Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Sheltered Students

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…go to college to avoid education:

Why is this happening now? How did colleges manage to guide generations of students through offense and outrage, only to founder at the dawn of the 21st century? Haidt and Lukianoff offer some plausible candidates: the increasingly sheltered lives that middle-class children now live, and expect colleges to sustain.”In a variety of ways,” they write, “children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.” Too, partisanship is higher, and angrier, than it was when I was in college. And today’s students, who live in a world where social media make it easy to launch crusades, may have stronger tendencies in this direction than my generation. (Once upon a time, an offense had to be outrageous enough for people to go to the trouble of exchanging phone numbers, attending meetings and printing fliers.)

There’s also a regulatory component: Under Obama, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has broadened the definition for what constitutes offensive speech. Colleges tremble in fear of lawsuits or visits from regulators, and they send legions of administrators forth to head off any threat by appeasing angry students and making new rules.

But here’s a candidate Haidt and Lukianoff don’t mention: the steady shift toward viewing college as a consumer experience, rather than an institution that is there to shape you toward its own ideal. I don’t want to claim that colleges used to be idylls in which the deans never worried about collecting tuition checks; colleges have always worried about attracting enough students. But cultural and economic shifts have pushed students toward behaving more like consumers in a straight commercial transaction, and less like people who were being inducted into a non-market institution.

Yes. The student-loan program has become a huge disaster.

The Lukianoff-Haidt piece she refers to is here:

There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.

But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.

I think we’re seeing a lot of that.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Blue Model Melts Down

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Get ready for the bankruptcy of Puerto Rico:

Ultimately, bankrupt blue cities and states and their pension funds will troop to Washington with their hands out, begging for bailouts. Already we’ve seen a leading New Jersey state Democrat call for a $1 trillion federal bailout fund for pensions. The political pressures around the issue will be intense. Some (mostly Republicans) won’t want to give a single dime to the improvident fools and crooks who created this mess. Others (mostly Democrats) will insist on no-fault bailouts, arguing that social justice demands nothing less than an infinite willingness to pour money down ratholes, so long as those ratholes are Democrat-run.

What the country needs is something in between: relief for reform. Cities, counties, and states (or, as in the case of Puerto Rico, commonwealths) who can’t manage their debts anymore can qualify for limited help—but only if they undergo serious, life-changing reform. That may well mean the end of public unions, drastic changes in governance, haircuts all around, tax reforms, and other substantive changes. Forward-looking people in Congress should be thinking now about the legislation that would be needed to set up a framework of some kind to handle these cases. The legal issues are complex; courts have been upholding, for example, the inviolability of employee pensions under state constitutional provisions. It’s hard to see how federal bailouts would let those pensions go unchallenged.

As I’ve written before, a California bailout by the federal government should come only with the condition that it revert to territory status, and not be allowed back in as a single state. Individual regions (like Draper’s South California, or Central California) that get their act together could petition for readmission.

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Socialism Always Ends Up The Same Way

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Thoughts on the Venezuela meltdown, corporatism, and fascism:

I don’t think Obama wants a brutal tyranny any more than Hillary Clinton does (which is to say I don’t think he wants anything of the sort). But I do think they honestly believe that progress is best served if everyone falls in line with a national agenda, a unifying purpose, a “village” mentality expanded to include all of society. That sentiment drips from almost every liberal exhortation about everything from global warming to national service. But to point it out earns you the label of crank. As I said a minute ago about that “We’re All Fascists Now” chapter, I think people fail to understand that tyrannies — including soft, Huxleyan tyrannies — aren’t born from criminal conspiracies by evil men; they’re born by progressive groupthink.

Yes. It’s all well intentioned in their minds, never understanding the paving stones on the road to perdition. Of course, Hitler was well intentioned, too. He just wanted to get a little lebensraum, and purify the race.

I should note that it’s not just Democrats. The problem with Republicans is that (per the Chamber of Commerce), they’re pro-business. They’re not pro-market.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Access Update

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There’s a new one out today, with an urgent ITAR-related action:

The deadline for public comments on the US State Department’s proposed ITAR arms-export rules changes is this coming Sunday, August 2nd. As you may recall, we see a serious problem with one of these proposed changes. The definition of “public domain” information (discussion or publication of which is exempt from ITAR restrictions) would be changed from all information that has been “published”, to only information that has been “published” with specific authorization from the US government.

