Declarations from Fady's World

Part 1 – Spring

As promised, I took a break from politics for a while, and dabbled with all things firearms and a bit of mobile application development. The later is a fascinating world that will, more than the PC, revolutionize how we do business.

But that is a story for another time. Back to politics.

I watch with fascination as many Arab ‘Ancients Regimes’ fight an existentialist battle with the forces of modernity. Their reactions, and outcome, are eminently predictable: ‘our despots’ simply couldn’t exert enough force to prevail, so they were the first to go.

‘Their despots’ on the other hand have no problem with mass killings, so they hang on.

How long they hang on remains to be seen, but their demise is inevitable. Not because of anything the US is likely to do or say, but because once educated youth reaches a certain threshold, and the economy deteriorates to another, the pot simply boils over.

So what’s next? As the west struggles with an aging population and a stagnant economy, the middle east holds vast potential for growth and vitality with a young and growing population.

Yet this potential has little chance of materializing. As we speak, dark forces are hijacking Egypt’s revolution the same way Lebanon’s Orange Revolution was preempted a few years back. People are falling back on what is comfortable, they are fracturing into smallish groups incapable of fashioning a national mandate.

Arabs are always accused of tribalism, but that is only because they do not have an trustworthy alternative. Arab “circle of trust” is relatively small, because, through experience, they’ve been conditioned that way. Years of bad government, bad economy, and terrible leadership led to deep mistrust of larger, non personal, institutions. These feeling are not only rampant, but also justified.

So what is left is tribal allegiances and zero sum game mentality that will , for the foreseeable future, slow down economic development in the middle east. And slow economic development a radical fertile grounds always make.

Progress will be made in he middle east, but that progress will be slow and uneven until the present generation of leaders passes on and a new, more educated crop takes their place.

Meanwhile, brace for more uncertainty and violence.

I often refrain from blogging about the education space because the business I run is education related and there is such a uniform, embedded, world-view it’s hard to have reasoned dialogue. “Waiting for Superman”, because it’s produced by a liberal, seem to, at last, lift the taboo on this subject. So here goes.
This industry seems to have a singular focus on money as the prime lever for good education. The graph below shows the results of this policy.

In the last 40 years the cost of education has gone up 375%, that’s almost 100% per decade, with no improvement in student achievement whatever. Is there any stronger repudiation of the spending argument?

Yet the teacher’s unions have convinced this country that any attempts at controlling cost will have a disastrous effect on the education of children and the future of this country.

Over the same period, student population grew by 10% the teacher population grew by 100%. Class size did not change much, for all of these resources are now deployed as ‘layers of experts’ adding overhead and reducing accountability. Who’s at fault if a student fails? The classroom teacher? The reading specialist? The curriculum coordinator? Special Ed? Lunch lady? Overlay of responsibility equals plausible deniability.

Here’s a simple mind experiment: If the growth in teacher population kept pace with the growth of student population, the average teacher would be making $150K per year. That would attract a completely different type of individual to the teaching profession, and we wouldn’t be arguing about class size.

The only way to fix this system is to bring accountability back. I say this as Michelle Rhee exits her position of Chancellor of the DC school district, her attempts at reform thwarted by an uncooperative Democratic congress, an unsympathetic populace that voted the reformist mayor Adrian Fenty out, and overly powerful teacher’s union.

You can wait for Superman; just don’t hold your breath

For a measly $1, I was lured into buying a collection of old science fiction books for my Kindle (I guess the Long Tail really works). A collection that spans more than a century and half of popular SciFi and fantasy fiction.

As I read through the 22 books, a curious pattern emerged: Prior to 1920, the heroes, movers and shakers that the worlds turned to in times of crisis were inevitably strong individuals and entrepreneurs. These industry scions harnessed and focused capital and resources in the defense of earth from evil invaders.

Then, somehow, in the popular psyche government was handed that job: they became our protectors, the fountainhead of power and resources. The individual faded into the background to become a small part of a larger machine. This world view persisted throughout the 20^th century: Big government and big business took center stage as the need for scale drove the concentration of capital and power.

More recently, in curious way, the pendulum shifted. Government and institution formed the first line of defense. The protagonist/hero, however, almost always was an individual that bucked the system and, singlehandedly achieved what a whole country couldn’t.

As we close the first decade of the 21^st century, recent events, and there are so many, have shown how impotent government is at dealing with systemic problems. After a century of placing our full trust in them, we are now reevaluating our options.

The rise of the Tea Party in America, the lurch to the right in Europe are all signs that the populace understand the choice at hand: double down on Big and move towards a more centralized, command and control government, or we can go the other way and allow the individual to flourish again.

As Gen-X start to replace baby boomers in positions of power and influence, they bring with them a different, more individualistic world-view. I won’t be around to see it, but I’m betting historians will label 21^st as the Libertarian Century.

A lot has transpired since my February demographics blog. A few readers have asked: Where does Greece fall on the chart? Well… Right there.

I also said that the move away from the welfare state is not a question of “if”, but of “when”.
I think we have our answer. Nuff said.