Well, he actually said why. If, of course, you RTFA. Because CVS and SVN are comfortable and familiar. He actually said that he wouldn't migrate a huge project to Git himself (not at first) because it's more important to make sure people have tools available to them that they are comfortable with. By your rational, people shouldn't migrate from Windows to Linux because most people haven't.
No El Al flight has ever been hijacked or blown up. Security is a game of chess. As a matter of fact, it's been said that all warfare is deception. Yes, your opponent will change strategies to mislead you, but you have to think a few steps ahead. There should be multiple independent methods of detection and prevention. This will be just another one.
Being inside of an airplane which is for the most part completely cut off from the rest of civilization makes you not part of the rest of society. Seeing how guaranteeing your life is much more difficult in that situation than it is on the ground, by the virtue of the fact that you put yourself in there you give up some freedoms. Some of the other things you cannot do on a plane that you can do in the rest of a free society: carry a gun, scream obscenities, generally act rude and disruptive, dance, listen to loud music, walk around (unless explicitly permitted), etc. Being on an airplane is an inherently dangerous situation. So no, rules of civil society do not apply.
I am not sure what you mean but a "technical" exercise, but video tapes cannot replace teaching because it is an interactive exercise. I don't see why you bring expense into this argument at all. We are talking about quality of education and why for what we spend on, we can certainly get better education.
Education is not a customer service enterprise. We're not here to give you what you want. People moving around without regard for their children's education are at fault, not schools.
You are not there to give us what we want. But you are there to give us what we need. And you just don't know what that is. So instead we get the best you have to offer. It's not good enough. The fact that we live in a society in which people have to move around is just a fact of life. You can't get away with dismissing it as someone else's fault because it makes your job harder. Especially, in the face of a proposed solution that takes this fact under consideration (ie, standardized curriculum).
We were assigned plenty of the great books, and many of my classmates never read them.
In a system with standardized curriculum, they would never have a great assigned according to how many of them they have read. So if they haven't read any, they would again fail the class. If that meant repeating the year, most of them would read it.
I think the crust of my argument is that developmental experts are out of touch with classroom reality in the same way that teachers are out of touch with the big picture.
You conveniently dropped the experts in disciplines from that sentence. Since the interaction of developmental experts and experts in disciplines consistently produces better education in other countries, there is no reason to assume that it cannot do it here.
A separate bureaucracy is also more susceptible to outside influence.
Very true. That's why such a bureaucracy on federal level would have to be subject to more Congressional oversight. Both the head of the department and lower-level officers would have to be vetted by Congress and be a subject to removal through a lawsuit that can demonstrate their incompetence.
"business stakeholders in education"
That could very well mean campaign contributors. But since I gave a rather strict criteria for what type of people would have a say in the shaping of the curriculum (developmental experts and experts in given disciplines), influence of other "stakeholders" would be seen as corruption rather than a legitimate part of the process.
Analysis is the branch with the most ready practical application I guess is why you see Calculus so much as the end of high school math. It could just as easily be topology or number theory if the goal was to increase rigor throughout your high school years.
Topology (or Analysis Situs) is only relevant because of Analysis. Without a proper notion of continuum, topology is just a game. Let's not have a flame war on this one. This is how developed historically and I'll insist that necessity is the mother of invention. Number theory is worth studying in high school as is discrete probability theory. Not so much for it's rigor but to prepare students for almost any scientific endeavor.
Now, whose idea do you think it was to take the math out of Algebra 1? No teacher would shortchange their students that way, but the state of Maryland certainly would.
Forgive my bluntness, but "state of Maryland" is still quite a local level as far as almost anyone is concerned. I am sure it has contributed a great deal thought the history of this country, so there is no need to try to enumerate its accomplishments. But a chance that a TOP expert in development and a top expert in Physics, Math, Literature, Chemistry, etc. would come together and dedicate their energies to fix education in the state of Maryland (rather than in the entire country) are rather minuscule. A chance that such a gathering would occur on regular bases is 0.
