I don’t care if Moynihan denies it...he read Eisenhower’s quote about Sweden being a country of suicide, high taxes and FREE SEX, and decided in that moment he would move there one day.
Engaging in (or listening to) a discussion about a topic I know almost nothing about is always interesting. Since I don't already have an opinion on Sweden or any strong sense of socio-political outrage about how it's run, this was a really fun listen. I could just sit back without deciding whether Johan or the boys were right or wrong.
A solid reason to sit on my ass on a Saturday morning with multiple cups of coffee and *not* clean my house for a while. Thanks again, fellas.
I think that one of the reasons why economists get such a bad rap is that when someone comes at them with a moral argument, they tend to come back with a counterargument that’s based on efficiency. E.g. “the rust belt has been hollowed out and people are dying deaths of despair” is countered by “but look at all that sweet sweet MONEY” which makes them sound, well, slightly less than compassionate. I realize that economics is all about the efficient use of limited resources, but maybe a basic worldview standing behind/over/beyond the drive to efficiency would lend the arguments a bit more weight
Yeah I was surprised that when Johan was describing the recent economic conditions after the move away from socialist policies, how most of the tax burden is falling on low to middle earners etc., no one drew a line from there to the rapid expansion of hardcore right and left wing groups as well the explosion in gun violence.
Worth exploring no?
I am not a libertarian, I'd consider myself to be centre-left in a European context, but enjoy listening to other perspectives. And actually find myself agreeing with a lot of the libertarian policies espoused on this podcast. Even so, I found this interview to be a bit fawning and lacking in depth.
David MacWilliams, an Irish economist has been doing 30 mins a week on prominent European countries. I leaned more in the 30 mins on Sweden there than in this episode.
I've been an avid listener for about 3 years now, but finding myself disappointed more and more often. Seems to be an element of complacency and group think setting in.
Still, I'll be tuning into the next episode anyway
Yeah I found that interesting - I’m sure his book has more details, but I couldn’t tell how he felt about Swedens current conditions. Surely a tax base of the poor is bad?
Surely taxes so high you need to hide personal expenses in companies is bad?
As always, a great and elucidating conversation. BUT!!
Whenever "learning loss" is mentioned as a product of the shutdowns, I get really confused. What is it? What has been "lost?" Humans are always learning. How many of adults remember the chemistry or algebra or history they were forced to take in high school? Is that counted as "learning loss?" Why not? How does one "lose" learning? Usually this happens in adults because they're not using any of the material in their lives. If that's the case, if they live perfectly fine lives without that information, why were they forced, at great expense and stress, to temporarily memorize it in the first place?
I think that "learning loss" is just a way of saying that arbitrary, institutional, and bureaucratic benchmarks for testing purposes aren't being met, and this makes adults nervous. For some reason, we still equate learning with schooling, despite all the kids schools have failed to serve, all the happy successful adults who look at their schooling (especially secondary) as a miserable waste of their time.
The ability of a child to read, or write, or multiply one digit numbers are not "arbitrary benchmarks." These are baseline skills that are gateways to further learning. Schools that fail to teach kids these skills will fail to teach them all the skills that rely on these skills. Some kids - rich kids - whose schools were shut down benefited from personal, educational enrichment from their parents. The rest probably watched YouTube while their parents took the bus to their service sector job. The reason so many smart, successful adults see schooling as a waste of time is because we got a lot of educational opportunities outside of school. For many poor kids, school is it.
Yes and no. "Poor" kids (I hate that kind of generalization) often get awesome opportunities and have a ton more to offer than boring-ass more affluent kids. They often have parents who are much more flexible, handy, and creative in general. Many of my students, while other kids had private tutors and nannies or whatever, built entire vehicles (one kid built a big rig with his dad), helped parents in agriculture, learned how to cut hair, do nails, plumb, do electrical work, and run food trucks. They've taken away an immense amount of learning and growth that no "learning pod" and the best tech could offer. The FAILURE is that the education system refuses to see those things as financially useful and academic, and still pushes the same college-only agenda as they have been since the 80s.