We think this is overly broad, with potential for arbitrary prosecution of anyone publicly discussing even routine aspects of space (and many other “dual-use”) technologies, with the burden of proof that something meets this new narrower definition of “published” on the accused. What’s that you say? They’d never do that unless they were really mad at you? Our point precisely. We think that this would have a massively chilling effect on US public discussion of a wide range of technologies, with end result of retarding the very technological advances ITAR seeks to protect.

If this could conceivably affect you, get your comment in by Sunday. See Space Access Update #142 for details on how to submit comments.

There are some other interesting items, including this evergreen advice, at least when it comes to space policy:

Recently we’ve seen the increasingly bitter partisan divisions affecting many US political issues creeping into the conversation over our future in space. This is potentially hugely harmful to our coalition and to our cause.

Much of what we’ve accomplished together so far is because both space issues and our coalition tend to cut right across the usual party lines. This is more than a little unusual in national politics these days, and it gets noticed. It is a big part of why we’ve won as much reform as we have to date, and why, if we work hard and stick together over the next few years, we have a decent chance at far bigger wins.

Every time one of us spouts off about how those damned other-party extremists are screwing things up out of their boneheaded disregard for the nation’s future in space, it increases the risk of our coalition fracturing, and of all the good we’ve done so far (and hope to do soon) going down the drain. Our recommendation: Don’t do it.

Practical coalition-maintenance aside (not to mention simple courtesy among allies), blaming current space problems on party is overly simplistic and an incorrect reading of actual motivations.

One recent example we’ve seen too often: “This Republican Congress is trying to kill Commercial Crew in favor of the no-bid pork-barrel unaffordable SLS.” No, it’s a regional pork coalition within Congress trying to do that – one that happens to be largely (far from wholly) Republican because that’s what party much of that region happens to be electing lately. One leading member of that coalition, Senator Shelby of Alabama, in fact executed a well-timed party switch in 1994. (Another, Representative Brooks of Huntsville, benefited from a poorly-timed party switch by his predecessor, beating him in a 2010 primary.)

And then there’s the SLS coalition response: “This Democratic White House shut down NASA human spaceflight.” No, they carried through a decision already made for good and sufficient reasons under the previous Republican White House, retiring Shuttle. They also (partially) implemented the recommendation of the nonpartisan Augustine commission to mercy-kill the out-of-control Constellation program. They’ve also championed the highly successful public-private Commercial Cargo and (so-far successful) Commercial Crew program, examples of a radical new approach that is in our view the main future hope of US human spaceflight. An approach which was, by the way, conceived under the previous Republican White House.

Trust us. Party affiliation is poor ground to fight the SLS-industrial complex on. They’re already trying to wrap their white elephant in the Republican banner. Helping them provoke the entire party to view that regional-pork rocket-to-nowhere project as a partisan issue to rally ’round is a BAD idea.

From whatever side, attack the policy, not the party, and we’ll end up with a much better chance of all of us winning.

Yes. Anyone who thinks that either party has a monopoly on stupidity when it comes to space policy hasn’t been paying attention. It’s been a mess on a bipartisan basis for decades.

[Update a while later]

As an example of the above, the bipartisan AL/CO congressional delegation’s war on SpaceX continues:

A bipartisan group of 14 U.S. representatives sent a letter saying they have “serious reservations” about SpaceX’s internal investigation process and question whether the “engineering rigor applied will be sufficient to prevent future military launch mishaps.”

“We are committed to our nation’s leadership in space, but equally believe we must be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars when it comes to achieving our priorities and goals for spaceflight,” reads the letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden and Air Force secretary Deborah James.

The panel asked Bolden and James to outline the oversight responsibilities of NASA and the Air Force, however, some questions raised in the letter have already been addressed in other arenas.

On May 28, SpaceX was certified by the Air Force to carry military payloads to space, offering competition to Centennial-based United Launch Alliance for the first time in more than a decade.

The letter’s signators include Colorado’s four Republican congressmen — Ken Buck, Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton— and five members from Alabama, where ULA’s rockets are built.

Oh, surely it’s just a coincidence that they’re the congresspeople from ULA.