Measurement is great. However business schools have become obsessed with measurement as they try to emulate science. Wouldn't it be great if you could just have a metric for everything? After all, it makes decisions pretty easy at that point. You just compare numbers.
However, in anything complex, large scale measurement is difficult... if not impossible. Just like your engineering/it job. How do you measure performance? Lines of code is easy... but stupid. Bug fixed/week... well that doesn't account for the person who writes high quality code that doesn't need so many bug fixes... In the end, like teachers... you just 'know' them. Colleagues can recognize them.
At the end of the day you'll spend more time, money, resources trying to have metrics than actually producing things of value.
And don't forget that bad metrics are worse than no metrics. If you have two groups of software developers. One doesn't use metrics at all. Another uses lines of code. The one with no metrics will produce better results than the one that with bad metrics.
In education, if we have bad metrics, it could produce worse results. teachers might do all kinds of things to get their numbers to look good that would be detrimental to the students.
The way we have solved it as a society has been via the market place of ideas. Everyone is free to try out their ideas. Everyone is free to start a business. They try and entice people to try their goods/service... good companies tend to gain more market share and better ideas thrive.
[insert disclaimer about crony capitalism, monopolies, legal.... all the things that stand in the way of the free market place of ideas... ]
It's far from perfect. let's face it, the best product is often beat by the one that is better marketed, or from a more 'reputable' company. However, no one needs to prove it is perfect. Only that is better than the alternative. The alternative being that you can predetermine success by reports/metrics.
I don't know what the best school policies are. I don't know what makes the best teacher. I don't know how applicable those are to every community and student. I don't know how policies today can change with conditions tomorrow. It's a million variable equation.
I have more trust in the market place of ideas than on bureaucracy to predetermine the winner.
My solution to education is simply to open it up. At its most basic level, let schools do their own thing. Empower local schools do manage their own resources and policies better. Yes, you will get some bad school of course as they would be poorly run. That's a trade off you make for diversity of ideas... some will be bad. You can set a basic set of limits of course, but push more decisions locally.
Going a bit further than that, you could introduce free entry so anyone can setup a school (maybe mandate it be non-profit)... and people just choose the school they want.
Unfortunately, that rarely has the intended result. Hence why federalism is a very practical political process as opposed to the idealized centralized administration.
In as much as you can 'hope' the federal government can 'control' the crazies... you run an equal risk of the 'crazies' controlling the federal government.
Look at history or the current situation. It is just very difficult for a central authority to change the local crazies. I'm sure the Russians would love to change the Chechans. But they can't... even with the force they use. I'm sure the Turks would love to change the Kurds... but they can't. I've sure Canada would love to the change the Native Indians... but they can't. I'm sure you would love to change the 'religious right'... but you can't. It's why most sane countries abandon centralization. You can't change people like that in a centralized manner... and if you try... you'll probably run into violence. Social change happens slowly over time.
With federalism, this does not occur. If some 'crazies' want to do their own thing, they will. But the system as a whole as stronger as the 'sane' states are allowed to pursue their own policies.
When you centralize things, you invite the crazies to the table and end up compromising the whole system.
You see the problem. You note they are doing things like attempting to change text books, ban books, ban sex ed, pushing creationism... Right now, that mainly occurs at the state level even in the US. Now imagine a national curriculum and these 'crazies' being at the federal table creating a national curriculum.
And you cannot exclude them from the table, they will be there. They are people and vote.
It is very intellectually appealing to imagine a central authority fixing 'crazy' groups. In reality, it just doesn't happen all that often. I for one have come to see the wisdom of letting the crazies be crazy in their own little areas. The more local the crazies can be, the better it is for society.
I'll just toss this out there. Surely you don't think all the 'crazy' states are filled with 'crazy' people.
So originally education was mainly local. Then surely people said... but what if Shelbyville is filled with crazies... we need to have a statewide education system and a state curriculum. Then in time, people saw that didn't solve the problem. The crazies didn't go away. They got a hold of the state education system. Then people said... but what if state XYZ is filled with crazies, we need federal oversight...
If state wide centralization couldn't solve the 'crazy' problem, what makes you think national centralization is going to solve the 'crazy' problem?
Most liberals will end up regretting their centralization of power in all these fields. Centralization will not only be used by 'your side'. You bring a gun to a fight... eventually the other side will learn to bring a gun too. And in the US, the 'crazies' have learned that they too can use the political system.
Canada and the US really aren't that different despite the rhetoric. You say some states wouldn't give a shit... but where it your evidence that the FDoE has improved it? People who don't give a shit... generally keep not giving a shit no matter how high you go in the bureaucratic chain.
It only began in the 1980s. Aside from the discrimination against blacks, education in the US was pretty decent.
Most of the issues around education were resolved in other areas (anti-discrimination laws, mandating access to elementary education...).
The only thing the FDoE gets you is the federal government being able to enact such ridiculous legislation as no child left behind.
Better a federal system where at most the federal government just writes a cheque with as few stings attached as possible. And you don't need a big department to do that.
yes, sorry, I misread your 3 as being the choice part of the equation. Yes 3 is in science and the next step 4 is the political decision process.
That all said, in philosophical terms, you're basically talking about utilitarianism.
It sounds ideal, except it by in large turns out to be a values game disguised as numbers.
For example, Some study might say we could increase our life span by 5 years by banning fast food. Let's say we assign this value a +5.
But that of course that infringes on freedom. How do you measure something like 'freedom'. You can't and different people feel about it differently. So the value you assign to freedom is pretty much completely arbitrary. For me, I think such an infringement would be a -100. To some libertarian it might be -infinity. To some socialist, it might be 0. To some progressive, it might be +5 as they twist the definition of freedom.
So action = 5 + (-100 or -infinity or 0 or 5). In each case you end with a different answer that ultimately ends up being completely arbitrary and about values.
The 'math' you put on top of it just attempts to mask a values discussion with numbers.
And of course this doesn't even taken into account that some things are just really very hard to predict. At no other point in time have we had so many brilliant people in the finance field. These folks somehow managed to completely much up the entire global economy despite all their models and numerical analysis. And that's just the economy.
You'll find this more often than... science doesn't really offer you much value in such POLITICAL decision making. There are a very very very small subset of questions that science can meaningfully produce a pure math answer in the manner in which you propose.
