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Education: are we getting value for money? : Comments
By John Töns, published 31/8/2011In an ideal world education systems produce well educated misfits who are capable of looking at our society with a jaundiced critical eye.
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Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 8:34:01 PM
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John
The argument on which you base your conclusion against the free market is: • Government pushed for greater export orientation of industry • Government-funded universities did not have LOTE teachers commensurate with that first policy • Government employees, being LOTE teachers, were then able to press government Ministers for more government funding. • To know whether government policy provided value for money, government tried to pick winners and losers. • Government did and does not have the knowledge necessary to do that. • Government had decided that education should be “vocationally oriented”, which in effect sacrificed other, more important values. It is a mystery why you think you have made a case against free market anything, because all the problems and actions that you discuss have to do with government control of educational services: government funding, government policies, government employees, government decisions. You are right that such things are inconsistent with a free market ideology; but wrong to conclude that ANY aspect of it amounts to “embracing the free market philosophy”. Free market means the opposite:- those who want to buy, and those who want to sell a particular educational service do so, and government does not determine funding, prices, content, qualifications, attendance, beneficiaries or anything else - except enforce the law of contract and fraud. Therefore in a discussion of free market theory of education, it is incompetent to fail to distinguish between actions by private service providers, and by government. For example you say “there was a considerable push for Australia to become export oriented”. *By whom*? If it was by government, then that is *not* a critique of the free market, obviously. And if it was by private firms, under a free market philosophy, everyone else in the population should not be forced into paying for benefits for private firms. For government to decide that education is primarily about vocational training, backed up by compulsion to fund, license, qualify, and compel attendance, is *not* a free market philosophy, it is a statist, interventionist, central-planning philosophy. (Cont.) Posted by Peter Hume, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 9:01:31 PM
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Government services always involve a split between paying for a service and receiving it. And it this split, not the free market, that has caused *all* the problems you have identified, which are only classic economic problems of central planning.
What values and content should education be teaching? Why should a small elite get to decide on behalf of everyone else? How could they possibly have the knowledge necessary to know what would be best for each individual affected by their one-size-fits-all decision? What is to stop them substituting their own personal or irrelevant values? Who pays the costs if they are wrong? Why should everyone else be forced to pay for benefits to employers? What about other important educational values that are not vocational? These are issues which are peculiar to governmental provision; they do not arise in a free market for education. And given that governmental provision is not to run under profit and loss, how is government going to calculate whether it’s getting value for money, considering the competition for the same resources from other important values such as hospitals, roads, law and order, and so on? It is confused to call any government service “free”. They cannot be free, because the resources to pay for them must be withdrawn from other valued employments to which society would put them. The fact that government services are paid for under compulsion proves irrefutably that social value was destroyed in the process, but what is the proof that any greater value was created? There is none. So the answer to your question “are we getting value for money?” is:- No. All the arguments that government does or can provide better educational outcomes are based on fallacies, which are completely refuted here: http://mises.org/journals/jls/19_2/19_2_5.pdf (Interesting note: the author of the article was 16 years old when he wrote it.) Posted by Peter Hume, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 9:05:29 PM
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I have to agree with some of your critics, John; I can’t really see much in the way of ‘free market’ principles in contemporary education. That being said, I accept that we don’t get value for money from education. And I wholeheartedly support LOTE as a powerful vehicle for intellectual development.
Primary school education isn’t all that complicated. Fundamentally, it’s about skills (language and maths, mostly), and culture. It’s NOT about ‘values’ -- that’s far too fuzzy a concept, and far too easily manipulated. We learn values from family, and from those myths and stories which define our culture. Education used to incorporate the latter, but no longer, and that’s a great pity. Nothing teaches ethics to humans faster, and more effectively, than story. Nothing is LESS effective than hectoring lectures about the importance of abstractions like multiculturalism, tolerance, and ‘diversity’. At Secondary level, students begin to differentiate. Everyone needs a little science, some will need a lot. Civics has been left out ... teachers aren’t really up to doing the subject justice anyway. It’s plain stupid to encourage all students to attend university; only a few are ready, many will never be. Any university lecturer knows that the best students are ‘mature-aged’. At 18, most young people are looking for a salary, independence, and love (the latter can be real or feigned, initially). They’ll have careers at least 50 years long, and most will want to change jobs by the time they’re in their mid-30s or early 40s. They should be encouraged to do so; by then, the’ll have enough life experience to KNOW what they’re good at, and want to do for a career. Finally, they’re ready to learn. The best managers and engineers are the ones who started off learning a trade. LOTE needs to begin early. We don’t need Japanese or Mandarin to chat to our trading partners; we need it to learn how to think outside the square. Every language represents a different way of interpreting the basic concepts which make up our personal world. Having only one is like having only one eye. Posted by donkeygod, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 10:54:24 PM
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Perhaps my comment above seems critical of John Ton's article, but it was really facetiously approving, so I'll have another go. I agree that <In an ideal world education systems produce well educated misfits who are capable of looking at our society with a jaundiced critical eye>. This is precisely what is missing in our schools; instead, children are tacitly taught that current institutions form an inevitable and timeless backdrop--the best of all possible worlds--to their lives. There's no rigour in the humanities at all--there's precious little of it at the tertiary level, which is now also virtually exclusively devoted to supplying an off-the-rack workforce and professionals--from business to science--dedicated to the system and its free-market ideology--which is and will continue to come increasingly to the fore.
Just as being bilingual facilitates the easy uptake of other languages, so do the three R's prepare the mind for diverse other appropriations of learning. That's why I think most of school is redundant and could be qualitatively replaced with a fraction of the time devoted to the honing of genuine literacy and numeracy ("the ratio, literacy/illiteracy, hasn't changed, it's just that now some illiterates can read"). All the other "cultural" programmes amount to Panglossian toadying. It matters greatly of course what children read--Voltaire's "Candide" should definitely be read as a bed-time story to youngsters--a diet of rhetoric and political philosophy from an early age being fundamental. John Ton's is dead right, what our society desperately needs is a generation of "well educated [well read] misfits", rather than commodities off an assembly line--drones incapable of radical thought, which is what the world desperately needs. The neoliberalism of recent decades has made a fetish of "career paths"; no job is so menial that it can't be styled a vocation; its ignorant drudge, rewarded and patronised an artisan, grows out of his youth to become an embittered miscreant or, more likely, a pathetic celebrant of the philosophically-impoverished culture that nurtured him. Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 1 September 2011 7:53:08 AM
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Squeers
"There's no rigour in the humanities at all-" That's rich coming from you. Your whole critique of capitalism is based on your simple failure to distinguish between private and public ownership of the means of production - the most basic confusion. You just label anything you don't like as capitalist, regardless whether or not it is done by government, as you have just done here. Government compels the funding, attendance, qualifications of teachers, and content - and you criticise that arrangement as biased towards the free market! You are hardly an advertisement for rigour in the humanities. Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 1 September 2011 8:40:40 AM
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Peter Hume,
It's known as social democracy, and it maintains the plebs in a buoyant enough condition to take part in the capitalist orgy. It also produces cookie-cutter versions of humanity fashioned in the required mindset. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/dec/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-democrac/ Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 1 September 2011 9:12:38 AM
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Poirot
What's "it"? The unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security in the USA are greater than the rest of the world's GDP, and the Scandinavian welfare states rank higher than the USA in the Index of Economic Freedom - in other words they are more capitalist than the USA, not less, so if you are trying to suggest that that the USA represents the epitome of the free market, that is just more confusion coming from the statists, more of the idea that the source of wealth is capital consumption. For your belief system to be true - that government interventions make society better off - there would need to be some reason to believe that government has the ability, by taking resources from A, and giving them to B via a bureaucracy, to create net real wealth for society. But no-one will ever venture to describe *how* this happens. You don’t seem to be even aware of the economic problem you are facing. That is why you have been unable to answer my question which disproves your entire belief system about the Industrial Revolution: If, following your line of reasoning, in order to improve the conditions of the working class, the legislature in 1842 had passed a law mandating the minimum wage be 50 pounds per day in 1842 money, do you think the resulting condition of the working class would have been better, or worse? The reason you didn't answer, let's face it, is because it's obvious that such a measure would have caused *greater* unemployment, poverty and hardship, not less. But if 50 pounds would, what about 49? At what level would government interventions *not* have been counter-productive? *Any* imposition above the market rate must have had a greater corresponding disadvantage, otherwise we're back to the irrational belief that we can create wealth by passing laws. We can't, else why not make us all millionaires and have done with it? Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 1 September 2011 5:22:06 PM
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Peter Hume it is not only my belief that government interventions make society better off, it is my experience. I would not be an educated misfit if schools and higher education had not been government funded. I am better off and not a crime statistic, because of that government intervention My children are better off and my community is better off.
I do believe that government has the ability, by taking resources from A, and giving them to B via a bureaucracy, to create net real wealth for society. The wealth I am talking of, is the real wealth that comes from living in a society where people care for each other and co-operate, where people are happy to be their 'brother's keeper' via the tax system. You seem worried about the economic situation but I am not. I am far more worried about the poverty of our lives and the growth of psychological disorders that has accompanied the increasing implementation of your cruel economic system and the stupid striving for more and more superficial crap it encourages. And your economic system is cruel. I know that, as a misfit, I wouldn’t survive in your world. I have been desperately scared of your economic system ever since I read “The Road to Serfdom”. On page 123, Hayek writes “Independence of mind and strength of character are rarely found among those who cannot be confident that they will make their way by their own effort.” So that leaves me out in the cold because I am not now and never have been, confident that I could or can make my way by my own effort. At least you'd make drugs and euthanasia legal in your system so some comfort there but ... without government funding I probably wouldn’t be able to afford them. Posted by Mollydukes, Thursday, 1 September 2011 6:24:06 PM
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Mollydukes
“I would not be an educated misfit if schools and higher education had not been government funded.” How do you know? Anyway that would only prove, at best, that *you* were made better off. You’re not “society”, so you haven’t proved your point or disproved mine. At issue is only whether provision for education should be by voluntary means, or based on coercion. You’re the one standing for coercion – i.e. unprovoked aggression, remember? So how you managed to jump from that anti-social premise, to a belief in your own moral superiority; how you managed to cast “voluntary” as meaning “cruel”, and “coerced” as meaning “caring and sharing”, is a mystery, or rather, simply nonsense. But you have admitted and illustrated the statist mindset very well: “If social co-operation were based on voluntary arrangements, I’m afraid I, or society, wouldn’t get as much benefit as if it were coerced”. Your mindset is a bit like when I was a kid, out with my mother. “Mu-um? Can we have this?” “No.” “Oh! But why no-ot?” “Because. We don’t have enough money.” “But why can’t you just get some money from the bank?” That, in a nutshell, is the statist belief in the State. It’s just such an open-ended sense of entitlement, married with a complete incomprehension about the facts of social co-operation that produce the wealth that the statists want to consume. Statists invest the State with the same open-ended credulity, as a child does to its mother, or the religious do to God. But I note you *haven’t made any attempt* to explain how the central planning bureaucrats are going to have the knowledge to provide better solutions than the people they are trying to provide solutions for - by overriding their wills? To be in favour of pro-state compulsory indoctrination of children, when you are unable to rationally defend your ethical or practical beliefs in it - after having received 10 years of it - what makes you think you don’t have Stockholm syndrome? Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 1 September 2011 9:07:46 PM
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Mollydukes,
I found your post inspiring, and Peter is just baying for the wolves. For him, anyone who can't fashion themselves an economic predator, is a bludger. It's only your delusion, Peter, that socialism must be the kind of bottom-feeding society you find so distasteful. I believe in a genuine meritocracy--its own reward. I don't believe in any "open-ended sense of entitlement", nor do I believe exploitative innovation is the apex of human accomplishment. I think there's room for compromise in economics. With a wealth cap of say a million dollars, plus assets, there's still room for the no-hoper to expose himself, and the entrepreneur to shine. I'm only saying we should keep the bludger, and genuinely disadvantaged, according to a minimal standard, thus maintaining our own legitimacy and self-respect in the process. Similarly, the entrepreneur, and unimpeded, should know there are just limits to their natural advantage and self-agrandissement, and that there's more to life than acquisition. Neither should their progeny be entitled to any heredity of privilege--like Gadafe's corrupt sons for instance, but they should suffer the same process of sorting the chaff from the corn as th erest, so that they may earn their success, or learn to resent the unjust law of Mammon. Finally, Peter, it's the rule of law that preserves your precious free market, and underwrites your "values", howevermuch you affect to despie it. Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 1 September 2011 9:39:43 PM
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I seem to recall that "market value" made the *assumption* of a willing but not desperate seller and a willing but not desperate buyer.
Funny how exponents of the "free market" often oppose measures that soften "desperation", let alone prevent it. Then again, the strong have always resented the weak forming alliances, even in the schoolyard. Rusty Posted by Rusty Catheter, Thursday, 1 September 2011 9:58:40 PM
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Peter Hume,
Did conditions improve in the mills, factories and mines without state intervention? Or was it out of the goodness of the mill and factory owner's hearts? (I seem to recall reading that they fought tooth and nail against the various factory acts). Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 1 September 2011 10:04:41 PM
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Oh dear, Peter I am not surprised by your personal attack or the lack of any suggestion that you wanted to understand how I came to have such a different opinion to your own.
