Efficiency, centralization, and lack of agency v. resilience

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, March 28, 2025 15:44
VIEWED: 4079
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SIGNYM

Monday, May 13, 2013 4:18 PM

OR perhaps different categories of efficiency... ones which reduce robustness, and others which don't.

1KIKI

Monday, May 13, 2013 4:26 PM

I was noticing that the instances of increased robustness seem to be clustered with increased human effort. I don't know if that's a random observation or an essential distinction.

NIKI2

Monday, May 13, 2013 5:49 PM

Caveat: I haven't been following this thread; the idea of "everything as a business" is something I'm all too well aware of and don't like to think about, given it's being pushed more and more in our society more and more effectively, including private prisons, etc., etc.

But I saw this, and it's relevant to the title of this thread, so here it is:

Quote:
Who Is Profiting From Charters? The Big Bucks Behind Charter School Secrecy, Financial Scandal and Corruption

Studies shows that charter schools don’t typically outperform public schools and they often tend to increase racial and class segregation. So one must wonder, what exactly is motivating these school “reformers”? And why have they pushed for more and more closure — and new charter schools — at such an unprecedented rate in recent years?

Pro-charter supporters will tell you that it’s time for public institutions like our schools to start competing more like for-profit institutions. Test scores and high enrollment, then, define success. Unsuccessful schools, they say, should close just as unsuccessful businesses do. For neoliberal school reformers from today’s Arne Duncan-led Department of Education to scandal-ridden movement leader Michelle Rhee to billionaire Bill Gates, it is taken on faith that market principles are desirable in education.

But since it’s not clear that market principles are benefiting students on a large scale, it seems likely that something else is at stake. And reformers may be more than a little disingenuous in publicly ignoring that other, less high-minded thing: Profit. Critics of charter schools and school closings point out that proponents may not really be motivated by idealism, but by self-gain.

But who precisely is profiting? And how? Untangling answers to these questions is a more daunting task. Compared to public schools, charters schools are an extremely unregulated business. They contract with private companies to provide all kinds of services, from curriculum development to landscaping. Most of the regulations that bind charter schools are implemented at the state level. And unlike public institutions, the finances of charter schools are managed on a school-by-school basis. Because they are not consistently held accountable to the public for how they distribute funds, charter schools are often able to keep their business practices under wraps, and thus avoid too much scrutiny.

For an article of this scope, it’s impossible to describe the profit issue in anything approaching thorough and accurate generalization. Instead, we will look at a couple of decades-old federal incentives for charter investment that may have helped pave the way for the explosion of charter schools today, and provide some examples and snapshots of what is happening on the ground in those major cities where the charter school movement is most influential. The rest at http://www.alternet.org/education/who-profiting-charters-big-bucks-beh
ind-charter-school-secrecy-financial-scandal-and?page=0%2C1&paging=off

Spoiler alert: It ain't good.

SIGNYM

Sunday, June 30, 2013 3:49 PM

Apparently, I've been noodling on this (effiency versus robustness) for a while. Having turned this over in my mind since I originally wrote this, I've come firmly down against efficiency as a useful driver of economies. But rather than seeing efficiency and the drive towards bigness and centralization as the inevitable outgrowth of human nature (as reflected in our current economic structure), I now see efficiency as a choice. A poor choice, but a choice.

Large versus small systems: efficiency, productivity, and resiliency

http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=40089

Quote:
Good luck on that. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient, the general "drive" will be towards larger and larger systems. History is a good indicator of this trend. There ARE countering forces... primarily, disasters which force systems into smaller, self-sufficient units (with large loss if life, given our history of breeding past environmental/ technological carrying point!) but that kind of corrective factor is intermittent and stochastic. So, in sum: I don't think it's gonna work. It's not economically favorable. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient-

Population size_ Larger population allows division of labor, greater technical advances, and a higher standard of living. Many papers on the topic. Technological level reversibly depends on population size; once population falls below a certain threshold the technology can no longer be sustained.

