Elliot was ‘exposed’ to the Learning from Dogs readership on the 22nd March as our first Guest author. He wrote about the US Government and Poverty.
Elliot has one important distinction with respect to the other authors of this Blog; he is the right side of 30 years old!
He is going to use this perspective to reflect on schooling, something that most of us ‘aged’ peeps take for granted, assuming we can remember our school days! 😉
It promises to be a fascinating reflection.
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Setting the scene
I’ve had a plethora of experiences over the past 17 years of my life. I’ve made and lost friends, had romantic
Elliot Engstrom
relationships, read, traveled all around the world, lived in France, and done countless other things that I consider myself immeasurably blessed to have experienced.
Despite the fluidity of where these different experiences have taken me, my entire life since the age of four has had one characteristic in common – I have been a school student.
In the spirit of “Learning from Dogs,” I thought it might be interesting to reflect a bit upon the core dynamic between education (not learning, which is a far broader topic) and schooling.
I often ask myself just how effective the modern US schooling system is as a tool of education, and whether or not its costs outweigh its benefits. I hope to have at least a rough answer to this question in the final post of this series.
In the following three posts, I will examine three topics:
– In what ways does the modern schooling system function as a positive tool for education?
– What costs involved in modern schooling hinder its ability as an educative tool, and even make it a negative influence on students?
– Considering the analyses put forth in the first two posts, do the costs or benefits or this system outweigh the other? On the whole, are school and education complements or antagonists?
This series is going to be exciting for me because, to be quite frank, I have no idea what my final answer is going to be. I guess I’ll just have to stay tuned to see where my brain takes me – and so for you!
For those living outside the UK (well so far as our IP address is concerned) watching BBC television via the Web has always been a bit of a challenge. Presumably because of the way that the BBC is funded, a Licence Fee (aka tax!) on those UK householders that wish to watch public broadcasted television, it is deemed ‘unfair’ if those outside the UK, who do not pay this Fee, have unfettered access to the Beeb’s programming. Thus if one attempts to access the BBC online from outside the UK you are met with the following message:
Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only, but all BBC iPlayer Radio programmes are available to you. Why?
However, the BBC have made a wonderful exception with regard to a series of programmes under the title of The Virtual Revolution. All about 20 years of the World Wide Web.
Most of, if not all, the key players of this last 20 years have been interviewed and the uncut footage of these interviews is here. Fascinating viewing.
And if you fancy making your own documentary using this material, under a unique BBC permissive licence, then here’s where to start.
A very far-sighted view of European collaboration from 12 years ago!
Once again, Learning from Dogs welcomes a guest post from Per Kurowski.
Per Kurowski
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I was intrigued by a recent Post on Learning from Dogs entitled Poor Old Europe. It included two commentaries from elsewhere about the state of Europe and how the feeling of trying to force, politically, very disparate countries together was still ever so dominant. It reminded me of an article that I wrote for my own Blog nearly 12 years ago just before the Euro came into effect. Reading it today is interesting, to say the least.
In just a few weeks, on the 1st of January 1999, eleven European countries will forsake the right to issue their own currency and accept the circulation within their boundaries of a common currency, the Euro. Monetary policy related to the Euro will be set by a European Central Bank. One fact that struck me as curious is that in all the abundant legislation that regulates this process, there is no mention whatsoever of how to manage the withdrawal or future regret of any of the union’s members.
The absence of alternatives in this case evidently represents a burning of the bridges, but this may be necessary to achieve credibility. There is no turning back and there is no doubt that this is a truly historical moment. As participants in a globalized world in which Europe has an important role, we must naturally wish all members luck, no matter what worries we might secretly harbor.
Until 1971, all money used throughout the history of humanity was backed in one way or another by something physical to which a real value was attributed. Sometimes the backing was direct, pearls for example, while in other cases it was indirect such as the right to exchange bills for a certain quantity of gold.
This physical backing in itself did not necessarily mean it consisted of something of fixed value. The value of a pearl, for example, is in itself subjective. The promise to exchange bills for gold did not guarantee anything either, since this promise could easily be voided by fraud. Whatever the backing was, however, it did at least offer the holder of the money the illusion that it was supported by something concrete.
In 1971, the United States formally abandoned the gold standard and the direct backing, however imaginary, disappeared. Since the Dollar is a legal currency, it could always be used to repay Dollar denominated debt. Today, however, in spite of the fact that the Dollars may have lost some of their purchasing power, a holder of excess Dollars can only hope that the Government of the United States will exchange his old bills for new ones of the same tenor.
This apparently precarious situation must be the raison d’etre of the motto printed clearly on the bills which states “In God We Trust”.