I think there is little point in refuting the many illogical assumptions in your reply. One example though is your apparent failure to understand that nothing can be 'proved'. Things can only be disproved. I can say that I know I wouldn't have gone to school because my parents would not have been able to afford to pay for me to go, and they would not have acccepted charity from any rich person or organisation funded by rich people. What a government provides is not charity, and as Spinoza says, we should aim to do the best for the well-being of the stste in order to derive for themselves the maximum of happiness and safety from it. The main thing I regret is that you have not responded to the statement that Hayek makes about people who lack confidence. So I assume that you have no answer except that people like me would just be collateral damage while your perfect system is implemented. And silly me, asking for understanding. Ayn Rand clearly(not!) explained why the essential human emotions of pity, shame, humility etc should not be politically correct. I think - in my arrogant educated misfit Asperger's way - that you libertarians have Asperger tendencies. The lack of empathy for others is striking. As an Aspergers with some insight, I can see that I only developed the ability to empathise by being among the poor and uneducated and seeing how impossible it is for them people to cope with the choices you want to force on us or to develop real confidence in their ability to make the correct choices. Posted by Mollydukes, Friday, 2 September 2011 8:52:43 AM
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Mollydukes,
Bingo!....you've hit the nail on the head. For it is the human ability to empathise that connects us to our fellow man and allows society to exist. Our "theory of mind" is our greatest asset - and when empathy is not present all our systems fail, wither in an individual sense or a collective one. Posted by Poirot, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:18:33 AM
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Poirot and Mollydukes,
that incapacity for empathy is also know as neoliberalism : ) Posted by Squeers, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:45:54 AM
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So true, Squeers.
Greed, self-interest, self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement are the natural outcomes of a system that has evolved based on the diminution of empathy. Posted by Poirot, Friday, 2 September 2011 3:13:39 PM
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Rusty
So does that mean if I’m desperate for an ice cream, it would be unfair of the seller to charge me the market rate? Or that therefore the government should subsidise me? But if not an ice cream, then how about a steak sandwich, a biro, a mobile phone, or a Shakespeare CD? Clearly the answer would depend on the person’s circumstances, and could only ever be arbitrary. There might be no “need” for a mobile phone to sext one’s girlfriend, but what about to call search & rescue when lost in the bush? And the biro might be needed to scribble an important message? As there are six billion people in the world, there would be six billion constantly changing opinions on what basket of goods that “desperate” would qualify. And if *the seller* of ice cream was desperate to make the sale, does that mean he would be entitled to a subsidy, paid for by coercing everyone else? Or perhaps his desperation might cancel out mine, and we’d be back to a free market? As the issue is whether government can provide a superior service, there should be no pre-determined bias in favour of government. So, in a spirit of impartiality, since all tax is a compulsory impost and all policy is enforceable, *no* government would qualify on the same terms as the market, would it? To say someone is desperate , is to say in other words, that the thing in question is high in the scale of values of the person in question. Someone who enables him to satisfy his urgent want does him a *greater*, not a lesser service, so there is no reason to discriminate against such transactions. It would make the desperate worse off, not better. In the context of education, those “desperate” must obviously exclude people who, in priority to education, spend money on biscuits, wide-screen TVs, mobile phones, caravans, McDonalds, boats, make-up, cigarettes, overseas holidays and so on. As this describes virtually the whole Australian population, that effectively disposes of the case for government education on the basis of desperation. Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:28:53 PM
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As for the tiny minority who are truly in desperate want of education, that is hardly a reason for the great majority to be put in a straitjacket is it? Their existence only shows that we should assist the less fortunate. It provides no argument whatsoever to do it by coercion. (And to the extent that their desperation is caused by upstream government interventions such as taxation or inflation or killing employment, it is an argument *against* government interventions, not in favour of more.)
In any case, the problem could be solved by simply giving the small minority of truly desperate the money price of an education. The fact that governments don’t do that - because they don’t believe the money would be spent on education – is the last nail in the coffin of the desperation argument as it applies to education. Poirot Your (and Mollydukes and Squeers) post circularly assumes that voluntary relations are “predatory” and that employment is “exploitative”, which is what is in issue. However your problem is that, although I have repeatedly asked you to prove why employment is exploitative, you have never been able to do anything but *repeat* the claim without giving reasons; except the “desperation” argument as it applies to the Industrial Revolution. For starters, that obviously doesn’t apply to modern Australia, nor does it apply so far as government interventions have caused the economic problems in the first place; nor so far as capitalism in responsible for the standard you measure by. The argument is this. Voluntary relations are self-evidently mutually beneficial, otherwise they wouldn’t take place. Employers do not exploit employees, the relation is one of mutual advantage. The scarcity of resources is caused by nature (remember our discussion of The Human Planet?). Capitalism isn’t causing the shortage of honey in the jungles of New Guinea, is it? By the same token, capitalists of the IR were not causing the poverty of the workers, and more than anyone else, they relieved it. Before capitalism, those people *died*, usually in infancy. Capitalism elevated them from death, not degraded them to poverty. Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:29:55 PM
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(cont.)
The fact you *now* consider the minimum standard to be that made possible by modern capitalism invalidates your entire argument. To establish exploitation, you would need to show that the workers are entitled to more than the agreed rate for their services. Marx’s theory, which you are channeling, presupposes conditions which do not apply, and which you cannot rationally defend, including the labour theory of value, advocacy of full communism, and the supposed “iron law of wages. Conditions improved in the factories etc. as a result of market processes and of state interventions. But only the market interventions involved mutual advantage a) to the parties and b) to society as a whole. The state interventions, for all their improvement *in the factories*, caused *greater* poverty and hardship in terms of *worse unemployment and poverty outside the factories*, which is what you’re not taking account of. This must be so, else you’d be able to affirm that setting the minimum wage at 50 pounds per day would have improved the material conditions of the masses. That destroys your entire argument again. To the extent that improvements *followed* those brought about by market processes, the credit belongs to the market, not government . And to the extent that government improvements were *higher than* the market standard, they merely benefited richer workers at greater cost to the unemployed. Logic and reality kick in eventually. There is no Santa Claus. The *motivation* of the parties is irrelevant. Okay, so. Your proof that employment is intrinsically exploitative is….? Please make sure you take account of the corresponding cost to the unemployed of any intervention. Mollydukes Perhaps you will answer what Squeers keeps evading: can Pythagoras’s theorem be proved? He has given up any attempt at rationality as you can see. How do you know that, if education wasn’t government-funded, your parents would not have been able to “afford” it? (Weren’t giving priority to lower values were they?) To what extend did government cause the problem? As for Hayek, I don’t know why you think that lacking confidence entitles you to live at others’ expense. Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:31:35 PM
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(cont.)
At least you’re honest: - but your sense of entitlement to handouts paid for by coercing other people is not what’s in issue. It is whether government provision of education is ethically or technically better. Firstly, it is moral fakery to categorise forced redistributions under “empathy”. Obviously they are not paid for out of empathy, but out of fear. Nobody’s talking about forcing anything on you – you’re talking about forcing things on others, so your understanding is completely back-the-front. All It is enough for me to point out the irrationality of identifying empathy, sociality, caring, the social emotions, and the moral virtues, with a monopoly of unprovoked aggression, as against voluntary co-operation. At best you have a non sequitur. Let’s cut to the chase. You are in favour of government-provided education. So how is government going to avoid the conflicts identified in the article: a) What values and content should education be teaching? b) Why should a small elite get to decide on behalf of everyone else? c) How could they possibly have the knowledge necessary to know what would be best for each individual affected by their one-size-fits-all decision? d) What is to stop them substituting their own personal or irrelevant values? e) Who pays the costs if they are wrong? f) What responsibility do you take for the lives blighted by compulsory indoctrination? g) Why should everyone else be forced to pay for benefits to employers? h) What about other important educational values that are not vocational? None of these problems arises on the free market, which harmonises the different interests – and the desperation argument is simply bullsh.it. These problems arise only because of government provision, which causes the conflict, benefits some at the expense of others, and sets up castes of privileged and exploited. Thus the arguments for government education fail on both ethical and practical grounds. Since you can’t defend government education except by irrational arguments – begging the question – I’m asking you honestly, what makes you think you weren’t brainwashed during your 10 years compulsory indoctrination? Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:34:08 PM
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Peter Hume,
The reason I continually cite employment conditions during the Industrial Revolution is because initially all matters of this nature "were" voluntary. Mill and factory owners, for the most part, were not under any obligation to provide decent conditions for workers - and consequently they chose not to. Cruel and abysmal conditions were the norm in most manufacturing towns and were the result of unregulated industry. It is plain to see in documents from that time that "voluntary" relations were most certainly "not" mutually beneficial. Early industrialisation did degrade workers into poverty - it also degraded the nature of their daily toil. For the majority of mill, factory and mine workers it was an abomination which only improved when regulatory supervision was imposed by the state. Btw, I home educate my son so he's not participating in a one-size-fits-all education. (It is possible to take a bit of freedom, even in this society, if one sets their mind to it) Nor is he working a 14 hour day in stifling conditions, exploited by libertarian industrialists as they did before state controls were introduced. Posted by Poirot, Friday, 2 September 2011 10:25:09 PM
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Peter all that you write is nonsense if you don't have any understanding of the psychology of human behaviour that underpins economic behaviour.
Your economic theory fails because human beings are simply not 'rational men'. All the evidence from psychology, and your own response - points to this awful fact. For example, amid all the nonsense you wrote, I did pull out the word 'desperation' and I wondered where that came from. I never mentioned desperation! Good grief, you people are like wind-up toys; only capable one type of response. Did you miss the bit where I said I have read Hayek and Rand? That means I am familiar with all those hypothetical arguments that rely on deliberately perverting and misunderstanding ethics and make ignorant assumptions about the way the human mind functions. If you can't respond as a real person, rather than as a libertarian mouthpiece, to my real life experience and arguments based on real life psychological knowledge, there is no point in continuing. My experience of living among and being one of those people who would not flourish in a libertarian economy and who are increasingly finding it difficult to overcome their disabilities in this neo-liberal economy, is sufficient evidence for you to take my opinion seriously and respond as another human being, rather than take on your persona as the voice of the libertarian God who sees and knows all the answers. Your response re-inforces my idea that you are an Asperger type person with no insight into yourself or others and clearly shows that psychology is far more important than economics as a solution to the human dysfunction we all see and want to make better. Posted by Mollydukes, Saturday, 3 September 2011 8:41:49 AM
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In terms of game theory, The free market is supposed to be a game that yields not only equilibrium but the most efficient outcome possible. Adam Smith’s so called “invisible hand” intended his model for small markets – ie situations where it was possible to know all the information one needed to determine the equilibrium. Thus if I am one of three people selling widgets I can quickly see when my prices are too high – not only do I not sell any widgets but my competitors are selling. So I have a choice – I either lower my price or sell nothing. My competitors likewise lower their prices until they reach at the lowest point at which they are prepared to make a sale. Thus at the point where supply equals demand the market is at an equilibrium. The reality is of course that the free market only exists in the mind of economists – there are simply too many variables for anyone to be able to ensure that the market is both stable and efficient. (This implies defining efficient as a stable market where supply equals demand.)
It also highlights why public goods such as education are not amenable to a free market approach Posted by BAYGON, Saturday, 3 September 2011 9:28:30 AM
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Peter I did not make any claim about employment being exploitative but perhaps I can explain why it can be seen that way.
I experience a real lack of confidence in my ability to negotiate with employers. My inherited brain functioning is mediated by high levels of the brain chemicals that produce anxiety and depression. I also lack appropriate socialisation skills because of my childhood experience of living in a socially isolated family and having to constantly move house and school so that my father could find employment. Do you understand how disruptive and negative the psychological and social consquences of moving to a new community is for a family? And yet that is part of your agenda. Requiring this level of mobility destroyes the extended family model that is the foundation of all human societies. But back to me and my problems; having these tendencies toward high levels of anxiety, being easily discouraged, and lacking in self-esteem, I simply don't have the social skills to negotiate with an employer. The employer has all the power and all the skills and is more able to make a choice that will advantage them, not me. This is the case for a great many poor dysfunctional people. If I had all the advantages of an 'appropriate' childhood and a private school education, I may have learned to interact appropriately with those confident people like you. Perhaps I may even have learned to be greedy enough to overcome my dislike of competition and competitive interactions. And the simple minded argument that you libertarians trot out all time about the workers 'choosing' to work for mill owners during the Industrial Revolution, is just self-serving nonsense. There was no real choice. Also, note that those 'robber barons' were Christians and supposed to be guided by the teachings of Jesus. You libertarians don't even pay lip service to a moral or ethical code. Posted by Mollydukes, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:09:10 AM
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Peter Hume,
Mollydukes makes a good point. In your rush to defend industrial libertarianism, you fail to take into account the warping of human relationships inherent in such a system. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, people lived, plied their craft and farmed their plots in close-knit communal settings. They were interdependent and they conducted themselves accordingly. Children learned their skills and morals in the normal process of life unfolding around them. Early industrialisation exploded traditional society and supplanted the people into an alien environment acting as little more than slaves to a mechanised system. Eventually the state was forced to intervene and mass education was cooked up as a complementary psychological training ground for children "to serve the system". It's not a matter people being "desperate" for education. Children "learn" regardless. You don't appear to realise that the covert purpose behind mass education is to condition children for a smooth transition into consumer society. Alvin Toffler likened mass education to factory production itself. It's a tool of capitalism, not an encumbrance. Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:10:21 AM
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Poirot - your are correct. The assumption that 19th and 20th century democratic theorist based their call for the shift to democracy was citizens would be critically engagement and active participants in public debate. This is where education was to play a key role but it was to be an education system that existed independently of government direction. A government that determined the curriculum and imposed its perspective of what would be taught would, in JS Mill’s words, be “a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another.” Yet this seems to be what we have.
