In the May 5 edition of the Wall Street Journal, I explore how groceries would be supplied were they governed by the same perverse institutions that govern the supply of K-12 schooling in the United States. Here are my closing three paragraphs:
In the face of calls for supermarket choice, supermarket-workers unions would use their significant resources for lobbying—in favor of public-supermarkets’ monopoly power and against any suggestion that market forces are appropriate for delivering something as essential as groceries. Some indignant public-supermarket defenders would even rail against the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as “customers,” on the grounds that the relationship between the public servants who supply life-giving groceries and the citizens who need those groceries is not so crass as to be discussed in terms of commerce.
Recognizing that the erosion of their monopoly would stop the gravy train that pays their members handsome salaries without requiring them to satisfy paying customers, unions would ensure that any grass-roots effort to introduce supermarket choice meets fierce political opposition.
In reality, of course, groceries and many other staples of daily life are distributed with extraordinary effectiveness by competitive markets responding to consumer choice. The same could be true of education—the unions’ self-serving protestations notwithstanding.
UPDATE: My colleague Walter Williams sent to me by e-mail the following note after reading my essay:
You might have mentioned there’d be no need to cater to the myriad of tastes by wastefully carrying 60,000 different items.
True dat.
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In the San Jose Mercury news recently:
Public schools: Is California’s middle class heading for the exits?
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_17925178
My cousin moved out of Sacremento just before the big bust and got a freaking mansion in Dallas for the value of the modest home he sold in California.
He said it was the best decision he ever made.
Yeah … but you said Dallas.
Don,
I find your ideas interesting. I feel the need to point out that while it is left up to each individual to choose where to shop, the choice of what to buy isn’t if you are on food stamps or other government provided food. Food stamps cover things like eggs, milk and bread as well as many other necessities. So the comparison works but without redistributing wealth (always an option but you don’t seem to advocate this point), parents would need to receive vouchers for the cost of schooling. They would then be free to supplement the costs at their own expense.
All of that being said, it seems to me like many people don’t want to think about education or health care too much. They have a philosophy of choosing the default socially acceptable option. This seems to be very different than food. If I am choosing health care or education for a loved one, I see many as motivated to choose an option that won’t be argued with instead of choosing an option that fits a personal situation. I would opt to give my parents more health care than I think the situation dictates if I think people would look at me with disdain for shorting them. The excuse of “that is all you would pay for” is a socially tolerable excuse to limit their care. If I received a dollar for dollar discount for saving health care or education costs, I fear I would be a social outcast for skimping. However in the case of groceries, no one looks at me for abuse for serving generic soda or bread in my house.
Thank you,
Ed
P.S. The preview button should return!
Why should the government be the middle man? Let people spend their education money where they want.
So you are afraid of making choices? Why does that require a government solution? Just appoint yourself a guardian to make all your decisions.
It would probably be overloading the analogy to add that most of the households in the county do not and cannot consume supermarket food (but they are still taxed exactly the same), but it would be a closer analogy if you could…
Note that you would also be allowed to grow your own food. You’d still have to pay your food property taxes, of course.
Yes, but growing your own food would be subject to government regulation via our mangled Commerce Clause.
To Ed Bosanquet above: Food stamps allow you to buy food. Whatever the hell you want, not just milk, eggs, bread, and other staples.
Spend some time at a 7/11. Food stamps/EBT will allow for purchase of most foods, if you call potato chips and candy food.
Food stamps are also easily gamed. They can buy a few items, pay for them with food stamps, head straight over to the customer service desk, and return the items for cash.
Perhaps rules governing returns have been established since my days of working in a grocery store but they certainly did used to do that.
The underground economy will take food stamps as payment for drugs/sex etc ususally at a 2:1 ratio to the price in dollars.
Yep. Food stamp fraud of various sorts has been going on for quite a while. I’ve read quotes from local and state government leaders which basically say that they do not have enough staff to investigate food stamp fraud.
Incidentally, one reason government programs appear to have so little overhead is that those programs do not aggressively investigate fraud. That’s in direct contrast to private programs, such as health insurance companies, which must keep fraud costs low in order to remain competitive. Government programs are not competing with anyone, of course.
This irritates me to no end. While private firms are treated like criminals and are forced to bear the enormous costs of regulation (supposedly to prevent ANY fraud), fraud in government programs is basically ignored.
I don’t particularly want to pay more in taxes to support a food stamp fraud investigator, but the lack of concern in government about fraud in government programs sort of implies that regulation of private firms has very little to do with preventing fraud (regulation institutionalizes it, in fact) and much more to do with controlling private industry.
California had to implement new rules 2yrs ago as it was discovered that millions of dollars worth of govt aid was being cashed in at casinos. Local news station has an investigative series in Phoenix this week about the fraud and misuse of food stamps, early SS for ‘disabled’, and other govt assistance aid.
And yes, food stamp rules are not the same in all places. In the Phoenix metro area, I witnessed the use of food stamps to purchase potato chips, soda, and candy. The same user of the welfare than used cash to purchase a 12pack of beer.
And, of course, unearned money will rarely be used with discipline, from the govt who freely hands it out to the ‘downtrodden’ recipient of the welfare.
I grew up in North Vegas and worked at Lucky/Albertsons in the poor part of town. Now this is 16 years ago and I havent shopped in poorer parts of town for a long time, but when I worked there, most of the customers using food stamp would seperate their carts into three sections; WIC items (bread, milk, cheese, cereal), food items (paid with food stamps, steak, ribs, pretty much all tge high end stuff), then non foods (mainly beer and hard alcohol, you can buy Jack Daniels at any grocerry store in Vegas).
The only thing that was ever paid for in cash was the alcohol. Everyhing else was curtesy of the tax payer.
Food poisoning, and cooked food preparation is too important to be left to the private sector. Studies have shown most ‘yutes’ can’t boil water. There for, for safety, economy, health and fairness, all food preparation centers should be government run, non profit, and of course union. Meals will be rotated on a varied nutritional/cost/religious basis. It will be managed by the Department of Foodland Security .
( Naturally, fed/localgov would do a bad job, but we can trust them with more complex tasks )
Loved it. Linked it, with comments, on my blog:
http://zatavu.blogspot.com/2011/05/laws-of-economics-apply-to-education-ii.html
Groceries make for a great example of problems in other economic sectors:
http://blog.mises.org/13355/suppose-there-were-food-insurance/
The article does an excellent job calling out the incentive problems with today’s public education system.
I still think the analogy is a bit flawed though. A poor person only needs to shop for groceries maybe once a week. Logistically, it’s relatively easy to make time and find transportation to get to the store for this, even if that person has multiple jobs.
However, their children attend school on work days. If a single, poor parent is working multiple jobs on work days, it can be a prohibitive logistical challenge to transport his or her children get to the school of their choice, if that school is in another district.
I’m not defending the status quo, but this is an issue in the debate over school choice, or separation of school and state that I rarely see addressed. But it would be a very real logistical issue if put in practice on a large scale.
Why does it need to be addressed in the debate about school choice? You can’t imagine a scenario where parents band together to create transportation options? You can’t imagine an entrepreneur filling that need?
The bigger and more invasive the government weed becomes, the more it’s killing off our imagination. We just can’t imagine a world where we think and do for ourselves.
In the 80′s or early 90′s (I think) a question was posed to randomly selected Soviet citizens: What would you do with a million dollars (equivalent in Rubles), assuming no restrictions? Some people said they’d buy a car and a few other personal items. The most common answer was “I don’t know”. No dreams. No ambition.
After seven decades of government control, the only thing these sheep could imagine was a world where they abused each other to acquire tiny creature comforts. Finding ways to work together, to serve each other’s needs was beyond anyone’s imagination. Even just seeing the world was beyond their imagination.