According to this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Peop le's_Republic_of_China, 9 grades of education are compulsory in China. In the Soviet Union education up to the age of 16 was compulsory. In France everyone takes an exam at the end of High School which pretty much determines whether they get to get anywhere in life for the rest of their lives.... I don't know if attendance is mandatory in France.
Oh, and as a side note, Algebra 1 is not a HS course. In China, Russia and France (all of which have universal curriculum) all the material covered in a traditional Algebra 1 course (and usually more) is covered by grade 7 or 8. Those who don't pass it, get to repeat the grade -- not the course. So the incentive to pass the course is strong enough that VERY FEW students ever don't learn it by that point.
The part I'm citing is the tendency in organizations to take decisions out of the hands of lower level employees. This results in lower training costs, shorter training time, and interchangeability of employees. When you can easily replace an employee, you can afford to treat them worse (and pay them less) because there's always someone else available who can do the job just as well. This frees up more of the money to go to the people at the top. Well, since the enterprise of education is not for-profit, there is no money trickling to the top to speak of. Being able to replace teachers is a GOOD THING (tm). This is the crust of my argument. First of all, this guarantees that people can move around (which happens very often in this country) and not worry about their children being out of sync with what is taught in schools. Second, this guarantees that a local teacher cannot "wing" his idea of what to emphasize in a class room. Again, leave planing in the hands of experts. This would allow the developmental experts and experts in particular disciplines to decide what and what stage children should learn. A local teacher and even school board cannot possibly make a decision of whether it would be beneficial to teach (let's say) Geometry for 2 years and Algebra for 1 year or vice versa. They don't have enough data, experience, or expertise to draw on. A nation board would.
I think you are confusing universal testing with standardized curriculum. Standardized curriculum would mean universally adopted textbooks for subjects and micromanagement of deadlines within which certain topics are presented during the year.
C'mon. You know you are exaggerating. China was never part of the Warsaw Pact, true. But it had much closer ties to the Soviet Union than it did to NATO. But it was a socialist (centrally planned) economy. And it certainly did adopt universal curriculum. If for no other reason than that a socialist system heavily depends on propaganda. And propaganda is more easily spread to people who can read. I would be interested to see a source that says that China keeps rural population illiterate. It goes contrary to all the anecdotal evidence I've seen. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Peop le's_Republic_of_China article (even though it's so full of statistics that it sounds like an official press release) claims that China has universal compulsory 9 grade education.
Well, you cite an extreme example. I am talking about the philosophy of stay-out-of-my-attempts-to-improve life as an everyday wish of every ubergeek and every innovator when treating both their bosses and government regulations that they find stifling. There is just a lot of life views that libertarians and technocrats share on day-to-day basis. Of course, there are extreme examples (like the one you cited) when they get to tell everyone else "told you so", but more often people who prioritize immediate comfort over potential progress see them as being on the other side of the isle.
Are you sure that as many as half Americans can read? Are you very, very sure? I teach college and I can guarantee you that at least half of INCOMING COLLEGE STUDENTS can't do percentages.
All the former Soviet block countries definitely have a standardized education. Socialism was all about central planing and their school curriculum in science have not changed since the SU fell apart. That covers my data for Eastern Europe and China. France does as well. I don't believe that England does. And their education levels have been dropping comparatively speaking. See this http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/10/20 42245 slashdot story. I am not sure where you got the fact that half of them can't read from. I suspect you are exaggerating.
I am a little suspicious of politicizing school curriculum, too. But when it comes to classic high-school-level math and science education (with the possible exception of biology) there is very little wiggle room to politicize. World history up to (let's say) 1800 shouldn't be too controversial either, but leave it to politicians to abuse that one.
If we had a department that was designing curriculum for the entire nation though, I am sure we'd establish rules so that both its head and some of the lower level officers would have to be vetted and approved by Congress. This is an issue that's on everyone's mind so it would get much more scrutiny than, say, appointments of circuits' judges.