Quantifying things across different domains generally just ends up being a values exercise disguised as numbers.
I full agree with your formulation as a general concept.
I just didn't want to have the conversation tilt towards the validity and conclusions of the science. It's besides the point of what science's place in society should be and would only distract the real political conversation.
That's why i said (assume I'm talking about gravity):P
I leave it up to the scientific field to figure out 1 and 2. The rest of society only steps in during Q3...the actions and the politics.
"Science is the boss and should tell politics what to do, not the other way around."
I going to nitpick here, as the distinction needs to occur.
Science cannot tell anyone what to do because science is valueless and goalless.
For example. Science can tell you global warming is happening (play along even if you don't believe. Replace global warming with gravity if it helps you) . But science cannot tell you what if anything you should do about it. Science can be used to slaughter a billion people as easily as can be used to provide clean energy.
Science cannot tell you if you should just ignore global warming, have a carbon tax, fund research, build transit... all those require goals and weighing people's values.
Should that billion dollars go towards funding solar research or healthcare for the poor? Should we include a carbon tax and raise the cost of living on the poor? Should we just be happy with increasing temperatures and move to more suitable climates?
It's a careful distinction. I'd rephrase it as.
"Science is the thermometer and should tell politics what the temperature is, not the other way around. We can't have politicians telling the thermometer what the temperature is outside"
At least two of these should definitely be cut. Education Housing and Urban Development.
I never understood the purpose of the federal department of education. I'm Canadian and education is provided at the provincial level (states). It lets provinces do their own thing. What does the federal dept of education do what individual states cannot? If there is anything that is local, it is education.
Again Housing and Urban development at the federal level? This is such a local matter which should primarily concern cities themselves... and at most states.
Some of the other things make more sense at the federal level. Not that I agree with all of them, but they at least have a plausible rational. Especially things like standards and global issues (Atmosphere and ocean)...
While I'm always for cynicism, there is a 'basis' for this.
There is a long history, especially in the progressive movement to monetize everything. It's an essential part of modern politics. We must monetize all work so that all work is treated equally. Child-rearing must be monetized. House work must be monetized...
From this context, intellectual property is just a way to monetize the retention and spread of knowledge.
Remember back in the day when the telco monopolies dominated, a lot of R&D was in fact subsidized by telecom service revenue. You got the great bell labs and everything that way... including languages like C++. Most of the open source movement dreams of this era when software was giving out for free... while forgetting it was pretty much all subsidized by being integrated into a telecom monopoly. That provided long term stable cash flow.
With the telco monopoles broken up, how do you fund long term jobs and ensure the money reaches those contributing these products?
Intellectual property. It prevents the products from having their cost drop to 0 and thus keeps money in the system. Would less money be made in the grande scheme of things by fewer downstream products and companies? Who knows... but they do have a rational for their obsession with intellectual property and its the monetization of all work.
I'll try and explain it, but its pretty self-explanatory and followed by lots of empirical evidence.
It doesn't matter if there are 1,2,5,10 competing innovative companies. They still provide a very small number of jobs.
Think of operating systems. Sure, there's Microsoft, Apple, Red Hat, Qnx... and that's a consolidating industry. Microsoft, one of the largest employers provides the world with OS, word processor, office suits, gaming systems, collaboration software, database software, web search, email, video, business intelligence... does all it does with 100K people.
And all things are not equal. You're viewing the world entirely from an economists point of view. Just because there's money, doesn't mean there's a need or skill to create competing products. You'd think you'd have picked up on that while businesses have huge amount of money in the bank, but don't want to spend it. They don't see anything worth spending on.
If you worked in software development, you'd pick up pretty quickly that throwing more people at a problem doesn't solve it better. You need a few empowered skilled people.
Even in 'newer' fields like solar. There's really only a few great design jobs available for crazy PHd types. And again, the number of design jobs are very few. And there's diminishing returns once you have a few companies setup doing it. What 'new' value are you adding. When they already have a working product, supply chain, sales relationships.
And if you're not adding new value, why would a customer buy your product instead of the established one? You could also compete on cost, but again for an established company, especially in a digital world, cost becomes marginal.
And think of the devotion to solar that you would need to actually create innovation. How many are willing to pursue their Phd in the field to actually make a useful contribution? Not many.
This is made worse by what I call... the government economy. Healthcare, education, public sector, legal... industries. Skilled people are shunning innovative jobs precisely because the investment is huge and the payout not so great on average. Better to just be a public sector worker doing a regular job, or entering one of the protected professions like law or medicine and doing everyday work.
There's definitely lots of innovation jobs... but they're small relative to the sheer number of people. I hope I don't come across as saying there will only be one company. No, there will be many players. They will rise and fall. New ones will be born. But the actual number of design jobs will be few.
Governments are trying to deal with this reality in many ways. Some like China insist on technology partnerships... to ensure local employment. Without government, companies like Cisco/MS/Intel would have taken over the entire Chinese market. They already had the skills and products. Huawei, STM... really don't add any value.
Others, like in the US/Canada, try to stimulate competition by plowing money into industry. Things like feed in tariffs... Often guaranteeing profits by subsidies... It really doesn't add much more value to society, but its an attempt to create jobs. They count on the finance folks to want the easy money and thus create different companies.
In any field with a plausible market, there's already good minds working on them. You don't really add more value by faking competition. In general, you just end up with scammers and cronyism.
This is all in complete contrast to the industrial age. When telephones first came up, the jobs really did scale with population. To make a phone call, you needed a telephone switch operator. We've been slowly grinding away at the jobs that scale with population.
I'm Canadian. 10K... after taxes... depending on your jurisdiction in the senior salary range... is going to work out to like 6k. It's not life changing
Moving to a new job is diving into a new pool. You might not like it. You might not like the new people. You might not like the new work. Who knows.
I personally wouldn't leave a known good situation for 10K. But that's just me.
But ultimately, life is about the relationships you build. Your manage, that product manger, your director, your coop students, your underlings...
These are people like any other who understand loyalty. Loyalty to the company and these folks is different, but intertwined.
You don't leave the company without leaving all those individuals
It's a complicated social world and you have to be smart about it.
