Socialism and Computers

E-voting versus ATMs

2004-11-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

James Fallows of the Atlantic has a piece in today's Times (http://nytimes.com/2004/11/28/business/yourmoney/28techno.html)
contrasting ATMs and other commercial electronic systems used -- and trusted -- by millions, with the widely (and correctly) mistrusted electronic voting.

He points to two factors. First, the extensive and prolonged testing the former, but not the latter, have gone through. Second, the paper trail (such as receipts) available, again only in the former, so banks and others know there's always the potential for malfeasance to be discovered.

I would add a third factor, which goes a long way to explaining the first two. The banks, airlines, etc., WANT to get it right technologically because it's in their social interest to do so. Just as squeezing surplus value from workers efficiently depends on following all the legal norms of capitalist property relations, so too does having access to consumers' funds for investment purposes depend on banks following carefully and scrupulously the equivalent legal norms affecting ATM transactions (which still puts them in the position of screwing us -- but still legally! -- with deep-buried credit card fees).

The point being that when the social motivation is there to get electronic voting right it'll be done right technologically.

But that won't happen until there's a workers' party big and strong enough to make sure it happens.

riffin' on RFID

2004-11-22T18:19:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this slide show. Click
here
and then page down.

"We're going to get rid of insurance companies.”

2004-11-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

"We're going to get rid of insurance companies.”

So says the head of one of the country’s leading healthcare software
firms. He then adds the qualifier “at least insurance companies as we
know them." But the article from today’s New York Times in which this
quote appears is proof positive of what the Labor Party, Physicians for a
National Health Program -- and even the GAO -- have been saying for
years: that the administrative savings from automating and centralizing
billing and clinical information make for-profit insurance and
pharmaceutical companies totally unnecessary.

The Times article reports on a recent national conference held to discuss
plans for a national electronic healthcare record. Not surprisingly the
Times’ business reporter, Steve Lohr, frames the news inside a pro-market
argument which makes nonsense of his facts. He tries to twist the
technological advances touted to show how computers would enable a
restructured, more rational “free market” for healthcare – and even ends
with an approving quote from Newt Gingrich to that effect.

But let’s look at those facts.

For instance, Lohr reports that “Big insurers like UnitedHealthcare,
Aetna and Cigna insist that they have moved beyond being insurers to
become experts in managing health care. But in large part they still
operate as the middlemen, tussling with doctors and hospitals over
reimbursements for visits, tests and operations. In a digital network,
the rules for approval and nearly all transactions could be automated,
drastically reducing the middleman's role. ‘We're going to get rid of
insurance companies, at least insurance companies as we know them,’ said
Neal Patterson, chief executive of Cerner, which produces software for
health care automation.

“The pharmaceutical business could also be in for a shock. Doctors often
get most of their information about drugs from the drug makers. Obtaining
genuinely objective information about the effectiveness of drugs requires
close tracking of academic studies, particularly those not funded by the
drug industry. Kaiser Permanente, a health maintenance organization, is
big enough to field its own drug information team to review the available
research and study the treatment results of its 8.3 million members.”
Lohr then cites a Kaiser study using this data which saved tens of
millions by switching to a generic drug. “The company's drug information
unit, said Dr. Sharon Levine, a director in Kaiser's medical group, is
intended to combat ‘the total failure of the market for information in
pharmaceuticals.’"

Lohr continues: “A digital medical network like the one envisioned by the
National Institutes of Health would make studies such as Kaiser's, though
with even larger data sets, available to doctors and patients across the
nation. An open system for information on drugs and their effectiveness
might just make obsolete the sales visits to physicians' offices and the
television pitches for drugs.”

Lohr concludes by noting the role the government will have to play in
setting up data standards which all healthcare providers and institutions
could agree on. For Lohr – and Gingrich and Bush (and for the Democrats
as well) – this would be solely to enable a more integrated, “freer”
market (maybe they’ll call it “HAFTA”).

But as the LP and PNHP have argued, the savings from wiping out the
administrative, profit-seeking middlemen – the insurance and
pharmaceutical companies – should go not to other market vultures but to
providing more healthcare (including retraining and reemploying displaced
insurance company staff as healthcare providers). In fact those savings
alone are enough to guarantee insurance for every person in the country.

Coincidentally the same day the Times ran an editorial in favor of using
Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) tags on pharmaceuticals and
notes the tremendous savings – and centralization of information -- there
too. RFID is the technology Walmart and others are introducing to
further centralize and plan already huge stores of information on
billions of products. Should all medications have RFID tags, the data
available would complement the electronic patient record to further
integrate all aspects of the patient care experience.

And in another strange coincidence – strange not primarily for the timing
but for what it says about the irrationality of our high-tech, low
morality economy – the Times ran yet another healthcare article today
(without drawing the connection), reporting that the rate of increase in
health care costs for the bosses will slow down for the first time in
five years. And the reason is almost entirely that bosses are succeeding
in pushing healthcare costs onto the backs of workers. So in the midst
of these technological advances we have a barbaric economy forcing
already hard-pressed families to cut back on even essential healthcare
for themselves and their loved ones.