I’m saddened with every step Americans take in this direction.
Very well said indeed.
Ditto on that to Don and Methinks. I worry we are already half way to the no imagination world Methinks describes already. Scary. It is so weird to me that Dave, who is likely a typical voter raised in our static government controlled world, cannot even imagine that a trip to school is just another cost of education that could also be covered by a voucher too – hopefully on a private bus company. His measly objection is just more evidence to me of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the education status quo.
We certainly are half way to the no imagination world, but the culprit in that crime is consumerism and the desire for the acquisition of wealth. We don’t need to have imaginations anymore because, well, we can just buy one instead. Just look at the entertainment industry, where consumer culture rewards unoriginal, untalented people with fortunes because Americans just have so much damn money to spend, might as well waste $50 on a shit movie and dinner for two every Friday night.
I always believed (and still do to some extent) that given a large enough population, markets would work pretty well on their own. But many of these economic problems we face today are due to a social cancer that is the value and admiration of fame and fortune over things like education, creativity, imagination. Ask half the high school seniors in this country, and they’ll tell you they are going into this field or that because they can make a lot of money doing it, not because they can change the world for the better, or because it’s something they enjoy.
I wonder, at what point are people going to stop believing that America is great because of its richness? Is that what makes a friend great? Or a co-worker? Or a neighboring town? Being rich?
Americans wouldn’t know what to do with $1 million either, because many already have $1 million, and it hasn’t made them any happier, has it?
No, Market Johnson. Untrue. You will need to explain….being with the first sentence.
What you say is a round about way of saying you long for days when people bought what they needed and read more books.
Sorry but that is not the level of imagination being discussed. You’re having a different discussion and an incorrect one at that.
As far as aspirations go int the U.S., most people in school have been inculcated with the desire to “get a good job”, while a few want to start a business and get rich.
I would add that the Washington Post published a story in 1994 about the influx of mail order brides in the U.S. from Russia. When asked, nearly every one of the Russian women stated as their reason for wanting to find anything other than a Russian man to marry is that Russian men lacked ambition.
Are you then claiming that the grocery store analogy is perfect? No differences at all? Note that in my original post, I’m just claiming the analogy has material logistical differences.
Don’s idea is basically that education and food are both considered essential, but we leave one to the market (mostly) and the other controlled (mostly) by the government. I’m generally on the side of more consumer choice, less tops down direction, etc, and I’d like to see more of that incorporated in education, because I agree that the incentives are lousy. But I also think there is a very real difference in the logistics of the two activities that is ignored in the analogy that makes it much more difficult in practice, particularly when focusing on education of the poor.
I think entrepreneurs and parents banding together would fill that need… for people with the means to purchase such services or carpool. I’m specifically addressing the poor, who are less likely to own cars, less likely to have flexible work schedules, less likely to have two parents at home, and, obviously, have less money. What if the only decent school is 50 miles away (or 100, for that matter), in a more expensive neighborhood that they can’t afford to live in? Is that not a legitimate logistic issue? Not to mention that even good schools have space limitations.
This brings me to another flaw in the analogy: education is a complex, difficult process, at the point of consumption (i.e. when the child is learning). Buying a banana is not. Sure, the supply chain for grocery stores can be very complex, but the products are not, even if there is a lot of choice. Customers come in, more or less know what they want (even if they don’t understand nutrition very well, they at least understand what sustains them), and cashiers do the relatively simple task of checking them out. Five year old children entering a school do not know what they need to learn. In the case of poor children, their parents may not have a good grasp of what it is they need to learn (after all, they are poor, perhaps because they are not well educated, among other reasons). And yes, I realize I’m making the same sort of liberal argument that I usually despise that “the poor don’t know what it is that they want or need.” But in the case of schools, the ultimate consumer, the one whom the education will most affect, is the child, who cannot possibly know what he or she should demand. Learning is a much more complex process than buying groceries or cooking or eating from a cognitive standpoint.
Now, you may argue that poor children do not necessarily deserve an opportunity for a decent education (assuming we could roughly agree on what a “decently” educated person is), and if that’s the case, then we will merely talk past each other (and please note I’m not arguing that everyone should have the same education). If you argue for vouchers, then I still think logistics is an issue for reasons stated above (plus the empirical research on recent implementations is mixed).
If you argue for a completely free market in education, I would point out that the market for primary education mostly did not serve the poor in the US prior to public, compulsory education. Maybe it would be different this time, maybe charities would help a bit, but there’s no arguing that resources would flow to where the money is, and that is not where the poor are. The poor can buy much less expensive food than the wealthy and still sustain themselves for another day at low cost. There does not seem to be an equivalent, adequate, low cost option in education, because it requires competent people’s time on a daily basis.
So, that probably sounds like an argument for the status quo, but I promise that’s not what I want. I agree that the public schools are today failing the poor and that there must be better ways. But a lot of the alternatives have big problems as well. I think the analogy used by Don is oversimplified and has materially important issues.
Behaviors of individuals, like traits, are passed on to children. A parent that does not take an interest in the child’s education or that rates the education low on priorities is passing on behavior that is likely the cause for the parents financial situation in life. The parent who has a poor diet is likely to maintain a poor diet for their child and the poor eating habit is carried on in life until that child makes their own choice to reform.
There is no govt program that will change this. Reduction in the incentives to continue poor choices is more likely to direct individuals to cease choices that produce negative results.
While, poor choices in education and diet have delayed results, the impact is more consequential. There will still be time later to rectify, but such a greater and more impactful lesson is learned that it is unlikely to be so easily forgotten. The offspring are more likely to be early beneficiaries of the parents mistake.
Dave,
“Are you then claiming that the grocery store analogy is perfect? No differences at all? Note that in my original post, I’m just claiming the analogy has material logistical differences.”
Even if Methinks doesn’t claim there is not difference, I will. If the state ran food production, thew would be in charge of the logistics of moving food around the country. Logistics is logistics, whether you’re moving kids or food, dealing with one job or many.
For food distribution entrepeneurs have pretty much solved any logistics problem. Yes, in the absence of government enforced and run education, entrepeneurs would rise to the the challenges of educational logistics problems.
“I think entrepreneurs and parents banding together would fill that need… for people with the means to purchase such services or carpool. ”
This is exactly what someone would say if the gov ran grocery stores. The standard refrain would be “Who but the rich could afford oranges outside of Florida?”, or some other foodstuff. In other words, your statement is a non-sequiter.
“This brings me to another flaw in the analogy: education is a complex, difficult process, at the point of consumption (i.e. when the child is learning). Buying a banana is not.”
All the education I’ve ever bought is as straight forward as buying a banana: I check class schedules to see what classes are available, compare them to the list of classes I want to take and buy the class.
“Five year old children entering a school do not know what they need to learn.”
Five year old children entering a grocery store wouldn’t know how to buy all the necessary groceries needed for the home either. This is why parent do the grocery shopping and they would also buy the education, and shop for it, too.
“In the case of poor children, their parents may not have a good grasp of what it is they need to learn”
Ah yes. What would a call for government action without the condescension. After all poor people are stupid. They can’t handle things on their own.
If poor people cannot be trusted to purchase the correct education, how can they possibly be trusted to buy nutritious meals for themselves and their kids? Don’t be a dick.
“Now, you may argue that poor children do not necessarily deserve an opportunity for a decent education”
Who’s saying that? Erecting straw men just to knock them down shows just how week your argument really is.
“If you argue for a completely free market in education, I would point out that the market for primary education mostly did not serve the poor in the US prior to public, compulsory education.”
Did you ever think that poor people aren’t served that well by going to school, so chose not to have it? Going to school is not the same thing as getting an education. Everyone seems to think that going to school is the answer to all problems. Guess what? The most credentialed people in America are running trillion dollar deficits and are actively hostile to businesses that make people’s lives better. Much better educations are gotten at work than at school.
