What happened?

While reading the following portion of this morning’s Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Interview, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a metaphor occurred to me.

“What happened before in state government was that they would just spend, and then in April they would come to the governor’s office and say, ‘Oh, oops. Sorry, we need another 30 million. We need another 50 million.’ And there would be a huge number of supplemental spending bills that would get passed on June 30th along with the budget for the next fiscal year,” often with tax hikes to pay for them, says Mr. Christie. “And I said to my folks, ‘If you don’t manage to budget, you’re going to get fired.’”

Here’s the metaphor:  It’s suicide when a parasite begins think of itself as the host, as it will proceed to consume the host and then wonder what happened as it dies.

Here government is the parasite and the private market is the host.

I do not intend to use the word parasite in its pejorative.  I intend to use its biological meaning.  There are many cases of parasite organisms that provide benefits to the host and I do believe that government can provide benefits to its host.

Government is a parasite that feeds from the private market.   While it does provide benefits, like defense and a backing to the rule of law, it would not exist if it were not for a valuable resource from which it could draw its life force.

In some cases, that resource may be natural.  Middle Eastern governments are sustained by the proceeds of oil.  Warlord governments in Africa form around resources such as diamonds.  The crony kleptocracy of Russia persists on the bounty of Russia’s natural resources.

And our representative democratic government persists on the wealth generated in the private market.

But, few people see that.  They reflexively see each new perceived problem as a job for government to solve, without considering private alternatives, and then when the government runs out of money, they simply say, raise taxes.

Governor Christie describes this mindset in New Jersey.  ”Ooops.  Sorry, we need another 30 million.”

This mindset leads the parasite to incrementally consume the host and then wonder why it’s dying.  Where did the jobs go?  Where are the new jobs!? Why are tax revenues declining?  Raise taxes on the rich!

Sounding Off

In this post, I pointed out that a big problem in our society is the strong encouragement we give to getting your voice heard, while not encouraging thinking, researching and applying reason to arrive at our positions.

In this one, I quoted from a Sowell book and wrote about how we are taught what to think not how to think through something.

In this column from Thomas Sowell, he calls what has resulted presumptuous ignorance and agrees with on a potential source of it:

One of the reasons for so much presumptuous ignorance flourishing in our time may be the emphasis on “self-esteem” in our schools and colleges. Children not yet a decade old have been encouraged, or even required, to write letters to public figures, sounding off on issues ranging from taxes to nuclear missiles.

Agreed.

Related articles

• A Brass Age? – Thomas Sowell – Townhall Conservative (gds44.wordpress.com)

SOTU

Here’s Obama’s SOTU in a nutshell:

I’ve picked winners.  I’ve picked losers.  

I want to continue to exceed the authority granted to me in the Constitution to pick more winners and losers.

I want to work with everybody in Congress to do things that I want done.  If you are against what I want, well, then, you’re bad.

Here’s my dream SOTU address:

As your President, I commanded the military to protect you so that you could continue to enjoy a level of freedom and standard of living unsurpassed ever on this planet and continue to pursue your happiness — even in these hard times.

I’ve preserved, protected and defended the Constitution, just as I solemnly swore to do when I took the oath when you elected me President.

I ask Congress to continue to pursue a rollback of government interference in your lives.

We’ve had some hard times.  Mistakes have been made.  I hope we all have learned from them.  One of the key lessons I hoped we all learned, is that when we manifest our generosity by demanding that others do something, rather than doing something ourselves, things end badly.

I’d like to encourage you, if you see a problem, work with your family…your friends…your neighbors and do something about it.

Good night.

All Sorts of Awesome

This is all sorts of awesome (from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution).  

Key highlights:

• Stanford computer science Prof offers online course on Artificial Intelligence.
• 160,000 people take it.
• On campus class size dwindles from 200 to 30, as more folks say they learn better from the online lecture.
• Professor decides to change the goal of his course from weeding out students to teaching them.

Now for the awesome part:

• That computer science professor quits Stanford and starts his own, online university, Udacity.

The Backbone Hypothesis

I enjoyed Thomas Sowell’s column this week, South Carolina Message.

Sowell summarizes the surges in the multiple candidates against Romney:

The more fundamental message is that the Republican primary voters do not want Mitt Romney, even if the Republican establishment does — and it is just a question of which particular conservative alternative the voters prefer.

But, I think there is an additional message from South Carolina: Have Some Backbone!

Newt demonstrated backbone when he refused to accept the premise that he should feebly play along after the news media appeared to have manipulated and slanted the news against him.

“Sorry John, but you and your staff decided to lead a Presidential debate with this topic.  Don’t try to blame others.”

Mitt seems to have received the backbone message with his recent “I’m not going to apologize for my success” speech.  It’s unfortunate that he had to get this message though.  Newt had to test the backbone hypothesis before Mitt was willing to give it a try.

That’s not backbone.  That’s like standing up to the bully only after another bully has  intervened on your behalf.

Third Place + Wine

When I first heard a while back that Starbucks was testing serving wine in its stores, I didn’t think much of it.

When I read today that they were expanding this test, the value proposition suddenly occurred to me.

Before, I was  stuck on Starbucks as a coffee company.  But, they also have another business — providing comfortable space for folks to sit and chat, read or surf the net.  They call it the third place.  It’s not your home or business, but it’s close.

I suddenly thought about the times when I’ve been out with friends, family or business associates and we wanted to catch up over a glass of wine or beer, but we didn’t want a noisy, or empty, bar.  And we didn’t really want to sit at restaurant where everybody else is eating.  We struggled to find a place to go.  Often we settled for picking up some bottles of wine at a grocery store and heading home or going to bar.  Neither was ideal.

