NAFTA's Strange Bedfellows -- It's Only the Beginning Forbes

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

NAFTA's Strange Bedfellows --
It's Only the Beginning




If its implications weren't so serious, the Nafta
debate would have been laughable for producing
such odd bedfellows. Who would have imagined a
dance card like this?
        * FOR: The New York Times and the Wall
Street Journal; Anthony Lewis and William F.
Buckley; Al Gore and Empower America.
        * AGAINST: Ross Perot and Jesse Jackson;
Roger Milliken and Ralph Nader; Pat Buchanan and
the Sierra Club.


        What this shows is that the range of
political opinion in the U.S. is not always spread
along a single axis of left to right. I believe
there is another axis ascendant. It is
authoritarian/libertarian.
        Try this exercise. Draw a left-to-right
line across a page. Then draw a vertical line from
top to bottom, labeling it Authoritarian on top,
Libertarian on bottom. You have just created a
grid with four quadrants.
        Politically speaking, it should look like
this:
        * Upper left is left/authoritarian. Here
dwell the Communist Party, AFL-CIO, NEA, parlor
Maoists like Michael Lerner and European-style
social democrats like Hillary Rodham Clinton.
        * Upper right is right/authoritarian.
Augusto Pinochet, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot call
it home.
        * Lower left is left/libertarian. This
quadrant is least represented in government today,
even though many college-educated baby boomers
(particularly those without children) would place
themselves here. Mavericks like Jerry Brown or Bob
Kerrey often start here, then move out or drop out
when they can't build a coalition -- the perennial
problem of politicians in this quadrant. In the
same quadrant are readers of Rolling Stone
magazine and donors to the ACLU. Tellingly, most
software designers I know would claim a home here.
        * Lower right is right/libertarian. Most
Wall Street Journal editorial page readers are
comfortable here. Other neighbors include Ronald
Reagan, National Review, Forbes and Empower
America.


        Where's Bill Clinton? Our young president
has always been a leftist. His real problem is
that he can't decide whether he is authoritarian,
like his wife, or libertarian like the New
Democrat he campaigned as for president. On Nafta,
Clinton was his old campaigning self. (Not so on
much else, regrettably.)


        Here is the point: Nafta was largely
supported by libertarians and largely opposed by
authoritarians. And Nafta won't be the only
example of this. As the world speeds ever faster
into the information age, look for more skirmishes
fought along the authoritarian/libertarian axis.


        The source of the conflict is this:
Authoritarians believe in the goodness of
command-and-control. Politicians of this stripe --
left and right -- trust the state and its
apparatus to mold human beings into better human
beings. Force, implied, threatened or used,
inevitably is necessary. Libertarians, by
contrast, trust in the individual's ability to
make his own best destiny.
        How does politics relate to the
information age? Simply this. The microprocessor,
software and communications technologies --
building blocks of the information age -- are
tools that empower libertarians and wreak havoc
with authoritarians.


Distributed Computing Offers Clue
        There is no better predictor to describe
the coming authoritarian/libertarian battles than
the example of what happened in the computing
world during a 15-year period from 1977 to 1992.
In 1977, 99 percent of the world's computing power
resided on mainframes and minicomputers, which
communicated their wisdom to vassals known as
"dumb" terminals. By 1992, the percentages had
flopped: 99 percent of computing power sat
collectively on the world's desktop (and laptop)
computers. Moore's Law laid waste to command-and-
control data processing centers inside of
corporations.
        Moore's Law (named after Gordon Moore, the
Intel co-founder who predicted that chips would
double in performance every 18 months) will rout
every authoritarian regime it encounters. Yes,
every one: from mainframe computers, to monopolies
and cartels, to the tin pot Napoleons in
government, trade unions and academe.
        By 1996 Moore's law will have the power of
1993's top mainframe contained in a desktop box
for $3,000. By decade's end, that power will be in
your set-top box (once known as your television)
and telephone.
        Communications bandwidth will grow at a
rate even faster than Moore's Law. Fiber optics
has an almost infinite capacity, assuming the
development of such enabling technologies as
photon amplifiers and frequency tuners. But while
we're waiting for that, advances in digital signal
compression (again, thank Moore's Law) will turn
co-axial cable and even copper into six-lane
interstate highways of data. Wireless may hold the
greatest promise of all. Each year, Moore's Law --
literally in the form of digital signal
processors, analogously in a grid of microcells --
will ensure that higher and higher frequencies in
electromagnetic spectrum can be turned into
ocean-wide channels of data.


        Put this kind of expanding power in
ordinary people's hands, and authoritarian regimes
will topple, one by one. Before the decade's end,
home and private schooling on computers will rout
the NEA. Lightning fast library searches on
massively parallel servers fed by fiber optic
pipes will trash the cost structures of many
professional cartels, including law and perhaps
even medicine. And corporate organizations that
are based on hierarchies, job descriptions and
credentialism will be left gasping when passed by
nimbler rivals harnessing workgroup software,
teams of virtual experts and just-in-time
learning.
        In the age of information, those who cling
to authoritarian command-and-control structures
are destined to lose. But beware, in the meantime,
they'll try their best to make us miserable.






Best,
Rich Karlgaard
editor/Forbes ASAP
phone 415-802-6881
fax   415-637-1987