[10516] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Debating the NII "Truisms"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Fri Feb 25 23:35:57 1994
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 19:36:58 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: STAPLETON@bpa.arizona.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: The future Ross Stapleton-Gray's message of Sat, 12 Feb 1994 16:35:14 -0700 (MST) <940212163514.21802884@BPA.ARIZONA.EDU>
>From: The future Ross Stapleton-Gray <STAPLETON@BPA.ARIZONA.EDU>
>Re keeping government out of educational content, the fact of the matter
>is that we've got *governments* doing it today and have all along. One
>benefit from having a national program produce educational content (and
>not have it be a monopoly producer, mind you) is that the state and
>local control is softened.
Why is that a benefit? And what are you referring to (I'm serious,
federal spending on K12 education is tiny, it's not their venue, and
it looks like you're referring to federal since you distinguish state
and local)?
>I'm not saying that this doesn't take thinking, I'm just noting that
>replicating bits is a trivial matter if you own the copyright, and there's
>a certain delicious economy of scale here.
What economy of scale? You take the taxpayer's money and you give 'em
back what you decided they wanted. No economy at all, except perhaps
for those whose paychecks are derived therefrom.
I mean, what left field is this coming from? The govt doesn't even
attempt to create public school textbooks, nor does it utilize any
federal-level economies of scale to help get them into kids' hands.
Hence, a lot of public school systems can't even afford textbooks and
three kids sharing one beat up 10 year old textbook is not uncommon.
Is that the precedent for this?
What I always have a hard time understanding is that one can point to
some abject failure of the govt that would seem to require almost
precisely the same sort of initiative and accomplishment and people
seem to just believe that somehow this time they'll get it right. Why?
I dunno, somehow this time it's gonna be different...
-Barry Shein
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