Sipping some wine at Starbucks would be the perfect place for that.

I also thought about the times when I’m on the road — be it for business or vacation.  It would be nice to have a low-key place to grab night-cap, catch up on emails (and blogs) and do some mild people watching.

I can see how this fills a nice niche for consumers.  I hope their tests work.

Innovation in College Education

 

Image via Wikipedia

MIT will begin offering certification for its online courses (HT: Carpe Diem blog).  The online courses are free, but there will be a fee for certification.

The discussion in the comments on Carpe Diem brings up some good points.  Will the certification be worth anything?  Will employers put much stock in it?

One commenter, morganovich, points out that the true value of an MIT degree to an employer is the screening process you go through to get into MIT.  This process won’t be in place for the online courses, since anyone can take them.

He may be right.  Or maybe employers are wrong.  Maybe the screening process of getting into MIT isn’t all that great and this might help some employers figure that out.

It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves.  Here are some things I could see happening.

This might start to unravel the lecture model of higher education.  Maybe while at MIT you end up taking some of online courses on the side, but your core curriculum becomes built around doing more apprentice-like things — starting businesses, working on research projects, working with companies on projects.  Instructor become more like your advisers, mentors and project leaders.

Maybe this happens at your local state schools too, you take MITx online courses part-time and then work on projects the rest of the time.

Perhaps high schools let students take the MITx courses and earn high school credit as well, so they can enter college ahead of the game.

Maybe it does nothing. Maybe a people take the courses, they learn some things and MIT and the rest of higher education persists as is.

Nobody knows, but it’s good to see such storied institutions trying new things.

The price of education

I don’t recall learning during my 13-year attendance in K-12 public schools how much that education cost and where the money came from.

Priceless (Image by Sean MacEntee via Flickr)

I remember having a vague notion that the funds for education came from “the state”, but I really didn’t know what that meant.

That’s a shame.  I believe if students and parents better understood that the cost to educate a student in public schools runs between $8,000 to $13,000 per year they may appreciate it more.

Further, many don’t realize that this cost is relatively consistent across public school districts.  I’ve had many conversations where taxpaying individuals could not believe that the spending per student in a well-reputed school district, was less or about the same as a poorly performing urban school district.  It was eye-opening/myth debunking for them.  Several of them would utter, “I guess it’s not about the spending then.”

Knowing this information may allow them to better understand that it’s quite a privilege, they should try to get the most out of it and not take it for granted.

Further, if students better understood that their education was funded by their families and neighbors, through property taxes, and how much was paid in property taxes, that might make students a bit more appreciative of the sacrifices their neighbors make to ensure they have a better chance to become self-sufficient and contributing members of society.

Schools could further reinforce this by establishing a code of conduct, primarily based on courtesy and respect, for this privilege.  For example, for receiving a $10,000 per year education, you are expected to be courteous, clean and respectful.  If you cannot maintain this standard, you will lose your access to this privilege so others can gain maximum benefit.

Maybe if parents couldn’t ensure a cooperative student, they would be billed for a portion of the cost of the child’s education or have the choice of removing the student from school.

Perhaps, each year, the schools could provide students and parents with a report showing the cost of their education.  This would be similar to what companies do with an annual total compensation report that shows associates the total value of the wages and benefits they receive for employment, which I always take to mean, “quit complaining, you cost a lot!”

The same could be said for college education.  When attending an institution with heavy funding from tax dollars, it would be nice for the students and parents to know what the true cost of that education is.

How much of what you earn belongs to me?

Speedmaster, at the Pretense of Knowledge blog posted this great quote from Walter Williams:

What’s “just” has been debated for centuries, but let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then, tell me how much of what I earn “belongs” to you — and why?
– Walter Williams

I’ll go one further.  How much of what you earn belongs to me? 

Related articles

• Good questions (ourdinnertable.wordpress.com)

“Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public”

William Banting wrote a 16-page diet book in 1863 with this name.  I love that name.

It appears he had it all figured out then.  His advice turned out to be the same advice that a) helped me lose weight and keep it off (going 11 years now) and b) recently helped me improve my cholesterol levels.

His advice:  Eat less sugars and starch, eat more proteins and fat.  Why?  Because too much sugar and starch throws off your hormones and tells your body to store fat.  Proteins and fat don’t.  In fact, too much sugar and starch will lead to diabetes.  Hello, diabetes epidemic coming after several decades of sugar and starch consumption!

I’m reading Gary Taubes longer than 16-page book, Good Calories, Bad Calories.  If you don’t have time to read the whole book, read the Prologue.  In it, Taubes gives great highlights on the evolution in the diet world since Banting’s book.

In the rest of his book, Taubes exhaustively reviews the “scientific” literature on diets to show that much of the conventional diet wisdom (e.g. government guidelines, the calorie balance equation, eating a low-fat diet) actually has no scientific basis.  Shocking.

But, for your own health, here’s the summary:  Follow Banting’s advice.

When I lost weight, I attributed my success to a lot things because I changed a lot of things.  I balanced my calories.  I ate more often.  I watched my portions.  I reduced mindless eating.  And, I increased my intake of fat and protein and decreased my intake of sugars and starches.

In his other book, Why We Get Fat, Taubes said that people with weight loss success like mine tend to confound all the reasons, but there’s really just one, the last one.

It’s worth experimenting.  Cut back on sugars, breads and starches in your diet, eat a little more fat and protein and watch your scale.