Are you concerned about how infrastructure spending is going to get done - I am. Please read this and let the government know how you feel.
There are three elements to smart infrastructure, the
infrastructure has to serve to improve commerce so that is PAYS for itself in
time, government should seek to partner the costs wherever possible (or avoid
them altogether) and it should be financed creatively and to the extent
possible domestically. Infrastructure is
agreeable to politicians because it normally results in a ribbon cutting and
public gratitude; but it should be remembered that the real infrastructure of
society is human capital, build human capital and it propagates itself.
Governments are good at counting traffic flow or assessing the value of transporting
goods; the entire western accounting complex is very poor at valuing human
capital. Infrastructure is more nebulous than ever, perhaps the most nebulous after human capital is infrastructure that facilitates technology – little things floating
in the sky that no one sees.
Recent press coverage of the feds meeting with municipal and
provincial governments has me quacking in my boots, I was hearing a lot about
arenas, recreations centers; Canada, toys are what we buy when the budget is
balanced, government is a little like the single parent that invests in hockey
gear only to have no milk for the month. It is a question of priority, it is a
question of putting pencil to paper and choosing to spend on things that result
is a sustained improvement in living standards, invest money in infrastructure
and avoid spending on things that just end up costing more when the loan is paid.
Intellectual
Infrastructure
The language that emerges in the form of buzzwords often
serves to give insight into to the head-space that is feeding human action, when
I hear “shovel ready”, it gags me – one realizes this is only a metaphor, but
to many when you say “infrastructure” they think railroad. So here are some
suggestions for some “intellectual” infrastructure.
Bigger Pipes &
Satellites Please
The CRTC sometime ago in effect sanctioned throttling by
granting companies the “right” to choose who’s data travels quicker than others
over the internet, this was offered as a solution to “burdened” infrastructure
– granted it was infrastructure specific to “private” companies, companies it
should be noted that enjoy a privileged operating circumstance relative to most
other countries. There are two key factors creating a problem, firstly, the
regulatory environment in Canada related to telecom is anti-competitive and
secondly, the term “information highway” has relevance in communication policy;
that is to say, government has a role to play in ensuring there is optimal
infrastructure to maximize it’s tax base and to promote regional advantage. We
are failing in Canada on this score, mainly due to the regulatory environment we’ve
created. A minimal investment in satellite technology and encouragement to the
telecom industry to build out capacity would serve to facilitate commerce and
human interaction in general, but also take industrial opportunity to all
corners of the country. Satellites could
be P3 financed and “private” information transmission infrastructure is able to
be addressed through more generous Capital Cost Allowances.
Please See Link Below:
CRTC - We need reform
Note: there have been some changes at the CRTC, but the fundamental structure remains the same.
Please See Link Below:
CRTC - We need reform
Note: there have been some changes at the CRTC, but the fundamental structure remains the same.
Converting
Knowledge to Action
Government has a responsibility to provision for the collection and distribution of knowledge
and to make the services it provides efficient as possible. Examine the budgets
of governments in Canada and you will see that money is going out on Medical
Care and Education and coming in on Business activity. That is the MATH, and
the joy of math is that it informs without bias or political distortion. One of
the greatest impediments to facilitating trimming cost and enhancing services
by government in Canada is a gross under estimation of people to read, think
and care for themselves that emanates from the collective paternalism of
interested service providers. Give people the information they need to make
manage their life and they will – the largest element of intellectual
infrastructure is knowledge and the largest benefit to government is the self-reliance that comes with
having it.
Job one, free web based education programs, this is
almost unrepresented now. The government is wed to big buildings, big
institutions and big money, when the internet opportunities for free education
lay wasting. Trades theory could be web based and free, and supplemented with
very little self-financed one on one tutelage. There are a vast number of
professions that could be facilitated on line – most learning can be done
online – certainly a larger percentage than is now available.
Job two, give people the tools they need to take care of
themselves so government services are targeted to high value use. Medical
service delivery, even under the “single payer” model we have in Canada could
be made much less costly, if the government would only give people the means to
care for themselves. There is plenty of space to support this through
government provided infrastructure, self-directed medical assessment for
example – the vast majority of Canadians can plug a basket of symptoms into a
computer and make an assessment of their medical status – self-directed medical
assessment could be developed an expanded. Canadians can enter the medications
they are taking into a computer and have a the computer scan a database for
contraindications and print out complete reports on other risks like food
interactions – the computer will do a better job than people.
Governments in Canada run massive organizations
delivering health care to Canadians and they fail to track medical outcomes, in
Canada we have no database that explains the 10,000 or more deaths from
preventable medical accidents each year; this is analogous to a farmer failing
to measure yields – people surviving a hospital stay is the key metric in
health care – we should be tracking it so people can decide how best to manage
the risk.
See Link Below:
Converting
Knowledge to Action
The vast majority of the world’s knowledge lays in a
latent state along with untold wealth now, in large measure because as a
society we are absent the absorptive capacity to put it to work. There are two components to converting existing
knowledge to actionable goods or services, firstly there is knowledge required
and secondly there is capital required. There are several ways government can
contribute to a infrastructure for a “capital deployment”; it can provide the
platform for favorable capital distribution from the mass of wealth that is
also latent in the form of conservatively invested “boomer” wealth, by engaging
in a form of quantitative easing that would subsidize capital.
Please see links below:
Converting the bank of latent knowledge that is present
in the world today to action requires a process called innovation – we hear the
word – we see it as the creative use of knowledge to generate something new and
or improved to sell to a market. Innovation is also, as often as not, an exercise
in heuristics; patient capital is required here.
Please see Link:
Funding
Money used to pay for infrastructure can justifiably come
from the liquidation of raw resource assets – sell one asset, create another;
we have failed in the past in converting raw resource assets into actuating
human capital – we have frittered it away paying to operate government
institutions, which cost more than the tax base can pay for. We have hitherto
spent much of our resource wealth rather than invest it.
Please see links below:
The municipal governments need to be able to issue bonds
for infrastructure improvements, this is a place where the cities can garner
funding from their respective citizens and the federal government can augment
returns to bond holders. In doing so, a healthy outcome emerges, in that cities
initiate the spending at their discretion, the local citizens choose to
support it and the federal government engages in a populous driven quantitative
easing program.
Human capital is the most important asset of any society;
the second most important is the financial wherewithal to actuate human
capital. Infrastructure spending is INVESTING in a manner that facilitates the
human endeavor. The government needs to play the role of the facilitator of
facilitation; that starts with providing access to relevant information and
then promoting access to capital.
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