Every union contract negotiation and strike these days involves a fight
over such healthcare costs. Once workers start forging solidarity with
each other around these healthcare-related contract battles, they’ll soon
pick up the demand for a single-payer plan to take healthcare out of the
realm of bargaining. And when they, do they’ll find, because of the
technological advances mentioned above, a healthcare system ready to leap
overnight into a cheap and efficient state no market can match.

(full Times articles at):

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/22/technology/22newecon.html?pagewanted=all
http://nytimes.com/2004/11/22/opinion/22mon3.html?pagewanted=print&positi
on=
http://nytimes.com/2004/11/22/business/22care.html?pagewanted=print&posit
ion=

What’s the matter with high-tech West Virginia?

2004-11-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

A recent article in Le Monde Diplomatique entitled "What’s the matter with West Virginia?", http://mondediplo.com/2004/10/02usa (picking up on themes in Thomas Frank’s recent book, "What’s the Matter with Kansas?") wonders why so many voters so hard up economically would still back Bush. The author’s answer is their attachment to right-wing positions on social issues combined with the contempt of liberal elites for the downtrodden.
Around the same time (and while debates over this thesis were raging on some progressive email lists), the state of West Virginia announced it would sponsor a public computing grid accessible to researchers and businesses through the Global Grid Exchange.
The project, "which will function as a supercomputer at a fraction of the cost, is a joint effort of the state, the West Virginia High Technology Consortium, Verizon and Hewlett Packard.… ‘this grid in the hands of West Virginia companies and researchers will give them the capacity for innovation and greater potential for new products in the state of West Virginia as well as an influx of research dollars into the state,’ Amy Beaudry, a spokeswoman for the high tech consortium, said Wednesday…. The grid will link computers in academic institutions, government offices and home personal computers that have excess capacity to advance work in such fields as biometrics and cancer research. Officials believe the grid will spark economic development initiatives within the state. Although universities and organizations like NASA have had computer clusters for years, researchers and businesses not connected with those institutions have had to go through an extensive process to gain access. ‘A West Virginia engineer or researcher will be able from their desk top to get access to math computing power on demand… The potential is staggering.’" (Associated Press report.)
So two pictures are simultaneously painted of the state in the media: a benighted, ignorant voting base, and a state government brilliantly taking advantage of the latest in supercomputing innovations.
What’s wrong with this picture?
On the one hand, it ignores the complexity of political views among West Virginia’s workers. For one thing it’s not clear why miners losing jobs and benefits, WalMart workers with low wages and no benefits, and aspiring teachers who can only pay for their college degree by going to Iraq (think Jessica Lynch), should be expected to be gung-ho for a Democratic candidate who has studiously avoided promising any change in their economic fortunes. Nor is it clear why such indifference is a sign of ignorance, as opposed to informed self-interest. (The author of the "What’s Wrong" article notes: "Before John Kerry starts taking advice from President Bill Clinton he should recall that it was Clinton’s mix of free market economics with pseudo-progressive social measures that made the Democrats into a minority party.")
On the other hand we have a state elite whose response to these workers’ woes is to ignore it, to write them off as relic of the state’s past, and instead to spend state development money on a computing grid which will produce a tiny handful of jobs requiring education far beyond that achieved by any of the workers just mentioned. (Well, OK, perhaps some of them can work as janitors in the small companies the grid spins off).
How’s this relevant to a page about computers and socialism? Here’s how:
The state government’s preference for this form of development, and for investing in this form and use of technology, comes first and foremost from its belief that profit solves all problems (in the short term for itself and in the sweet bye-and-bye for workers). But this preference results in a technological idiocy on a greater scale, and more damaging socially, than the alleged stupidities of the state’s voters.
This is another example of the combined and uneven development of information technology: that is, the most advanced data gathering and analysis techniques in a region with some of the worst social and economic conditions in the country. And the social crime, displaying the idiocy of the state’s elite, is that the advanced techniques won’t be used to address that backwardness.
No doubt the public grid will lead to some very worthwhile scientific research (as well as some totally pointless research geared to boosting profits for pharmaceutical companies and other vultures). But why not take a step back and use this grid to do the math the state has skipped over: that is, matching resources to people’s needs. Describing the new grid, the state spokesperson said "the potential is staggering.’" You got that right – but not for the reasons she thinks.
It’s no secret, and it doesn’t take even a pocket calculator to do the math, that for over a century the number of dollars flowing out of the state in value produced by miners (and more recently by retail workers), and into the pockets of mining and other companies, far exceeded what would have been necessary to provide decent jobs, education, health care, housing, etc. for all the state’s residents.
The state spokesperson praises the grid because with it "a West Virginia engineer or researcher will be able from their desk top to get access to math computing power on demand…" Even without the supercomputing power of the new grid, a far more socially useful grid is already feasible which could do the math so studiously avoided for so long:
Let’s say the state’s unions and community groups created a website on the state’s economy and promoted its use by members at union and group headquarters as well from their home computers. On it would be links to the public annual reports of any corporation doing business in the state. On it would also be links to state and Federal websites with figures on the state’s population, employment, housing, schools, etc.
Then taking data from these already available, already public websites, some simple calculations are run showing the resources needed to meet residents’ needs, and the results are matched with the products and profits of the above-mentioned corporations (I would add a historical component to this calculation, showing the reparations due the state for the profits exported from it over the years).
Not a particularly daunting project. The real problem is not technical, but social: getting access to the resources which the calculations show are required. That of course presumes stronger unions fighting for better contracts, for legislation boosting benefits and creating public works jobs, etc.
And to take it the last mile: such calculations, performed on a daily basis, would be the basis for socialist planning (although at that point the grid would have to be extended nationwide (or further)).
Which brings us back to the problem of combined and uneven development of information, i.e. the fact that we let the social idiots of the ruling class run our economy and society, creating this kind of criminal mismatch of technology and social need.

