The GOP has done away with the long form type census in the USA, and they are at war over
Last edited Sat May 12, 2012, 02:57 AM - Edit history (9)
information. The long form census was canceled by the Conservatives in Canada too. They say it is about privacy in the USA. In Canada they would not say why they wanted that policy. I think the right wing want all information in the hands of corporations. The information gleamed from the long form census used to go to the public through the government. Policy was created from that. Regulations would come from that data. Business decisions would be made. All with free public information on that great market: America. By getting rid of government's role in garnering such free information, corporations will & have stepped in with market research. Only organizations and businesses big enough to be able to afford to buy such information will get it. And that means big corporations. Mid sized corporations no longer exist because of deregulation. So small business and the people (government too) will be shut out or have one hand tied behind their backs where information is concerned.
The GOP also want the experts to be working at private universities, not public universities. That way they will not take their expertise and regulate corporations because they are not there to help the public. Plus, all in all, if you have to pay a corporation to get information on anything...that limits the number of people who will have access to the information to entities with a lot of $$$. Thus the corporations can run amok and develop new markets based on different assumptions than those available to the general public or soon to be impoverished governments, with the general public and government having much, much less relative information than they have now. Good information will no longer be a public good. The bankers did have new algorithms on human behaviour when they developed the new 'subprime' loan markets and derivatives markets. That went well (sarcasm mine). Markets fail when all the players don't have 'perfect information' to make the best economic decisions on both sides. When one side is basing their decisions on old assumptions or lack of information, the other side wins. A transfer of wealth takes place. From the uninformed public to the well informed corporations. Another way the GOP wants to do in the middle class. And they claim there is a war on the 1%. Once again they are projecting.
It's war for sure, that whole neocon/Rumsfield asymmetric warfare thing again that they want, only with information as the weapons and the might. Let us not allow them to foment inequality in information like they have done to income in the past 30 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare
According to Wikipedia:
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"Asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the "weaker" combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality.[1] Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized.[2] This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution."
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