Posted by BAYGON, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:18:30 AM
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For those interested what a traditional conservative thinker has to say about the free market this is well worth listening to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013r2ld/A_Point_of_View_The_revolution_of_capitalism/ He comments that in order to succeed in the existing world people need to invest in educating themselves, for most that means going into debt but by the time they have accumulated that debt either the skills they bought are no longer in demand or already on the way out so they have to go further into debt to update their skills - it is like a dog chasing its tail. John Gray is conservative in the mold of Edmund Burke and has written a great deal about liberalism. False Dawn, Straw Dongs and Enlightenment's wake are among his more interesting books. Posted by BAYGON, Saturday, 3 September 2011 5:35:16 PM
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Poirot
During the Industrial Revolution, there was a great increase in population. In Britain the population doubled in about 60 years. Before industrial capitalism came along, these people *died*. But apparently in saving them from that fate, capitalism did them no favours. Death was better than the dreaded capitalism, according to you guys. Marx didn’t know about the population increase when he wrote. He theorized that capitalism had made the masses poorer, when in fact, for the first time in history, a social system provided for the increase in population so that instead of the poorest just dying, they now live at higher and higher living standards – like us! But you guys’ understanding is still back in the early nineteenth century with Marx, still making the same assumptions that are flatly incorrect. You’re still alleging that capitalism makes the masses *poorer*. And you’re still alleging that public ownership of the means of production makes society *richer*. But if this is true, why stop at education? Why not full governmental ownership and control of all means of production? What a Paradise we would enjoy then eh? You have lost the argument, which is why you have not answered my questions, and have nothing but slogans about exploitation that beg the question. Poirot, great about your son. I’m sure he’s better off for it. You still haven’t dealt with the essential disproof of your argument. Go ahead – affirm that a minimum wage of 50 pounds a day in 1842 would have improved the condition of the masses. Crying “exploitation” does not change the facts a) that poverty is better than death, and b) you’re in favour of interventions that caused *greater* poverty, hardship and death. And you contradict yourself. On the one hand you criticise capitalism for grinding the faces of the poor; on the other hand for mass consumerism. So you keep coming down on the side of the argument that would cause the great mass of proletarians to just die; and when shown disproof, fleeing to refuge in more circular slogans about exploitation that assume Marx’s argument. Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:29:06 PM
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To allege compulsory state education is “a tool of capitalism” is just confusion. According to this theory, private provision of education is bad because capitalist, and governmental provision is also bad because capitalist. It’s an unfalsifiable belief. But if *government* education is “capitalist” - (?) - and capitalism is exploitative, then we agree that government education should be abolished, right?
Thus all your arguments are self-contradictory and false. Mollydukes “Desperation” came from Rusty Catheter, above. I reject your a) personal argument b) begging the question c) implying that you have understood and disproved the arguments without showing reason why. All these are logical fallacies, and comprise most of your post. As to the ethics, anyone would think it’s you who’s *opposes* unprovoked aggression and *in favour of* voluntary co-operation – the reverse of the truth! So you’re in no position to talk down to me about ethics or empathy. Your argument assumes that you’d be worse off in a libertarian society, and better off under government education. But you have not shown why. Having Aspergers Syndrome doesn’t prove it. For example last year I worked with a kid who had Aspergers, and his treatment at the hands of the government education system can only be described as abusive. This kid was highly anxious and had great difficulty socializing. In a class-room situation, he would just go into a panic attack, and would end up on the floor quivering and sobbing. Despite the fact that his mother tried *for years* to get a more humane and understanding response, and despite the fact that the school had *reams* of policies on disabilities, special needs, etc. the school was the worst bully of all. When he went into meltdown, the teacher would yell at him – in front of the whole class – “John! Get up right now! “John! Stop being stupid!”. It just blew all his fuses. It was cruel. When the mother confronted her, she lied. When the mother said she had recorded it, the teacher groveled. Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:30:10 PM
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(cont.)
When he was aged 11, and academically at age 6, his mother illegally withdrew him from school, and in 18 months with the mother who had no qualifications, he gained 3 academic years. And the school’s response? To threaten the mother with court action because *they* hadn’t authorised it! The school, in short, were incompetent, uncaring, bullying, and obsessed with procedure over substance. And that was only one kid. Another one, 13, was bashed so badly that her teeth grew up towards her eyes, and she needed special orthodontic treatment. The school had loads of bullying policies. They had EIGHT bullying incident reports on this girl, filed away in the bottom drawer. So they KNEW about the bullying. And their response? They just couldn’t care less. Another one, also 13, was partly blind. After 6 years compulsory government schooling, she was at the reading level of a 6 year old, and they were teaching her GERMAN and algebra! She learnt nothing, was neglected and bored to distress. She wanted to work with music and animals, she has a terminal illness and is going to die in a few years, and they have abused her time and her life. Now the point is this. My theory correctly explains and predicts all these phenomena. On the other hand, your theory couldn’t be more wrong, could it? What were you thinking when you identified *government bureaucracies* with *empathy*? You have *projected* your *feelings* of what a nice society would be like *for you*, onto *government*, without doing a reality check, and without cognizing that government is *not* an instrument for caring or empathy, but of legalized aggression and demagoguery. Who is responsible for these abuses? The teachers can say they are only doing their job trying to cope with the system. The politicians say they are only representing those - like you - in favour of compulsory government education. So kindly have the honesty to confess *your principal authorizing part* in the abuse of these children. Get this: the fact of your disability does not justify coercing or abusing others. Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:31:01 PM
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Your assumption that it would be *harder* for you to find suitable employment in a libertarian society is invalid, because it’s based on our *non*-libertarian society - the high degree of taxation and regulation in COUNTS MOST AGAINST THE MOST MARGINAL.
Under the government interventions *that you are in favour of*, you are relegated to receiving handouts, and imagining that this constitutes your dignity! Thus you have not justified your false *assumption* that you would be worse off in a libertarian society, BUT EVEN IF YOU HAD, IT WOULD PROVIDE NO JUSTIFICATION FOR COERCING OR ABUSING OTHERS. Baygon There is no need for anyone to establish some kind of abstract perfection as a precondition to action, or to freedom, and therefore your critique of the market is invalid. Economic equilibrium is a theoretical construct to explain where the market is *tending*; where it would reach if no new data were entering all the time. But a) this does not and cannot describe reality b) there is no *ethical* reason to prefer equilibrium c) the equilibrium state is unknowable in practice d) in any event, equilibrium describes a state of *inaction* e) it does not justify coercion, and f) government is in no better position of knowledge or efficiency – on the contrary! It is enough that people voluntarily prefer A to B, and that the free market facilitates the satisfaction of their wants. The equilibrium argument is a complete furphy, but in any event, neither is government perfect! Government is made up of these same people! Government is not only in a worse position to know or to satisfy people’s values, but it also creates the castes, and causes the unnecessary conflicts described above. Therefore you have not established that government can provide education better, while I have shown that it must necessarily be worse. The public goods argument is just as much a furphy as the equilibrium argument; and is completely refuted here: https://mises.org/journals/jls/7_1/7_1_1.pdf Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:36:16 PM
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Peter Hume,
State intervention didn't cause greater hardship, poverty or death - interventions probably saved the system and has helped it to roll along. Let's face it, any system that has proved itself so diabolically robust in the art of over-consumption and wanton excess must have hit upon the right balance of freedom and responsibility to fuel its toxic progress - sort of like a cancer.... Raw libertarian capitalism proved itself cruel and exploitative, What's the point of a libertarian system that flogs its participants into the ground? If the state hadn't intervened, it probably would have proved unsustainable in its debauched form. And speaking of liberty - the average cottage artisan and craftsman had far more personal liberty in his work and daily affairs prior to his servitude to his new masters under the factory system....and don't give me your old line "death was the only alternative". If that had been the case, the libertarian industrialists would have had no peasant-class to prey upon for factory fodder. State intervention and its continuing reach into ordinary lives is a symptom of its partnership with business and industry in the capitalist system. Strangely enough, our system has more in common with Soviet communistic practice that Marx's theories ever did Posted by Poirot, Sunday, 4 September 2011 1:22:02 AM
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Peter Hume,
Speaking of state intervention and the education system. I happen to agree with you that our one-size-fits-all system is possibly the worst place to install a child with Aspergers or high-functioning autism (both are near equivalent in presentation). Some of the most profound frustrations and heartaches of these children and their parents emanate from their involvement with a rigid education system. Bullying is rife and ignorance amongst the teaching profession is equally damaging to these children. I personally am aware of many children with ASD whose anxiety levels soar once placed in school and who are subsequently often medicated just for school issues - their parents taking them off medication during school holidays. My son is diagnosed high-functioning ASD and, as I've mentioned, is not constrained by institutionalized learning - suits him beautifully as he can learn through his special interests at a pace that suits him. Peter, I think you're probably correct in your assertion that government "empathy" is a double-edged sword. It's not real empathy, but serves instead to mitigate the worst excesses in greed and exploitation of the capitalist system. This system requires such a mechanism or it would fail. Compulsory institutionalized education is part and parcel of the system and its continuity - but, like the system, it doesn't tolerate "misfits". Posted by Poirot, Sunday, 4 September 2011 2:06:18 AM
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Peter Hume you use the same old same old arguments about how people were better off because of the industrial revolution. That is not relevant to the point I am attempting to discuss with you, that the psychology of human behaviour means necessarily that your system or non-system will not work.
Your descriptions of cruelty by damaged teachers and poorly implemented policies are not in the same league as my explanation of one common scenario in which a job seeker has less power and consequently a lower possibiity of making a choice that advantages them. You seriously think that it is because they are employed by a government that they are degenerate? What's your point? Of course, institutions cannot have empathy; they can have policies that are based on an understanding that empathy and ethical behaviour is the foundation of functional human social systems. Your system provides no guidance or encouragement for people to behave in an empathic and ethical way rather than choose the easy, greedy way that ensures we rip each other off when we can. Where to start is for you to explain why those mill owners choose not to provide decent conditions for their workers when they were free to do so? Posted by Mollydukes, Sunday, 4 September 2011 9:52:59 AM
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Mollydukes,
An appropriate question, indeed....and it wasn't only the conditions in the workplace that degraded the working population during early industrialisation, but also the domestic arrangements. I've just glossed over a few documents pertaining to the time and the following is a brief reference to the state of the factory and mill towns of the time. Reports of water polluted by decaying animals and other refuse - this water being used for "culinary purposes" by the poor. Of taps being "turned on" only for certain hours in the day in poor areas.(1845). Reports of houses hastily erected court style - privies in filthy condition often without doors - overflowing with filth (also privies in many of the manufacturies in the same condition). Contagious fever extending from house to house, ravaging whole streets (1843) Reports of sewage in "inferior streets" running in open channels. Main sewers ot towns discharging into brooks and canals which run into the "lower" point of town where poor workers live.(1845) In Sheffield, the air so charged with soot that folk are commonly imbued with dust and grime. "One cannot be long in the town without experiencing the necessary inhalation of soot which accumulates in the lungs..." In Leeds...ashes and garbage thrown from house windows. filthy privies of which their are few. A "blunted decency" of the people arising from the contaminated state of their surroundings. Vast amounts of ill-health, increasing poverty and premature death. (1845) In Nottingham....surface drains, filthy privies, accumulated refuse allowed to putrefy (which increases its value and is sold on as manure) (1845) Dunghills were a common feature amidst the mean streets of libertarian industrial Britain. One could go on and on. It's the same story over and over. Workers squashed in cobbled-together tenements - many families often sharing a single abode. Open sewers, doorless filthy toilets, widespread illegitimacy and base morality. This what happens when you lift people out of organic communal arrangements and transplant them into an industrial setting (to which one report referred as a "receptacle of demons") with "no care" for their welfare...the state was forced to intervene. Posted by Poirot, Sunday, 4 September 2011 3:23:58 PM
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Poirot
I asked you, in proving that capitalism is exploitative, to take account of the corresponding costs of the government interventions. You haven’t done so. Therefore you have lost the argument. It’s easy sport to look at something terrible, and pretend to find net benefits *by ignoring the costs*, and that is all your intellectual method amounts to. Your argument is no more than “If there was no scarcity, wouldn’t life be wonderful?” No doubt it would, but you haven’t shown how government interventions caused less unemployment, poverty and hardship, than more. You simply look at the benefits, and pretend the costs don’t exist, or assume they were automatically worth while. How do you know that the other uses to which society would have put the resources that were withdrawn by the interventions weren’t more highly valued by society? And how do you know that the destruction or diversion of resources did not cause greater poverty or hardship than the interventions saved? So far as the original problem was public goods, such as pollution of streams or wastage of forests, you’re only making my argument for me. All you’ve done is use a double standard. But you have made no attempt to show reason or evidence for your assumption that with government we enter an economic wonderland, nor even apparently cognized the quintessential problem. If your basal assumption were correct, then we would make the Australian public richer by raising the minimum wage to $200 an hour. A moment’s reflection will show that your theory is wrong. Merely pointing to bad things doesn’t prove your case. Thus you have not been able to establish that capitalism was exploitative in the Industrial Revolution. And therefore your entire critique of capitalism collapses. Also you and Molly are agreed that the income to IR workers was not “decent”. But if I ask you each to define decent, I guarantee both your answers would be different or vague; same for the other 6 billion people on the planet. It’s arbitrary. Your income in *real* terms is greater ... Posted by Peter Hume, Sunday, 4 September 2011 10:46:29 PM
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... than that of the richest capitalists in the IR. They gained no more benefit from the workers above the market rate than you do.
