Coming Together to protect the educational commons

How to privatize the university system and get paid for it as you go, tell the government money dries up and a government funded “market driven” education system falls apart with the rest of the economy.

So how does it work?

Simple, the “market maniacs” get politicians elected that cut taxes on very well off people and massive corporations that could afford paying those taxes and then when the bill for government comes due, they scream, “we don’t have any money.” So they then have the excuse to “cut” funding and of course education is at the very top of their “needed cuts.”

So where to get the money for kids that want and need a university education and can’t afford it? You get the very people and corporations that paid for the politicians they put in office to create the “demand” to come forward and provide the answer - public/private funding. This is done by corporate infiltration of the commons, one example is taking over intellectual property rights by “sponsoring” and “funding” science efforts by directing and profiteering from how science is conducted at the public universities – as only one example of many.

The other is more insidious, the direct funding of students by selling “educational loans” to parents and students who in the past didn’t need them, because schools at one time were affordable because of government support, that support that is no longer exists. Just to bad for the poor kid who worked to prepare herself, but couldn’t go because the cupboard at home was empty.

A simple scheme, but very a very effective scheme, tell the bottom fell out of the “market driven economy” and then you know who has to pick up the pieces on that one. This is part of a much wider PPP (public, private, partnership) activity that has been going on for decades – to create “markets” out of what is left of the commons.

To expand the concept of creating wealth, the only place to do that is to take from the commons and give it to the “private sector” – read corporations. Government is the place to effectively get hold of the various aspects of the commons. Education, water, air – yes air, that is be commoditized by the use of buying credits to continue to pollute the air, the water commons is being attacked at all entry levels– public water systems, the rivers, streams, aquifers, even the rain that falls from the sky is not without its privatizers.

Education is really being hard hit, educational systems around the globe are being attacked in various ways, by market maniacs, corrupt governments and many other “merchants of opportunity”, it reaches far into the biggest financial institutes in the world. They use every available tool of commerce to get the job done – even trade.

International trade rules that have been set up over the past decades make it almost impossible to react collectively to these forces, because the new rules are enforced by the very people who set up the rules – in effect a court of no appeal.

So what to do about the on going demise of the commons? It’s become a systemic problem that we as citizens of the world have to confront. segment by segment. It’s already being confronted around food and water; we now have to confront the take over of the educational commons – that means taking on the political and market manipulators. I use the manipulators in the grandest of terms, for when you combine political governess with market maniacs you have a massive, will funded – read supper rich as the opposition where in the future the generic commons will no longer exist.

The first thing to do is define the purpose, then figure out “who pays?” and then plan a strategy, work the tactics and then win – no small task.