If I were to venture a guess, I would say that standardized curriculum serves as a buffer to cultural tendencies so that even if pop culture geared attention away from math and science, inevitable lack of choice would keep students' attention on it. So that when an opportune time comes and being scientifically literate is "in" again, the damage would not have been done.
Well, technocrats share a great deal with libertarians. They are both not fond of administrators who don't have intimate knowledge of the domains they administer.
We are not only behind in science. We are also illiterate. Most people never read any classic texts. And I will probably make at least one spelling error in this post. The problem is lack of standardized curriculum. Almost every nation that is cited as an example of someone we "really shouldn't be behind but still are" has a standard curriculum in science, math and humanities. We have too much local opposition to it from all-too-powerful teacher's unions. This is not meant to start conservative vs liberal debate (even though I happened to mention teacher's unions). Most of the time in K-12 a program for educating people over a period of 12 years is designed by teachers who can't plan for more than 1 year. They don't have the time or the background to see "the big picture" of where their particular class fits in the overall education. A separate bureaucracy (there, now you can't accuse me of being too conservative) of experts on development could do a much better job of it by designing and tweaking a curriculum for the entire nation. China does it. So does Russia and so does every European country.
Thanks! Since you've offered nothing but insults in the face of logical arguments I will make the most obvious assumption that a logical argument cannot be forthcoming (at least, your claims to the contrary notwithstanding, not from you). As such I take insults as indications of frustration. Or to put it bluntly I don't believe you when you claim that you are choosing not to disagree with me coherently because you can. I am confident it is because you cannot master a counter argument. I'll take it as the best indication that you agree even though you don't want to. Thanks again.
...Therefore, it has to be taken from those who have the resources to dispense it. Before you tell me again that these people will not shortly fall into the trap of allowing themselves to command greater and greater power over the people who allowed them to govern, tell me why not? If they could bring themselves to act as despots towards one group of people, why not all people?
And lastly, our arguments don't have an actual effect. We are only 2 votes in each election in which millions vote. The only effect that this argument can produce is to establish a correct label for the system whose victims we may or may not become. I just hope that at some point that label will be "free" rather than "nice".
I don't remember claiming to be a Bush supporter. Nor do I think that Bush has worked to reduce the size of the government. As a matter of fact, he has worked to expand the power and the reach of the federal government. So you are kind of proving my point there.
The idea that innovation can only thrive under pure capitalism is bunk.
Yep. It most certainly is. Innovation (as all other progress, or to be even more general any successful human activity) is an iterative process alternating between planned and ad hoc. Some times planning can foresee most problems that would otherwise need to be resolved ad hoc. Most of the time it does not. My claim was not that a bureaucracy cannot facilitate innovation. It was that it cannot facilitate the ad hoc part of the process (and usually works to suppress it). Further, I never even stated that innovation cannot exist in the absence of capitalism. That would be absurd. My claim was that leaving the task of problem solving in the hands of bureaucrats rather than allowing it to slip in the hands of those concerned with their own self-interest hinders the ad hoc part of the process. This, by the way, is evident by definition. Bureaucracies plan and administer according to preset plans. Thereby, they remove the flexibility often necessary to accomplish tasks at hand. In other words, innovation in absence of self-interest would be severely hindered, but it would not stop.
I'm bored with debating these things with people like you, people who can blithely spout falsehoods like, "History tells that any such attempt leads to a merciless totalitarian state sooner or later." The only thing I think I have to learn from you is how to effectively rebut people like you, and I'd like to think I have better things to do.
You have not actually rebutted my arguments. You've spewed insults and pointed out where my arguments were incomplete. You have not shown a single time that my assumption was wrong or that a conclusion that I made from of my assumptions did not logically follow. Better luck practicing!
The idea that government is a solely coercive institution is bunk, and inconsistent as well unless you're a true anarchist.
