From: jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca
Date: Sat, 18 May 1996 17:20:59 +0800
To: perry@piermont.com
Subject: RE: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996
Message-ID: <9604168322.AA832264836@smtplink.alis.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Perry Metzger wrote:
>As long as this is now CypherCesspit and not CypherPunks, I might as well play
the game.

Thinking of game theory, couldn't the prisoner's dilemma apply to this; where
what is best for the group is not necessarily best for the individual. 

>Every year since World War II, expenditures in real dollars have
increased per pupil at the government schools. Every year, average
class size has gone down in the government schools. 

I would be curious to know your source for this information. The information I
have indicates that in California when Ronald Reagan became governor, 80% of the
funding for state universities such as UC Berkeley and UCLA came from the public
purse. Last year, only 24% of the funding came from the government. I would have
trouble believing that the overall school system was radically different.

The teenage children of a visiting Brazilian professor commented that no other
country was like Canada in the sense that people here received a low cost
education and did not go destitute. Contrast this to their situation in Brazil
where off duty police officers are often hired by merchants to get rid of the
street urchins that disrupt their businesses. See current edition of french
Photo magazine (cover Ayrton Sennas ex girl friend) for a pictorial.

Scientific American (June 1995) has an article entitled The Arithmetics of
Mutual Help - Computer experiments show how cooperation rather than exploitation
can dominate in the Darwinian struggle for survival. To paraphrase, cooperation
arises naturally in most biological systems. Lone defectors do well, but by
spreading, defeat themselves. (See: CypherCessPool for example).

I appreciate my free public education. I might not have been so forward thinking
if I had to go deeply into debt to finance it myself.

>Actually, I believe most people on this list argue for no government
or so little that its decisions hardly matter.

I agree. Unfortunately, that would seem to put me in the minority.

James

>Perry

jbugden@alis.com
What we do not understand, we do not possess. - Goethe