roundtable: FINS ADDRESSES KEY ISSUES FACING POLICY MAKERS ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS

roundtable: FINS ADDRESSES KEY ISSUES FACING POLICY MAKERS ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS

FINS ADDRESSES KEY ISSUES FACING POLICY MAKERS ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS

W. Curtiss Priest (BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu)
Sun, 11 Jun 95 08:04:32 EDT 

Message-Id: <9506111206.AA08629@a.cni.org>
Date:         Sun, 11 Jun 95 08:04:32 EDT
From: "W. Curtiss Priest" <BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject:      FINS ADDRESSES KEY ISSUES FACING POLICY MAKERS ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS
To: Telecommunications Policy Roundtable <ROUNDTABLE@CNI.ORG>


FINS ADDRESSES KEY ISSUES FACING POLICY MAKERS ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS
CITS Observations
W.Curtiss Priest

Some of us in public policy have seen previous predictions of mass
unemployment.  Some of us have seen these enough to become numb and
think that there will always be a sector of the economy to absorb
workers.

But read this and read Charles Handy's book, the Age of Unreason.

How many knowledge workers will there be when task after task becomes
automatated, even knowledge tasks.

Will the information age come "naturally" or does it require the
reasoned result of collective minds creating opportunities that go
beyond strict economic necessity?

I will state Priest's Adage, "Anything that sounds plausible, operates
to SOME degree."  This adage is to help "grey" thinking.  While politics
must often be matters of black and white, most answers lie in grey areas.

The proposed telecommunications bills will concentrate power and
the concentration of power will lead to abuses.  Information technology
does lead to greater efficiency in operating banking, commerce, 
wholesaling, retailing, etc.  These efficiencies will produce wealth 
and will reduce employment.

The bill will also open up new opportunities.  These opportunities will
lead to new jobs.

These are all plausible arguments and they, thus, operate to SOME degree.

It is our role to place the percentages on these effects, today.  And
it is the role of our best leaders and wisest people to craft legislation
that ensures a healthy nation.

Is all out competition the right choice?  We, individually don't know, but
collectively we may know.  Is the current balance of power in the federal
government appropriate to making the right decision without speaking up?

We think not.  So, please, speak up.
Thank you,

Dr. Priest
===========================================================================
FINS SPECIAL REPORT                                            JUNE 8, 1995
by Vigdor Shreibman
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM BILL ON US SENATE FLOOR
More High Tech and "The End of Work" on the Line

Washington, DC--The US Senate began debate Wednesday evening, June 7, 1995,
on the "Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995," which
should be cited, more accurately, without the second word in the title.  The
bill was denounced last Tuesday by Jeff Chester in a summary of the situation
for public interest groups meeting at the Telecommunications Policy
Roundtable: "its a horrible bill as a legacy for our children."  In a
commentary on the future, Eric K. Meyer, of Newslink Associates blasted this
message over the Net to online-news, at 3 am this morning:

     The informational superhighway is an overhyped myth designed mostly
     to reduce data-transmission costs for businesses at the expense of
     individuals. ... The sociological implications of a switched
     broadband network are not the empowerment of the masses but rather
     the strengthening of an elite -- huge regional video servers,
     corporations able to control everything in Third World plants from
     First World headquarters, a direct targeting of all mid-level
     decision-making and entrepreneurial ventures -- in short, the
     mainstays of the middle class.

     And now comes the ultimate put down, "The End of Work" by Jeremy Rifkin
(1995), with an amazing analysis that shows how profoundly the Information
Age is reducing the need for workers, as high-tech machines take over and
millions of individuals all over the world are increasingly left without
employment and without a source to sustain their existence.  Rifkin observes
that "In the United States, corporations are eliminating more than 2 million
jobs annually."  Not only are manufacturing jobs being massively ended, but
the service sector which has been absorbing job losses in the manufacturing
industries is now itself undergoing a historic shift "with growing numbers of
workers being permanently replaced by the new information technologies."

     For example, Rifkin cites the fact that "new silicon operators are the
latest in a string of technological advances that have allowed AT&T to handle
50 percent  more calls with 40 percent fewer workers in recent years.  The
telephone industry has eliminated more than 175,000 jobs between 1981 and
1988.  Moreover, these global mega-corporations, who owe their loyalty to no
nation, are acquiring the power to impose punishing anti-labor conditions.

     Just take a look at the news just reported of the hard line taken by the
International Chamber of Commerce.  An internet transmission last Tuesday,
June 6, 1995, disclosed this piece in The Vancouver Sun:

>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>LET WORLD'S UNEMPLOYED FEND FOR SELVES, CHAMBER
>>SAYS
>>
>>OTTAWA -- The world's business leaders want Prime
>>Minister Jean Chretien to deliver a tough-love
>>message to his G-7 counterparts in Halifax next
>>week.
>>   The major industrial countries should dismantle
>>their labor laws and cut social safety nets to
>>encourage the world's unemployed to look harder for
>>work and help businesses create jobs,
>>representatives of the International Chamber of
>>Commerce told Chretien during a 75-minute meeting
>>Monday.

     So what's in store for the global people when no one shows up to
purchase the products produced by the Information Age, because everyone
is out of work? The whole hot air balloon would likely collapse, of course,
just as it did earlier this century as the first wave of the Industrial
Age production system caught up with the reality of the workers left high
and dry by machines.

     When the final telecommunications reform Act is passed by Congress
and presented to President Clinton, some time this session, for his
approval and signature, it will likely contain a super massive rip-off for
the mega- corporations, leaving the people who own this country in a ditch
without a shovel.  The President must not sign such an Act and the people
should drive that point home in the most compelling terms ever witnessed
in this sweet land of liberty.

_______________________________________________________________________________
|           W. Curtiss Priest, Ph.D., Director       *********************** |
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