Interesting. But logically inconsistent. Anarchy itself is a logically inconsistent believe that human beings can live in a society in which no rules of behavior are established. So to claim that something is logically inconsistent unless it comes out of a logical inconsistency is well... interesting.
The U.S. seems far closer to your ideals than, say, France, but if you ask me, the U.S. is closer to slipping into totalitarianism.
Since you are still in academia, you might notice the deluge of French expatriates around you. The number of researchers that cannot find the funding in either public or private sector in France and are forced to come to the U.S. (despite the fact that they know what American attitudes towards the French are) is telling. It is telling of the fact that in the name of your beloved egalitarianism France could not handle supporting the pace of innovation (that would have kept the researchers at home) that it could otherwise. But this is only evidence of the fact that the claim that capitalism promotes innovation is not bunk. Considering that the French are not allowed work more than 35 hours/week legally I would hardly call them a more free nation. You can argue all you want that a person should not have to strive to succeed in order to survive, but can we, please, agree that a person should be allowed to strive to succeed?
And now that I decided to finally address everything you've said previously in as much expanse as one evening's blog will allow. Back to your previous posts:
1) Taxation is theft.
2) Social programs are theft.
This is all fine and good except that it revolves on the premise that bureaucrats are capable of acting as surrogate parents -- taking care of those in need and wisely redistributing resources in such a way as to minimize unhappiness. History tells that any such attempt leads to a merciless totalitarian state sooner or later. They stifle true innovation -- the innovation that comes out of the need to create those temporary solutions that usually become permanent out of necessity. They stifle them because the bureaucrats are too remote from the problems at hand to understand their solutions. But this is all moot. We can discuss whether it is more ethical to be selfish or charitable until we are blue in the face. But this is a choice of a personal philosophy. Proposing that the government (again, the people with guns who have no means to enforce their decisions other than with the threat of violence) forces everyone to become charitable takes the choice of personal philosophy away from all individuals. FYI, I've read Ayn Rand. I stand by the statement that she is a pulp writer. She made both logical and factual mistakes in the analysis she presented. The fact that she inspired multitudes to become selfish-as-a-knee-jerk-reaction-to-having-libertie s-taken-away does not change this. I'll leave you with Aristotle's "Beware of a man who means well." Because everything is allowed to him who means well. Feel free to correct my spelling further. That always adds strength to an Internet argument.
Really? A nut job? I outlined an argument (albeit rather abstractly) for not wanting to support your needs. You gave some blurb about a pulp fiction writer (who may or may not agree with me) being bad. When did we get to the point where people like you feel comfortable calling people like me nut jobs?
The world does not owe you a cookie. If you have the "dough" to make one, make one. If you don't, think of a way to make the dough. If you think your neighbor must share his dough because he has it, you'll create a society where people will be much less likely to create innovative ways of making cookie dough. So there'll be less dough to go around. Less people will have cookies. Oh, and anyone who is creative enough to find a new way of making cookie dough deserves a huge windfall from that for himself and his family. That's economics. If you take your neighbors cookies dough because you need it, you'll be steeling it. It doesn't matter if you do it with the knife in the middle of the night, an act of Congress in the middle of the day, or a gun in the middle of a highway. That's ethics.
Perhaps you don't realize that liberty is not being touted to you. Perhaps you just don't realize that the other side is simply saying "no, you can't have the world owe you a cookie if it comes at the expense of my freedom." No one is saying that you have to choose to be free. We are just saying that we are choosing to be free. And if you attack our freedom, don't expect us to give it up without a fight.
Sorry, I don't watch Fox News. From what all the ways I hear it being demonized, I am guessing that this is a stab at saying that I am biased. I simply stated a philosophical position. Freedom is a goal. It is the stated goal of this country. Perhaps we are doing poorly at moving towards that (never fully attainable) goal. But as long as it is our stated objective, your argument for moving away from it simply is not in line with the indicated objectives. As such it is pointless.