Also, what you’ve said is completely untrue. Dunbar High School was an excellent school for poor black kids in Baltimore. Thanks to the intrusion of government it is now as dangerous and poorly run as the typical poor black high school in Baltimore, i.e., bad. I can’t think of any magnet schools or privately run schools that have the need for metal detectors because the administration is too ineffective to deal with crime, but I can think of a TON of publicly run schools that are like this.
The failure of public schools is not simply a failure of education. It is a failure of culure, of confidence, of cronyism, of apathy, etc. It is the mark of everything that is wrong with government actions.
Regards,
Ken
Dave,
Do you think “the poor” don’t value education?
Do you think schooling was valued as much by the poor when “the market for primary education mostly did not serve the poor” in light of the fact that at that time many if not most of those poor were destined to a life of subsistence farming regardless of education?
Do you think the cost of primary education would fall substantially in a free market, even as quality improved (as has happened in every other case)? If not, why?
If you argue for a completely free market in education, I would point out that the market for primary education mostly did not serve the poor in the US prior to public, compulsory education.
Are you sure about that?
There’s only a couple of things I would add to these, IMO, awesome replies.
I think entrepreneurs and parents banding together would fill that need… for people with the means to purchase such services or carpool.
The poor also need food, clothes and houses. I can’t find one without a cell phone lately. Like you and I, Dave, the poor supply themselves with things that are a priority by making trade-offs.
Of cours, implicite in your complaint is the assumption that schools in super-poor neighbourhoods somehow serve the kids. Have you been to any ghetto schools ever, Dave? There’s lots going on in them – learning ain’t one of them. Take a look at how many of the students can’t read or write by the time they are in 9th grade. Arithmetic is taught to them by the neighbourhood drug dealers. The parents don’t have the OPTION to change schools – and that’s the point.
Options are valuable even if you don’t exercise them.
A parent who doesn’t exercise the option to send his child to a better school (for whatever reason) is still better off than he was when he didn’t have that option. If there’s no better school for 50 miles and the kid remains in the same crappy school and the crappiness of the school doesn’t change as a result of competition, he is still better off! Options are valuable.
We sold our option to choose our own schools to the government. In exchange we got something that, on the whole, is pretty much garbage. That means we sold our option too cheaply. The government ripped us off. We need our options back.
*like*
Ah, the complexity argument. Why is Dave making such silly arguments at Cafe Hayek here. Don, did you hire him to challenge your econ 1 students? He obviously is not familiar with Hayekian ideas. I recommend Dave look up, read and study Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil”. He will then hopefully understand that the origins of the banana in the bin at his local supermarket is a lot more complicated than he can now or ever imagine and that complexity is a very weak argument for the education status quo and against free markets.
Similar anecdote – source RW Reagan.
He asked a young student in Moscow, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Answer: “They haven’t told me yet.”
May God save America from all those wise plans of this presidential administration.
I love the way people use those harmed the most by the US education system to cast aspersions on more freedom. Do you really believe a free education market would not evolve ways to address the issues you raise? Methinks pointed out 2 clearly obvious ways this would happen, do you think differently?
In a system less hostile to school choice, more educational centers will open up, thereby opening up the options for those with more difficulties in making the changes.
Don,
An empirical analysis perhaps.
http://bit.ly/msOBR7
Don,
Your prediction that under the proposed scenario “Some indignant public-supermarket defenders would even rail against the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as “customers,” on the grounds that the relationship between the public servants who supply life-giving groceries and the citizens who need those groceries is not so crass as to be discussed in terms of commerce” sounds strikingly familiar.
This quote is from Paul Krugman’s recent Times column on Health Care:
“Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred.”
Here’s the link to Krugman’s ridiculous ranting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Don devoted a post at CH to this bit of Krugman’s idiocy. Is there any doubt that this portion of Don’s article is meant to mock Krugman’s inane rant?
Right you are, Methinks!
Amazingly incoherent for an economist. Does anyone have any reasonable explanation for Krugman’s ridiculous inanity? He used to write reasonable things in his textbooks….
Krugman gave up economics in the mid-90′s.
I know, but why? I wonder if he decided to “fit in,” as it were, or if he is paid to spew propaganda.
And by “paid” I mean bribed.
Wait, is the person below seriously asking if Krugman is being paid to spew propaganda on a site that features people who work for the Mercatus Center?
Stone,
I don’t think it’s as organized and dark as that. Being a political hack is just so much more fun than being an economist toiling in the ivory tower!
Seriously, I do have my own opinions about the academy and the majority of the people in it. But to accurately assess what is in one man’s cold, dark heart? I don’t think that can be done.
Nice and congrats for getting published in the WSJ. About time. Hopefully there will be more in the future. Good luck.
I’d like to offer an addition to your public supermarket universe.
Politicians would want to hold public and private supermarkets “accountable” by using standardized tests, because they don’t understand that people are capable of holding their supermarkets accountable through choice.
These standardized tests would measure things that probably don’t matter much to consumers and those measures would be identified by some small panel of grocery “experts”.
For example, Michelle Obama might lead an effort to hold stores accountable to providing calories in proportion to the recommended government food pyramid. So, the stores score higher if they have fewer choices of soda and more milk.
Then we’d be told that there really isn’t much difference in these standardized test scores between public and private supermarkets, so private supermarkets are not really better (maybe we should even get rid of them). Yet, for reasons that escape the politicians a good portion of people would rather use the private supermarkets.
Great analogy! I did the same 15 years ago (using Australian examples) . See http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/harris1.htm
Public Supermarkets, if there were such in Texas we would find an administrator for every clerk, stocker, or carryout boy. We would also have the “Robin Hood” principle that would ensure all those poor and rural folks had access to the same size and quality supermarket as those rich folks (at least in law and principle it would work that way).
Can you imagine the committees that would spring up in each supermarket administration? Somewhere in there at a crucial bottleneck point I would imagine we’d find the Committee of Precautionary Stocking, that would decide on the potential harmful effects that products may have on any single person taking things from the store, consequently choice would be severely curtailed.
Undoubtedly colleges would begin to offer Supermarket administration 101 and in order to become an official in the supermarket industry each person would need a degree.
For supermarket clerks that can’t deal with the public we’d have to setup “rubber rooms” where they could go out of the public eye and diddle themselves or each other while drawing full pay until fired (= never).
While the public might not find on the shelves most of the articles they need to feed their families, ensuring panic buying and long lines all at the same time; you could bet that the “workers”, particularly the officials, would always take what they needed from the stockroom before it had a chance to be moved out to the shelves.
BTW Don, I loved the satire and hope PK has it put into his hands, though I have to tell you that I have had such a long time special trustful personal relationship with my grocer that we no longer use such vulgar and demeaning words as customer or seller,
In such a public v. Private supermarket system there would be a different tax rate on the purchases from each store. The private stores would be taxed a higher rate to subsidize the ability for the public market to lower the prices within their stores. Or, the govt approved products or brands would be taxed at different rates. Jiffy peanut butter is taxed at a higher rate than the brand less peanut butter.
Nonetheless, govt would further their interventionism so as to subsidize and encourage lower standard and quality products.
You’re right about the problems from funding schools with property taxes and not allowing residents to send their kids to a better district. This is something many proponents of public education would like to see changed.
You’re wrong about private schools doing a better job. Reports just don’t back it up, at least in Ohio. A lot of the ham-fisted regulations that keep public school teachers from actually teaching apply to the private schools as well. I’m all for regulation to maintain high standards, but they must be monitored and adjusted with some intelligence, not on the federal level.
