Crazy Questions for Pete Buttigieg about Bill Gates’ Toy

And for all of you who honor me by reading

1. Gates describes the computer as 'our toy.’ How does shared access to transformative tools in childhood shape not just individual success, but the potential for collaborative innovation? How might this challenge our competitive model of education?"

2. When examining the contrast between Lakeside School's resources and typical public schools, how does the focus on individual achievement mask the collective nature of opportunity? What would education look like if we prioritized creating conditions for collaborative learning over ranking individual performance?

3. The piece describes how 'time on task' remains a dominant metric in both education and business. How does measuring individual productivity in hours worked undermine the collaborative nature of problem-solving and innovation? What alternative metrics might better capture the value of shared effort and collective intelligence?

4. Looking at the research on socioeconomic impacts on child development, how does our emphasis on individual merit ignore the communal nature of human flourishing? How might reframing success as a collective achievement rather than individual competition lead to more equitable outcomes?

5. Gates' later recognition of his 'luck' suggests a shift from individual to systemic thinking. How does acknowledging the collaborative nature of success from supportive parents to enriched learning environments challenge the cut-throat competitive framework that dominates American education and business? What would it mean to build institutions that prioritize collective achievement over individual competition?

6. We recognize selling one's body as exploitation and outlaw it, yet we normalize selling hours of one's finite life. How does the hourly wage system create invisible barriers to democratic participation, especially for those who must sell the most hours to survive? What happens to civic engagement when citizens are exhausted from their selling time? (I am thinking of an orange…)

7. When people are trapped in hourly wage jobs, often working multiple jobs to survive, what impact is there on their ability to participate in the essential collaborative activities that sustain democracy—attending school board meetings, joining community organizations, volunteering, caring for elderly neighbors, mentoring youth? How does time poverty undermine democratic community?

8. The paradox of time commitments: We need people to make and keep time commitments to sustain families, communities, and democracy itself. Yet the commodification of time creates both scarcity and inequity. How might we restructure work and compensation to honor necessary time commitments while avoiding the exploitation of hourly wages? What would it mean to value contribution over time?