Since 1971, the real value of the Dollar as an element of exchange, has lost some of its value due to inflation. Today, we would need many more Dollars to buy the same houses, cars, movie tickets and gold than we would have needed in 1971. In spite of the above, with few exceptions such as the end of the ‘70s during which inflation increased dramatically, few would dare qualify the United States’ elimination of the gold standard as a failure.
The world’s economies have managed to increase international commerce drastically and with it, sustain a healthy growth rate. Many analysts would explain this phenomenon by saying that the discipline exacted by the gold standard represented a brake on international commerce. The growth rate registered in commerce after 1971 was the result of the release of this brake. Other more critical analysts sustain the thesis that, due to the fact that we have abandoned the discipline required by the gold standard, the world has accumulated gigantic accounts payable, which we may be coming due very soon.
I personally swing back and forth between amazement of the fact that the world has accepted such a fragile system and satisfaction that it actually has done so.
The Euro has one characteristic that differentiates it from the Dollar. This characteristic makes me feel less optimistic as to its chances of success. The Dollar is backed by a solidly unified political entity, i.e. the United States of America. The Euro, on the other hand, seems to be aimed at creating unity and cohesion. It is not the result of these.
The possibility that the European countries will subordinate their political desires to the whims of a common Central Bank that may be theirs but really isn’t, is not a certainty. Exchange rates, while not perfect, are escape valves. By eliminating this valve, European countries must make their economic adjustments in real terms. This makes these adjustments much more explosive. High unemployment will not be confronted with a devaluation of the currency which reduces the real value of salaries in an indirect manner, but rather with a direct and open reduction of salaries or with an increase of emigration to areas offering better possibilities.
What worries me most is the timing. The world is facing the possibility of a global recession. This will require very flexible economic and monetary policies. The fact that the search for initial credibility for the Euro is based on trying to assure markets around the world that the new currency will be guided by a philosophy closer to that of Bonn than that of Rome, probably goes against the best interests of the world.
Published in Daily Journal, Caracas, November 19, 1998
Behavioral Economist concludes that most people cheat.
In a very interesting video on the website TED, Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, explains his research into why people think it is okay to cheat and steal.
Here is Ariely’s presentation from YouTube:
From his research, he concludes the following:
A lot of people will cheat.
When people cheat, however, they cheat by a little, not a lot.
The probability of being caught is not a prime motivation for avoiding cheating.
If reminded of morality, people cheat less.
If distanced from the benefits from cheating, like using “chips” instead of actual money in transactions, people cheat more.
If your in-group accepts cheating, you cheat more.
Dan Ariely
I quibble with the interpretation of some of his findings, which may justify a separate post on how people perceive what they do and do not know, but there are always issues of this sort with a given research project. Where I draw the line is when he expands his conclusions to include all of Wall Street and the stock market, which is totally beyond the scope and nature of his research.
On what basis does he draw this conclusion? As explained in this short video (as I have not read his book, though I’ve read excerpts and am familiar with the study upon which the book is based), Ariely claims that because stocks and derivatives are not in the form of money, they “distance people from the benefits of cheating,” which leads individuals who engage in the stock market to cheat more. He alludes to Enron as proof.
This is almost too silly to spend a lot of time on trying to discredit, but I fear that a lot of people who hear his talks or read his book may be lulled into accepting what he says about the stock market as true. But it is not! Enron is the exception, not the rule.
Companies who issue stocks are raising money to provide a good or service that is valued by society; they are rewarded by profits. Investors who buy and sell stocks, trade derivatives, and invest in portfolios are trying to make their money go further. They are trying to earn a return on their savings. Cheaters do not survive in the stock market, unlike the “consequences-free” classroom in Areily’s experiment.
On the other hand, these factors are in glaring abundance in the government: politicians never “see” the taxes they spend as the hard-earned income of the citizens. And the “benefits” of cheating, including power and privilege, are amorphous and vague, and couched in the so-called morality of “doing the greater good.” I’m surprised Ariely does not condemn the federal government using the same logic as his does the stock market.
His last take-away from this research project? That we find it “hard to believe that our own intuition is wrong.”
I think Dr. Ariely ought to apply that caveat to the conclusions he draws about his own research. Very interesting, very compelling, but his interpretation of the results as they apply to the stock market falls victim to the very same biases that he claims to find in others.
Tim Berners-Lee was, or is, the father of the Internet, that remarkable network that has done to connect millions together. Indeed, my personal view is that the Internet may be the only real tool that people have to protect and defend democracy.
I’m sure thousands know the background ofSir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, to give him his full name, an Englishman living in the USA.
There was an introduction to the the way that Sir Tim wants to see the web move in yesterday’s Post.
But Tim recently (February 2010) gave a talk in Long Beach, California, entitled The year open data went worldwide. This takes the concept much further.