You’re also wrong about unions. They do things that hurt the market, but without collective bargaining there is no force to positively affect worker’s wages, not with this level of unemployment. As it is, teacher salaries don’t draw the more talented college grads. Most districts are fighting unions to pay teachers less. The private school teachers benefit from the public school wage competition. Aren’t unions a part of a free market system? Isn’t it logical that workers will band together to leverage the best deal they can get from employers the same way employers do everything they can to get the best deal on labor? I don’t understand why free market advocates bash unions and are in favor of government interference in them when they don’t want the government to interfere in business.
So you obviously support the fierce regulation by consumers in the marketplace – excellent!
wrt unions – I think you have it backwards. Free market advocates seek to eliminate government interference in unions. It is the hugely preferential monopoly treatment they get from governments in many states that creates all the problems associated with unions.
Public unions are not in the free market system. Unions in the private sector are often in non-right to work states where condition of employment is joining membership. If you don’t join, you will not be given employment. And, membership dues are not voluntary.
There is a force to positively influence wages…….. It ‘s called turnover rate. Better and more capable employees will be harder to retain at lower wages and total compensation. And those businesses will also e pressured to keep price low from consumer demand. Push- pull on pricing and costs will find an appropriate wage for their employees. You and I may not like the market driven allocations for that particular industry, but it will be fair. Remember, teachers are given a 10 week vacation every year.
Jef,
“You’re wrong about private schools doing a better job.”
How many private schools have you heard about having to install metal detectors? How many private schools have problems with gangs, attendance, and crime? Educational deficiencies are not the ONLY failure of public schools. While educational benefits of private schools are only minimally better than public schools on academics, they are orders of magnitude safer and more repsonsive to parents.
“without collective bargaining there is no force to positively affect worker’s wages, not with this level of unemployment.”
A statement like this can ONLY be said out of economic ignorance. Productivity is the primary force “positivebly affect[ing] worker’s wages”. Unions do nothing to increase productivity of their union workers. In fact their sole job is to reduce productivity and increase pay and benefits.
“Most districts are fighting unions to pay teachers less.”
Teachers should be paid less. Many are failing their students. Teacher pay is not what matters. The amount of education actually delivered per dollar spent is.
“Aren’t unions a part of a free market system?”
Not public employee unions. School systems hire crappy teachers and the unions refuse to fire them, then hold a city hostage with strikes and sickouts in order to force the city into bankruptcy.
“Isn’t it logical that workers will band together to leverage the best deal they can get from employers the same way employers do everything they can to get the best deal on labor?”
No. I can earn far more contracting independently rather than through a union. I would rather have a higher salary than more benefits. Unions prevent this. Unions are easily captured by a few who care only about union perks and don’t give a shit about the average union member.
“I don’t understand why free market advocates bash unions and are in favor of government interference in them when they don’t want the government to interfere in business.”
Because the unions Don is talking about in this post ARE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES WHO CAN HOLD CITIES HOSTAGE WITH STRIKES. Is this really so hard to understand? Thinking that pubic employee unions serve the same function as private sector unions means you have no understanding of economics in general.
Regards,
Ken
The private school teachers benefit from the public school wage competition. – Jef
How’s that? Private school consumers have to pay a premium to send their children to school. Outside of the elite private schools the vast majority of private school administrators are sensitive to this and realize that in order to attract students they need to keep that premium affordable. Meanwhile the public school is virtually guaranteed students. That is why you see generally private school spending per student and teacher is less than public.
Also…there are too many teachers chasing few jobs openings for there to be a bidding war in favor of teachers. If anything there is a who will work for less bidding war.
I read the editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning and thought that it was funny because I have been using tat exact same analogy and argument for years. Now a lot of people will see it and understand the the total insanity of our educational system – especially in New Jersey.
Thank you.
Jerry
Professor,
The comment section in the WSJ is full of people who don’t think your analogy is appropriate – food and medical care are somehow so much different, that treating them as mere ‘goods’ is tantamount to suggesting that we fly to Mars for our air. (OK, there I go using another hyperbolic analogy/metaphor . . . ooops.) When the analogy makes the point – like yours did – why do critics attack the figure of speech? Maybe because the merits of the point are unassailable.?
While I have many answers to their silliness, I think your readers would enjoy a retort from you.
Annoying, isn’t it, Jeff?
When government takes over, you get one flavour to choose from. Once people become unaccustomed to not thinking and choosing for themselves, many can no longer imagine a world where they might have to. All they see is the loss. They can’t begin to imagine what might fill it. Of course, this is reversible. When people are forced to figure things out for themselves, they do. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
It’s too bad government and politics almost never reverses. I don’t have a lot of hope that the US will be around in a few hundred years.
Yes, but thanks to the wisdom and insights of Lord Keynes, I know that I will be too dead to notice.
Any argument predicated on comparing a supermarket (which sells concrete quantifiable sundries for a profit) with the education system (which attempts to instill abstract difficult to quantify knowledge as a public service) is purely ridiculous on the face of it. You might as well compare the education system to a bowl of cereal or a hydroelectric dam.
“food and medical care are somehow so much different, that treating them as mere ‘goods’ is tantamount to suggesting that we fly to Mars for our air.”
They are extremely different. In the first place there are a huge number of foods that are essentially interchangeable. If you can’t get apples you can get much the same nutritional value from a pear, or any of a hundred other foods. But if you need a heart bypass you need a heart bypass and there’s no value to you in getting a root canal. And if you actually needed the root canal the heart bypass is not only not helpful it’s actively endangering your life.
Secondly food is provided not by the highest skilled labor but rather by some of the lowest. Growing crops doesn’t require nearly a decade of training.
Third understanding food is pretty trivial. Even delving into issues of calories, vitamins, and balanced diets is simple enough that any high school graduate can understand the concepts. On the other hand medical procedures are often enormously difficult to understand, the risks and rewards are essentially impossible for a lay person to grasp. Instead we rely upon medical experts to explain what we need, why we need it, and what the risks are.
So yeah food is basically nothing AT ALL like medical care.
You’re correct, except, well, you’re not.
I’d no more buy food from a dry cleaner than I’d buy medical care from a vet. The analogy the professor uses is meant to compare the markets for two different products. No one suggested that the products are the same, just that market forces can and should be brought to bear in the production/buying/selling of both products. There is specialty and expertise in medicine just like there is specialty and expertise in flying airplanes or operating construction equipment or running a software company. WITHIN, not across, those markets, the market forces in question operate.
market forces have no application in situations where the customer cannot reasonably distinguish between choices. Such is precisely the case in medical care. My mother works in the health care industry in a major hospital. When I was sick as a kid she strictly decided which doctors could and which absolutely could not treat me based on her knowledge of which were good doctors and which were complete losers. She was in a privileged position to make that decision because she had information the vast majority of people did not have, and never would have.
A market for health care simply cannot work even according to capitalist theory. A well functioning market must have choice, competition, and the customer must be able to distinguish the value of the available product. Health care fails these criteria. The large infrastructure required for a major hospital precludes the possibility of having significant competition (it’s not like you can just decide to drive across country to go to the hospital having a sale on MRIs during your stroke). The arcane and technical nature of the “product” precludes the possibility of truly informed consumers.
Such is precisely the case in auto repair. My father works in the auto repair industry at a major dealership. When my car broke down as a kid he decided which mechanics could and which could not work on my car, based on his knowledge of which were good mechanics, and which were complete losers. He was in a privileged position to make that decision because he had information the vast majority of people did not have, and never would have.
A market for auto repair simply cannot work even according to capitalist theory. A well functioning market must have choice, competition, and the customer must be able to distinguish the value of the available product. Auto repair fails these criteria. The large infrastructure required for a major auto repair facility precludes the possibility of having significant competition (it’s not like you can just decide to drive across the country to the auto garage having a sale on rebuilt engines if your car breaks down suddenly.) The arcane and technical nature of the “product” precludes the possibility of truly informed consumers.