Why can't the time we force kids to learn "baseline skills" be arbitrary? Why do the Scandinavians not teach reading until kids are 7, while we start at 4 and 5? Baseline skills are best obtained by different humans in different ways and at different times of their lives.
There's no evidence whatsoever that all kids best learn the same things in the same ways at the same times in their lives. There's lots of evidence that teaching kids that way not only produces lots of illiteracy, but makes even the literate kids hate school and learning. We agree that the poor kids get it worst of all, because they don't have the choices rich kids do, or the resources for enriching distractions the middle-class enjoys.
So I have one comment about education during the pandemic and a question for you. The comment is: The HUGE issue I have is the national lack of flex during and especially AFTER schools reopened to change the way things are done. There were massive missed opportunities to level the playing field in so many ways (for example, making internet access free and available BY THE STATE to every single household with school-aged children in it - I realize that hedges on pinko, but I think I'm right about this), make changes to what kids (I teach HS) have to take away from the end of primary and secondary ed (i.e. certification, training, college course options, etc.), and evolve out of the 1919 schooling, much of which has been the same since, well, 1919. Instead, countrywide, there were very few if any changes. The push was to return to "normal". I can't say for sure why, but I have my guesses and they are not charming. Districts bleed money to bullshit left and right and then sit back while teachers are blamed for decisions they don't make - the pandemic was no different. ANYWAY...
My question: What are some ways you think would change all this? To say "it's complicated" is an understatement at best. Ditching standardized tests (or changing them by region) has been a ridiculous failure, wheels spinning trying to create tests that apply to maybe some kids in some areas and diversifying every. single. year to accommodate whatever the guess is that kids maybe know in a certain area or demographic (talk about day-drinking certifiable horror show). Often this "testing" is left to teachers to create, by site(!!!) and the information that comes from it can never be used to help kids because it's always different. So how do we, as a giant country, provide public tax-paid education to all children in an equitable (barf) way that ensures national success?
There is also the poverty question, "enriching distractions", and illiteracy. We (OK, *I*) could talk about that shit for hours. But I would love to hear what you think about changes to make (and I'm serious - not being passive or catty here....what do you think?).
These are really important observations, and I don't disagree at all with your pinko-bordering idea (to be fair, the entire concept of public schooling is anti-libertarian, but I believe deeply in it). I'm afraid the changes I think need to be made are so radical as to be practically useless.
I think it's so complicated because we humans, our brains and our minds, are the most complicated thing in the observable universe. We all learn best different things in different ways at different times in our lives, but school is set up as if the opposite is the case.
One of the very few rock-solid findings in psychology is the association between mental health and a sense of control in one's life. School allows for very, very little control on the part of the students. The institution has convinced most people that kids need to be advancing on the same subjects at the same rates doing the same things in order to become educated adults, prepared for college and/or the workplace. It's such an obviously false and failed concept, it's hold on popular conceptions of education is baffling. If education professionals started telling parents to bring in their babies for walking classes, in a generation or two people would think that school was necessary to learn how to walk. But I digress. As I often do...
So, school disallows for the thing, sense of control in one's life, that we KNOW humans need in order to truly thrive. I think the changes we need are so fundamental, it would redefine what school is. School would have to become consent-based in order for it to be effective for most of the kids it's supposed to serve. But I know that's not going to happen anytime in the near future.
So, practically speaking, I think the practice of forcing millions of kids to work for free to temporarily memorize arbitrarily chosen material for the purposes of test-taking is a huge waste of time and resources. The first step to creating a system that truly serves each individual kid would be to let every single kid have an Individualized Education Plan, that they would take part in creating, allowing them the years of practice necessary for someone to learn how to make choices, decisions, and take responsibility for their own education.
I know that there are too many people who don't respect kids enough to allow this to happen, hence, the uselessness of my opinion on the topic. I pretty much have the same attitude that Richard Elmore does, as he describes in this brief video.