Your argument doesn't appeal to any person X who believe that just because a person Y has it hard it is X's job to help Y. Your ethics might be different, but now we come to the question of whether social ethics is something that a "free" country can establish. Remember that the government's power is derived from their capacity to commit violence towards non-complying. If you break laws (even tax laws), theoretically, you go to jail.
It would be nice of that hypothetical X to help out Y. But government forcing all X's to help all such Y's can no longer purport to be a government of a free nation. Maybe you'd rather be comfortable than free. There is actually a strong argument that most people would. But this nation is established on the opposite premise.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, he actually said why. If, of course, you RTFA. Because CVS and SVN are comfortable and familiar. He actually said that he wouldn't migrate a huge project to Git himself (not at first) because it's more important to make sure people have tools available to them that they are comfortable with. By your rational, people shouldn't migrate from Windows to Linux because most people haven't.
No El Al flight has ever been hijacked or blown up. Security is a game of chess. As a matter of fact, it's been said that all warfare is deception. Yes, your opponent will change strategies to mislead you, but you have to think a few steps ahead. There should be multiple independent methods of detection and prevention. This will be just another one.
Being inside of an airplane which is for the most part completely cut off from the rest of civilization makes you not part of the rest of society. Seeing how guaranteeing your life is much more difficult in that situation than it is on the ground, by the virtue of the fact that you put yourself in there you give up some freedoms. Some of the other things you cannot do on a plane that you can do in the rest of a free society: carry a gun, scream obscenities, generally act rude and disruptive, dance, listen to loud music, walk around (unless explicitly permitted), etc. Being on an airplane is an inherently dangerous situation. So no, rules of civil society do not apply.
You are not there to give us what we want. But you are there to give us what we need. And you just don't know what that is. So instead we get the best you have to offer. It's not good enough. The fact that we live in a society in which people have to move around is just a fact of life. You can't get away with dismissing it as someone else's fault because it makes your job harder. Especially, in the face of a proposed solution that takes this fact under consideration (ie, standardized curriculum).
We were assigned plenty of the great books, and many of my classmates never read them.In a system with standardized curriculum, they would never have a great assigned according to how many of them they have read. So if they haven't read any, they would again fail the class. If that meant repeating the year, most of them would read it.
I think the crust of my argument is that developmental experts are out of touch with classroom reality in the same way that teachers are out of touch with the big picture.You conveniently dropped the experts in disciplines from that sentence. Since the interaction of developmental experts and experts in disciplines consistently produces better education in other countries, there is no reason to assume that it cannot do it here.
A separate bureaucracy is also more susceptible to outside influence.Very true. That's why such a bureaucracy on federal level would have to be subject to more Congressional oversight. Both the head of the department and lower-level officers would have to be vetted by Congress and be a subject to removal through a lawsuit that can demonstrate their incompetence.
"business stakeholders in education"That could very well mean campaign contributors. But since I gave a rather strict criteria for what type of people would have a say in the shaping of the curriculum (developmental experts and experts in given disciplines), influence of other "stakeholders" would be seen as corruption rather than a legitimate part of the process.
Analysis is the branch with the most ready practical application I guess is why you see Calculus so much as the end of high school math. It could just as easily be topology or number theory if the goal was to increase rigor throughout your high school years.Topology (or Analysis Situs) is only relevant because of Analysis. Without a proper notion of continuum, topology is just a game. Let's not have a flame war on this one. This is how developed historically and I'll insist that necessity is the mother of invention. Number theory is worth studying in high school as is discrete probability theory. Not so much for it's rigor but to prepare students for almost any scientific endeavor.
Now, whose idea do you think it was to take the math out of Algebra 1? No teacher would shortchange their students that way, but the state of Maryland certainly would.Forgive my bluntness, but "state of Maryland" is still quite a local level as far as almost anyone is concerned. I am sure it has contributed a great deal thought the history of this country, so there is no need to try to enumerate its accomplishments. But a chance that a TOP expert in development and a top expert in Physics, Math, Literature, Chemistry, etc. would come together and dedicate their energies to fix education in the state of Maryland (rather than in the entire country) are rather minuscule. A chance that such a gathering would occur on regular bases is 0.