I would never leave a good job for a few thousand. 1. Ask your employer to match the salary. A few thousand is nothing for a company. The sales guy probably drink that much in a month. 2. In the grand scheme, do you enjoy the work? Do you like your colleagues?
The 'creative class', the 'innovation economy' was a hail Mary pass created by people to try and keep anything going. We've created a system dependent on growth (pensions, public debt...)
Do you what the key component of the 'innovation' age is? It doesn't need a lot of people to service the world.
A few thousands engineers/marketting/sales people can handle all the digital distribution for the entire world. Contrast that against all the jobs in local communities that used to be there when each neighborhood had its own blockbuster.
Computing, automation, and globalization mean there really aren't that many jobs to do. Especially with software, once something is built, that's it. There's no manufacturing cost or labor for additional people serviced.
Oh I'm sure there will be huge advancements in technology. The problem... they won't create that many jobs.
The 'creative class' and its advocates are ignorant progressives who live in a bubble. They live in silicon valley or at university campuses. It doesn't occur to them that there are 300 million Americans. Over 6 billion people in the world. There aren't enough innovative 'good' jobs available because design oriented jobs DO NOT SCALE with the population.
The innovation economy bares a good resemblance to Hollywood. And it pulls in plenty of suckers it seems. You might laugh at young people wanting to become actors or musicians... thinking their chances of making it big are 1 in a million. Yet, looking at it in scale, that one movie or big musicians services a large population and gets very wealthy. That's what makes it such a dynamic field.
Yet, that is exactly what the innovation economy is... and they've managed to actually pull the drapes over the entire American population... if not the world.
It's a world where innovation ensures rapid change, few jobs. It has nothing to do with patents or copyright.
Anyone who thinks innovation will 'power' the American economy is an idiot who doesn't understand scale. Innovation might be enough for a really small country... of a few million. Maybe Singapore or Sweden... think if Silicon Valley was its own country. We'd all be in awe. Yet they only make it rich by being a small population with massive exports. Not every country can be an exporter.
So next time someone talks about the innovation economy... try and think of the 300 million Americans and 6 billion people on Earth... and see how they fit into your 'innovation economy'. The reality is this
1. There will be a few innovative creative class jobs as there have always been. 2. Most people will be in regular jobs doing regular things
We'll probably see a lot of this kind of proposal. Ultimately, it has to do with jobs. Why not bypass all the bullshit and just admit we're not willing to deal with globalization?
Say what you want about the 'market', most of the economy is government run today... either directly or heavily regulated to the point of being government run. healthcare, education, military, law, financial...
So why do people like yourself sit there pretending like we have a free market and ultimately hurting yourself as an engineer/computer scientists (yes I am assuming you work in the field).
Don't be a martyr for efficiency. Me, I'll gladly take regulation in software so you need the credentials and residency experience of a lawyer/doctor to write software, especially mission critical or networking software. That's just how the world is right now.
When we live in a libertarian paradise, I'll gladly compete with anyone. Until that time, don't be a martyr. Fight for your industry and protection.
Except, science cannot tell you values or what you should do. Everything... and means everything... starts from values.
Science can just as easily lead you to build clean energy as it can to build a nuclear bomb and slaughter a million people.
The core of science is the scientific method. It is completely and utterly valueless. And modern people, especially progressives like to pretend as if their policies are based on science... and they're not ideological or based on values. Yet they are.
I should note, when I say progressive, I don't just mean 'leftists'. They are equally there on the right as well. I'm talking about the progressive movement which views the government's job to lead society via rational administration to progress.
A progressive will have a scientific report that says... reducing transfats will extend life expectancy by 1.5 years therefore we should legislate banning transfats.
They will claim that action is irrefutable as it is based on science. Well no... the fact that transfats will extend life expectancy might be based on science. The proposed action is not. Implicit in that is a value judgment. They value extending human life.
Now who could argue with that? Well there are other values in life. Freedom, leisure, fun, spirituality, responsibility, love...
Everything in politics is about competing 'good values'. Even Hitler didn't campaign on being evil. He campaigned on rebuilding the great German society. A very good value.
How much you value competing values determines your value set.
People who want 'Science' as king are really just intellectually lazy people who deny they have values, and typically want to only use easily measurable values. As 'science' is much easier to do when you have things that are easy to measure.
Value wise, something like freedom and health are there. People feel just as strongly about both. But life expectancy is easy to measure. Which do you think the 'progressives' decide to adopt as a value? They're intellectually lazy.
And quite frankly, it is insanely easy to find flaws with anything human made. I've yet to see anyone come up with a reasonably alternative to constitutional democracy.
Nothing is easier than thinking 'if only I could be in charge, we could solve all the problems.' That is something common to kings, theocracies, dictators, and progressives.
They don't want to deal with the complexities of society, of dealing with people, of convincing them, of dealing with life in general.
It's easy to say science should be king. Well who do you decide to put on the scientific panels in government? If you politicize it, you end up where we are with judges today... no different than democracy. If you leave it up to scientists, then you have this unelected supreme council which politically isn't much different from having a theocracy. You can say, but they have peer review... But Catholic Priests also had a code forbidding molesting children. It didn't stop them from abusing their power and molesting children and covering it up.
Once you create such a institution, it corrupts itself with power. It doesn't matter what their 'code' says.
So I challenge you, think up a system of governance and work out all the details. Don't be intellectually lazy like most progressives. Think it through. You want a scientific council? Who gets to be on it? What powers do they have? What do you if the 'idiot masses' resist?... you know the actual things if importance.
well I have no problem with cartels as long as it is not a 'natural monopoly' like telecom.
If Hitachi and LG rig their prices too high, all their buyers (HP, Dell...) will take note. If the price gets too high, they will setup their own optical manufacturing.
Now for another good buzz word.... cloud computing. Microsoft is already hosting Exchange, Office, and SharePoint online. They and other product providers can directly provide the service now... reducing the need for IBMs.
With all due respect, the marketing folks and politicians always win.
There isn't a problem in the world where a politician doesn't think making it a central authority won't solve every problem.
You name it. Education, healthcare, transit, R&D, food, poverty... politicians think if they can just create a national system, they can reap efficiencies and expertise and solve every problem.
Maybe it has something to do that most politicians are not 'builders' like society and thus don't have to care how things actually work. They tend to be lawyers who only care about writing how things should ideally work.
