From phm@a2e.de  Thu Jan 10 07:28:57 2002
From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 08:28:57 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Patents] Re: schooling "industry" in UK and US
In-Reply-To: <3C3D57D9.6040409@digitalroute.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0201100814460.14911-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>

>  >>  http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,629209,00.html
>  >>  Schooling up for sale
>  >>
>  >>  The creeping corporate takeover of education is being fostered to build
>  >>  up exports
>  >>
>  >>you find another very well account of extremes of privatisation in
>  >>anglosaxon countries.  When people speak negatively of 'neo-liberalism',
>  >>they are missing the point.  The problem is the transfer of a success
>  >>experience known from the market economy of tangibles into the economy of
>  >>intangibles.
>
> Hartmut seems to argue that the privatization of education is bad
> because it is a service instead of production industry. I objected
> not to the conclusion (even though I am not convinced it is true)
> but rather to what seemed to be the implied assumption
> "X is a service => privatization of X is bad".

The implied condition here is of course that X is a public infrastructure.
If X was for example a new city center (also a kind of infrastructure), to
be built according to a given architectural plan, privatisation of the
execution of this plan would be quite a normal idea.

I am not myself convinced that privatization of education is bad.
Education encompasses various aspects, from the managment of information
(public goods) to the managment of private ressources such as the time a
certain teacher devotes to certain students.  To private ressources at
least quite a lot of the success experience from producing industries also
applies.  This industry success experience does not however apply to e.g.
the managment of skilled personnell: the head-hunting or expert service
selling business is suffering from the typical problems of "software
obstructionism": brokers being eager to cut the communication between the
supplying and the demanding side, fearful of losing their broker position,
which again tends to be either a monopoly business or nothing.  The
industry success experience applies even less to the creation of public
information goods such as school books or scientific research.

Thus I am saying that while the industry model (private market economy)
has some advantages to offer even for many traditionally public sectors
such as schooling, these advantages are much more limited and relative
than a a currently still very predominant tide of thinking wants us to
believe.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                                          http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation	     http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/




