WELP.
This post was going to be about the good things that can come out of quarantine and the apparent changes we need to make in our institutions and society, but there were nation-wide riots all day today and yesterday, so…
I’m not sure I’m comfortable ignoring the fact that innocent people keep dying because of their race, but I still want to write about this topic, so I will. And keep in mind that there are problems that need addressing; problems outside the ones I discuss here.
Let’s start with the obvious ones.
The US medical system is too expensive and too slow.
It’s hard for a person who hasn’t researched this topic (me) to pinpoint exactly the reason for this is, but it seems to come from a few different places:
- It’s heavily regulated. That’s good for making sure everything on market is up to a certain quality, and it’s all well-tracked.
- There’s price gouging. The “good” person in me doesn’t want to believe this, but it seems to be pretty apparent. I’m sure the prices are also so expensive because of the time it takes to get through regulation.
It makes sense to me to raise taxes to help mitigate costs across the country, but that also requires people to be paid a livable wage after being taxed. There are a lot of problems.
Also, there are loads of other people who have written about this, and it isn’t really the focus of my post. Sorry.
The education system needs to be overhauled.
There’s no doubt that the American school model has changed to adapt technology. High school students are assigned laptops for their work, which is a change being rolled out across the nation. However, my concern isn’t so much with the amount of technology in the classroom, but with the classroom itself.
The necessity of a physical classroom is becoming debatable. The advent of high-quality video calling and the ability for teachers to take advantage of technology have created a very real possibility to retire school buildings.
With current technology, we should be able to be more flexible with how students learn, instead of forcing them into seats and lectured for an entire day. I personally don’t learn well in this model unless the subject is of particular interest to me, and even if I find myself enamored with the subject matter, I find myself in need of doing something else with my hands and eyes.
I have no doubt, though, that an advantage of the classroom is for face-to-face social development, but most teachers’ leniency for a loud classroom seems to end when the students are around high-school age.
Like most, this problem doesn’t have a simple solution, but its detrimental effects are growing worse each year.
Do we even need offices?
My extroverted friends will say, “yes.”
My introverted friends will say, “maybe.”
We have the internet. We can very easily work from home if the job allows for it. Communication technology will improve (imagine collaborating using a whiteboard but in 3D space).
The two biggest reasons to have offices are to encourage collaboration, and to make sure work is being done (and free food). Now with collaborative technology being improved, companies should trust employees with proven track records to work remotely permanently. It’s not such a radical idea.
If you eliminate offices, you eliminate the need to relocate employees. You also eliminate the need to be bound to time zones, which is something that restricted collaboration.
You also eliminate the catastrophic expansion of mega-corporations overwhelming small towns with transplants. We wouldn’t be having a housing crisis in Seattle if these companies weren’t building offices.
But I do miss my old co-workers. You get to know people fairly well when you’re confined to the same space all day.
This is probably an oversimplified solution to a complicated problem too. Who knows.
I’m just a guy who likes writing about stuff.