Really, you want to compare auto repair to surgery?
How many years do you have to go to school to become an auto technician? How long is the residency?
Please this is just ridiculous. Auto repair is routinely done by high school kids in shop class and by people with no formal training. When was the last time they taught surgery in high school or you thought about letting an enthusiastic amateur open you up?
Try to at least not completely beclown your point of view, as a favor to your fellow travelers at least.
“How many years do you have to go to school to become an auto technician? How long is the residency? ”
Irrelevant. The difference in difficulty of satisfying the license to perform the task has nothing to do with the topic of discussion.
You’ve gone from misguidedly and nihilistically applying the definition of a theoretical perfect market as the standard to allow freer markets in health care (a debatable but incorrect position IMO) to using difficulty of achievement as some reason why we shouldn’t compare two different goods/services as far as markets are concerned.
Very good reply. Pricing, quality of service, choice, etc., are just as prevalent in medical care as they are in any other industry.
“Really, you want to compare auto repair to surgery?
How many years do you have to go to school to become an auto technician? How long is the residency?
All of the problems you claim exist for market-based medical care are the same problems with market-based auto repair. If you wish to argue that a market cannot work when consumers are ignorant, you should also favor a single payer system for auto repairs or any other complex, highly skilled service.
You pretend to know too much about how markets function and evolve to function better.
You claim things for certain that cannot be known…by you or anyone.
Actually they are known to anyone with a passing familiarity with markets. You trying to tell me that basic market theory doesn’t require consumers to have a choice? That that concept is not only unknown but unknowable?
“Actually they are known to anyone with a passing familiarity with markets.”…et al
You are reading a double-meaning into my statement that isn’t the correct one. A further sign that you don’t get the meaning I intended.
“She was in a privileged position to make that decision because she had information the vast majority of people did not have, and never would have.”
I disagree with your last statement. The reason quality information about medical care is not available is because the third party payment system has treated it more or less as a commodity.
In a market where consumer paid for more of the bill and had their choices less encumbered by the rules of their third party payer, ways of getting quality information to the consumer would emerge.
Just one example, if vehicles were paid by third parties like medical care, switching to first party payment you might argue that only mechanics have the special privilege of being able to distinguish quality. However, in the free market, auto brands have emerged and reputations associated with those brands tells you a lot.
Similarly, medical care brands could emerge along with reputations and you would come to know which brands are best at hiring, training and providing the best personnel.
There is no auto brand equivalent in medical care. Bypass surgeries do not roll off of an assembly line.
Yet somehow the Cleveland Clinic has a well established reputation for heart surgery.
Mayo Clinic, Cancer Treatment Center of America…….
To stent or not to stent….. That is the question……
Custom artwork does not roll of an assembly line either. Should artists work only for the government? After all, when did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to patrons of the arts as “consumers”? The relationship between patron and artist used to be considered something special, almost sacred.
And most people can’t tell a four year old’s scribblings from multi-million dollar artwork, and we know that when consumers are ignorant about what they intend to judge and purchase, the government needs to provide that product or service for society in order to protect them from the inefficient market generated when ignorant consumers make ignorant purchasing decisions.
People can really only be happy if you make their decisions for them. Especially the important and complicated decisions regarding life or death. They certainly should not be permitted to select the teachers that will educate their children, the doctors that will operate on them, or the artwork they hang in their homes. After all, what would happen if they paid millions for a child’s handiwork? The horros of the free market are not to be taken lightly!
Choosing between apples and pears is similar to choosing between Dr. Smith and Dr. Brown. Both can do the heart surgery, but are different people with different skill sets, just as both are fruits with different nutritional value. Similar, but the choice is valuable.
How do you know that Smith and Brown can both do the surgery? You are assuming facts not in evidence, in fact you are assuming the very thing I just pointed out isn’t true, namely that you can intelligently distinguish between the abilities of two health care providers.
“namely that you can intelligently distinguish between the abilities of two health care providers.”
Once again, the hubris of pretending to know how markets function and evolve to function better. Your attitude would scuttle any emerging and unknown good or sector of goods….IF we took it seriously.
There’s a lot about how markets for products evolve…not to mention how you evolve as a consumer of goods…that you don’t seem to be taking into account or take for granted as not being applicable…or are unaware of even though you partake in it.
There’s nothing to explain or tell. But there ARE things for you to read about besides the definition of a perfect market.
Have you ever heard of certification?
Do you understand the importance of reputation?
Are you aware of the numerous websites providing customer comments about medical professionals?
Your position is simplistic and limited by the blinders of the status quo and static thinking.
He’s just using the definition of a text book perfect market where all knowledge and competition is perfect and we get equilibrium….or something like that.
It’s about as useful as knowing that phrase from English poetry that has perfect iambic pentameter.
certification at best provides for minimum competency it does not distinguish between the competency level of the two providers. Reputation is a game of politics. Having a good reputation in no way indicates competency, merely the ability to be perceived well. There have been a number of big financial scandals in recent years due in large part to people taking reputation as a sign of competency or legitimacy.
There are indeed websites with customer reviews but this gets at exactly what I am saying- those reviews are almost always from a position of ignorance so they do not help you evaluate the provider in question except by irrelevant criteria (“they were pleasant”).
Actually my position is bounded by the evidence and the limitation explicit in free market thinking. You simply cannot have a market where it is impossible to make a meaningful choice. Whether that is due to monopolies precluding all but one product or the inability of the consumer to understand and evaluate the product is irrelevant- either way without meaningful choice the entire rationalization of free markets falls to dust.
It is utter nonsense that the market can’t work in health care when, in fact, millions of doctors and patients trade with one another every single day.
It is also nonsense to setup some impossible to achieve standard to judge the market against while pretending that any other system could achieve that standard and wouldn’t also introduce a whole host of other problems.
The market is trying to breakout despite the govt interventionism. For the past 5 yrs , the number of ‘urgent care facilities’ has increased, quite a bit. Whether it be in a Walgreens pharmacy or a startup biz in a once unoccupied store.
@Tlaloc
Wrong………………..badly.
1) Certification can indicate much more than minimum competency. Multiple certification agencies would exist in a free education or medicine market. And, not all certifications are the same – a certification agency is subject to its own reputation. Those with poor reputations will have no value in the market; those with good reputations will have credibility.
2) Reputation is much more than politics wrt both educators and medical professionals, and includes factors not prone to subjectivity. Your vision is blinded by the status quo and static thinking if you feel the only reputation guides in a free market would be vacuous “he was pleasant” type comments.
I didn’t mention it before, but independent rating agencies would almost certainly be a part of a free market in education, medicine, etc. In addition to providing information on provider reputations, these rating agencies would also be subject to their own reputations.
3) One need not understand the details of education methods or medical procedures to make good decisions about them. Many markets exist where the consumer doesn’t understand the details of the product, yet product quality and affordability improves and people manage to evaluate anyway. You’ve given no reason to conclude education or medicine would be different.
Consumer magazine, anyone?
Tv shows dedicated to rating automobiles.
I think you guys are wasting your time with him.
Every single day the market solves countless problems far more complex than choosing a doctor. He’s one of those people who would argue that bumblebees can’t fly.
Phone call between moms…..
Mom1: yeah, Tommy has that cough again. Our doctor keeps giving us cough drops. He just keeps getting it every spring. Doc, says it will go away and it does, but he still has to deal with it for 2 months….yadda
Mom2: well, Johnny had the same thing and Doc Brown found out it was an allergy to……..
Mom1:well, I guess I will have to make an appt with Doc Brown….yadda yadda….
And the magic of economics goes on without the all knowing and powerful govt to rescue me from the scary unknowns…..
