Transformation

It has been clear for years now that the spread of the internet has made as profound a change in current society as the printing press did in its day. What has not been so clear until recently is that even more profound and far-reaching changes are taking place in society as a whole, driven in part by the unparalleled connectivity the internet and mobile phones provide, but in part by other forces in society.

 This week’s Economist calls it the “third industrial revolution”, and discusses at length the substantial changes in the workplace that explain, in part, why many jobs are not coming back as this recession finishes its cycle. Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum discuss much the same thing in their new book That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (a book I am reading, but have not yet posted to this blog or my associated book list).

 I recommend this week’s Economist articles, and Friedman and Mandelbaum’s book to those who would like to pursue this point of view in more detail. My topic in this post is to suggest that the profound shifts in society, and particularly in the workplace, coupled with the nation’s demographics (the “old people” bulge and the associated fiscal problems with Medicare and Social Security) , require a fundamental rethinking of both the American political process, and the American educational system.

 The problem with major transformations in a society is that people are slow to recognize them and resistant to changing their ways to adapt. It has been clear for decades now that our political process was in trouble, spending ever larger amounts of (borrowed) money on increasingly ineffective programs. And it has been clear for almost as long that American education, hobbled by teacher’s unions and academic orthodoxy and incompetent local school boards, is in equal trouble. Yet to this day we persist in throwing yet more money at the same problems with the same ineffective results. I am remained again of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

 These are, in the most literal sense, issues of national security. If our government cannot find a way to avert the looming fiscal crisis from our growing national debt and the unsustainable unfunded future liabilities of our current entitlement programs (not even mentioning the equally unsustainable unfunded pension liabilities of many states), America will be in serious trouble. And equally, if we cannot find a way to make the education of our younger generations more effective, and better adapted to the technological work world they will enter, we will shortly cease to be a world leader, ceding that position most likely to one of the Asian nations whose children are better educated.

 The putative presidential nominees of both parties are still talking about and thinking in terms of the old order, and still promising to return us to the prosperity of the old days, mostly by throwing more (borrowed) government money at the problems. This may be sound politics in an election year, but it is a disastrous national policy in this period of transformation.

 As is always true in any profound transformation in society, it is not at all clear how we should adapt. It will no doubt take decades of trial and error (and more errors than successes) to figure out how best to adapt our political and educational systems to the new order. I would support any political figure, and any educational system, that would at least recognize the problem and begin to try to adapt to it, even if clumsily at first.