Learning from Dogs has been publishing on a daily basis since July 15th, 2009. That’s over 460 posts and is a great tribute to the commitment of all the authors of this Blog. We are grateful that our regular readership is also measured in the hundreds and is growing steadily.
Elliot Engstrom
It seemed time to make a small change. We have decided to include articles from Guest Authors on a regular basis. Our first guest is Elliot Engstrom.
Elliot Engstrom is a senior French major at Wake Forest University, and aside from his schoolwork blogs for Young Americans for Liberty and writes at his own Web site, Rethinking the State
Elliot first post for Learning from Dogs is about the US Federal Government and Poverty. This also appeared in The Daily Caller.
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The federal government, which claims to be the greatest supporter of those in need, is anything but a friend of the impoverished.
Often times when conservatives speak of the government treating the rich differently than the poor, the discussion is framed around taxes and welfare, with the argument being made that the government forces the highest earners to pay a massive percentage of all taxes, both punishing success and stifling overall economic productivity and making it all the more difficult for anyone not in the upper echelons to accumulate wealth for themselves. I sincerely hope that I have not constructed a straw man version of this common conservative argument, as I certainly think it has a great deal of credibility. However, I also would like to draw attention to the fact that while government loots the rich through the direct means of taxation, it likewise loots the poor, albeit through a different set of means that is much more difficult to recognize, and thus much more difficult to counteract.
While looting the wealthy can often be construed as some kind of humanitarian effort to aid the poor, looting the impoverished is a much more difficult enterprise to disguise as a moral good. Thus we will find that the government’s means of taking money from the poor are much more difficult to detect, comprehend, and eliminate than the means of direct taxation that is used to extract money from the wealthier members of society.
The dollar in which the majority of Americans receive their wages or salary has no absolute, set value. We see this in the fact that the value of the dollar is constantly fluctuating when compared to gold, silver, or the currencies of other nations (which are all constantly fluctuating in value themselves). “Value” is determined by a wide range of factors, but is based in the fact that human beings are all rational maximizers who are all trying to get what they want while expending the least amount of resources possible to do so. The occurrence of this phenomenon in the mind of every single individual economic actor coordinates the price system in a free market economy.
A given worker making $10.50/hour may see himself as bringing home a constant source of income. However, this is not the case at all due to the constantly shifting value of the dollar. Even in a free and unhindered market, the value of the dollars that this worker takes home each day would fluctuate based on factors like how much liquid currency was actually in existence in the market, how many resources had been invested in banks or stocks, and what amount of resources had been converted into physical capital or products. In the end, the dollar itself has all the value of a flimsy piece of cotton paper – it derives its true value from the productive activities of economic actors who use it as a medium of exchange. In other words, the dollar is a widely accepted “I.O.U.” This would be the case even in the freest of economies. Values of commodities and currencies are always changing based on the effectual demand and effectual supply of the moment.
But, as we all know, we live in anything but a free and unhindered economy. Our supposed “free market” is criss-crossed with a Federal Reserve System that manipulates the value of the dollar at will, a corporate welfare system that socializes the losses of corporations at the expense of the rest of society, and law enforcement policies that weigh the heaviest on those who do not have the time or resources to easily deal with court and lawyer fees, jury duty, and detainments prior to trial, not to mention the fact that the War on Drugs does substantially greater damage to the lower classes of American society than it does good, particularly when speaking of poor African-Americans.
And here’s the scary part – this was all the case before the bailouts and stimulus package that George Bush began and Barack Obama continued and amplified. Not only do these bailouts threaten to massively inflate our currency, spelling disaster for those whose livelihood is based in hourly wages paid in dollars, but it also directly took from all of society, not just the rich or the poor, and gave to a few select corporate entities such as Goldman-Sachs and Wells Fargo. We know this because every new dollar created by the government in the stimulus plan detracted from the value of every dollar already existing in the pre-stimulus economy (or will do so when released into the economy).
Does this sound confusing? It should, because it is, and that’s exactly how the federal government likes it.
While the federal government would tell us that they protect the poor from the exploitation of the rich, economics would tell us that it is in fact the federal government itself that is the greatest exploiter of our nation’s impoverished, and it is this institution that in fact facilitates much of the disparity in wealth between wealthy national corporations and impoverished local communities.
Those of the small government mindset who wish to rally more people to their cause should not go about proclaiming that we should be immediately getting rid of affirmative action and welfare for the poor, but instead should be putting forth a rallying cry against corporate welfare, an inflation-minded Federal Reserve System, and a law enforcement system whose economic penalties weigh heaviest on those with the least money in their savings accounts. It does not have to be out of selfishness that we advocate for a reduction of the federal nanny-state. It can, and should, instead be out of a concern for the poverty and destruction of wealth that is directly generated by this institution’s misguided policies.