Therefore it is pious hypocrisy that you accuse IR capitalists of greed and frivolous consumption. Why don’t you practise what you preach? In its deep structure, your argument is only this: “Capitalism is exploitative.” “Why?” “Because it is.” Or “Capitalism is exploitative.” “Why?” “Because conditions weren’t ‘decent’ as (not) defined by me.” Flaky. If I were to use your approach, I would simply say that government education is not “decent”, and then smugly assume that that disposes of all issues. That’s the intellectual level of your argument. But I don’t just illogically and circularly assume what is in issue like you do. Instead I have shown: a) that voluntary transactions are mutually advantageous and therefore ethically better than coerced ones which are zero-sum b) that voluntary transactions also benefit society at large more than coerced interventions c) that state interventions necessarily involve greater and worse costs than benefits d) that the reason you haven’t identified that is because you either haven’t understood or considered the issue e) when shown reason and evidence which you are *completely unable* to refute, you simply ignore it f) your methodology consists of circularly repeating “exploitative” without ever having proved it or cognized what is in issue g) your arguments are all logically fallacious: self-contradictory; double standards; circularity; personality; and misrepresentation. The state interventions you support have caused more human suffering than they relieved. Your moral argument is phony and self-contradictory, and your economic argument is flatly incorrectd and refuted. Mollydukes Obviously the reason you haven’t answered whether Pythagoras’s theorem can be proved, is because it can be. This disproves your statement “that nothing can be 'proved'.” But if it’s true that nothing can be proved, then you cannot meet your own standard of proof in the argument, and your argument fails for that reason. “What’s your point?” My point is that voluntary relations are preferable as a basis of social co-operation than coerced relations ... Posted by Peter Hume, Sunday, 4 September 2011 10:52:23 PM
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… as a basis of social co-operation than coerced relations, both ethically, and in terms of economic benefit to society as a whole.
The advocates of social co-operation based on coercion, such as you, a) cannot rationally prove their argument b) cannot disprove my refutation of them, and c) rely *entirely* on logically fallacious arguments. Whether an argument is “same old” is irrelevant. The question you should be concerned about is whether it’s true. Psychology You have treated as self-evident - but not explained how or what - “psychology” supposedly invalidates voluntary relations as a basis for social co-operation. “…one common scenario in which a job seeker has less power and consequently a lower possibiity of making a choice that advantages them.” Less and lower … than whom? Your argument doesn’t make sense without saying whom. How does the fact that a job seeker has a lower possibility of making an advantageous choice (than some other unspecified person) prove that voluntary relations are unethical and unworkable, or that legalized aggression and government bureaucracies are better, as a basis for social co-operation? If I go for a job as a plumber, or an engineer, I have a lower possibility of making a choice that advantages me than a a plumber, or an engineer. So? What’s your point? “Where to start is for you to explain why those mill owners choose not to provide decent conditions for their workers when they were free to do so?” Firstly define “decent”. Now justify it in terms of the subjective evaluations of the consumers of flour, most of whom were themselves working class. Secondly, no doubt the reason the mill owners chose not to pay more than the market rate for labour, is for exactly the same reason you also choose not to. You have a higher standard of living, in real terms, than the mill owners. Yet you’re amusing yourself on the internet, instead of providing a “decent” difference to poor workers of China – or Australia. Why? Posted by Peter Hume, Sunday, 4 September 2011 10:53:40 PM
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The mill owners derived no more benefit from the mill workers above the market rate for their labour, than you do from those contemporary poor, so what’s your explanation?
Thirdly, your query is about the *motivation* of the capitalists. That’s irrelevant. The relevant question is as to the *effect*, not the *intent* of private or governmental producers. On that relevant question, you have lost the argument, because you cannot prove – to your standard, or mine – that state interventions in general, and government education in particular, causes better outcomes than worse. Why not? Because you’re only looking at half the ledger. You’re not taking into account the *downsides* of government interventions. You simply assert that, because you’ve got Aspergers, *therefore* coercion is preferable as a basis for education. This is simply a non sequitur. But it’s worse than that, because you look on abuses for which government education is responsible, disown them, and still assert that the ultimate criterion is whether *YOU* are getting a benefit, with *no consideration at all* for the costs or wrongs imposed on other people. Pure selfishness without remorse. Your argument fails your own standard of empathy. At best, the deep structure of your argument is this: a) with private provision of education, there is a downside, that the scarcity of resources requires us to sacrifice other important values b) but with government provision of education, society is not faced with that problem, since we just ASSUME without any attempt to justify it, that the resources used did not require the sacrifice of any other value. It’s irrational and a double standard. You need to demonstrate *why* and *how you know* that the social values that had to be sacrificed to provide government education, are less urgent and important than the values that were satisfied by government education, after we allow for its incompetence and abusiveness. Go ahead. You - and Poirot - haven’t even started. Posted by Peter Hume, Sunday, 4 September 2011 10:54:28 PM
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Peter Hume - rather than engaging in mindless point scoring - you could start to think that may be, just may be, you are not that well informed about capitalism and the free market.
The argument about 19th century experiences is simply that government needs to regulate the market it is a question of how much it needs to be regulated. Secondly capitalism is unstable - something that we are witnessing now. As John Gray writes: As a side-effect of the financial crisis, more and more people are starting to think Karl Marx was right. The great 19th Century German philosopher, economist and revolutionary believed that capitalism was radically unstable. It had a built-in tendency to produce ever larger booms and busts, and over the longer term it was bound to destroy itself. Marx welcomed capitalism's self-destruction. He was confident that a popular revolution would occur and bring a communist system into being that would be more productive and far more humane. Marx was wrong about communism. Where he was prophetically right was in his grasp of the revolution of capitalism. It's not just capitalism's endemic instability that he understood, though in this regard he was far more perceptive than most economists in his day and ours. More profoundly, Marx understood how capitalism destroys its own social base - the middle-class way of life. The Marxist terminology of bourgeois and proletarian has an archaic ring. But when he argued that capitalism would plunge the middle classes into something like the precarious existence of the hard-pressed workers of his time, Marx anticipated a change in the way we live that we're only now struggling to cope with. Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 5 September 2011 6:57:12 AM
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cont
He viewed capitalism as the most revolutionary economic system in history, Hunter-gatherers persisted in their way of life for thousands of years, slave cultures for almost as long and feudal societies for many centuries. In contrast, capitalism transforms everything it touches. It's not just brands that are constantly changing. Companies and industries are created and destroyed in an incessant stream of innovation, while human relationships are dissolved and reinvented in novel forms. Capitalism has been described as a process of creative destruction, and no-one can deny that it has been prodigiously productive. Practically anyone who is alive in Britain today has a higher real income than they would have had if capitalism had never existed. The trouble is that among the things that have been destroyed in the process is the way of life on which capitalism in the past depended. Negative return Defenders of capitalism argue that it offers to everyone the benefits that in Marx's time were enjoyed only by the bourgeoisie, the settled middle class that owned capital and had a reasonable level of security and freedom in their lives. In 19th Century capitalism most people had nothing. They lived by selling their labour and when markets turned down they faced hard times. But as capitalism evolves, its defenders say, an increasing number of people will be able to benefit from it. Fulfilling careers will no longer be the prerogative of a few. No more will people struggle from month to month to live on an insecure wage. Protected by savings, a house they own and a decent pension, they will be able to plan their lives without fear. With the growth of democracy and the spread of wealth, no-one need be shut out from the bourgeois life. Everybody can be middle class. In fact, in Britain, the US and many other developed countries over the past 20 or 30 years, the opposite has been happening. Job security doesn't exist, the trades and professions of the past have largely gone and life-long careers are barely memories Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 5 September 2011 7:00:18 AM
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Baygon:"capitalism is unstable - something that we are witnessing now."
Capitalism is unstable because it is reliant on the enlightened self-interest of individuals making decisions for themselves. Command economies are stable because they remove the uncertainty created by individuals acting in their own interest. Of course, they might be stably heading off the nearest cliff, such as in the Soviet example, or the Fascist ones. Zimbabwe is a command economy, ditto North Korea. Personally, I know what I prefer Posted by Antiseptic, Monday, 5 September 2011 7:04:32 AM
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If people have any wealth it's in their houses, but house prices don't always increase. When credit is tight as it is now, they can be stagnant for years. A dwindling minority can count on a pension on which they could comfortably live, and not many have significant savings.
More and more people live from day to day, with little idea of what the future may bring. Middle-class people used to think their lives unfolded in an orderly progression. But it's no longer possible to look at life as a succession of stages in which each is a step up from the last. In the process of creative destruction the ladder has been kicked away and for increasing numbers of people a middle-class existence is no longer even an aspiration. As capitalism has advanced it has returned most people to a new version of the precarious existence of Marx's proles. Our incomes are far higher and in some degree we're cushioned against shocks by what remains of the post-war welfare state. But we have very little effective control over the course of our lives, and the uncertainty in which we must live is being worsened by policies devised to deal with the financial crisis. Zero interest rates alongside rising prices means you're getting a negative return on your money and over time your capital is being eroded. The situation of many younger people is even worse. In order to acquire the skills you need, you'll have to go into debt. Since at some point you'll have to retrain you should try to save, but if you're indebted from the start that's the last thing you'll be able to do. Whatever their age, the prospect facing most people today is a lifetime of insecurity. Risk takers Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 5 September 2011 7:06:25 AM
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At the same time as it has stripped people of the security of bourgeois life, capitalism has made the type of person that lived the bourgeois life obsolete.
When savings are melting away being thrifty can be the road to ruin. It's the person who borrows heavily and isn't afraid to declare bankruptcy that survives and goes on to prosper.When the labour market is highly mobile it's not those who stick dutifully to their task that succeed, it's people who are always ready to try something new that looks more promising. In a society that is being continuously transformed by market forces, traditional values are dysfunctional and anyone who tries to live by them risks ending up on the scrapheap.We find ourselves in the world Marx anticipated, where everyone's life is experimental and provisional, and sudden ruin can happen at any timeA tiny few have accumulated vast wealth but even that has an evanescent, almost ghostly quality. Today there is no haven of security. The gyrations of the market are such that no-one can know what will have value even a few years ahead. This state of perpetual unrest is the permanent revolution of capitalism We're only part of the way through a financial crisis that will turn many more things upside down Currencies and governments are likely to go under, along with parts of the financial system we believed had been made safe. The risks that threatened to freeze the world economy only three years ago haven't been dealt with. They've simply been shifted to states. Whatever politicians may tell us about the need to curb the deficit, debts on the scale that have been run up can't be repaid. Almost certainly they will be inflated away - a process that is bound to painful and impoverishing for many. The result can only be further upheaval, on an even bigger scale. But it won't be the end of the world, or even of capitalism. Whatever happens, we're still going to have to learn to live with the mercurial energy that the market has released. Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 5 September 2011 7:13:26 AM
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Jesus! it was a article about public value for public money!
And most of the problems mentioned in the article do come back to too much 'state planning/regulation' but not to too much state funding. Posted by pedestrian, Monday, 5 September 2011 12:17:45 PM
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Peter Hume Perhaps you mistake me for someone who has an ideology to support. Do you always assume that anyone who disagrees with you is 'the enemy'? Is this a characteristic of yours in your real life?
I'm not a socialist or a capitalist - just a sad old welfare bludger looking for an explanation of what I would do in your world when Hayek simply rejects me. That was where this all started; me asking you about the meaning of that passage in Road To Serfdom. You are a very prolific writer. Quite impressive, or do you cut, paste and adapt from the Cato website? My dad back in the 60's told me that neither capitalism or socialism will be the answer - in the long term - because neither is a 'proper' ideology. They are just systems of dividing up property and income and neither addresses the 'problem' of human nature. Based on my understanding of psychology it seems to me that there are a number of different types of human nature and an ideology that will work will need to take this into account. What do you think about that? Really that's all I want from you, not attempting to coerce you or say you are a bad person. But perhaps you don't do thinking about new ideas all that well? Are you a real libertarian? Posted by Mollydukes, Monday, 5 September 2011 12:46:45 PM
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Poirot There was a very intersting interview on RN the other morning with John Elder Robison, a man who was diagnosed with Aspergers when he was 40. He was the bloke who did all the tech stuff for Pink Floyd.