Every competent engineer knows the flaws of centralization of highly complex systems. We like distributed systems for highly complex systems.
I would pretty much wager politicians will try and buy the big centralized administration urban OS over intelligent distributed processing.
yes I do. I'm one of these 'experts' who works in a high-tech field that displaces the jobs of people.
The difference between me and my colleagues is that I don't see the rest of society as worthless. I see no reason why I should be paid more than a farm worker. Only if my skill is so great that no one else can do it is there any justification for me being paid more. Perhaps its because I come from the 3rd world in a very rural area.
And in case you missed the point... computers, automation and general education increasingly make the average person equally capable of doing any job society needs done to the satisfaction of the consumers.
So why should person A get a job and not person B? In some kind of free market world, the answer is somewhat moral... A does a better job or offers a better price than B or is able to attract more customers.
But we don't live in that world. We live in a world where huge areas of the economy are run or heavily regulated by the government (healthcare, education, infrastructure, military, banking...) and more and more parts of the economy are dependent on government programs. So this moral rational of A deserves it more than B is going away.
For example, I live in Ontario, Canada. Teaching is a very well paid profession here. The result... no surprise... lots and lots of qualified teachers. And lots and lots of unemployed teachers. As there is no free-entry in the education system, why does one qualified teacher get a job... the other equally qualified teacher is stuck doing retail? The unemployed teachers are angry. I know a lot of them. But of course, we all can't be teachers:P
We have have yet to fully comprehend what an 'educated' society will yield. When education no longer makes you 'special', it shouldn't carry any premium in pay.
The result as I say is more egalitarianism. In some fantasy free market world that doesn't exist, this will happen as the cost of living plunges and people don't need to work a lot and they voluntarily work less hours. I know I would if I didn't have to pay such high property taxes and worry about inflation.
Perhaps a 'good' job is going to work on the farm a few days a week?
Alternatively, a more socialist model is going to result in the same thing. Government could mandate a shortened work week, more vacation time....
I'm always amazed at these job discussion. Who wants to work 8 hours a day every week?
Even today, everywhere you turn it is jobs jobs jobs. Obama rants about jobs. Republicans rant about jobs. Meanwhile, all the people with jobs are stressed out from all the work they have to do.
And of course, there's all the 'educated' people. The biggest problem with these people is they were all raised thinking they were special. They're 'entitled' to a high standard of living.
It's why society has created all these legal and financial jobs. They do nothing productive or useful for society. Many would argue they even hurt society. Yet, they are these because 'educated' people deserve good jobs.
The poor textile worker who made clothing for people... screw them.... outsource to China. Farm workers... hah... we won't even let our welfare folks work on the farm.
The solution to all this... and the economic collapse we're experiencing... is the following: less work more work sharing
Whether socialism or the free market, the tendency is going to be to a more egalitarian society. In terms of producing things people value, there is little that differentiates people. I can do a job. You can do a job. A computer can do a job.
Sure, there will be a small percentage of 'super experts' who will still be able to out do anyone else.... but they are a small number.
And good on MS. They're doing the work, they want to make sure they get paid.
Maybe one day you will realize that every field protects itself. Doctors and lawyers restrict their trade. Regulators and government employees have direct access to government cash.
What do tech companies have? They have their own community fighting to destroy any sense of long term cash flow.
It was easier back in the day when this cash-flow came from a telecom monopoly which was then funded to R&D labs. But with the breakup of the telcos and vendors forced to fight on their own, they have to deal with the realities of funding a long term business.
You want nice open standards... then do it but then have a license fee or tax that goes back to the creators of said standard.
I have a feeling as the economy implodes... more and more people are going to realize that making a living is a pretty important part of life.
"We didn't have the knowledge or technology prior to 1961 either. But spending money to learn how to do those things was the right thing to do."
But that of course is the debate. We should spend money to explore space, fix diseases, take out 3rd world dictators, rebuild nations, build high speed rail lines, research electric cars, take of the mentally ill... and so on and so forth.
Advancing science is hardly a trump argument to do something. Not saying it is not a worthy goal, but virtually all such goals are worthwhile. To many exploring space is nothing... a who cares proposition. No different from government spending on operas.
This all comes down to your grand assumption that more data will improve care.
There is a grand belief... and I use the world belief on purpose... that bureaucrats and experts can you use data to run things better. To allocate resources better.
For example, could you get better care from a general doctor running his/her own office without any complex codes or anything?
It's the equivalent of eating out at a small family restaurant. They probably don't keep track of huge data sets... but they provide a pretty good meal at a pretty decent price. They also don't have to employ analysts and data collection, and spend half their time filling out complex forms... they provide the service directly.
Now this is not to say the non-data based businesses perform better. Quite the contrary.
There are many cases where being data focused helps your business.
However, I'd prefer that be left up to the society at large to keep things in check. If one medical provider wants to use massive data sets... let them. If another wants to have more personal non-data care... let them.
In general, this attitude that 'more data' is always better is ridiculous. Do you think you would be any more productive at work, if you had to keep data on everything you did? Every time you started a build logged? Every bug detailed and classified into 100000 categories of bugs? Every coffee break logged?
I'd actually say this is less than useful. It is going to be counter productive and make medical care worse.
Well hopefully... this results in a world where we don't need to work the GP.
The reality is that your average doctor really doesn't do anything that complicated that a computer can't match on average. They take symptoms, order tests...
What you really need to do is make sure it doesn't go nuts. I'm sure they could write in some safe guards and other health professionals like nurses could do a sanity check.
It's about time we recognize that 'quality' is not the only metric in healthcare. Availability, cost... factor in just like anything else.
If a computer can do image detection with 98% accuracy of a radiologist, we should use it.
If we can improve primary care by using Watson, we should allow it.
Will doctors accept it? They'll fight it as they like their monopoly... but for the greater good, we should fight for such choice.
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Measurement is great. However business schools have become obsessed with measurement as they try to emulate science. Wouldn't it be great if you could just have a metric for everything? After all, it makes decisions pretty easy at that point. You just compare numbers.
However, in anything complex, large scale measurement is difficult... if not impossible. Just like your engineering/it job. How do you measure performance? Lines of code is easy... but stupid. Bug fixed/week... well that doesn't account for the person who writes high quality code that doesn't need so many bug fixes... In the end, like teachers... you just 'know' them. Colleagues can recognize them.