And the auto biz had recalls…… Tomato recalls….. People just stopped buying Pintos, Yugos, Beta, blue Ray wins out, plasma is overtaken by LED, Anacin is out of the market, etc.,……
Right so two moms with absolutely no real information make a decision. They are not qualified to know if the two coughs are in any way related or if the second doctor is in fact a snake oil salesman, but because of a single anecdote they’ll decide on which doctor sees their child.
If this is the magic of markets working I’d really hate to see what it looks like when they fail…
Indeed, they will talk and seek out better advice. Have a child and see how this scenario plays out hundreds of times over in just one year, by you, the parent, and then your spouse with other parents.
I Have kids and a spouse. Been there, done that. Family doctors are often sought out by friend and family recommendations. Clinics are often referred. This is done in discussions at work and in leisure. Moms never stop having these discussions……… Never……….. Ever……
“Right so two moms with absolutely no real information make a decision. They are not qualified to know if the two coughs are in any way related or if the second doctor is in fact a snake oil salesman, but because of a single anecdote they’ll decide on which doctor sees their child.
If this is the magic of markets working I’d really hate to see what it looks like when they fail…”
Wow. It’s anything ever gets done right in this world without some central authority giving the OK.
Arguing ad absurdum with anecdotes doesn’t mount much of a real argument.
Actually, I am presenting scenarios that I have either participated in or was a witness to. And, I can recall this occurring throughout my lifetime from all different types of illnesses and inuries to myself or siblings.
Where in the hell does one live to have not seen this play out hundreds of times over?
Just in the past year, this occurred between friends and family many times over. Surely, the participants to this site over with child rearing experience can recall such scenarios playing out time and time again. I can only think that detractors are childless or are children still themselves (considering Obamacare has designated 25 or less as children we can consider this age group to be children).
Medicine is nothing like car repair.
First, If the car costs too much to fix you get rid of it. No one makes that choice in medicine.
Second more mechanics in a town leads to lower prices. More doctors in a town leads to more treatment, not lower prices.
The school supermarket analogy is rubbish as well. Parents, not teachers, are the problem. A good family can overcome any bad teaching, a good teacher can’t overcome bad parenting.
People make the decision to avoid treatment all the time for fatal diseases. They weight the chance of recovery against the cost of pain and suffering.
More auto mechanics lower prices because they work in a free market for auto repair. Doctors work in a monopoly market.
Tialoc, your argument is really ridiculous. Many consumers complain loudly about HMOs that restrict their ability to choose their own doctors. I have had knee surgery and foot surgery and you can be sure that I did research and used many sources to choose the doctors. Sure, much of it was anecdotal, but are you suggesting that I would have been better served if I were just assigned a doctor?
I would much rather choose with limited information than not have any choice at all. With the high deductible insurance I have now, price becomes another factor. I recoil at the thought that because of people who think as you do we may in the future be getting even less choice in medicine than we have now.
“How do you know that Smith and Brown can both do the surgery?
How do people know that Smith or Brown can rebuild your car’s engine?
Excellent point.
And, how do people know that Doctor Yasafi Muirduck is qualified to provide medical care to children? The government says he is, but everything I’ve ever read by him makes me think that he wouldn’t know when to flush a goldfish down the low-flow toilet.
Anyone with a decent mechanical background can check under the hood and get a first order approximation of how well the mechanic did. Not just anyone can do an exploratory surgery to see if your appendectomy was well done or shoddy.
And obviously you know that, but you are pretending that mechanics are analogous to doctors because…well I guess I’m not really sure why. Doctors are analogous to other fields that require immense special training in order to know what you are talking about, say particle physicists. If for some reason everyday people needed to see a particle physicist routinely it’d be just stupid to suggest the free market would take care of the matter. It won’t. it can’t possibly. Again there are certain minimum requirements for a market to function, that’s not even talking about a perfect market as some posters erroneously claim above. Perfect knowledge is ideal but SOME knowledge is required and the vast majority of people have simply no knowledge and no capability to learn enough about medicine to make an informed decision. You may not like it but there it is. Deal with it. Or pretend it isn’t true. Up to you.
Tlaloc – repeating a few assertions ad nauseam is not a convincing argument. Several here have presented examples and logic showing why you are wrong and you’ve just repeated your assertions. Have fun with that.
Not seeking out the knowledge, even the minimalist amount is not the rest of societies problem. It’s the individuals problem and prerogative.
“Anyone with a decent mechanical background can check under the hood and get a first order approximation of how well the mechanic did.”
Really?? Why? Because you said so? You are very conveniently overestimating the average person mechanical knowledge. Most don’t know much about that these things beyond a most basic knowledge level. Like most anything else, it takes trust, reputation and a little common sense. The irony is that we do this with mechanics toward something very important: our cars….and there’s very little in terms of official documentation that people look for or ask for when choosing a mechanic. Most people go to dealers and just assume they have competent mechanics or someone they at least ask around about first.
In general, I love the self-serving assumption that “important things” are too complicated for information mechanisms to emerge while mundane stuff is about things that most people know about.
“you are pretending that mechanics are analogous to doctors because…well I guess I’m not really sure why…”
Well, I think you do know why. BUT, you are pretending this discussion topic is such that the difference between doctors and mechanics matters. It doesn’t. Both involve a service with specialized knowledge that most people don’t have. Sure, mechanics’ knowledge is attainable and easier to understand but it still doesn’t change the fact that most people don’t simply don’t know how to do it.
You have simply tried to paint the dilemma of picking a doctor as being so much more mysterious than it really is. The difficulty in becoming a doctor doesn’t change the fact that markets can deal with it just like anything else. It just changes and adapts as needed. Somethings have readily available consumer info that makes little difference. Some take a little more effort. Some even more. And the more dire and complex the medical problem, the more people make an effort to be information and explore choices…or are simply referred to specialists at the top facilities. Just because you have special info to be more choosy doesn’t make the rest of the system wrong.
A bigger problem would be with govt intervention to both try and reduce what a doctors income should be along with more rules and regulations on what a doctor can perform or how to perform is likely to reduce the amount of individuals who train to become doctors. And, with the amount of time that it takes to become doctors, we are surely to come up short on supply.
You might want to be careful before making such sweeping generalizations.
“Growing crops doesn’t require nearly a decade of training.”
Is that right? So understanding soil, sediment, weather types, impact of seasonal fluctuations, plant breeding, irrigation patterns, impact of diseases, impact of fungi, hormones, pesticides, fertilizers, and the impact of predators are all ingrained knowledge? These are things that take no time to learn? And what I mentioned is just some of the aspects of growing, we have not even discussed harvesting, storage, transport, or markets.
It disgusts me when people who obviously have no idea what they are talking about make such sweeping statements. I am in no way comparing the business of being a farmer to that of being a doctor but what I am saying is in many professions there is a massive undercurrent of knowledge that most people are not privy too. So yeah healthcare and food production have A LOT of similarities.
One final comment for you to show you the limits of most people’s knowledge.
“Third understanding food is pretty trivial.”
Really? Why do we have such an obesity epidemic, despite a long term directive to eat more carbohydrates and lower our fat intake? Could it be because we are actually not meant to eat a high carbohydrate diet and the sugars, preservatives, and corresponding insulin and hormonal response to eating is actually worse for us than eating a higher fat diet? Do you know a lot about hormone reaction, tissue synthesis, growth patterns, metabolic activity, or neuro activity and how they are affected by the foods we eat? One day the actions of the FDA will be seen as criminal for its disgustingly incorrect guide to “healthy eating.” Which of course has had the corresponding effect of making us one of the sickest nations in the world.
I wish you hadn’t written that article. It will give the Oppressor Class ideas of more things to control and regulate.