He talks about how he was able to help his son cope with the real world and a technique TMS Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, that provided him with a few minutes of understanding what it is like to be neuro-typical and understand how other people think. I would like to try that. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2011/3305306.htm Posted by Mollydukes, Monday, 5 September 2011 12:55:05 PM
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Peter Hume,
Your triumphal attitude to debate is rather amusing - seems that you're mainly interested in declaring yourself the "winner" point by point (hoorah!). Children had always worked in traditional societies once they achieved a certain age. However, the paradigm shift to mill and factory work proved so injurious to their developing bodies. Noxious fumes, poor ventilation, poor nutrition and long hours of repetitive manual labour led to the crippling and stunting of these children. "Work" which had been common practice for children couldn't be translated to an industrial setting. Young adults became old and ruined before their time. That is the reason government education was introduced. Some of the more humanitarian industrialists like Robert Owen perceived of a system where children could be educated while at the same time being prepared for industrial society...so it went, and the system that resulted produced adults fully conditioned to the capitalist paradigm, yet preserved in their physical well-being. The fact that government education is a one-size-fits-all system is that it's the nature of the beast. It's a beast intially fashioned in response to the dereliction of humanitarian duty and common sense displayed by libertarian industrialists, and adapted over time to serve the needs of capitalism. Mollydukes, Thanks for that - will have a squizz. Posted by Poirot, Monday, 5 September 2011 1:40:29 PM
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Poirot
Ad hominem mind-reading, ho hum. So what’s happened in our long series of exchanges is this. You have talked of capitalism as exploitative, as if it’s so obvious it goes without saying. When I’ve asked you to prove it, your reply has assumed it. When I’ve pointed out that you’ve assumed it, your next reply has simply assumed it again. It’s like you don’t even understand the issue. When I’ve specifically identified the economic issue for you – to show that government interventions have made improvements after all costs of such interventions were taken into account – that government interventions have not increased unemployment, poverty and hardship - you’ve just assumed it all over again! Thus your intellectual technique is no different from that of the Hare Krishnas. You illogically assume the existence of a superbeing and just keep repeating it. Baygon Similarly I accuse you of using methods that do not satisfy the minimum requirements of rationality. You made your equilibrium argument. I refuted it. You have not defended it. You made the public goods argument. I referred you to a refutation of it, and can myself totally refute it any time you will join issue. But you have not defended it. Instead you reply with - personal argument – I’m supposedly engaging in “mindless point scoring”. This personal insult evades the possibility that your theory is wrong. - circular argument – in reply to being completely refuted, you just *repeat the assumption* about government that you haven’t been able to rationally justify in the first place, namely that it can provide education better after taking into account the upsides and downsides both ways. So you haven’t got to square one and I’ve destroyed your arguments, remember? - long-refuted nonsense. Don’t make me laugh about Karl Marx being a “great … economist”. Marx thought of himself first and foremost as an economist. Yet it was the economics departments who were the first to reject his theories … because they’re demonstrably wrong! Posted by Peter Hume, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 3:44:45 AM
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In particular, Ludwig von Mises has proved that socialism is not even possible *in theory*, let alone in practice: http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf and absolutely demolished all Marx’s theories here: http://mises.org/books/socialism/contents.aspx
Until you a) have understood the argument from economic calculation, and b) can refute the argument you’re just displaying prattling ignorance of what you’re talking about. The flaw that invalidates the whole of your last post is that in criticizing capitalism you fail to distinguish private, from governmental control of the means of production, thus being guilty of still more basic confusion than even Marx was guilty of. The money supply and interest rates at all times during the financial crisis were under monopoly government control. According to free market theory, this will result in instability, while according to interventionist theory this will result in economic stability. So you’ve lost the argument - again. Mollydukes Firstly, let’s acknowledge you haven’t answered my questions because they completely disprove your argument. “I'm … looking for an explanation of what I would do in your world when Hayek simply rejects me.” Some of the thousands and thousands of productive activities that are now illegal? Ever considered freedom as an option? Ever considered that the government interventions you advocate might have negative consequences that make your life, and millions of others’, *much worse* for no defensible reason? Then when I disprove your assumptions, instead of acknowledging it, you come back at me with personal disparagement. “[N]either capitalism or socialism will be the answer … They are just systems of dividing up property and income and neither addresses the 'problem' of human nature.” I have shown why socialism must necessarily produce worse outcomes, both in ethics and in practice. But you haven’t begun to establish show how capitalism is worse, and have blamed capitalism for problems caused by government. “Based on my understanding of psychology it seems to me that there are a number of different types of human nature and an ideology that will work will need to take this into account. What do you think about that?” Posted by Peter Hume, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 3:45:55 AM
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Whatever the differences between people, nature still imposes certain unchangeable limitations in common on all people, e.g. time. These non-negotiable limitations include limitations on the possible uses of scarce resources. All the wishful thinking, and all the logical fallacies in the world cannot make these truths go away. They apply to all people in all cultures in all times. They affect us *whether or not people understand or believe them*. Knowledge of such truths is not “ideology” in the Marxian sense.
Thus it’s not a question of “proper ideology” with its implication that we can choose whatever economic reality we want. We can’t. There is a such a thing as reality, and as logic, and these impose limitations on human nature and human production. The claims of socialism, or government, to provide services as well or better than private ownership are COMPLETELY FALSE. That’s why a) I have challenged everyone to answer how government services are going to avoid the problems that private provision avoids, and no-one has been able to answer b) I have challenged everyone to answer how government services are going to equal the benefits of private provision, and no-one has been able to answer. c) All the claims against capitalism consistently blame capitalism for problems caused by government d) ALL the claims in favour of government are logically fallacious many times over. Their technique consists of simply not counting the downsides of the government interventions they advocate. “But perhaps you don't do thinking about new ideas all that well?” That’s rich coming from you. Have you had any new ideas as a result of not being able to answer *any* of the questions I’ve asked you? At least I am genuinely inquiring to find out if and when my ideas are wrong. That’s why I’ve asked the questions I’ve asked. I have *openly and repeatedly* offered for you guys to prove me wrong – none of you has been able to do it. Posted by Peter Hume, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 3:49:06 AM
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By contrast, you guys all *actively flee from disproofs*, taking refuge in circularity. I prove you wrong, and you just repeat the same assumptions. I prove them wrong again, and you reply with personal insult and another round of the same assumptions all over again.
Your intellectual technique is one of mere invincible ignorance. Are *you* open to new ideas? When you grow tired of demonstrable falsehoods, try something true for a change: http://mises.org/Books/mespm.PDF Can you disprove it? “Are you a real libertarian?” Do I believe freedom is better than unprovoked aggression? Yes!, both morally and practically, and I have proved it – rationally. And all the arguments I have got back are just a welter and thicket of fallacies, overlaid with layer upon layer of personal insult – from the supposedly caring empathetic side. All What’s happened here is that you are so entrenched in your beliefs about government being able to assign resources to their most urgent and important uses, that when someone actually challenges you to prove your claims for government and against capitalism, you are completely at a loss. You fall back immediately into personal attack, circular argument, irrelevance, fake piety, straw men, calling socialist interventions “capitalist”, Marxist slogans, and every kind of logical fallacy. The reason is obvious: since birth you have been so surrounded with people who believe your assumptions about government, that you have absorbed it with mother’s milk. Then came your compulsory indoctrination, which you’ve obviously never critically questioned as concerns this issue. Then it comes as a shock when someone points out there’s no reason or evidence for your beliefs, so you blame the messenger. Your methodology is religious, not rational. Perhaps one day you will consider the arguments on their merits, and care whether or not what you are advocating is false and abusive. Posted by Peter Hume, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 3:53:39 AM
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Peter I totally agree that it is difficult to escape the 'gravitational pull of the dominant consciousness'.
So how did you do it? How did you manage to see that libertarianism is the way when so many of us can't see that? Are you a special type of human being? More intelligent perhaps? Because I am most definitely not like you. My freedom comes from the security that a goverment can provide. I don't seek to maximise my profit at all and I am sure that accumulating wealth is not the way to maximise human happiness or find enlightenment. I seek to increase my understanding of human nature and myself, and to establish reciprocal and symetrical relationships with others. I think I have argued convincingly, that people like me would always come out losers against people like you if there were no restrictions on your greed. All I can say in conclusion is that you are a silly silly man. You haven't proved anything. ROFL! You do know that means 'roll on floor laughing'? I am dissapointed with the quality of your response though. I did expect a bit more independent thought. Posted by Mollydukes, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 7:14:07 AM
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Peter Hume,
mmmm....Ad hominem Hare Krishna references : ) I specifically highlighted that "liberaian" capitalism was grossly exploitative - and that state intervention mitigated that to some extent and allowed the capitalist system to succeed. You are arguing that we should all go back to unregulated libertarian arrangements - and I have given many examples of the sort of base humanity that emerged under such a system. None of that is "assumed" - it actually happened and is recorded as such Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 7:43:43 AM
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Mollydukes:"I think I have argued convincingly, that people like me would always come out losers against people like you if there were no restrictions on your greed."
I think you've argued a good case for your own perceived self-interest, not anything else. It is refreshing to see someone so overtly shilling for their own benefit. What you haven't done is made a case for why I should support you. If you are so dysfunctional that you cannot support yourself then obviously you feel that someone else must do it for you, but what's in it for me? What's the quid pro quo? I have made a decent living out of my business for the past 7 years; a business which I established and I have run with no assistance of any kind from Government and with very little capital, at least initially. The business conditions at the moment mean that the business is not making money, so I'm closing down, at least temporarily and moving into a different field for a while. If that works out, I'll have 2 businesses. I've done that while suffering a significant reactive depression for a fair part of the first few years and in the face of significant family problems including several court cases and CSA issues. I could have curled into a ball and gone on welfare - htat's the trajectory for very many men in that situation, but I decided to do something about it instead. A mental illness/injury is a burden to be overcome, not an excuse for failing to try. I find your justifications for your own special pleading to be unconvincing. Posted by Antiseptic, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 8:01:49 AM
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Antiseptic so sorry for your hard life - it must suck to be you and feel so ripped off by people like me. I am ashamed of myself and will wear sackcloth and ashes for the next few weeks.
But just one more thing about libertarianism for anyone interested in this cult movement. Check out http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/30/lind_libertariansim The article includes this information. "Cato Unbound recently hosted a debate over whether libertarianism is compatible with democracy. Milton Friedman’s grandson Patri concluded that it is not: Democracy Is Not The Answer Democracy is the current industry standard political system, but unfortunately it is ill-suited for a libertarian state. It has substantial systemic flaws, which are well-covered elsewhere,[2] and it poses major problems specifically for libertarians: 1) Most people are not by nature libertarians. David Nolan reports that surveys show at most 16% of people have libertarian beliefs. Nolan, the man who founded the Libertarian Party back in 1971, now calls for libertarians to give up on the strategy of electing candidates! … 2) Democracy is rigged against libertarians. Candidates bid for electoral victory partly by selling future political favors to raise funds and votes for their campaigns. Libertarians (and other honest candidates) who will not abuse their office can't sell favors, thus have fewer resources to campaign with, and so have a huge intrinsic disadvantage in an election." Posted by Mollydukes, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 8:22:40 AM
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I'm too snowed under with work to contribute, but just want to say I find Mollydukes' hoensty and unpretentiousness refreshing. Humans form societies because we're social animals and need that support and protection. Heaven forbid the neoliberal agenda of recent decades should maintain its heading.
There was an interview this morning on RN with a rep from the "New Economics Foundation", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economics_Foundation a left-leaning group bent on confronting libertarian ideology with its own. She predicts the end of the Euro and sovereign insolvency btw. Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 8:39:24 AM
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Mollydukes, I asked you a simple question: what's the quid pro quo?
What do you contribute to the wellbeing of society that makes it worthwhile for society to skew natural relationships in favour of your welfare? There must be something, or why do we bother? squeers, did you happen to look up the sititual leader of the NEF, a chap called EF Schumacher? A quote:"“It is when we come to politics,” Schumacher insisted, “that we can no longer postpone or avoid the question regarding man's ultimate aim and purpose.” If one believes in God one will pursue politics “mindful of the eternal destiny of man and of the truths of the Gospel”. However, if one believes “that there are no higher obligations”, it becomes impossible to resist the appeal of Machiavellianism “politics as the art of gaining and maintaining power so that you and your friends can order the world as they like it”(2). Once one accepted that man was created by God with a designated purpose, politics, economics and art had value only for the end of helping man reach a higher plane of existence, which should be his goal (2)." I thought you were an atheist? Posted by Antiseptic, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 9:01:15 AM
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squeers, it seems that Schumacher wasn't real happy with Marx, either:
"For Schumacher there were three main culprits, that had all been corrosive agents in a world which had lost sight of individual responsibility and a world bound to the parameters of realism and science. These were Freud, Marx and Einstein. Freud had made perception subjective through his teaching that perception was subject to the complex interplay of the ego and the id, literally rendering it self-centered. This led inevitably to a change of attitude in human relations where self-fulfillment took precedence over the needs of others. Marx, by seeking a scapegoat in the bourgeoisie, had replaced personal responsibility with a hatred for others. His fault lay in his blaming of others for problems with society. Einstein had supposedly undermined belief in absolutes with his insistence on the relativity of everything. The application of 'relativity' in all other fields including morality, led to rejection of moral codes and responsibility" Dear me, I thought this was a "left-leaning" little group? I suppose if one defines left-leaning as "loopy" it's possible... Posted by Antiseptic, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 9:06:12 AM
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Yes, Mollydukes, your straightforward style is refreshing.
It's interesting that Peter can't see the humanity for the "system". In his ideology ordinary human needs and societal harmony take a back seat. It's "all" economics. British autism expert, Simon Baron-Cohen has a theory that people with Aspergers (or high-functioning autism) operate with an overly "male" brain, in that "systems" tend to override other considerations. Female psychology, on the other hand, is more empathetic. Most humans (and their social arrangements) usually demonstrate a healthy balance between the two. As Mollydukes has shown, it is possible for a person affected to understand empathy well. My son tends to have more of problem regulating his empathy as he tends sometimes to worry and fret about people and things that aren't his province of concern. Libertarian ideology appears to have an opposite problem. Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 9:14:53 AM
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Poirot, I can empathise with Mollydukes's problem, but that doesn't make it my problem. Is my depression hers? She apparently feels no empathy whatever for me.