At the end of the day you'll spend more time, money, resources trying to have metrics than actually producing things of value.
And don't forget that bad metrics are worse than no metrics.
If you have two groups of software developers.
One doesn't use metrics at all.
Another uses lines of code.
The one with no metrics will produce better results than the one that with bad metrics.
In education, if we have bad metrics, it could produce worse results. teachers might do all kinds of things to get their numbers to look good that would be detrimental to the students.
The way we have solved it as a society has been via the market place of ideas. Everyone is free to try out their ideas. Everyone is free to start a business. They try and entice people to try their goods/service... good companies tend to gain more market share and better ideas thrive.
[insert disclaimer about crony capitalism, monopolies, legal .... all the things that stand in the way of the free market place of ideas... ]
It's far from perfect. let's face it, the best product is often beat by the one that is better marketed, or from a more 'reputable' company. However, no one needs to prove it is perfect. Only that is better than the alternative. The alternative being that you can predetermine success by reports/metrics.
I don't know what the best school policies are. I don't know what makes the best teacher. I don't know how applicable those are to every community and student. I don't know how policies today can change with conditions tomorrow. It's a million variable equation.
I have more trust in the market place of ideas than on bureaucracy to predetermine the winner.
My solution to education is simply to open it up. At its most basic level, let schools do their own thing. Empower local schools do manage their own resources and policies better. Yes, you will get some bad school of course as they would be poorly run. That's a trade off you make for diversity of ideas... some will be bad. You can set a basic set of limits of course, but push more decisions locally.
Going a bit further than that, you could introduce free entry so anyone can setup a school (maybe mandate it be non-profit)... and people just choose the school they want.
Unfortunately, that rarely has the intended result. Hence why federalism is a very practical political process as opposed to the idealized centralized administration.
In as much as you can 'hope' the federal government can 'control' the crazies... you run an equal risk of the 'crazies' controlling the federal government.
Look at history or the current situation. It is just very difficult for a central authority to change the local crazies. I'm sure the Russians would love to change the Chechans. But they can't... even with the force they use. I'm sure the Turks would love to change the Kurds... but they can't. I've sure Canada would love to the change the Native Indians... but they can't. I'm sure you would love to change the 'religious right'... but you can't. It's why most sane countries abandon centralization. You can't change people like that in a centralized manner... and if you try... you'll probably run into violence. Social change happens slowly over time.
With federalism, this does not occur. If some 'crazies' want to do their own thing, they will. But the system as a whole as stronger as the 'sane' states are allowed to pursue their own policies.
When you centralize things, you invite the crazies to the table and end up compromising the whole system.
You see the problem. You note they are doing things like attempting to change text books, ban books, ban sex ed, pushing creationism... Right now, that mainly occurs at the state level even in the US. Now imagine a national curriculum and these 'crazies' being at the federal table creating a national curriculum.
And you cannot exclude them from the table, they will be there. They are people and vote.
It is very intellectually appealing to imagine a central authority fixing 'crazy' groups. In reality, it just doesn't happen all that often. I for one have come to see the wisdom of letting the crazies be crazy in their own little areas. The more local the crazies can be, the better it is for society.
I'll just toss this out there. Surely you don't think all the 'crazy' states are filled with 'crazy' people.
So originally education was mainly local.
Then surely people said... but what if Shelbyville is filled with crazies... we need to have a statewide education system and a state curriculum.
Then in time, people saw that didn't solve the problem. The crazies didn't go away. They got a hold of the state education system.
Then people said... but what if state XYZ is filled with crazies, we need federal oversight...
If state wide centralization couldn't solve the 'crazy' problem, what makes you think national centralization is going to solve the 'crazy' problem?
Most liberals will end up regretting their centralization of power in all these fields. Centralization will not only be used by 'your side'. You bring a gun to a fight... eventually the other side will learn to bring a gun too. And in the US, the 'crazies' have learned that they too can use the political system.
Canada and the US really aren't that different despite the rhetoric. You say some states wouldn't give a shit... but where it your evidence that the FDoE has improved it? People who don't give a shit... generally keep not giving a shit no matter how high you go in the bureaucratic chain.
It only began in the 1980s. Aside from the discrimination against blacks, education in the US was pretty decent.
Most of the issues around education were resolved in other areas (anti-discrimination laws, mandating access to elementary education...).
The only thing the FDoE gets you is the federal government being able to enact such ridiculous legislation as no child left behind.
Better a federal system where at most the federal government just writes a cheque with as few stings attached as possible. And you don't need a big department to do that.
yes, sorry, I misread your 3 as being the choice part of the equation. Yes 3 is in science and the next step 4 is the political decision process.
That all said, in philosophical terms, you're basically talking about utilitarianism.
It sounds ideal, except it by in large turns out to be a values game disguised as numbers.
For example,
Some study might say we could increase our life span by 5 years by banning fast food. Let's say we assign this value a +5.
But that of course that infringes on freedom. How do you measure something like 'freedom'. You can't and different people feel about it differently. So the value you assign to freedom is pretty much completely arbitrary. For me, I think such an infringement would be a -100. To some libertarian it might be -infinity. To some socialist, it might be 0. To some progressive, it might be +5 as they twist the definition of freedom.
So action = 5 + (-100 or -infinity or 0 or 5).
In each case you end with a different answer that ultimately ends up being completely arbitrary and about values.
The 'math' you put on top of it just attempts to mask a values discussion with numbers.
And of course this doesn't even taken into account that some things are just really very hard to predict. At no other point in time have we had so many brilliant people in the finance field. These folks somehow managed to completely much up the entire global economy despite all their models and numerical analysis. And that's just the economy.
You'll find this more often than... science doesn't really offer you much value in such POLITICAL decision making. There are a very very very small subset of questions that science can meaningfully produce a pure math answer in the manner in which you propose.
Quantifying things across different domains generally just ends up being a values exercise disguised as numbers.
I full agree with your formulation as a general concept.
I just didn't want to have the conversation tilt towards the validity and conclusions of the science. It's besides the point of what science's place in society should be and would only distract the real political conversation.
That's why i said (assume I'm talking about gravity) :P
I leave it up to the scientific field to figure out 1 and 2. The rest of society only steps in during Q3...the actions and the politics.
