund with rich alumni.  What we are really discussing is fear of
control.  People want the state to be their shield against scrutiny outside
of their "peers."  Nice work if you can get it...especially when someone
else is paying the bill.

R.

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Ryan, your first statement is about the total contrary of what I would
> advocate ... Most analyst and scientist would totally disagree with your
> view on knowledge as such, and claim that it is especially disinterested
> basic science, that has created the most fundamental breakthroughs, not
> shortermist pursuit of profitable spinoffs and the repression of curiosity
> in academia for the sake of profit. It is really artificiall to put
> theory/action as opposites, they go hand in hand, theory and world vision
> nearly always is what is necessary to inspire real world action
>
> it was precisely public funding of education which guaranteed broader
> education for all, and having worked for a private university last year, I
> have now seen close by how the profit motive distorts education at all
> levels .. the only acceptable way for me is to have educational institutions
> run by nonprofit foundations with a public interest, with public funding,
> but not necessarily as state institutions, since they are most often
> centralized and bureaucratized .. ... And subsuming knowledge to private
> interests is for me the absolute nightmare ... You are advocating precisely
> the kind  of measures that have led to the present educational measure ...
> Please don't misunderstand, I'm not against 'private' initiative and free
> schools, just against schools where education is subsumed to private profit
> models ... Without giving you names, but this is a real story, if you are a
> poor girl on a scholarship, and violated by the son of a rich lawer, you can
> pretty much forget due process ...
>
> I symphatize with 2 if applied to transhumanist dreamers <g>, but otherwise
> would point out that there are just as many people inspired by their
> spirituality to advance their life (see the protestant work ethic) as the
> other way around, and that a dole is what the excluded most often need just
> to become active and productive in their society ..
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 9:36 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>>  On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 2:44 AM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> This could be right. I recall I believe it was Michel that pointed out
>>> on this list a few months back that when the "cold war" ended in the
>>> US, government funding for culture also dried up. The government
>>> funded culture (public access television, arts, theatre, etc in
>>> communities) as part of the "cold war"
>>>
>>>
>>> quote:
>>>
>>>
>>> examples:
>>>
>>> http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/17/051017crat_atlarge
>>>
>>> (looking for other that are more objective)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> My own view of why creativity is falling is threefold:
>>
>> 1. There is a glut of funding for schools and research such that real
>> value is mocked and avoided.  Somehow the idea of "knowledge" as an end
>> became morally acceptable.  Such academics strike me as people nearly as
>> immoral as some of the worst criminals.  They choose to waste their lives
>> studying the valueless.  Consequently, University funding needs to fall by
>> 75% from states.  We need huge private sector investment to get actual
>> productivity from schools at all levels.  Nearly all state schools at all
>> levels should be privatized.  Fortunately, the UK and several US states are
>> moving rapidly in this direction.
>>
>> 2. People remain mired in metaphysical and religious dreams that dissuade
>> them from improving life on this planet.  Too often this allows poor people
>> to accept their lot and seek a dole rather than an active means of solving
>> their issues.
>>
>> 3. And most importantly, we don't have the maker centres and technical
>> play centres available to societies to build and explore garage-level
>> innovation.  Instead, people sit glued to mass consumption media and allow
>> themselves to be passively entertained as opposed to actively solving
>> problems.  This is even worse amongst the theorizing/observing set who
>> really produce almost nothing while carrying in many cases a decent mind
>> that could actually solve some real world issues.
>>
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>
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