Elmore is dead on, and he uses specific successful examples instead of arbitrary generalizations.
I'm not sure if you are in education, but just a quick FYI: IEPs are legal documents that must be followed to the letter and are subject to extreme legal ramifications if not. Until or unless that changes, IEPs are probably not the best way.
If we take a look at the founding principles of public school and the reasons they were created in the first place (ex: preparation for factory work, which at the time was stable and lucrative enough for people to afford homes, have weekends "off", and buy a new car every once in a while), we see that the workforce needs, higher education, and wealth concentration no longer supports this ideology. But the ed system has changed very little in the last 100 years (except the removal of trade courses like mechanics, woodshop, etc, NOT a gain), so children leaving this system have few useable skills and a national cohort of competition.
Ameya argued that basic academics lend themselves to higher thinking, and that's true, but I'll quote Gerald Graff here: ". . . no necessary connection has ever been established between any text or subject and the educational depth and weight of the discussion it can generate." That was in 2001, so maybe things have changed. Here's the whole paper on this: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/26320/pdf
I would also argue that kids don't "work for free" in school. While there are some resemblances to prison, I think the bigger issue in schools is that what they are told are necessary elements to functioning in our society are archaic and land low-paying jobs. 40 years ago this was not true. 100 years ago it was unimaginable.
Fact of the matter is that those people in charge of making decisions about the state of education don't get to be in charge without a little learning loss of their own. They are so removed from results beyond graphs and charts, lean heavily into spending choices (money bleeding to shit publishing companies and now tech companies looking to reach their hand into that giant bag of money), and make enough money themselves that they and their children never endure the results of their poor policy choices. The unions, while also having a mass of money and an agenda of their own (I pay into it and like when our union negotiates pay raises etc., but divorce myself from their politics), do show that states with strong teacher unions have better ed outcomes (whatever that is), more purposeful use of curriculum, and higher morale.
So ideally yes, every kid making their own choice in what and how they learn would be great. But it's not feasible in the system we have in place. Imagine you have 175 students (my daily cap, and it's full) all with different "ways" of learning, at different levels of learning, with different interests and goals, and a law in place that says I have to ensure that they get what they need. Imagine you make 57G a year (the national average). Imagine you are surrounded by millions of other teachers and students with this situation. Imagine money-grabbing tech and publishing companies offering empathy-based product (ya know, "for the children") that does nothing for student growth in your classes but is nevertheless purchased by higher-ups because they have to spend their money or lose it.
Yes, I should have said "something like" an IEP. It's been 20 years since I taught, in Special Ed.
Thanks for sharing that Graff article! It looks fascinating and I'll be sure to check it out.
Probably have to agree to disagree whether or not kids are working for free in school. I don't mean to imply that none of the work done in school is worthwhile, just a lot of it is for some, and most of it is for others. Doing that useless work involuntarily for the benefit of the institution and its employees could accurately be described with lots of ugly words.
As far as how self-directed education would look for a teacher, depending on what you teach, you'd probably have a lot fewer kids, who would choose to come to you to learn what it is you're teaching. And your teaching would likely change as the requirements for how you teach and assess teaching would change from being generated by the state to being generated by you and your students.
It is, indeed, a tough one and a bit of a pipe dream, for now. I do think that European style voucher systems are inevitable (along with more and more micro-schools) and I hope we can learn from them how they avoided the predicted pitfalls of such systems.
Anyway, thanks for getting my brain working again and have a great holiday!
Many good points here and Johan is obviously quite brilliant but…
I’ve noticed that when examining one side of the coin the gents tend to emphasize individualism and individual experience. This is Kmele talking about How to Be Anti-Race or Michael brushing off crime statistics because individual people don’t feel safe on the subway or the idea that urban elites paint rural America with too broad a brush when really Kansas is composed of actual individual people (who knew?!)
When it comes to free trade however it’s all stats and efficiency measures. People in Ohio living in a gutted town with the occasional train explosion or hourly worker that gets every raise vaporized by health insurance premiums should just look at this great economic data and understand that actually they’re fine.