"Science is the boss and should tell politics what to do, not the other way around."
I going to nitpick here, as the distinction needs to occur.
Science cannot tell anyone what to do because science is valueless and goalless.
For example. Science can tell you global warming is happening (play along even if you don't believe. Replace global warming with gravity if it helps you)
.
But science cannot tell you what if anything you should do about it.
Science can be used to slaughter a billion people as easily as can be used to provide clean energy.
Science cannot tell you if you should just ignore global warming, have a carbon tax, fund research, build transit... all those require goals and weighing people's values.
Should that billion dollars go towards funding solar research or healthcare for the poor? Should we include a carbon tax and raise the cost of living on the poor? Should we just be happy with increasing temperatures and move to more suitable climates?
It's a careful distinction.
I'd rephrase it as.
"Science is the thermometer and should tell politics what the temperature is, not the other way around. We can't have politicians telling the thermometer what the temperature is outside"
At least two of these should definitely be cut.
Education
Housing and Urban Development.
I never understood the purpose of the federal department of education. I'm Canadian and education is provided at the provincial level (states). It lets provinces do their own thing. What does the federal dept of education do what individual states cannot? If there is anything that is local, it is education.
Again Housing and Urban development at the federal level? This is such a local matter which should primarily concern cities themselves... and at most states.
Some of the other things make more sense at the federal level. Not that I agree with all of them, but they at least have a plausible rational. Especially things like standards and global issues (Atmosphere and ocean)...
While I'm always for cynicism, there is a 'basis' for this.
There is a long history, especially in the progressive movement to monetize everything. It's an essential part of modern politics. We must monetize all work so that all work is treated equally. Child-rearing must be monetized. House work must be monetized...
From this context, intellectual property is just a way to monetize the retention and spread of knowledge.
Remember back in the day when the telco monopolies dominated, a lot of R&D was in fact subsidized by telecom service revenue. You got the great bell labs and everything that way... including languages like C++. Most of the open source movement dreams of this era when software was giving out for free... while forgetting it was pretty much all subsidized by being integrated into a telecom monopoly. That provided long term stable cash flow.
With the telco monopoles broken up, how do you fund long term jobs and ensure the money reaches those contributing these products?
Intellectual property. It prevents the products from having their cost drop to 0 and thus keeps money in the system. Would less money be made in the grande scheme of things by fewer downstream products and companies? Who knows... but they do have a rational for their obsession with intellectual property and its the monetization of all work.
I'll try and explain it, but its pretty self-explanatory and followed by lots of empirical evidence.
It doesn't matter if there are 1,2,5,10 competing innovative companies. They still provide a very small number of jobs.
Think of operating systems. Sure, there's Microsoft, Apple, Red Hat, Qnx... and that's a consolidating industry. Microsoft, one of the largest employers provides the world with OS, word processor, office suits, gaming systems, collaboration software, database software, web search, email, video, business intelligence... does all it does with 100K people.
And all things are not equal. You're viewing the world entirely from an economists point of view. Just because there's money, doesn't mean there's a need or skill to create competing products. You'd think you'd have picked up on that while businesses have huge amount of money in the bank, but don't want to spend it. They don't see anything worth spending on.
If you worked in software development, you'd pick up pretty quickly that throwing more people at a problem doesn't solve it better. You need a few empowered skilled people.
Even in 'newer' fields like solar. There's really only a few great design jobs available for crazy PHd types. And again, the number of design jobs are very few. And there's diminishing returns once you have a few companies setup doing it. What 'new' value are you adding. When they already have a working product, supply chain, sales relationships.
And if you're not adding new value, why would a customer buy your product instead of the established one? You could also compete on cost, but again for an established company, especially in a digital world, cost becomes marginal.
And think of the devotion to solar that you would need to actually create innovation. How many are willing to pursue their Phd in the field to actually make a useful contribution? Not many.
This is made worse by what I call... the government economy. Healthcare, education, public sector, legal... industries. Skilled people are shunning innovative jobs precisely because the investment is huge and the payout not so great on average. Better to just be a public sector worker doing a regular job, or entering one of the protected professions like law or medicine and doing everyday work.
There's definitely lots of innovation jobs... but they're small relative to the sheer number of people. I hope I don't come across as saying there will only be one company. No, there will be many players. They will rise and fall. New ones will be born. But the actual number of design jobs will be few.
Governments are trying to deal with this reality in many ways. Some like China insist on technology partnerships... to ensure local employment. Without government, companies like Cisco/MS/Intel would have taken over the entire Chinese market. They already had the skills and products. Huawei, STM... really don't add any value.
Others, like in the US/Canada, try to stimulate competition by plowing money into industry. Things like feed in tariffs... Often guaranteeing profits by subsidies... It really doesn't add much more value to society, but its an attempt to create jobs. They count on the finance folks to want the easy money and thus create different companies.
In any field with a plausible market, there's already good minds working on them. You don't really add more value by faking competition. In general, you just end up with scammers and cronyism.
This is all in complete contrast to the industrial age.
When telephones first came up, the jobs really did scale with population. To make a phone call, you needed a telephone switch operator. We've been slowly grinding away at the jobs that scale with population.
commute reduction? Definitely a plus.
I'm Canadian. 10K... after taxes... depending on your jurisdiction in the senior salary range... is going to work out to like 6k. It's not life changing
Moving to a new job is diving into a new pool. You might not like it. You might not like the new people. You might not like the new work. Who knows.
I personally wouldn't leave a known good situation for 10K. But that's just me.
Loyalty to some nameless corporation? No.
But ultimately, life is about the relationships you build.
Your manage, that product manger, your director, your coop students, your underlings...
These are people like any other who understand loyalty.
Loyalty to the company and these folks is different, but intertwined.
You don't leave the company without leaving all those individuals
It's a complicated social world and you have to be smart about it.
I would never leave a good job for a few thousand.
1. Ask your employer to match the salary. A few thousand is nothing for a company. The sales guy probably drink that much in a month.
2. In the grand scheme, do you enjoy the work? Do you like your colleagues?
Oh please.
The 'creative class', the 'innovation economy' was a hail Mary pass created by people to try and keep anything going. We've created a system dependent on growth (pensions, public debt...)