The difference between us is that I don't expect anyone to do anything at all for me without a quid pro quo. If a friend gives me a hand I throw on a some beers, or provide dinner and if they need a hand the same thing applies. If I need staff, I pay them for their work and I expect them to work hard for their pay. This is what Howard called "mutual obligation" that was so hated by the victimologists. Yet it's a reasonable thing to expect of someone who is not incapable of contributing. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, as Mr McIlhenny, my old senior maths teacher was so fond of saying. If you manipulate one side of an equation, there must be a similar manipulation on the other, or it is no longer the same equation. It no longer models the same problem There is only so much abundance available and using it for the support of people who are able to support themselves, albeit perhaps not in the style they aspire to, is simply wasteful and will lead to highly unproductive outcomes. Similarly, assessing the success of social programs by their impact on GDP gives a misleading impression of the outcomes, since GDP does not measure net outcomes, just national turnover. So money spent on support of Mollydukes is counted the same as money earnt by selling a product overseas. However, if that product had not been sold overseas, then Mollydukes would not be able to be supported but if Mollydukes did not exist or was supporting herself, the product sale money still would. One is productive and one is not. Posted by Antiseptic, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 10:18:45 AM
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Antiseptic,
No doubt you're correct, but don't underestimate the power and inventiveness displayed by people with Aspergers. A particular talent of theirs is the ability for obsessive concentration in specific areas. It's often said that half the population of Silicon Valley probably has some degree of Aspergers (it's a spectrum condition) - same goes for academic and scientific study, as the cloistered atmosphere suits them to a tee. I'd posit that a good many advances in human knowledge and discovery are down to an autistic outlook. Newton, Einstein...etc. I've heard it reported that Bill Gates has Asperger Syndrome. As I've stated, the human condition is complicated and so are the various systems that regulate it. Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 10:46:54 AM
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Only tim to pop in to say that Fran Kelly described the think tank as "left leaning" this morning. Sounded interesting but I haven't had the chance to check it out yet.
Any economist who's not a free marketeer as gotta be refreshing! Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 2:49:04 PM
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Poirot
The difference between your ad hominem and mine is that yours is the *foundation* of your entire argument – that and circularity. Mine is the *conclusion* of an argument that demonstrates irrefutably that you cannot evidence the benefits you allege without suspending reason. Citing history does not and cannot prove what you need to prove, because the question is how do you know that the interventions did not cause greater unemployment, poverty and hardship? You openly acknowledge the abuses of a one-size-fits-all education system, so it's you who think the economic issues - in your case, trying to force other people to pay for your values - is more important than society. Economics completely disproves the assumption behind your self-awarded halo of fallacious manufacture. But perhaps if you keep repeating your incantations they will become true eventually? “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Ram Hare Ram Four legs good, two legs bad Baaaaaaaah”. Squeers Ditto. That guy on the atheist thread really had you pegged, didn’t he? A “pseudo-intellectual prattler” – this time prattling that compulsory funding, compulsory attendance, compulsory curriculum and compulsory qualifications of state education are “free market”, you fool. Molly You appear to be under the false impression you’ve made an argument against capitalism. You haven’t, apart from openly stating that you feel entitled to live on other people’s efforts taken by coercion – the opposite of empathy. Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 8 September 2011 7:10:51 PM
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Antiseptic
No, Molly didn’t answer your question, and none of them answered mine, did they? All we got was the leftists’ conceit that they speak down from a higher moral plane to the people they violate, while simultaneously making society more conflict - and caste –ridden, and poorer. Such vanity. So since the leftitsts’ discourse is ultimately not rational, you’ve really got to wonder what is the psychological process behind this infantile behaviour. Speaking of autism spectrum, I think “Animals in Translation’ by the famous autistic Temple Grandin has explaining power. The pre-frontal cortex is associated with reasoning, logic, critical thinking and all that. The more primitive mammalian mid-brain is associated with feelings of hierarchy, dominance, submission, groupthink. That’s where the leftists are coming from, which explains a) the irrationality of their intellectual method – it consists only of arguing in a circle b) their infantile feeling of entitlement to tittie, somehow, anyhow c) why it consists only of groupthink. Incanting Marxists slogans works just fine with their co-religionists sucking off government in Marxist kindergartens. Any objection that it doesn’t actually make sense is met with xenophobic malice and personal insult. That’s it. Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 8 September 2011 7:14:41 PM
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Hi Peter, I love you too : )
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 8 September 2011 7:28:44 PM
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Hey, Peter...regarding "personal insults". I've never referred to anyone on this forum as "you fool" or an "idiot" - but I know someone who indulges in that line of rhetoric semi-regularly on OLO.
Oh look!, you did it again of page 11. Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 8 September 2011 9:01:20 PM
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Hare Krishna
"Four legs good, two legs bad" Might is right The state is god Baaaaaaaaah. Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 8 September 2011 10:38:24 PM
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"I've never referred to anyone on this forum as "you fool" or an "idiot"
No, you only advocate they be bashed into submission to make them comply with your opinion which you cannot justify except by personal argument and circularity. Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 8 September 2011 10:45:17 PM
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Peter, in fairness, I do hold the view that we as a society should support those who are incapable of doing so, whether temporarily for reasons of loss of employment, or permanently through some form of impairment. Think of it as a social insurance policy. Anybody may be struck by the finger of fate and the whacking great machete it's wrapped around. Social structures should exist in one form or another to support those so afflicted.
However, I think it's pretty obvious from mollydukes's contributions here that she is in no way unable to contribute. She is lucid, assertive, well-read, well able to prosecute her claims in discussion. She is, in short, able to contribute and she should not be exempted from that obligation if she expects the benefit of the social support structures. I have a relative who was diagnosed in his 40s with MS. He is a computer systems analyst by profession. While he is unable to maintain a regular schedule, he is quite able to contribute on a consultancy basis to work in his field and does so. At the same time, on occasion he is so incapacitated that he requires hospitalisation and always requires full-time care. He exhausted his own funds some time ago and his insurance isn't adequate for his needs, so he uses the public system, but he isn't drawing unemployment benefits. I have great admiration for the way he's handled himself, as he was on a fast-track for a very senior role in an iconic multi-national firm and he is now reduced to living in a care facility with support from his aging parents, all in the space of about 8 years. I haven't heard him whinging about how badly off he is though. Quite a big difference from the way some go on. Instead of allowing people to slip into a non-productive handout victimhood, we must encourage greater self-sufficiency. We hand out an enormous part of our national budget to support what are essentially lifestyle decisions in many cases. Posted by Antiseptic, Friday, 9 September 2011 6:16:02 AM
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Peter Hume,
"No, you only advocate that they be bashed into submission to make them comply with your opinion...." Gawd! - you can talk. It's not as if you don't bang on interminably on your pet subject. Peter, I don't give a toss whether you buy my line of reasoning or not. I do, however, have a right to put my views across, as do we all. You don't have to "comply" with anything I or anyone else says....this is an opinion forum, not a re-education gulag. Antiseptic, Well balanced and sensible reasoning in your last post. Posted by Poirot, Friday, 9 September 2011 8:11:51 AM
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Antiseptic
You wrote "However, I think it's pretty obvious from mollydukes's contributions here that she is in no way unable to contribute. She is lucid, assertive, well-read, well able to prosecute her claims in discussion. She is, in short, able to contribute and she should not be exempted from that obligation if she expects the benefit of the social support structures. But she gets killer migraines that can last for days - throw up every time I move and would kill myself if I could keep the pills down or set up the apparatus - I think a hose attached to the exhaust might be the easiest way. Sorry to be so rude last time I replied but I do get a bit of a brain buzz prior to an attack but I am just not a 'nice' person a lot of the time. Should I be just because I am poor? Aspergers like me really don't like people that much - we prefer dogs to humans. Dogs are honest and predictable to me; humans are not. I would and did make a bad employee - except in the university environment where people forgave me my 'personality' or social defects because my other abilities were valued. They aren't in any other workplace. I do contribute as much as I believe I 'should'. You can ask questions about my contribution if you want to. I'm not up to explaining in detail now, how and what I contribute in return for my disability pension as I have only just managed to get up, eat some toast and tea. Oh I might also say that I think I have given back full measure for my single parent benefit since I now have 3 adult children (all with my type of aspergers) but all in full time employment, participating and paying tax, thanks to the fact that I was able to stay home and give them enough time and help to cope with their 'disability'. Posted by Mollydukes, Friday, 9 September 2011 1:50:56 PM
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Antiseptic I have been reading back over the previous posts and you aren't as rabid as I thought.
Peter whatever his name is, is a waste of headspace. I was interested in understanding what he thought about the idea that Hayek - and libertarians - are Aspergers themselves. Aspergers isn't necessarily a mental illness. I am particularly dysfunctional and failed in the past, to cope with 'normality' because of my not so functional upbringing that exacerbated my problems. I do okay these days with medication, and understanding that what goes on in my head isn't the same as what goes on in other people's - that really has helped. With good parenting, like Poirot is providing,aspergers can be fine although they do need some understanding from employers. Perhaps it was easier for them to find work in the past because the requirements for social skills were not so ubiquitous or high. One incident from my daughters experience as a worker with aspergers -she is a computer programmer of course - and at one place her employers offered her more money to be 'approachable'. She had no idea what they meant and isn't motivated my money anyway. Her new employers don't insist she go to company functions or join in the office gossip. I don't feel any empathy for you Antiseptic unless you tell me you are suffering. I think I explained that I had to learn to feel empathy and I think that if I had not had the experience of living among the welfare class, I would not have much empathy for them either. They seem like a useless bunch overall but you can't tell from the outside what it is like inside, and I know that it is not easy or fun being dysfunctional and not understand why my 'choices' always turned out to be the wrong choice. Are you suffering because you have worked all your life? Or have you enjoyed it and gained satisfaction from your activities? Posted by Mollydukes, Friday, 9 September 2011 3:00:00 PM
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Also Antiseptic I have always been in favour of mutual obligation. I think that should be the foundation of our society. It was, as I have explained in another post, a left wing social worker who, well before Mr Howard was PM, explained to me in a way that I understood, that I had an obligation to society if I recieved a Government benefit.
Prior to that I 'hated' society and wanted no part of it. I didn't understand what I was supposed to do or how to do it and I would have been among the rioters in London, I am sure if I had not had the help and encouragement from the Dept of Social Security that they provided back in the 80's, to get an education and sort out my problems. I think that GDP and your idea of what is 'productive' as a measure of human progress is now useless. We have enough stuff - too much - and it's bad for us. We need to be productive and entrepeneural in producing healthy brains, bodies and souls, not more economic growth and that is what I work toward without any need to make a profit. Sometimes I fancy myself as a conscious objector to this society but I often have strange ideas particularly after a headache. Posted by Mollydukes, Friday, 9 September 2011 3:16:33 PM
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Perhaps those of you who are well read and knowledgeable about Aspergers should consider an article - it seems to me that it being in defined in such a way that just about everyone has aspects of the syndrome.
I suspect the real problem lies with the fact that have develioped a culture that focused on people's disabilities not their abilities - this is precisely the problem with schooling - we have a system that aims to produce people who are so alike that any diversity is stamped out - failing to realise that human progress has been produced by the mavericks, the people capable of standing outside of the herd and contemplate a different world - it is these well educated misfits, to quote the article that sparked this thread, in which any hope for the future of humanity resides. Posted by BAYGON, Friday, 9 September 2011 3:47:03 PM
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Molly, thanks for your very comprehensive response. As I said, I do empathise with your affliction, and I'm sure it makes things difficult. Chronic illnesses of all sorts do that and none of them are pleasant for the sufferer. That's still begging the question of contribution though.
Am I suffering because of my choices relating to work? I'd have to say that I am, somewhat. I haven't had a holiday in about 5 years, although with the current downturn, it sort of feels like one. I spend a great deal of time doing things that I would not choose to do if it wasn't for the money. Would I be happier unemployed? To be honest, I'm not sure. I'd like the freedom from responsibility, but I'd hate the lack of capacity to do things because of having no money. Being self-employed is the best compromise for me, since I get to choose what I do and when, to a large extent, provided the minimal necessities are taken care of. To go on from Baygon's suggestion, I'd be very interested to hear more from you and Poirot and others on the subject of ASDs. I have to say that having read a bit about it because of this discussion, I see a great deal of myself in the descriptions, albeit not at the debilitating end of the scale. The descriptions of AS in childhood are especially compelling and explain a few things which were somewhat mysterious to me about my own experiences. I'd never considered the possibility before. It's a fascinating topic, actually Posted by Antiseptic, Saturday, 10 September 2011 6:39:34 AM
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Antiseptic,
It is a fascinating topic. Just to clarify that an Aspergers diagnosis is given instead of a straight autistic one if no deficit has been met in "communication" criteria. The term "educated misfit" is pertinent to this thread because schooling is amongst the most trying situations for anyone with ASD. The more affected children are quite significantly disabled and therefore receive the attention they require - and the understanding. However for someone who is high-functioning, that is often not the case. Most people don't understand that it is not only certain behaviours that are an issue but also certain physical sensitivities. Many people have sensitivities to light, sound and smells, for instance. Things that wouldn't bother anyone else, become excruciating for someone with ASD. Abrupt changes in routine can petrify a child with ASD. Social interaction is often fraught, because often ASD children are particularly naive and gullible and have difficulty regulating their input and reactions. Other neuro-typical children pick up on this automatically and most times find it almost impossible not to take advantage - simply because they can. Repetitive behaviour is an aspect of autism at both ends of the spectrum. At the lower end it is normally physical in nature, but at the high end it is likely to take the form of an obsession or a special interest (which can change regularly) For instance, my little guy is quite interested in dates and people of note....so he regularly talks about this. To give you an example of how this behaviour may seem odd to another child. During a visit with our home education moderator, he started talking about the Camp David accord when Carter hosted Begin and Sadat - just out of the blue. He was nine years-old at the time. But then again, mostly he has perfectly ordinary conversations... that's where it's quirky. As I've mentioned, by home educating it gives him the opportunity to learn through his special interests, which is very important because often if children with ASD aren't interested in something they just switch off. More later. Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 10 September 2011 8:54:12 AM
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Poirot your last contribution is interesting for it seems that back in the seventies I may have stumbled on a way the school system could function effectively for kids with ADS. I set up a programme for what was then called resistant learners. I worked with a group of about 15 year 10 students - kids who had been given up by their teachers as incorrigible. I taught all of them all the various subjects in the core curriculum with one difference - they all worked on a project that was of interest to them. So for example one kid was interested in fish - we built a salt water aquarium, he researched and documented everything that one needed to know about fish - His maths was centred on doing the calculations needed to ensure the aquarium was a suitable habitat, his literacy was focussed on doing the reading and writing to document his experiments. My colleagues insisted that the programme be closed down because the kids were not getting a rounded education - so they went back to being their disruptive disengaged selves. I often wonder what would have happened if this programme had not appeared to be such of a threat to my colleagues.