According to this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Peop le's_Republic_of_China, 9 grades of education are compulsory in China. In the Soviet Union education up to the age of 16 was compulsory. In France everyone takes an exam at the end of High School which pretty much determines whether they get to get anywhere in life for the rest of their lives.... I don't know if attendance is mandatory in France.
Oh, and as a side note, Algebra 1 is not a HS course. In China, Russia and France (all of which have universal curriculum) all the material covered in a traditional Algebra 1 course (and usually more) is covered by grade 7 or 8. Those who don't pass it, get to repeat the grade -- not the course. So the incentive to pass the course is strong enough that VERY FEW students ever don't learn it by that point.
I think you are confusing universal testing with standardized curriculum. Standardized curriculum would mean universally adopted textbooks for subjects and micromanagement of deadlines within which certain topics are presented during the year.
C'mon. You know you are exaggerating. China was never part of the Warsaw Pact, true. But it had much closer ties to the Soviet Union than it did to NATO. But it was a socialist (centrally planned) economy. And it certainly did adopt universal curriculum. If for no other reason than that a socialist system heavily depends on propaganda. And propaganda is more easily spread to people who can read. I would be interested to see a source that says that China keeps rural population illiterate. It goes contrary to all the anecdotal evidence I've seen. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Peop le's_Republic_of_China article (even though it's so full of statistics that it sounds like an official press release) claims that China has universal compulsory 9 grade education.
Well, you cite an extreme example. I am talking about the philosophy of stay-out-of-my-attempts-to-improve life as an everyday wish of every ubergeek and every innovator when treating both their bosses and government regulations that they find stifling. There is just a lot of life views that libertarians and technocrats share on day-to-day basis. Of course, there are extreme examples (like the one you cited) when they get to tell everyone else "told you so", but more often people who prioritize immediate comfort over potential progress see them as being on the other side of the isle.
Are you sure that as many as half Americans can read? Are you very, very sure? I teach college and I can guarantee you that at least half of INCOMING COLLEGE STUDENTS can't do percentages.
All the former Soviet block countries definitely have a standardized education. Socialism was all about central planing and their school curriculum in science have not changed since the SU fell apart. That covers my data for Eastern Europe and China. France does as well. I don't believe that England does. And their education levels have been dropping comparatively speaking. See this http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/10/20 42245 slashdot story. I am not sure where you got the fact that half of them can't read from. I suspect you are exaggerating.
I am a little suspicious of politicizing school curriculum, too. But when it comes to classic high-school-level math and science education (with the possible exception of biology) there is very little wiggle room to politicize. World history up to (let's say) 1800 shouldn't be too controversial either, but leave it to politicians to abuse that one.
If we had a department that was designing curriculum for the entire nation though, I am sure we'd establish rules so that both its head and some of the lower level officers would have to be vetted and approved by Congress. This is an issue that's on everyone's mind so it would get much more scrutiny than, say, appointments of circuits' judges.
If I were to venture a guess, I would say that standardized curriculum serves as a buffer to cultural tendencies so that even if pop culture geared attention away from math and science, inevitable lack of choice would keep students' attention on it. So that when an opportune time comes and being scientifically literate is "in" again, the damage would not have been done.
Well, technocrats share a great deal with libertarians. They are both not fond of administrators who don't have intimate knowledge of the domains they administer.
Maybe he is a technocrat. Slashdot is, after all, the Technocracy Party of America.