Do you what the key component of the 'innovation' age is? It doesn't need a lot of people to service the world.
A few thousands engineers/marketting/sales people can handle all the digital distribution for the entire world. Contrast that against all the jobs in local communities that used to be there when each neighborhood had its own blockbuster.
Computing, automation, and globalization mean there really aren't that many jobs to do. Especially with software, once something is built, that's it. There's no manufacturing cost or labor for additional people serviced.
Oh I'm sure there will be huge advancements in technology. The problem... they won't create that many jobs.
The 'creative class' and its advocates are ignorant progressives who live in a bubble. They live in silicon valley or at university campuses. It doesn't occur to them that there are 300 million Americans. Over 6 billion people in the world. There aren't enough innovative 'good' jobs available because design oriented jobs DO NOT SCALE with the population.
The innovation economy bares a good resemblance to Hollywood. And it pulls in plenty of suckers it seems. You might laugh at young people wanting to become actors or musicians... thinking their chances of making it big are 1 in a million. Yet, looking at it in scale, that one movie or big musicians services a large population and gets very wealthy. That's what makes it such a dynamic field.
Yet, that is exactly what the innovation economy is... and they've managed to actually pull the drapes over the entire American population... if not the world.
It's a world where innovation ensures rapid change, few jobs. It has nothing to do with patents or copyright.
As a matter of reality, in the eyes of politicians and economists, these are probably one of the few tools to create jobs. Whether or not you agree with it or not, it is what they think.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/intellectual-property-a-new-kind-of-arms-race-with-patents-as-ammo/article2190761/
Anyone who thinks innovation will 'power' the American economy is an idiot who doesn't understand scale. Innovation might be enough for a really small country... of a few million. Maybe Singapore or Sweden... think if Silicon Valley was its own country. We'd all be in awe. Yet they only make it rich by being a small population with massive exports. Not every country can be an exporter.
So next time someone talks about the innovation economy... try and think of the 300 million Americans and 6 billion people on Earth... and see how they fit into your 'innovation economy'. The reality is this
1. There will be a few innovative creative class jobs as there have always been.
2. Most people will be in regular jobs doing regular things
I'm sometimes amused.
We'll probably see a lot of this kind of proposal. Ultimately, it has to do with jobs. Why not bypass all the bullshit and just admit we're not willing to deal with globalization?
Say what you want about the 'market', most of the economy is government run today... either directly or heavily regulated to the point of being government run. healthcare, education, military, law, financial...
So why do people like yourself sit there pretending like we have a free market and ultimately hurting yourself as an engineer/computer scientists (yes I am assuming you work in the field).
Don't be a martyr for efficiency. Me, I'll gladly take regulation in software so you need the credentials and residency experience of a lawyer/doctor to write software, especially mission critical or networking software. That's just how the world is right now.
When we live in a libertarian paradise, I'll gladly compete with anyone. Until that time, don't be a martyr. Fight for your industry and protection.
Except, science cannot tell you values or what you should do. Everything... and means everything... starts from values.
Science can just as easily lead you to build clean energy as it can to build a nuclear bomb and slaughter a million people.
The core of science is the scientific method. It is completely and utterly valueless. And modern people, especially progressives like to pretend as if their policies are based on science... and they're not ideological or based on values. Yet they are.
I should note, when I say progressive, I don't just mean 'leftists'. They are equally there on the right as well. I'm talking about the progressive movement which views the government's job to lead society via rational administration to progress.
A progressive will have a scientific report that says... reducing transfats will extend life expectancy by 1.5 years therefore we should legislate banning transfats.
They will claim that action is irrefutable as it is based on science. Well no... the fact that transfats will extend life expectancy might be based on science. The proposed action is not. Implicit in that is a value judgment. They value extending human life.
Now who could argue with that? Well there are other values in life. Freedom, leisure, fun, spirituality, responsibility, love...
Everything in politics is about competing 'good values'. Even Hitler didn't campaign on being evil. He campaigned on rebuilding the great German society. A very good value.
How much you value competing values determines your value set.
People who want 'Science' as king are really just intellectually lazy people who deny they have values, and typically want to only use easily measurable values. As 'science' is much easier to do when you have things that are easy to measure.
Value wise, something like freedom and health are there. People feel just as strongly about both. But life expectancy is easy to measure. Which do you think the 'progressives' decide to adopt as a value? They're intellectually lazy.
And quite frankly, it is insanely easy to find flaws with anything human made. I've yet to see anyone come up with a reasonably alternative to constitutional democracy.
Nothing is easier than thinking 'if only I could be in charge, we could solve all the problems.' That is something common to kings, theocracies, dictators, and progressives.
They don't want to deal with the complexities of society, of dealing with people, of convincing them, of dealing with life in general.
It's easy to say science should be king. Well who do you decide to put on the scientific panels in government? If you politicize it, you end up where we are with judges today... no different than democracy. If you leave it up to scientists, then you have this unelected supreme council which politically isn't much different from having a theocracy. You can say, but they have peer review... But Catholic Priests also had a code forbidding molesting children. It didn't stop them from abusing their power and molesting children and covering it up.
Once you create such a institution, it corrupts itself with power. It doesn't matter what their 'code' says.
So I challenge you, think up a system of governance and work out all the details. Don't be intellectually lazy like most progressives. Think it through. You want a scientific council? Who gets to be on it? What powers do they have? What do you if the 'idiot masses' resist?... you know the actual things if importance.
yeah, the alternative to the 'free marketteers' is a system where everything is price-fixed and everyone rips off everyone.
That's what the public sector is, and unions... massive price fixing schemes to benefit those in those institutions at the expense of the public.
Rail against 'the market' if you want... chances are what you advocate is worse.
well I have no problem with cartels as long as it is not a 'natural monopoly' like telecom.
If Hitachi and LG rig their prices too high, all their buyers (HP, Dell...) will take note. If the price gets too high, they will setup their own optical manufacturing.
Of course this could all change again.
Now for another good buzz word.... cloud computing.
Microsoft is already hosting Exchange, Office, and SharePoint online. They and other product providers can directly provide the service now... reducing the need for IBMs.
It's just another possibility.
With all due respect, the marketing folks and politicians always win.
There isn't a problem in the world where a politician doesn't think making it a central authority won't solve every problem.