Posted by BAYGON, Saturday, 10 September 2011 9:33:58 AM
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BAYGON,
Very interesting....and a brilliant way to approach learning, especially for students with ASD. I sort of worked it out for myself as I learned more about the condition. I saw that my son was so self-motivated to direct his own information gathering on subjects that held his interest - so it seemed fairly logical to follow his lead. There are all sorts of nebulous behaviours, preferences and talents that surface surrounding ASD. My son didn't have any language until just after he turned three - however 22 months later and before he turned five, he was reading fluently with comprehension at about a nine year-old level. Will get back to you further when time permits. Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 10 September 2011 9:51:30 AM
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Poirot, my parents did the same for me, to a large extent. I was also fortunate to have some really good teachers at Primary level in PNG. Unfortunately, at the Anglican Church Grammar school in Brisbane where I boarded for high school, the quality of teaching was nowhere near as good, with the teachers more interested in compliance and punishment than learning outcomes, on the whole. I still achieved pretty well, but only because the population average is pretty low - it wasn't in accord with the sort of
There were two things that have resonated for me especially in this subject. The first was Molly's mention that she prefers dogs to people. Really, so do I and always have. They're much more dependably predictable and less effort to deal with, on the whole. The second was the wikipedia article, which used the phrase "the little professor", as I was known among family and friends as "the absent-minded professor" as a child. I've never really been able to adjust to a rigidly structured learning environment, but I learn very rapidly indeed when I'm interested in something. It's also hard for me not to follow an interesting digression or diversion, which often, in conversation or discussion, can be taken for either contrarianism or simple rudeness. I do wish I'd known more about this when I was younger. Posted by Antiseptic, Saturday, 10 September 2011 10:21:50 AM
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I didn't finish a sentence above, I should have said my high-school results were not in accord with the outcome predicted by either my primary school results or my IQ, which is quite high.
Posted by Antiseptic, Saturday, 10 September 2011 10:23:55 AM
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You are all giving reasons against a compulsory centralised bureucratic education system, not in favour of it. Poirot, you are perhaps better able than most others give your son a more personalised education. Yet you oppose the same right for those who are less able to do it, to simply buy it.
Even in the current highly restricted market, private education has done better than the state system in innovativeness, quality and price. For example I researched home schooling for the girl who got bashed. The whole idea of people sitting in rows like boiled eggs being bored stiff betting told what's what by some authority up the front, has got whiskers on it. The net should have changed all that. One of these programs I saw was a program that teaches the child how to teach themselves, how to find the relevant material. It customised itself to the child's own interest, as well as providing a rounded education, and set them on their own course of study. And cheap! This obvious idea - of suiting education to the individual potentiality of the student - is what it should be. But with a centralised bureaucracy firstly innovation is anathema to their very fibre, because a bureaucracy is about carrying out directions and complying with regulations issued from the centre. And then, as Baygon has shown, even if you show them the idea, they have great difficulty taking it on board. And even if they do, change like that becomes a political decision. But why should it be? The needs of the child get lost in this, while the interests of institutional vested interests always come first. No-one has explained why the parents and child should not be the relevant decision-makers, rather than politicians, union leaders, and professional bureaucrats who pay no price for getting it wrong. It depends on the completely false idea that you, or those bureaucrats, know better what everyone else's values should be. Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 10 September 2011 10:39:08 AM
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People should be free to choose, educators should go out of business if they don't satisfy the needs of the consumers, and no-one has given any decent reason in favour of state education. You admit its abuses, but can't provide any rational justification of any corresponding benefit. It's not just those with AS whose needs are being neglected. There's dozens of categories, people thoroughly normal as well as people who are not, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the majority who are worse off - and in any event, why should so many children's interests be sacrificed for the mainstream?
Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 10 September 2011 10:45:52 AM
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Antiseptic thank-you.
I am sure that most people have some aspects of aspergers and your penchant for being self-employed as well as the other behavioural traits you mention, I think is consistent with the idea that you are a high functioning aspie. My father couldn't work for other people and we moved around a lot - 12 different schools in 8 years - so that he could start his own businesses; they always failed despite the hard work and long hours he put in, because he was a lousy businessman and he also had bi-polar type depression. As far as reading material goes, my daughter found the author, Simon Baron-Cohen, that Poirot refers to, to be very useful for her as a female aspergers. My son found Sarah Hendrickx and her book 'Asperger Syndrome and Employment' helpful. I understand that high functioning Aspies are good at minicry. So that if we find a supportive, predictable environment, we adapt to the requirements and blend in pretty well. That happened to me at Uni; I would have been fine there for ever and not been on disability although still on Govt money. I earned a Research Council grant to do my PhD and my Professor was always able to find grant money to continue to employ me. But he had come to the regional university - formerly an Institute of Advanced Education - to get the foundation professorship on offer, and when he realised that the Dawkins reforms that were supposed to make all tertiary centres equal had failed, he needed to get back to a 'real' university. He was very keen for me to move with him, and other post-docs did, but with my problems and with one child in her final year of high school there was no way I could move to another state where there would be no family support; where I didn't have a doctor who knew my long history, a mechanic who I could talk to, etc etc. The problems in moving when one doesn't have any confidence in oneself seem insurmountable. Posted by Mollydukes, Saturday, 10 September 2011 12:23:05 PM
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Radio National has a lots of stories and information about Aspergers in many of the programs; The Health Report, Life Matters, All In The Mind etc.
These two stories/interviews, both with the same bloke, reflect some of my peculiar ways of seeing our materialistic society. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1711792.htm http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/1843937.htm Posted by Mollydukes, Saturday, 10 September 2011 2:00:24 PM
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Peter Hume,
You make a good point - and I'm sure I come over in this instance as spectacularly hypocritical. But my views are squarely focused on "industrial society" and what occurred in the past when laissez faire was the model. I believe sitting children in a row like battery hens for their education has got knobs on it....but it's connected with sort of society we've fashioned - indeed, it's a mirror. Change the paradigm and you'll change educational experience for children. But is that possible without being forced into it by "collapse" of the present system? It costs me peanuts to home educate my boy, because most of everything he needs to learn is all around him - books, conversation, practical endeavour, etc. I have to stick to my states curriculum framework - although I'd be hard-pressed to flout it as most of it is common sense wrapped up in gobbldygook. On the other hand, I'm at liberty to ditch NAPLAN as I'm in control of how my son is assessed. In fact he doesn't usually get ticked or crossed - if he has a problem with something, we deal with it at the time...so it is a very different way of looking at things. I wonder if it is possible, Peter, to give all children opportunity in your user-pays system. My grab for liberty in this respect works because I'm up for the responsibility. Our system is set up so that most parents feel they have no right to take on such a role. Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 10 September 2011 8:00:37 PM
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Antiseptic,
I get where you're coming from. All of a sudden the pieces are beginning to fit. My son will just want to talk on and on about his current interest. It doesn't mean he can't or won't talk about other things, but whenever he can he'll raise his own subject. (in fact, it's rather handy that his interest is dates and people of note because each of those is related to an event in a time and place, and that leads him to broader fields which enhances his learning). It wasn't that long ago that the average age for an Aspergers diagnosis was 11 years of age. There are still heaps of kids who struggle in the education system undiagnosed. Our paediatrician initially told me my son was gifted. After much research and knowing school-proper was looming, I went back to him, but he was reluctant to refer my son for a formal assessment because he didn't think he'd meet the criteria. He told me this with a smirk on his face. By that stage of proceedings, I was equally confident that he would, so I stood my ground and when he was finally assessed by a psychologist and speech pathologist he met 9.5 or the 12 criteria areas - and he is relatively mildly affected. So sometimes it's difficult for children to get to the formal assessment stage, let alone be diagnosed. In my opinion it's crucial for a child with Aspergers who's attending school to be diagnosed - then it's taken into account. Although many children in that position are still misunderstood and situations like the one BAYGON alluded to are still common. The education system is "not" fashioned for square pegs - and these children are still rammed into round holes with great detriment to their self-esteem and their own idea of their capabilities. Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 10 September 2011 9:48:57 PM
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Peter, my experience was that a top-level private school, among the most expensive places to learn in the country, was much worse for me than the State education system had provided earlier. Because of the focus on a narrow set of behavioural standards and a rigidity in pedantry, as well as a rather toxic social atmosphere I did much less well at high school than was anticipated by anyone. What I did learn was resilience in the face of oppressively authoritarian bullying, but I'm not sure that's worth the effort. I've been making an effort to find some distinguished alumni from my school cohort and they're depressingly few and far between. The school seems to have been very good at turning out grey, faceless men rather than outstanding achievers. I'm sure that fits well with Canon Morris's original purpose in founding the school, but it's not something I'd aspire to for my own kids.
On the other hand, I'm sure that most kids do just fine with the normal school offerings. My experience with my own kids suggests that when parents are involved actively with their children's education teachers respond very positively, for the most part. If there is a problem area, it's that there is far too much nannyism in schools, meaning that a lot of kids are being disciplined and even suspended for things that are really quite innocuous, which is reflective of the rise of the Mrs Grundys in society generally. Perhaps it's changing. We can hope. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/funky-school/story-e6frg8h6-1226130668112 Posted by Antiseptic, Sunday, 11 September 2011 6:49:32 AM
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Thanks for the links, Molly. Chris Nagle's description of reading about Asperger's really mirrors my own of just a few days ago. It's a sense of having a handle on something that has always been a bit mysterious to me. I read a lot of "self-improvement" book in my young adulthood, as I'm sure many do, but apart from "I'm OK, You're OK" I didn't find anything much in any of them that spoke to my own nature. I still use transactional analysis to this day to help me work out relationships. Perhaps it's the boolean nature of the analysis that works for me?
Poirot, I'm really interested in your experiences teaching your son. I have a suspicion that both of my chldren are somewhere on the spectrum as well and it would be helpful to hear of some of the strategies you use. I could not home-school, since there's just no way their mothr would agree, but I really think my son especially would benefit. He often has problems with learning at school, but picks things up readily when he has something to relate them to within his own interests. My daughter has inherited my own penchant for procrastination and tends to become very withrawn when forced to meet a deadline. She also has a variable relationship with most of her peers. A couple of days ago she came home with the complaint that "they're all so shallow" and only want to talk about clothes and boys. She tends to want to spend most of her time alone and to interact with just one person at a time. I'll investigate some more. Posted by Antiseptic, Sunday, 11 September 2011 7:23:53 AM
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The title of the article was are we getting value for our tax dollar - our taxes pay for both state and private education. Private education is funded on the basis that it conforms to standards set by the state - I know this because one of my past jobs was to approve funding for private schools. So the essay needs to be seen not as discussing the nerits or other wise of state versus private education but rather on the assumptions that policy makers make about what constitutes a good education and therefore merits funding.
My experience in education at all levels is that we are short changed - the assumptions on which public policy is constructed do not serve us well - the Aspergers discussions mnay lead some to assume that its a minority that is not wekll served - none of us are well served by the current system Posted by BAYGON, Sunday, 11 September 2011 7:38:03 AM
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BAYGON,
It's a stunning indictment of the system that your colleagues judged that your newly achieving students weren't receiving a rounded education. In this case, it seems the term "rounded education" was code for uniform, inflexible and systematic learning practices. It's beyond reason that the decision was taken to close down your program when these previously disengaged students had responded so well. I've said many times on this forum that the covert intention behind mass education is to train young people to merge effortlessly with the system - not to bring about a genuine love of learning. The best thing we can do for our children is to instill in them a confidence for self-directed learning. Our system works hard to remove the very young child's natural motivation for self-directed discovery. Self-motivated seeking and learning turns out to be the hallmark of great minds - pure gold! I have no idea, however, how the present system could be changed. There would have to be overwhelming agitation from both parents and those involved in education for it to happen. Anti - will get back to you a little later. Posted by Poirot, Sunday, 11 September 2011 10:45:37 AM
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Poirot - there are models that do work. The Waldorf schools are such an example. The problem that they run into is that for students to matriculate they have to be dragged back into the system so they rarely go beyond year 10 - when they do the parents have enough confidence in their children that they do not need a matriculation certificate to lead worthwhile lives.