But speaking of state-run supermarkets, a good movie with incidental commentary on the relative virtues of private vs state-run markets is the Soviet film, Вокзал для двоих (translit. Vokzal dlya dvoikh). You can get it from Netflix under the English language title, Railway Station for Two. Oleg Basilashvili’s character is an intellectual who looks down on the idea of being a profiteer who would sell melons in a private market – but a somewhat comic sequence puts him in a situation where he will do just that. The late Nonna Mordukova plays a character who gives him a fine Adam Smith-like explanation of the virtues of those in comparison with state-run markets.
This movie came out in 1983, i.e. pre-Gorbachev. There is an earlier movie (Moscow does not Believe in Tears) that Ronald Reagan is said to have watched before meeting with Gorbachev, so he could learn to understand the Russian people. He should have watched this one instead.
As in most of his films, the director, Eldar Ryazanov, shows some western entertainment technology to his viewers (personal observation). In this case it’s a VCR. In his 1966 film, Beware of the Car, the western entertainment technology was sold on the black market by bad guys. By 1983 the people dealing on the black market are the good guys in his film. In between these was the 1977 film, Office Romance, in which you get a slightly satirical look at at what it takes to run a top-down economy. (The office in which the romance takes place is a government statistical bureau.) But in 1977 the adopter of western entertainment technology and bringer of illicit goods from the west was not yet one of the good guys.
Anyhow, I’ve never seen any thing in an American film like what’s in Railway Station for Two. (I suppose there are some Ayn Rand books that have been put into movie form, but I’m not counting films that aren’t about humans.)
American movies are created and reviewed by left-leaning people. Many, if not most American movies contain story lines that are only enjoyable if you are ignorant of economics, believe global warming is a horrific reality that needs to be stopped at all costs, that schools are failing because they lack funding, etc.
The older movies were much better. Less of the political and social engineering, and more of the politically incorrect stuff.
Agreed. It’s too bad many were so slow.
Привет, Кино!
I know you’re mostly into movies, but have you ever seen the Soviet-era comedian Arkady Raikin? For years the Soviets couldn’t figure out that what he was doing was political satire. When they did, they no longer allowed him to perform. You can find some of his bits on Youtube. машина (mashina. Car) is hilarious. So is специалист (specialist) and there’s one labeled часть 3 (part 3) where he does a whole bit as an average Russian Vanya who just bought a government-made suite (looks like it was constructed by wild animals) and he’s hard to understand because he just got a new government-made bridge in his mouth which prevents him from talking normally. He was just served a shish-kabob that had spent some time as a broom before it was served to him. But, he’s happy. He urges us to live a happy life – and to live a happy life, we have to lower our expectations.
That’s why those happiness surveys are so useless. Lower expectations enough, and you can be happy in a cave.
Can you link us to some in english or with translations? I can’t find any.
Oh, I don’t know of any translated versions! I’m sorry. I thought there might be some, but my search turned up nothing.
Привет, думаю1776!
No, I had not heard of Arkady Raikin. I don’t yet understand Russian well enough to follow his dialog, but he enunciates his words clearly enough despite his goofiness (in машина) that it sounds worth listening in order to understand what I can. So спасибо.
For some time I had known of Vladimir Vysotsky, another performer who was not well liked and sometimes hindered by the authorities. Recently an internet friend, knowing of my interest in Vysotsky, introduced me to Bulat Okudzhava’s music, which in turn led me to learn about Bards and Author’s Songs. But music is one thing. To have an outright satirical comedian, and in Stalin’s day, even!
But in a way I am not surprised that the authorities took a while to figure out what he was doing. There are occasionally movies, say from the 60s, that had me wondering how they could have got past the censors. My theory is that sometimes the authorities figured character B was being given a wholesome and much-needed dressing-down by character A, while most of the audience saw character B as the good guy and character A as an object of satire. People who take themselves and their ideology too seriously can’t always tell. And there are stories of Brezhnev sometimes taking a liking to a movie that some of those farther down in the system had thought should have been killed before it even got that far.
I like learning about these things. We might soon need some of the coping mechanisms for ourselves.
Опять спасибо!
It happened from time to time that something slipped through. Bulgakov was practically tortured, but in the 1960′s Heart of a Dog was published. If you’ve never read it, it’s hilarious – but only in Russian. The humour doesn’t translate well into English. I think you’ll like it.
I think you’re right about why the satire slipped by. In Raikin’s case, on the surface, he appears to be making fun of some character or other in society. He was particularly clever. He has another bit called “bureaucrats” which is less funny, but in very clear Russian (unlike his characters). It’s less funny because he talks about the productivity loss resulting from the Soviet system. He sounds just like an economist.
BTW, your site is very nice. Thanks for your recommendations and good luck with your Russian
Love Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell. When might you get either gentleman back on for an interview? Don’t wait, too long………
I find this whole op ed piece to be ridiculous on many levels.
The most obvious way it is ridiculous, and one I’ve not seen anyone here mention, is that the marketplace has not always been successful in delivering groceries.
I’m disappointed that a professor from GMU would be so unaware of so-called “food deserts” in DC. Many poverty stricken urban areas, the same areas most at risk for failing schools, are areas that do not have reasonable access to fresh produce or grocery stores in general.
I find it odd that you direct your critique at government failure in some school districts. As an aside I would argue that failing schools are a symptom of poverty and I’ve yet to see government or private sector solutions that work for entire districts. I find your entire point to be ridiculous. You point to a manner in which you believe the free market succeeds in providing a service, nevermind the fact that you’re comparing apples and oranges here, while being ignorant to the fact that the marketplace has failed to provide these goods and services to many of the same regions that are poverty stricken and have many failing schools.
It is distressing that you do not understand that poverty looks or feels like in America. You are so far removed from the reality of the situation that your solutions only work in a hypothetical world that you exist in.
I’m no libertarian but if you’re going to make a compelling argument you would be better equipped to do so if you actually understood the subject you were talking about.
I’m afraid this is yet another instance where the Mercatus Center embarrasses George Mason University.
Casey, I used to live in a ghetto in New York. I have some first-hand knowledge of the grocery stores vs. the schools there. Have you ever lived in a ghetto? Gone to school in a ghetto? Shopped for groceries in a ghetto?
Ever check out the number of fast food places in Compton? In the “food deserts” of D.C.? The South Bronx? Food providers serve the tastes of the community. It’s not my idea of food, but I haven’t the right to dictate food choices to others and I assure you, nobody in the ghetto thinks a burger is better for you than lettuce.
As a matter of fact, public schools are not failing only in government created ghettos (yep – it’s LBJ who herded the poor into public housing and concentrated both poverty and bad behaviour into virtually inescapable zoos), they are failing pretty much everywhere. It’s just that public school education in the university town where I went to high school is subsidized by parental attention and tutors. There is little doubt that our government-run public schools are pretty crappy on average – just as all things government-run are less efficient and harder to deal with.
But the bottom line is this, Casey. A poor person compelled by the government welfare program to live in a ghetto is not compelled to shop there. He can leave the ghetto and patronize whatever grocery store he wants. He has that option and that option is valuable. He is, however compelled to attend school in the local ghetto school. He doesn’t have the option to leave the ghetto to get an education. Is there some reason you don’t think these poor urban folk should have that option?
I grew up in some incredibly rural areas of Maine, some very low income areas of Norfolk, and even in Puerto Rico.
Since I actually grew up in these areas and know people from these areas I won’t call them a ghetto, such a term has too many derogatory implications, but they would be considered such by you.
I remember in Norfolk going to the local corner store for most of our groceries. Most of the food that came from there was fairly low quality and in turn I was a pretty fat kid. I didn’t grow up with many vegetables there. My parents had substance abuse issues, which I’m sure was as much at fault as the area, but even if they were better off it would have been difficult to get better food as there were few stores nearby that had fresh produce.
