Hello Folks,
This is indicative of the family approach that I learned at my father's
knee. It is also the approach that our family members had years ago in
city and state government, as it was taught to me by them at the time.
Now you all may have another opinion but this is the way my father taught it
to me and indicated that it was the family approach. He had little truck
with Reaganism or Republicans as do I. It was even more so with my mother
was not a faux accountant like our half cousin in the Senate but was a real
accountant who doubled their retirement in the market when they retired from
teaching.
The idea of community wealth was the Cherokee influenced brain child of my
father at the Picher school and at the Picher development corporation which
he founded that was a collaboration between school voc-tech courses and the
community's needs for housing.
What the community couldn't afford to pay teachers they made up by having
teacher housing as a part of their salaries. Housing built by the
vocational tech under Mr. Mullen who was also my shop teacher. It was the
untrammeled and unconnected "mining company" private sector that pillaged
Picher and then walked away without cementing the wells in the aquifer to
protect the states, water resources. Like Exxon and the oil companies,
they felt like the "profit" (leftover cash) was all important and they left
the Quapaw people and Northeastern Oklahoma with a mess that is still
unfolding.
As long as the schools and the community were all connected through the
unofficial network of the local Lion's Club set up by my Dad, then the
school used their funding for the good of the community and the school
prospered as well. Everyone graduated in a school system that went from
the 15% of the nation to the 88% in 12 years. I can't remember a single
student who didn't graduate and complete the work with most going on to
higher education. All of this in a community with severe lead poisoning of
us all. Picher lost their hospital but they kept the other businesses
including their bank. Five years after my father moved on, the schools
went all "privatized" under Bo Spoon as Superintendant, it killed the bank
and many of the businesses that had survived because of my father's stress
on building community public/private cooperation. Spoon simply wanted the
better interest rate from a larger outside of the community bank. Spoon
had been the coach of the football team in my Father's administration.
"Community wealth" is not socialism although it is the opposite of the
"profit" at any cost and the worth of the shareholder over the American
citizen as the highest good in today's market world.
I've chosen to work in the private sector all of my life. It's been my
experience that the private sector is great for untrammeled improvisation
and free exploration and that's why I've spent my years researching and
teaching privately. I would never have discovered what I know and done
what I've done working in the school situation, as I am now. Even
private schools are too inflexible to do real educational research on the
specific problems of the arts in America, and their pedagogy. Basically
all schools work a generic track that is geared to mass teaching and is very
poor at the individual issues involved in the Arts. That is what is meant
by "Standardized" testing. There can be no serious "standardized" testing
of people involved in the pursuit of performance mastery. It's just too
expensive, difficult and hard to know. That's why the ignorant think it's
"subjective", which it isn't.
The private sector is about individuals. But make no bones about it.
The private sector is not cheap because it must create a surplus of funds to
pay its shareholders (old capital) and to fund its new capital.
Government is far cheaper once something is known and standardized than is
the private sector. That's why the military, NASA and public health is so
expensive. There is too much private sector. The American government
subsidizes the private sector by commissioning them to build everything
including their $500 toilet seats. In private institutions like schools,
hospitals etc. their main function is to keep the public sector institutions
from getting lazy and not doing their job as happens when they constitute a
monopoly.
But every private institution trembles when confronted by the public sector
in the marketplace through the government. The reason is simple. The
capital base from the taxpayers is huge, and far cheaper, and can easily
outcompete anything the private sector can do from the simplest small
business to the largest.
But the combination of the public/private structure is far more efficient
and competitive for both than a pure laissez faire market or its opposite,
pure socialism. Today America is teetering on the brink of a corporate
plutocracy that is more Feudal than anything else.
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
[email protected]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:55 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] AlterNet: There Is a Way! Beyond the Big, Bad
Corporation
This story has been forwarded to you from http://www.alternet.org by
[email protected]
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There Is a Way! Beyond the Big, Bad Corporation
http://www.alternet.org/visions/155339
New corporate models focus on ownership, governance, sustainability and
social benefit.
-------------------------------------
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