We are not only behind in science. We are also illiterate. Most people never read any classic texts. And I will probably make at least one spelling error in this post. The problem is lack of standardized curriculum. Almost every nation that is cited as an example of someone we "really shouldn't be behind but still are" has a standard curriculum in science, math and humanities. We have too much local opposition to it from all-too-powerful teacher's unions. This is not meant to start conservative vs liberal debate (even though I happened to mention teacher's unions). Most of the time in K-12 a program for educating people over a period of 12 years is designed by teachers who can't plan for more than 1 year. They don't have the time or the background to see "the big picture" of where their particular class fits in the overall education. A separate bureaucracy (there, now you can't accuse me of being too conservative) of experts on development could do a much better job of it by designing and tweaking a curriculum for the entire nation. China does it. So does Russia and so does every European country.
Thanks! Since you've offered nothing but insults in the face of logical arguments I will make the most obvious assumption that a logical argument cannot be forthcoming (at least, your claims to the contrary notwithstanding, not from you). As such I take insults as indications of frustration. Or to put it bluntly I don't believe you when you claim that you are choosing not to disagree with me coherently because you can. I am confident it is because you cannot master a counter argument. I'll take it as the best indication that you agree even though you don't want to. Thanks again.
...Therefore, it has to be taken from those who have the resources to dispense it. Before you tell me again that these people will not shortly fall into the trap of allowing themselves to command greater and greater power over the people who allowed them to govern, tell me why not? If they could bring themselves to act as despots towards one group of people, why not all people?
And lastly, our arguments don't have an actual effect. We are only 2 votes in each election in which millions vote. The only effect that this argument can produce is to establish a correct label for the system whose victims we may or may not become. I just hope that at some point that label will be "free" rather than "nice".
Lookin' at you, Dubya.
I don't remember claiming to be a Bush supporter. Nor do I think that Bush has worked to reduce the size of the government. As a matter of fact, he has worked to expand the power and the reach of the federal government. So you are kind of proving my point there.
The idea that innovation can only thrive under pure capitalism is bunk.
Yep. It most certainly is. Innovation (as all other progress, or to be even more general any successful human activity) is an iterative process alternating between planned and ad hoc. Some times planning can foresee most problems that would otherwise need to be resolved ad hoc. Most of the time it does not. My claim was not that a bureaucracy cannot facilitate innovation. It was that it cannot facilitate the ad hoc part of the process (and usually works to suppress it). Further, I never even stated that innovation cannot exist in the absence of capitalism. That would be absurd. My claim was that leaving the task of problem solving in the hands of bureaucrats rather than allowing it to slip in the hands of those concerned with their own self-interest hinders the ad hoc part of the process. This, by the way, is evident by definition. Bureaucracies plan and administer according to preset plans. Thereby, they remove the flexibility often necessary to accomplish tasks at hand. In other words, innovation in absence of self-interest would be severely hindered, but it would not stop.
I'm bored with debating these things with people like you, people who can blithely spout falsehoods like, "History tells that any such attempt leads to a merciless totalitarian state sooner or later." The only thing I think I have to learn from you is how to effectively rebut people like you, and I'd like to think I have better things to do.
You have not actually rebutted my arguments. You've spewed insults and pointed out where my arguments were incomplete. You have not shown a single time that my assumption was wrong or that a conclusion that I made from of my assumptions did not logically follow. Better luck practicing!
The idea that government is a solely coercive institution is bunk, and inconsistent as well unless you're a true anarchist.
Interesting. But logically inconsistent. Anarchy itself is a logically inconsistent believe that human beings can live in a society in which no rules of behavior are established. So to claim that something is logically inconsistent unless it comes out of a logical inconsistency is well... interesting.
The U.S. seems far closer to your ideals than, say, France, but if you ask me, the U.S. is closer to slipping into totalitarianism.
Since you are still in academia, you might notice the deluge of French expatriates around you. The number of researchers that cannot find the funding in either public or private sector in France and are forced to come to the U.S. (despite the fact that they know what American attitudes towards the French are) is telling. It is telling of the fact that in the name of your beloved egalitarianism France could not handle supporting the pace of innovation (that would have kept the researchers at home) that it could otherwise. But this is only evidence of the fact that the claim that capitalism promotes innovation is not bunk. Considering that the French are not allowed work more than 35 hours/week legally I would hardly call them a more free nation. You can argue all you want that a person should not have to strive to succeed in order to survive, but can we, please, agree that a person should be allowed to strive to succeed?