You name it. Education, healthcare, transit, R&D, food, poverty... politicians think if they can just create a national system, they can reap efficiencies and expertise and solve every problem.
Maybe it has something to do that most politicians are not 'builders' like society and thus don't have to care how things actually work. They tend to be lawyers who only care about writing how things should ideally work.
Every competent engineer knows the flaws of centralization of highly complex systems. We like distributed systems for highly complex systems.
I would pretty much wager politicians will try and buy the big centralized administration urban OS over intelligent distributed processing.
"No, it lobbied government "
then its not a free market :P
We don't have a free market. We have corporatism or some other fancy word. In either case, it is heavy with big government.
yes I do. I'm one of these 'experts' who works in a high-tech field that displaces the jobs of people.
The difference between me and my colleagues is that I don't see the rest of society as worthless. I see no reason why I should be paid more than a farm worker. Only if my skill is so great that no one else can do it is there any justification for me being paid more. Perhaps its because I come from the 3rd world in a very rural area.
And in case you missed the point... computers, automation and general education increasingly make the average person equally capable of doing any job society needs done to the satisfaction of the consumers.
So why should person A get a job and not person B? In some kind of free market world, the answer is somewhat moral... A does a better job or offers a better price than B or is able to attract more customers.
But we don't live in that world. We live in a world where huge areas of the economy are run or heavily regulated by the government (healthcare, education, infrastructure, military, banking...) and more and more parts of the economy are dependent on government programs. So this moral rational of A deserves it more than B is going away.
For example, I live in Ontario, Canada. Teaching is a very well paid profession here. The result... no surprise... lots and lots of qualified teachers. And lots and lots of unemployed teachers. As there is no free-entry in the education system, why does one qualified teacher get a job... the other equally qualified teacher is stuck doing retail? The unemployed teachers are angry. I know a lot of them. But of course, we all can't be teachers :P
We have have yet to fully comprehend what an 'educated' society will yield. When education no longer makes you 'special', it shouldn't carry any premium in pay.
The result as I say is more egalitarianism. In some fantasy free market world that doesn't exist, this will happen as the cost of living plunges and people don't need to work a lot and they voluntarily work less hours. I know I would if I didn't have to pay such high property taxes and worry about inflation.
Perhaps a 'good' job is going to work on the farm a few days a week?
Alternatively, a more socialist model is going to result in the same thing. Government could mandate a shortened work week, more vacation time....
I'm always amazed at these job discussion.
Who wants to work 8 hours a day every week?
Even today, everywhere you turn it is jobs jobs jobs. Obama rants about jobs. Republicans rant about jobs. Meanwhile, all the people with jobs are stressed out from all the work they have to do.
And of course, there's all the 'educated' people. The biggest problem with these people is they were all raised thinking they were special. They're 'entitled' to a high standard of living.
It's why society has created all these legal and financial jobs. They do nothing productive or useful for society. Many would argue they even hurt society. Yet, they are these because 'educated' people deserve good jobs.
The poor textile worker who made clothing for people... screw them.... outsource to China. Farm workers... hah... we won't even let our welfare folks work on the farm.
The solution to all this... and the economic collapse we're experiencing... is the following:
less work
more work sharing
Whether socialism or the free market, the tendency is going to be to a more egalitarian society. In terms of producing things people value, there is little that differentiates people. I can do a job. You can do a job. A computer can do a job.
Sure, there will be a small percentage of 'super experts' who will still be able to out do anyone else.... but they are a small number.
And good on MS.
They're doing the work, they want to make sure they get paid.
Maybe one day you will realize that every field protects itself. Doctors and lawyers restrict their trade. Regulators and government employees have direct access to government cash.
What do tech companies have? They have their own community fighting to destroy any sense of long term cash flow.
It was easier back in the day when this cash-flow came from a telecom monopoly which was then funded to R&D labs. But with the breakup of the telcos and vendors forced to fight on their own, they have to deal with the realities of funding a long term business.
You want nice open standards... then do it but then have a license fee or tax that goes back to the creators of said standard.
I have a feeling as the economy implodes... more and more people are going to realize that making a living is a pretty important part of life.
"We didn't have the knowledge or technology prior to 1961 either. But spending money to learn how to do those things was the right thing to do."
But that of course is the debate.
We should spend money to explore space, fix diseases, take out 3rd world dictators, rebuild nations, build high speed rail lines, research electric cars, take of the mentally ill... and so on and so forth.
Advancing science is hardly a trump argument to do something. Not saying it is not a worthy goal, but virtually all such goals are worthwhile. To many exploring space is nothing... a who cares proposition. No different from government spending on operas.
This all comes down to your grand assumption that more data will improve care.
There is a grand belief... and I use the world belief on purpose... that bureaucrats and experts can you use data to run things better. To allocate resources better.
For example, could you get better care from a general doctor running his/her own office without any complex codes or anything?
It's the equivalent of eating out at a small family restaurant. They probably don't keep track of huge data sets... but they provide a pretty good meal at a pretty decent price. They also don't have to employ analysts and data collection, and spend half their time filling out complex forms... they provide the service directly.
Now this is not to say the non-data based businesses perform better. Quite the contrary.
There are many cases where being data focused helps your business.
However, I'd prefer that be left up to the society at large to keep things in check. If one medical provider wants to use massive data sets... let them. If another wants to have more personal non-data care... let them.
In general, this attitude that 'more data' is always better is ridiculous. Do you think you would be any more productive at work, if you had to keep data on everything you did? Every time you started a build logged? Every bug detailed and classified into 100000 categories of bugs? Every coffee break logged?
I'd actually say this is less than useful. It is going to be counter productive and make medical care worse.
Well hopefully... this results in a world where we don't need to work the GP.
The reality is that your average doctor really doesn't do anything that complicated that a computer can't match on average. They take symptoms, order tests...
What you really need to do is make sure it doesn't go nuts. I'm sure they could write in some safe guards and other health professionals like nurses could do a sanity check.
It's about time we recognize that 'quality' is not the only metric in healthcare. Availability, cost... factor in just like anything else.
If a computer can do image detection with 98% accuracy of a radiologist, we should use it.
If we can improve primary care by using Watson, we should allow it.
Will doctors accept it? They'll fight it as they like their monopoly... but for the greater good, we should fight for such choice.