Notes on Chapter 13

Another chapter with a lecture in it.  How else would you know that it's me?

As this is the last chapter, I wanted to end with an uplifting message.  I also wanted to say that there are things each of us can do that would make America better.  Of course, as an economist/social scientist, I am well aware of the 'free rider' problem.  It really will only matter in aggregate if a good fraction of the overall population will do these things.  And if the things are costly to do, then there is incentive for each individual to avoid doing them.  The individual incurs the cost and one person's behavior won't impact the aggregate in a large population. This is very much like the 'paradox of voting' which we have partially overcome but certainly not fully.  I thought the analogy with forming a new habit was useful, because that is the way this better behavior can be sustained.

I must say, there are reasons to be pessimistic about all of this.  Even though I cut my teeth on educational technology in the 1990s, I have a quite dystopian view of online technology at present.  It seems to be turning people into objects and at an alarming rate. You will never put another's needs before your own if you regard the other person as an object.  This wasn't the right place for me to elaborate on this particular issue, but I think we need to defeat this foe and soon.  Otherwise, the dystopia will take a permanent hold of us. 

One more point I'd make about this chapter.  The rest of the book makes the case that it is necessary for a nonpartisan organization to move us forward on our politics, as it is the only way to make a cross partisan appeal among the voters and thereby produce a super majority on some issue(s). But the way I told the story, the forming of this nonpartisan organization was purely by happenstance and then it happened in a burst.  Could a more thoughtful and deliberate approach produce something similar?   I really don't know.  If there are others who read this book and take inspiration from it, I'd like to seem them actually try for something similar to what is suggested in the book.  On the other hand, if no such organization actually is possible, then we should be asking how to make things better with the cards we've already been dealt. The purpose of this closing chapter, then, is to give one view of how to answer that question.

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