And now that I decided to finally address everything you've said previously in as much expanse as one evening's blog will allow. Back to your previous posts:
1) Taxation is theft.
2) Social programs are theft.
Taxation with the sole purpose of redistributi
This is all fine and good except that it revolves on the premise that bureaucrats are capable of acting as surrogate parents -- taking care of those in need and wisely redistributing resources in such a way as to minimize unhappiness. History tells that any such attempt leads to a merciless totalitarian state sooner or later. They stifle true innovation -- the innovation that comes out of the need to create those temporary solutions that usually become permanent out of necessity. They stifle them because the bureaucrats are too remote from the problems at hand to understand their solutions. But this is all moot. We can discuss whether it is more ethical to be selfish or charitable until we are blue in the face. But this is a choice of a personal philosophy. Proposing that the government (again, the people with guns who have no means to enforce their decisions other than with the threat of violence) forces everyone to become charitable takes the choice of personal philosophy away from all individuals. FYI, I've read Ayn Rand. I stand by the statement that she is a pulp writer. She made both logical and factual mistakes in the analysis she presented. The fact that she inspired multitudes to become selfish-as-a-knee-jerk-reaction-to-having-libertie s-taken-away does not change this. I'll leave you with Aristotle's "Beware of a man who means well." Because everything is allowed to him who means well. Feel free to correct my spelling further. That always adds strength to an Internet argument.
Really? A nut job? I outlined an argument (albeit rather abstractly) for not wanting to support your needs. You gave some blurb about a pulp fiction writer (who may or may not agree with me) being bad. When did we get to the point where people like you feel comfortable calling people like me nut jobs?
Microsoft (as a monopolist) will stifle innovation by (what in this case seems to be) innovating?
Great! You don't like Ayn Rand. Stating that is not exactly the same as producing a coherent counter argument.
The world does not owe you a cookie. If you have the "dough" to make one, make one. If you don't, think of a way to make the dough. If you think your neighbor must share his dough because he has it, you'll create a society where people will be much less likely to create innovative ways of making cookie dough. So there'll be less dough to go around. Less people will have cookies. Oh, and anyone who is creative enough to find a new way of making cookie dough deserves a huge windfall from that for himself and his family. That's economics. If you take your neighbors cookies dough because you need it, you'll be steeling it. It doesn't matter if you do it with the knife in the middle of the night, an act of Congress in the middle of the day, or a gun in the middle of a highway. That's ethics.
Perhaps you don't realize that liberty is not being touted to you. Perhaps you just don't realize that the other side is simply saying "no, you can't have the world owe you a cookie if it comes at the expense of my freedom." No one is saying that you have to choose to be free. We are just saying that we are choosing to be free. And if you attack our freedom, don't expect us to give it up without a fight.
Sorry, I don't watch Fox News. From what all the ways I hear it being demonized, I am guessing that this is a stab at saying that I am biased. I simply stated a philosophical position. Freedom is a goal. It is the stated goal of this country. Perhaps we are doing poorly at moving towards that (never fully attainable) goal. But as long as it is our stated objective, your argument for moving away from it simply is not in line with the indicated objectives. As such it is pointless.
Your argument doesn't appeal to any person X who believe that just because a person Y has it hard it is X's job to help Y. Your ethics might be different, but now we come to the question of whether social ethics is something that a "free" country can establish. Remember that the government's power is derived from their capacity to commit violence towards non-complying. If you break laws (even tax laws), theoretically, you go to jail.
It would be nice of that hypothetical X to help out Y. But government forcing all X's to help all such Y's can no longer purport to be a government of a free nation. Maybe you'd rather be comfortable than free. There is actually a strong argument that most people would. But this nation is established on the opposite premise.