You will also find that in every school there teachers who instinctively encourage their students to be self directed but as you will know from teaching your child - self-directed learning is far more demanding on the teacher than following a set pattern. For example even when I was in the 'fold' my classes were still self directed - whether I taught maths, physics or English the starting point was always the students interests and I worked from there to fit the syllabus around those interests but that meant preparing sometimes 7 different lesson porgrammes - worked fine for a while but it did burn me out - so I finished my career as an administrator. Posted by BAYGON, Sunday, 11 September 2011 11:03:34 AM
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Antiseptic,
We do some formal work using books, but I really think he gets the most insight from following his passions. It's probably best to give you an example. One of the things he doesn't like to do is writing...so written expression is a challenge. So...how does a child use his imagination and express himself in a demonstrative way? Well, he's a big fan of LEGO. He decided to build his LEGO sets and fashion his characters, then photograph them. These he uploaded onto the PC (having worked out the sequence of the story before he started filming) - then he made frame-by-frames films to tell the story. He used a micro-phone to do voice-overs and also added background music. Da Dah! There we have an original story and quite a bit of technical prowess to boot. That's just one example of the freedom he's afforded. Our Ed Dept. moderator sat and watched his "films" and was more than happy to sign off on that. She appreciates my son's situation and could see that he was meeting the curriculum standards, albeit using an alternative mode for expression. We also do projects and such like. We're investigating sound at the moment and have made sound cannons, a tin and string telephone and a burglar alarm (radio is next) He spends all day asking questions (without having to put his hand up) He gets loads of info from me and his own independent investigation. It's thinking outside the square. The other important thing is that he is usually at liberty to get up during the day and take off out the back for a run around or whatever. It seems to help centre him - and I'm sure it's something that he feels impelled to do, and he does this probably about six times during the day. My advice to you is to keep reading on autism/Aspergers...you'll learn quickly, knowing what a clever cookie you are : ) Posted by Poirot, Sunday, 11 September 2011 4:08:00 PM
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Baygon, does the Steiner method actually achieve good pedagogical outcomes for most of the particiapants? The schools don't have a particularly good reputation as far as I can tell, but that may be a reaction to the fact that they are so different to mainstream schools. I feel a a little uncomfortable with the idea of putting too much emphasis on intangible outcomes myself.
Poirot, that sounds very creative. I'll certainly be looking more deeply into the subject, both for myself and my children. Looking back I suspect my Mum, but not my Dad, may have had some mild form of asperger's as well. She was almost constantly rhythmically rubbing her fingers and thumbs together in a circular motion and she was very "nervy", suffering a "nervous breakdown" not long before I came along. She didn't "do" sudden changes well. I understand there is some genetic component. Both my kids are very bright. It'd be a great shame if they missed opportunities for lack of the right assistance. I'm very grateful to Mollydukes and yourself for bringing this up. Posted by Antiseptic, Monday, 12 September 2011 6:20:11 AM
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antiseptic
The Steiner schools I inspected seemed to me to be as educationally sound and well run as the 'ordinary' schools that were part of my inspectorate. BUT you hit the nail on the head - they are difficult to assess if there are no tangible outcomes. But our demand for tangible outcomes is precisely the reason much of our education system is so poor. It reduces us to value only that what can be measured which then in turn becomes a yardstick for determining whether a child receives a sound education. For example our obsession with standardized testing ignores the most important activity that teachers do: error analysis. Thus good teachers when they see a child has given 1 as the answer for 2+ 2 will ask how they arrived at that conclusion and may discover that instead of adding the child divided 2 by 2. The teacher now knows that the problem is not with numeracy but possibly with dyslexia. Maybe we should have a little more trust and confidence in one another for much of what we value in life is intangible so to reduce education to the tangible is to tell kids that this is all that is of value. Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 12 September 2011 6:38:55 AM
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BAYGON and Antiseptic,
I checked out Waldorf/Steiner education when I first began to investigate alternative modes of education. It is so very different to anything in mainstream education. It does seem to me a superior education in that it's likely to give a child a far more comprehensive skill base for independent learning....Montessori is another style which I found quite inspiring, and one I would be more inclined to recommend for an autistic child. In the end, I decided to just "free-range" as then my son could follow his inclination (with a certain amount of guidance). I also agree that it's not necessary to matriculate to have a fulfilling and productive life....and in the case of alternative education, there are many avenues these days into higher education if one is so inclined. Often it's better to have gained a certain maturity before embarking upon such a course, in any case. Just to cover the social aspects of home education - we mix with other homeschoolers, my son also attends a dance class and he has friends in the local neighbourhood who come to our house or congregate in the tree-house next door. BAYGON, I appreciate how difficult it is in a mainstream classroom environment to allow the freedom for students to self-direct. The system is set up so that they are directed in what they should learn and how they should learn it...not compatible with independent thought and action. Posted by Poirot, Monday, 12 September 2011 7:03:20 AM
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BAYGON,
NAPLAN is a good case in point - it's modelled on the now discredited American idea. In fact the woman who was instrumental in setting it up during the Bush years has written a book panning it. I know that much time is spent by teachers now to "teach to test" - preparing the students to achieve well in these tests. I believe considerable time is now given over to this specific preparation, which could alternatively be used for "real" learning. I discovered that NAPLAN was not compulsory for home schoolers so I gave it a big miss. Obviously it is all about measurement and comparison and not about education. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I don't usually mark my son's formal work as I'm aware if he's having trouble grasping something, and then we find an alternative method to approach the problem. I do have stamps and stickers, but most of the time he doesn't even look for that sort of recognition. Also a lot of our stuff is practical and, therefore, it's more a matter of his interest in the subject and his feedback in my direction that allows me to understand how it has impacted him. Posted by Poirot, Monday, 12 September 2011 7:33:13 AM
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Poirot - your approach to your son's education seems to be fine. I would only add that stamps and stickers can be over rated - people know when they have done well and equally know when something is crap - honest, supportive feedback is all you need.
I essentially a reasoning test - aim is diagnostic I have used with people of all ages (age 7 - 60) the idea is that you give them the same test at 12 monthly intervals simply to see how their reasoning skills have developed. I have found that from yr 7 upwards there is no improvement in people's reasoning skills unless they have been exposed to programmes that are designed to improve their reasoning skills. Posted by BAYGON, Monday, 12 September 2011 9:10:03 AM
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BAYGON,
I agree about stamps and stickers. i don't even know where our stickers are at present And we only ever seem to use stamps as an afterthought, so they aren't an important feature or reward. You are right that engagement and enjoyment at discovery or the mastery of a practical skill are reward enough for most people. I do like my son's enthusiasm when he decides to investigate something he's interested in. It's wonderful to see him take a project from start to finish, and my job at those times is to provide as much stimulus and material as I can to facilitate his learning. "Enthusiasm" seems to be the key word for anyone earning at any time. Posted by Poirot, Monday, 12 September 2011 11:05:35 AM
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Baygon
“So the essay needs to be seen not as discussing the nerits or other wise of state versus private education but rather on the assumptions that policy makers make about what constitutes a good education and therefore merits funding.” Surely that begs the question? If the problems under discussion necessarily inhere in state control of education - and cannot be remedied by changing particular policies while retaining it - then the interests many thousands of children are being sacrificed every day each year for … what? The emotional benefit to adults of not having to critically examine beliefs that are well-intentioned but badly miscarrying? Furthermore since the whole purpose of state funding is to provide education otherwise than on the basis of profit and loss, then *how* will anyone determine whether we are getting value for money? What will it mean? Who’s “we”? The teachers’ federation? Since neither the people paying for the education, nor the people receiving it nor their parents, are to be permitted to decide, how could the decision be anything but arbitrary? Since we are all agreed that the process and results are unsatisfactory, why should the starting point be to exclude the possibility that problems in state-sponsored education have something to do with it being state-sponsored? In order to eliminate that obvious possibility, we would need to conclude that state provision could *avoid* the problems arising from the original split between paying and receiving the service which is inherent in state involvement. But given that split, how could the decision-maker know what are the values he is trying to satisfy that “merit” funding? What would stop him substituting personal or irrelevant or wrong decisions? What cost would he pay for getting it wrong? What account will he take of the alternative competing values for the same resources – e.g. hospitals, defence, roads? What would stop the whole system from being biased in favour of the interests of union leaders, and departmental officers, and politicians? How would any state provision *not* result in the creation of guilds and privileged castes? (cont.) Posted by Peter Hume, Monday, 12 September 2011 11:11:55 PM
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I read an article recently about private tutors, whom many people hire to try to compensate for the shortcomings of the system. The monopoly state-granted privileges of state education are *economically* no different from the mediaeval guilds. They jealously agitate for the banning of competition that the consumers prefer. The reasons given are always to protect the consumer but it’s always the *producers* calling for these regulations. Since the foundational idea is that parents and children are *not* to decide, there is less and less escape from a uniformly uncaring and sub-optimal system. State provision creates serious intractable social problems.
What reason is there to think that, if we give the state the power to do what you think good, it’s actually going to do it in fact? How do you account for the thousands upon thousands of lives bullied, worsened, and turned into clones by the current system and its indifference to individuality? How could the question of meriting funding, or what constitutes “good” education, ever be answered without answering these questions? Besides, what happened to “well-educated misfits”? How can we hope to produce such, if we’re not even willing to countenance the possibility that the state may be wrong? Whatever happened to the values of creative thinking, and caring, and social justice, and critical thinking, and avoiding a sausage-machine approach, if at the first sign of questioning the state’s legitimacy, you circle wagons and say the question is out of order? I asked what makes you statists think you haven’t been brainwashed for good reason. Here you are, in the most highly educated group in Australia, all agreed that the system is highly unsatisfactory, and yet apparently unable or unwilling to even consider what a great diversity of better options might be made available by stopping doing what’s causing the problem. Poirot LOL thanks. Obviously we can’t have a paradigm change if we are not willing to change, or even to question, the dominant paradigm which in this case is state education. (cont.) Posted by Peter Hume, Monday, 12 September 2011 11:17:10 PM
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Virtually all households with children including the poorest tend to give priority to education after food, clothing and shelter, and before discretionary consumption. For example my ancestors were Irish and Scottish immigrants and although poor, they always made education a very high priority. I worked with refugees, and always among their first priorities was education of their children. Even among the welfare classes, who have been fed the line that they are not responsible for their own lives, schooling is seen as very important.
“Our system is set up so that most parents feel they have no right to take on such a role.” Why would they under the current system? It is built on the idea a) that parents can’t be trusted to have their children’s best interests at heart, and that b) the government knows and cares about children more than their own parents. Yet how can anyone belief this foundational tenet of the whole system. The truth is, we have government education not because that belief is true – it obviously isn’t – but because the first tendency of any identifiable group in democracy is to vote themselves benefits paid for by someone else. It is no coincidence that state education followed soon after universal suffrage. The majority simply voted that one of their biggest expenses should be shucked off onto everyone else. Their motives were, in other words, greed, self-interest, self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement, dog-eat-dog, lack of empathy, law of the jungle, not caring about others – exactly what you’re projecting onto the free market. That is why we have our current system. And for what benefit? So that the parents of school-age children, as a political group, could give priority to discretionary consumption before their children’s education! Posted by Peter Hume, Monday, 12 September 2011 11:19:39 PM
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If we had a free market in education, a great diversity of services would spring up, from small individual tutors, to home-based services, to franchises with a successful template, to web-based, to vocation-based, to disabililty-focussed, other special needs, voluntary education such as we see on the web, to religious schools. Out of all this competition the best ideas would be adopted generally and become standard, while prices would fall, as we see on the web. The chronic zero-sum conflict between state-dependent groups would be gone.
Who really believes that state schools, teachers’ unions, and education departments would continue to be viable if they were answerable to parents and students? In the highly unlikely event that they were, of course they could continue. To change the paradigm, we need those who favour state education a) to acknowledge that they, and past people with the same opinions, have caused the problems they are now trying to fix with more of the same, and b) to understand that the deprivation of opportunity is far worse and more generalized under the current system than it would be under a system of parents’ and students’ freedom and responsibility. Antiseptic “Peter, in fairness, I do hold the view that we as a society should support those who are incapable of doing so….” So do I. The furphy is in identifying society with the state, and the state with society. The state doesn’t magically create wealth out of nothing, nor supply any social empathy or moral superiority that is not in society. In fact society is far more representative of society, by its voluntary relations, than the state is with its bureaucratic central planning based on confiscations and political favouritism. Molly has offered no reason on any relevant issue in this entire thread other than that she favours arrangements *because* they benefit herself, regardless of the cost or wrong imposed on anyone else. Without even realising what a clanger this is, she projects onto the free market her own creed of perfect greed and the devil take the hindmost. Posted by Peter Hume, Monday, 12 September 2011 11:32:49 PM
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Education follows suit; it's not about humanism, but indoctrination into free-market ideology--please note the distinction between ideology and philosophy, one is voluntary and the other is not.
The further problem with your article is that it questions the logic of the system, as though the system's inconsistencies were objectionable, when it's very legitimacy as a model "worthy of reform" ought to be what's objectionable. If the system has proven anything, it's that it is incapable of reform. In continuing to object to its inconsistencies, we legitimise it! There comes a point where the rhetoric will no longer wash, where the criticism is merely part of the discourse, and the garment must be dispensed with rather than darned.
This is where OLO and co perform a disservice; they keep the chatter going, as if anyone took any notice; as if the by and large conservative cohort of OLOers were interested in change. They're not; their interest is in self-preservation, that is in salvaging their tired ideologies, which they've invested so heavily in all their lives.
The education system in this country is pathetic; worse, it's a joke; it turns out drones and morons, incapable of self-reflection, let alone philosophy!
Primary school could be immediately dispensed with if parents committed to spending an hour reading with their kids twice a week. Half an hour on maths! High school could be similarly cut down to one day a week spent on political philosophy. That would spell the end of reform, which is why the powers that be keep hammering away at pedagogy.