Flint
Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006
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Sir Toejam:
| Quote | | uh, you have GOT to be kidding! standardized testing itself would NOT be considered "light" regulation under a free market scholastic system. |
I don't want to quibble over adjectives. The way I interpreted your question, free market secondary education would be much like free market colleges - pretty much what we have in place today. I don't know where we'd draw the line and say "Beyond X amount of regulation, this isn't free market anymore." I'll debate this if you wish, though.
| Quote | | You really are living in a dream world if you think a free market educational system would actually create anything other than complete dogma in a very short time. |
Then I will continue to dream. As I said, the college system is a free market system, with a very wide variety of choice among competing private colleges. Do we see "complete dogma"? Well, only if "a very short time" exceeds the several hundred years the private college system has existed, since it hasn't happened yet. Or are you going to argue that YOUR education was simply a matter of swallowing and memorizing "complete dogma"?
| Quote | | I was thinking you were just arguing from a postion of theoretical economics, but now i see you have totally swallowed many false presmises that simply don't jive with the real world. |
For my part, I've long suspected that outside your narrow specialty, you were a walking sloganeer, and I see that I was correct. For you, the rest of the world is "Anything I choose to believe so long as I remain too ignorant to know better." Which you are defending with all-too-familiar tactics.
| Quote | | You live in fantasyland if you really beleive that truly free-market economies actually work. or true democracies, for the same reasons. |
You really must define your terms, otherwise you come across as a brainless ideologue. Maybe you ARE one, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
I think a fully free-market economy doesn't exist, has never existed, and cannot exist. It's simply a useful conception in model-building. Same with a true democracy. Let's assume a spherical cow in a vacuum - no, I mean let's assume everyone has a "vote button" hooked to a national network, and the entire population votes on every issue and proposal. Let's also presume that the vote is implemented immediately on being taken. How long would any government last? A few minutes? Sorry, but I'm aware that a great deal of regulation and inertia and resistance and friction (and checks and balances) must be built in for either an economy or a government to exist and operate effectively.
| Quote | | The reason so many folks shop at Walmart is exactly the same reason folks end up supporting ID; pure ignorance of the consequences. |
And are you proposing that all these people, who used to shop elsewhere, used to be LESS ignorant? People shop at WalMart because they perceive that they get good value for their money. And indeed, they DO get good value for their money. At a cost, to be sure. As a matter of fact, I think your entire pathetic display of spleen here is because you perceive that I am not a devout member of your Church of Anti-Walmart. Whereas, if you could set your faith aside long enough to check, you will find that I have NEVER ONCE taken a moral position about WalMart, good or bad. And I've done that for several purposes, only one of which is to use WalMart as an example of economic costs and benefits. I'll admit, one reason is to see who starts hyperventilating, assuming that since I haven't taken their position, I must therefore OPPOSE their position. Sound familiar?
Still, I'm amused that you have dichotomized this issue to the point where the only two choices are to HATE WalMart, or to suffer "pure ignorance." Let us now pray, right?
| Quote | | I worry for you, truly, that on the one hand you can clearly see the problems inherent with teaching ID theory, yet on the other can't see the problems with the assumption that Walmart is simple free-market economics in action. |
From my perspective, I see that you are adamantly opposed to WalMart, and like any creationist, you are simply not open to ANY analysis of how they operate, what the consequences are, why they're successful, what we as a community may wish to change to improve matters, or anything else that might include facts. In your mind "WalMart" is like the word "evolution" in the mind of Pat Robertson - a trigger to stop thinking and start emoting and sloganeering.
| Quote | | With that viewpoint, i really can't see any reason to continue this discussion further. |
And this is ALSO much like a creationist. Having preached, having told the sinner he's mentally incompetent, you stalk off in self-congratulation. As an economist, you're a good biologist, I suppose. You don't know the facts, you don't know the theory, but you DO know what's True, and nothing else matters. Bless you, brother.
(And what's ironic is, I also see WalMart as a symptom of something deeply wrong with our regulatory system. Sorry that my approach is more analytical, and less emotional as you clearly would prefer (and practice)).
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