Your argument that fast food “serve[s] the tastes of the community.” is just ridiculous. I understand it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation but if that was the case there would not have been as much fanfare when a new Giant opened up in SE DC.
I don’t understand why you treat residents of DC as fully empowered individuals that are served fairly and accurately by the marketplace when it comes to their diet but seem to think that they are somehow trapped into living in DC and attending their awful schools? Using your same logic, which I don’t agree with, would lead one to think that because the residents of DC have not moved to better school districts that the schools in DC are meeting their needs.
I remember growing up and going to a one room school in Maine. I’m not even old, I’m only 27, but it was just a very rural area. I also remember going to schools where we were crammed into the class and the teachers spent more time handling rowdy children than they did teaching. I spent first and second grade in a public school in Key West. It was awful. I don’t believe I learned much and I really have nothing good to say about it. For the third and fourth grade, however, I went to school in a Department of Defense School on Sigsbee. That was a well run school and I remember growing a tremendous amount. I had a similar experience in Puerto Rico when I spent a semester at a public school in Fajardo and then went to a school on Roosevelt Roads.
The major difference in the quality of schools, as far as I could tell, came from two areas. First, the DoD schools were better funded and had better facilities. I believe the teachers were better paid, I know that to be true in Puerto Rico at least. Second, the Navy provided stable employment for the parents of the students at these schools and fostered a better environment for children to grow up in. Parental involvement and interest seems a much larger factor to a child’s success at school than anything else.
Better schools are in more affluent areas and are able to better provide for the two items I list above. I student taught for a while, it was what I originally wanted to do with my life, and the one thing that really affected me was the capability of a few students from troubled families to negatively affect the rest of the students.
I’m getting entirely too biographical here but yes, I do know what it is like to live in an area dominated by poverty.
I’m all for making our education system better. I’ve seen no data to suggest that system wide privatization has worked. I know in DC that the KIPP schools have been very successful because they are able to expel students who are not successful and who do make trouble. The voucher program in DC, at least, seems more interested in funneling goods students into these programs while making things worse for everyone that was left behind.
If you free market geniuses can provide for a system wide solution to the school program than I would be all ears. Until then it seems to me that all the free market reforms seem more interested in breaking the backs of unions than doing much good.
Casey, first of all, I’m sorry to hear that your parents had substance abuse problems. As a child, you are completely dependent on your parents and their issues must have made for quite a hellish childhood for you.
A ghetto is a place where the poor are herded into and basically forced to live. They are usually inner city housing projects. They’re very nasty places to live. The residence have no choice as they are assigned section 8 housing. They live where the government forces them to live. A poor rural area is not what is commonly known as a ghetto. I lived in a ghetto.
If you read my post carefully, I am not saying that these poor people are served by the market. I’m saying that they are NOT served by government. In fact, the government harms them. Whether they live in section 8 housing or not, they are forced to go to the school government assigns to them. They are completely DIS-empowered. That’s my point.
There are several concrete ideas regarding how to accomplish this. Vouchers is one of them. I don’t know which one will work best. The best ideas emerge from competition as well and it’s probably a good idea to try as many as possible to figure out which one works best. Take a look at this website for some ideas on school choice.
http://www.edchoice.org/
I have no doubt that many of the poor areas that you claim are food deserts are education deserts as well. The difference is that people have no choice but to frequent the local schools that fail to meet their needs. A woman in Detroit was prosecuted for signing her kids up in a neighboring school district that she thought would be better than the local school.
I don’t know anything about DC but I am very familiar with Detroit. We probably have what you would call food deserts here too, but the city is ringed with oases a short drive or bus ride away. I also know that the merchants that operate the convenience stores in the city would gladly stock whatever would sell. If in fact they don’t stock fresh fruits and vegetables it is because their customers don’t want them.
Might there be some person in a wheel chair living in poverty in the city who wants better food options and is unable to get them? Of course. But the idea that we should overhaul our entire food distribution system and make all supermarkets public entities because a very small fraction of consumers are not well served is beyond ridiculous. That is the essence of your argument to maintain the status quo in schools.
“Food deserts,” eh? I must’ve missed those articles about all the starvation deaths in central DC.
The market has not only been successful in delivering food, it’s been radically, transformatively, unimaginably successful. It was only a few generations ago that the only fruits and vegetables available were those that were native, locally-grown, and in-season.
I never said there was starvation. There is a lack of access to quality food, however. There is a reason that obesity is on such a dramatic increase in poor urban areas.
Yes, the free market has done a great job at providing goods and services to those with the capital to purchase them. In areas where epidemic poverty has become a way of life, however, such goods and services are becoming increasingly difficult to access.
Great. And government hasn’t provided these people with an education either.
Once again:
A poor person compelled by the government welfare program to live in a ghetto is not compelled to shop there. He can leave the ghetto and patronize whatever grocery store he wants. He has that option and that option is valuable. He is, however compelled to attend school in the local ghetto school. He doesn’t have the option to leave the ghetto to get an education. Is there some reason you don’t think these poor urban folk should have that option?
Just another fool criticizing the market for falling short of some impossible arbitrary standard.
Never mind that there is and never has been any viable alternative that has ever come close to the production capacity of the market.
My above comment was in reply to Casey.
The only foolish thing here is the magical belief that the market is a panacea for all the world’s ills.
The author points to the success of grocery stores in comparison to public education. The fact is is that the free market has not successfully delivered these goods and services to many of the same communities that public and private schools have also failed in. I do not see how this is some “arbitrary standard”. The author asserts that the market place delivers a necessary good or service, in this case in the form of grocery stores, and I assert that there have been many instances where that has not been the case. It is hardly arbitrary, friend.
The larger point being that any attempt to address failing schools without addressing its root cause, generational poverty in this case, is a fool’s errand. Many well meaning liberals believe that education is a panacea and that we should invest a tremendous amount of money into the school system while not addressing the larger causes of this particular symptom.
“The only foolish thing here is the magical belief that the market is a panacea for all the world’s ills.”
Nobody here thinks the market is a panacea for all the world’s ills so you’re arguing against a straw man. You waste our time if that’s all you have.
“The larger point being that any attempt to address failing schools without addressing its root cause, generational poverty in this case, is a fool’s errand.”
You see, we actually agree. Though we may disagree on how to get there.
There a many government programs which may have been inspired by good intentions but in fact hold people down.
“The larger point being that any attempt to address failing schools without addressing its root cause, generational poverty in this case, is a fool’s errand.”
That is pure bullshit. The root cause of a failed education or an education system is in that the individual(s) do not give a crap about learning and resist it with great fervor.
It isn’t lack of money that causes that lack of desire for learning, to make the claim it is, is lunacy.
If that’s a straw man than I apologize for completely misreading this website, Hayek, Mises, Rand, and the Cato Institute. I can’t think of any issue they don’t believe should be handed over to the private sector. I mean, outside of an acknowledgement by Hayek in the Road to Serfdom that governments might have a reasonable position in regulating child labor I can’t think of any instance where any of those people thought that government wasn’t always and forever the problem.
Maybe I’m misreading things? I did go to a government school, afterall
If that’s a straw man than I apologize for completely misreading this website, Hayek, Mises, Rand, and the Cato Institute. I can’t think of any issue they don’t believe should be handed over to the private sector. I mean, outside of an acknowledgement by Hayek in the Road to Serfdom that governments might have a reasonable position in regulating child labor I can’t think of any instance where any of those people thought that government wasn’t always and forever the problem.
Maybe I’m misreading things? I did go to a government school, afterall
Quality foods? The locals do not buy enough of the ‘quality’ food to suggest the shelves should be stocked with them. And, what is ‘ quality ‘ to you?
Casey, we don’t think free markets are a magical thing that makes everyone happy. We feel they are the best known option. They won’t accomplish everything we want; but they will do better than any other system.