Geographic area_ Larger geographic area means higher likelihood of obtaining specific resources or being resilient to local disaster. Examples: tantalum, the floods in Georgia. Yes, you can get this by trade, but that means disparate groups have to have safe trade routes and common currency or common trading practices, common language and clock or calendar. Look at how far the 24-hour day has spread, and the seven-day week! In effect, they ARE tied together in a larger system, which rewards greater internal efficiencies.

Bulk handling_ Producing and handling items in bulk is much more efficient than producing and handling piecemeal. It doesn't make much sense to set up a production unit, make one or two items, and then retool for something else. Far more efficient to run the unit 24-7 until it wears down ... this is simply a ratio of the investment you made in your production capacity versus the output.

I could go on with several other factors, but... you get the point?

So, YES, larger systems ARE more efficient. Less labor is used to produce more goods. It is an obvious economic and historic fact.

You might be confusing that with being more resilient. Larger units are NOT more resilient, particularly if they have been tweaked to maximum efficiency. A maximally-efficient system is highly interdependent, with no internal redundancy, "spare parts", or resources laying idle. In that case, the system is subject to the slightest disruption in trade, power sources, internal dissent etc.

JAYNEZTOWN

Tuesday, November 26, 2024 9:45 PM

How anti school choice Republicans are on collision course with Trump
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2024/11/26/how-anti-school-choi
ce-republicans-are-on-collision-course-with-trump/76454789007/

Trump, To Eliminate the Education Department, Will Need To Make the Case to the Voters
https://www.nysun.com/article/trump-to-eliminate-the-education-departm
ent-will-need-to-make-the-case-to-the-voters

JAYNEZTOWN

Saturday, January 18, 2025 10:22 PM

Ratches of Wakanda

dragged out of a highschool gym in cuffs

https://x.com/unlimited_ls/status/1880299871535604096

Alessia Parker and Jemecia Godchaux Face Felonies For Assaulting Principal

Plaquemine (Louisiana) Police arrested Alessia Parker on charges of battery of a school teacher, resisting officers, and disturbing the peace

Jemecia Godchaux, who was with Parker, was also charged

The principal tried to stop the children from entering the basketball court twice during a game

SIGNYM

Sunday, January 19, 2025 3:14 AM

Well. Altho your posts are extreme non sequiturs, thank you for this necropost. This was when I first bumped into the realization that "efficiency" was a very distorted measure of anything related to human existence. It's interesting to see how my - and others'- ideas evolve with discusssion.

I retitled the thread to be more reflective of the ideas within.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

JAYNEZTOWN

Thursday, March 27, 2025 10:52 PM

‘Cannot be tolerated.’ Attack caught on camera at Gastonia high school is being investigated
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cannot-tolerated-fight-caught-camera-223746
183.html
Littman told Queen City News he’s heard his students talking about the video circulating on social media, which he saw for the first time on Wednesday. “They’re saying that a student got hit inside a classroom for absolutely no reason, and they’re starting to worry they may be next.”

SECOND

Thursday, March 27, 2025 11:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well. Altho your posts are extreme non sequiturs, thank you for this necropost. This was when I first bumped into the realization that "efficiency" was a very distorted measure of anything related to human existence. It's interesting to see how my - and others'- ideas evolve with discusssion.

I retitled the thread to be more reflective of the ideas within.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Signym, your ideas are contained within John Ralston Saul's 1992 book Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West. Saul did not stop with just one book. There is The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994) and The Unconscious Civilization (1995). The last won the 1996 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction Literature.

These books deal with themes such as the dictatorship of reason unbalanced by other human qualities, how it can be used for any ends especially in a directionless state that rewards the pursuit of power for power's sake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul#Voltaire's_Bastard
s,_The_Doubter's_Companion_and_The_Unconscious_Civilization

Download John Ralston Saul's books for free from the mirrors at
https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=John+Ralston+Saul
or https://annas-archive.org/search?q=John+Ralston+Saul

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

SIGNYM

Friday, March 28, 2025 1:22 AM

Scanning a description of his books, I think we're talking about entirely defferent things.

I have no problem with "reason".

What I'm trying to point out is that we are being driven by faulty assumptions, and out-of-control behaviors and processes.

Some of our behaviors are inbuilt (altho we also have other contravening drives) and some - like economies of scale- are driven by physics.

Without INSIGHT, our societies become dysfunctional.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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