I'm back!

2004-11-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've resumed posting to the blog.
See also my previous website, especially the "Suggested Reading" link, at
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/4603/

The totally avoidable tragedy in Haiti

2004-05-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

Every six months or so (and increasingly often, perhaps due to global warming) there's a "natural" disaster which turns out to be not so natural. This is certainly the case with the deaths in Haiti/the Dominican Republic which are due to a combination of deforestation, shoddy housing construction, and the economic system and political repression which creates them.

The very same week several midwestern states in the U.S. were hit with flooding on a similar scale with very few deaths. The ruling class has the resources -- and has faced political pressure over decades -- to provide generally higher construction standards (although that will change as the economic crisis deepens).

What on earth you ask does this have to do with computers and socialism? Just this: meteorologists have sophisticated computer programs which get better and better all the time at integrating trillions of pieces of data to model the earth's climate (read any article on the announcement of the world's latest most powerful supercomputer and you'll find it's used either for that purpose or for military/nuclear modeling, or both). It would take computers far LESS powerful to calculate the amount of steel, wood, concrete, labor, etc. needed to insure EVERY citizen of the planet with a house that would be safe in the harshest weather.

But for now what we have instead is a ruling class which gives the masses of Haiti bullets (through its latest set of puppets imposed by its coup) and crocodile tears.

Making History

2004-05-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

This Thursday's Times Circuits section has an article on educational software called "Making History." It lets students play roles of historical figures to see if their choices would alter history -- for instance Chamberlain in Munich in 1938. (And of course the section has its usual uncritical reviews of blood-and-gore militarist games.)

The article (and the software's website) doesn't say what decision-making tools are embedded in the software. Obviously the computational difficulties of predicting the interplay of diverse factors in the kinds of choices portrayed are far more complex than those required in making decisions in the economic sphere alone (not that any decision is ever "just" economic). And in the absence of other evidence I'd assume the algorithms behind the choices are based on very limited data (and of course biased by the politics of its creators).

But ...

Elsewhere in this blog and its links I talk about using computers to plan a socialist economy. Implicit in managing such an economy is the need to calculate explicitly the social impact of economic decisions -- calculations which are relegated to "externalities" by mainstream economists. By the time we get to an economy run by networked workers' councils, we'll find that their programs 1) work up from the "strictly" economic data gathered at work and in the community to include more and more social data, and 2) that they work down from the supermacro level portrayed in games such as "Making History."

Bush's healthcare IT initiative

2004-05-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

Last week Bush made a campaign speech claiming he would revolutionize healthcare by computerizing it, specifically by creating a nationwide database of patient records. He pointed, correctly, to the waste arising from computerized systems that don't talk to each other, and the life-threatening medical errors that arise from lack of computerized systems or their inefficient use.

What he won't say of course is the far larger waste -- and source of illness and death -- coming from healthcare's fragmentation into private entities, starting with the insurance companies.

Look at his new drugcard benefit. On the one hand, the Internet allows the government to post prices of all participating companies for consumers to see. But because its run by and for private drug and insurance companies the posting of prices has meant more rather than less confusion.

Ironically much billing and even clinical information is online and centralized through the government's own Medicare and Medicaid systems. A successful workers' struggle for socialized healthcare thus already has a technological platform ready to be expanded upon. But for now, even the Medicare/Medicaid systems are used as often as are private healthcare IT systems to deny payment as to facilitate care.

What the "Socialism and Computers" blog is about

2004-05-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

1. How technology could be used to democratically plan an economy. Examples of its use (and misuse) today.
2. The need for computerized planning as shown in the irrationalities of today's economy.
3. Struggles from which a planned economy will grow.