Very early on in the life of this Blog, indeed on the second day, I wrote a short article about the NASA mission to the moon, some 40 years after the event. You see, for me that has been the historic event of my lifetime.
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
Apollo 11 badge
That speech before Congress by President Kennedy was on the 25th May, 1961. I was 16 and was enthralled by the idea of being alive when man first set foot on another planetary body. That came about on July 20th, 1969 at which time I was living and working in Sydney, Australia. I took three days off work, rented a TV and watched every minute of the event.
Exploration is a core need of man. By pushing out the boundaries of our knowledge we continue to offer hope to mankind.
So it is with great disappointment that it has been announced by President Obama that the manned mission programs to the moon are to be severely curtailed – that sounds terribly like political speak for cancelled!
As Eugene Cernan (last astronaut to set foot on the moon) said:
I’m quite disappointed that I’m still the last man on the Moon. I thought we’d have gone back long before now.
I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership… to seek knowledge. Curiosity’s the essence of human existence.
Curiosity is indeed the essence of human existence.
That curiosity and the investment in space exploration by NASA on behalf of the whole world has shown us some remarkable findings about Saturn and it’s majestic rings. Just watch the video segments in this piece from the BBC.
The one-time cost of Cassini-Huygens mission was $3.26 billion. Just 0.3% of the cost of one year’s expenditure on U.S. defense spending.
Science missions like Cassini enhance cooperation between nations, and greatly contribute to scientific progress which benefits everyone.
Perhaps the big Banks would like to pick up the cost of further manned missions to the Moon?
When I was a very young boy at Grammar School (aka High School) in Wembley, North West London, one of the subjects taught was wood-working. I loved the feel of wood, still do, and the smell of a wood shaving fresh off the wood plane is still remembered. But, for whatever reason, wood and I never got on.
Later on, my first yacht was a pretty little East Coast gaff cutter, built in 1898, with a hull of pitch pine laid on grown oak frames. Her original name was Mimms but this had been changed to Esterel by the time she was purchased by me. Despite needing a lot of remedial work, the over-riding memory was how the hull ‘spoke’ when she was being sailed.
It’s almost as though wood doesn’t die when the tree is felled, it just passes into another phase depending on the use made of it.
So where’s this all leading?
Alan Peters who died October 11th, 2009
In the issue of The Economist dated November 7th, 2009, there was an obituary about Alan Peters, furniture maker, who died on October 11th, 2009, aged 76. Like all obits. that appear in The Economist this was well published but something about this particular obituary really stuck in my mind. I tore out the page so it could be re-read over the coming weeks.
It’s still on my desk even 6 months later and it prompted me to write about Alan Peters on Learning from Dogs.
In contrast to many of today’s school-leavers, who look for instant success and celebrity, the furniture designer Alan Peters served seven years’ apprenticeship in the workshop of Edward Barnsley, which then operated without power tools. When interviewed last year Peters was still proud that he swept the workshop floor quicker and better than anyone else. His eagerness to share his passion and knowledge of furniture design and furniture making was a theme of his life.
And here’s another reflection from David Savage who studied under Alan Peters:
Damn, Damn, Damn, I am getting fed up writing obituries on dead furniture makers. Why can’t they just go on for ever.
I knew Alan quite well. He was a role model and a mentor when I really needed one. This would be way back in the late 1970s when there were very few people making modern furniture in a barn in Devon which is what I wanted to do. Even fewer making a living doing it. I had all the questions and Alan as far as I could see had all the answers. I spent a short time working with him. I was first in the workshop in the morning and last out in the evening. I’m sure he got fed up with my questions but he patiently answered. He gave and gave and gave. When I was set up he helped me get into the Devon Guild of Craftsmen and much later he would come to my workshop in Bideford to give Saturday seminars showing slides of his work and trips to Japan and Korea. He was an inspiration I know not just to me but to a generation of makers. I miss him.
Question: How many furniture makers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Ten, one to change the bulb and nine to discuss at length how Alan would do it.
I apologise for the rather trite sub-heading but it was a bit of attention grabbing to promote the results of a recent conference called Let Markets Be Markets. It was published by the Roosevelt Institute and had one very impressive line of speakers.
One of the speakers was Simon Johnson of Baseline Scenario fame, a Blog that Learning from Dogs has followed since our inception.
Here’s 8 minutes of Simon pulling no punches.
If you want to read and watch other presentations, then Mike Konczal’s Blog Rortybomb is the place to go.
As this Blog has repeated from time to time, this present crisis is a long way from being over.
Learning from Dogs 