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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (March 25, 2015)
2 Wednesday, March 25, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Robert B. Reich American Voices Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: As a taxpaying member and a lover of the Sisters community, I am dismayed by the neg- ative attention directed towards what gener- ally is thought of as a positive thing — a trail through the woods — in this case, the trail from Sisters to Black Butte Ranch. While I understand property owners are always concerned about “others” being in or near their neighborhood, (believe me, I’ve lived in a large city), I’m bemused by the out- pouring of what appears to be fear — which clearly comes across as opposition coming from a certain sector of the Sisters community. I also understand that some people are con- cerned that taxpayer money has been and may continue to be used to pay for the project and costs associated with the project. But that’s what taxpayer dollars are for — to pay for proj- ects that benefit taxpayers. I’m sorry to see that the Forest Service has abandoned its plans to move forward on this trail, yet I am hopeful that the commu- nity will resubmit a proposal. I particularly applaud Deschutes County Commissioner Alan Unger’s outreach to Oregon Solutions — an Oregon-based solutions finding group — to form a committee of representatives to look at economic, environmental and community objectives and come to an integrated solution that benefits all. This takes collaboration and representation from all concerned parties, and eliminates one group from dominating the discussion. It also assures that all stakeholders will be heard. I know this and have experienced it because I currently serve on an Oregon Solutions team. As the representative of a small neighborhood that sits in the center of a huge storm of fed- eral, state, county, regional, city and port con- cerns, we lived in fear of being overshadowed by lawyered, well-funded public agencies and large businesses (see Columbia River Repair and Accreditation; orsolutions.org/osproject/ MCDD). Yet we were not. With measured and consistent participation, we were able to voice our concerns, relate the importance of our neigh- borhood, and state the value of our community in this regional matter. Individual landowners were also heard; the process makes room for all. I hope Commissioner Unger is suc- cessful in his mission, and that Governor See letterS on page 12 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday thursday Friday Slt. chance rain Mostly sunny Sunny 58/31 70/38 72/37 Saturday Sunday Monday Partly sunny Mostly sunny Partly sunny 64/35 65/32 64/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Lisa Buckley Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $40; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2014 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it. At its prime in 1988, Eastman Kodak, the iconic American photography com- pany, had more than 145,000 employees. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo com- pany, had 13 employees serv- ing 30 million customers. The ratio of producers to customers continues to plummet. When Facebook purchased “WhatsApp” (the messaging app) for $19 bil- lion last year, WhatsApp had 55 employees serving 450 million customers. A friend, operating from his home in Tucson, AZ, recently invented a machine that can find particles of certain elements in the air. He’s already sold hundreds of these machines over the Internet to customers world- wide. He’s manufacturing them in his garage with a 3-D printer. So far, his entire business depends on just one person—himself. New technologies aren’t just labor-replacing. They’re also knowledge-replacing. The combination of advanced sensors, voice rec- ognition, artificial intelli- gence, big data, text-mining and pattern-recognition algo- rithms is generating smart robots capable of quickly learning human actions, and learning from one another. If you think being a “pro- fessional” makes your job safe, think again. The two sectors of the economy har- boring the most professionals, healthcare and education, are under increasing pressure to cut costs. Expert machines are poised to take over. We’re on the verge of a wave of mobile health apps for measuring everything from your cholesterol to your blood pressure, along with diagnostic software that tells you what it means and what to do about it. In coming years, software apps will be doing many of the things physicians, nurses and technicians now do (think ultrasound, CT scans and electrocardiograms). Meanwhile, the jobs of many teachers and university professors will disappear, replaced by online courses and interactive textbooks. When more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, the profits go to an ever-smaller circle of execu- tives and owner-investors. One of the young found- ers of WhatsApp, CEO Jan Koum, had a 45 percent equity stake in the company when Facebook purchased it, which yielded him $6.8 billion. Cofounder Brian Acton got $3 billion for his 20 percent. Each of the early employ- ees reportedly had a 1 percent stake, which presumably net- ted them $160 million each. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be left providing the only things technology can’t pro- vide: person-to-person atten- tion, human touch, and care. But these sorts of person-to- person jobs pay very little. That means most of us will have less and less money to buy the dazzling array of products and services spawned by blockbuster tech- nologies — because those same technologies will be supplanting our jobs and driv- ing down our pay. We need a new economic model. The economic model that dominated most of the 20th century was mass pro- duction by the many, for mass consumption by the many. Workers were consumers; consumers were workers. As paychecks rose, people had more money to buy all the things they and others pro- duced, like Kodak cameras. That resulted in more jobs and even higher pay. That virtuous cycle is now falling apart. A future of almost unlimited production by a handful, for consump- tion by whoever can afford it, is a recipe for economic and social collapse. Our underlying problem won’t be the number of jobs. It will be, it already is, the allo- cation of income and wealth. What to do? “Redistribution” has become a bad word. But the economy toward which we’re hurtling can’t function. It may be that a redistri- bution of income and wealth from the rich owners of breakthrough technologies to the rest of us becomes the only means of making the future economy work. © 2015 By Robert Reich; Distributed by Tribune Con- tent Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.