As someone who has generally libertarian leanings this is a circle I’m trying to square in my own brain too. Anyway, will try to dig unto the book sometime.
There is a cognitive dissonance here. One thing that's a worsening problem that doesn't seem fed into the calculus - we (and those I talk to) can't find people interested or capable of doing the work we need done in this economy. Meanwhile, there is a growing pool sitting on the sideline, either uninterested in what's out there or uninspired to find purpose or make a living through it. This is not just old men and ladies yelling at clouds about the yoots of today. It is a genuine problem.
Only halfway through, but very interesting conversation so far. Very interested to hear that manufacturing capacity in the United States has doubled since 1990.
Would have love to have asked (or if anyone knows, please pitch in):
1. How has the composition of that manufacturing output changed? (For example, fewer car engines, more jet engines? More espresso machines?)
2. What happens in the event of war? Would the Western powers be as capable of transitioning to wartime production as they were when General Motors was turned on the Third Reich?
In other words, even if China makes 1.5% of the profit on the sale of an iPhone (or some aircraft component, say), is there something very strategically valuable that we're ceding to an increasingly hostile power, should the worst happen?
I just havent seen a libertarian free market work out in any country around the world. In fact, many libertarian utopias that have been attempted have been laughable at best. Im more of a Keynesian social democrat, so I think while annoying to free market apologists, I think a fair amount of regulation in the free market is necessary!
No "libertarian utopias" ever existed, google search or ill-defined term or naught. So let's position your stance appropriately - do nations do better with highly-regulated/closed economies or with less-regulated/open economies? What does the past tell us? What does Sweden, the subject of the discussion, tell us?
Really enjoyed this episode. When are you going to have Russ Roberts on the podcast? Or Moynihan do a one on one episode with him. Tired of your teasing.
Good episode - main gripe which I don’t recall being mentioned: while it’s true that many “anti-capitalists” complain about wealth in general, the other part of that complaint is the means by which the wealthy get wealthy i.e. labor. It’s not simply that innovative idea=wealth but rather innovative idea + labor=wealth. I think the most important/valid part of an “anti-capitalist” critique against free markets is the critique of unfettered capitalism being absolutely brutal when it comes to labor conditions historically. So many workers fought and died to secure such norms as the weekend and the 40-hour work week. I’d be very interested to hear a part ii to this conversation that addresses the brutality of labor conditions over time and what has worked (free market vs. government intervention) to improve those conditions. I think a good part iii to the conversation would be environmental implications of a free market capitalist economy. Thanks lads as always for thought provoking stuff!
Working in the trades I agree that there is an insane labor shortage however I’m suspect of the “people aren’t willing to work” trope because I personally do not know any of these people and also can’t find them. Every once in a while you’ll meet someone who has a cousin who’s boyfriend is on the dole or whatever but can’t find a measurable amount of these mythical beasts anywhere.
Maybe we should allow asylum seekers to work but that would require Congress to get their collective thumb out of their
Sold me on buying his book. I like the thought about conservatives not really caring about free markets, they just had a common enemy against the communists.
I don’t care if Moynihan denies it...he read Eisenhower’s quote about Sweden being a country of suicide, high taxes and FREE SEX, and decided in that moment he would move there one day.
Engaging in (or listening to) a discussion about a topic I know almost nothing about is always interesting. Since I don't already have an opinion on Sweden or any strong sense of socio-political outrage about how it's run, this was a really fun listen. I could just sit back without deciding whether Johan or the boys were right or wrong.
A solid reason to sit on my ass on a Saturday morning with multiple cups of coffee and *not* clean my house for a while. Thanks again, fellas.
I think that one of the reasons why economists get such a bad rap is that when someone comes at them with a moral argument, they tend to come back with a counterargument that’s based on efficiency. E.g. “the rust belt has been hollowed out and people are dying deaths of despair” is countered by “but look at all that sweet sweet MONEY” which makes them sound, well, slightly less than compassionate. I realize that economics is all about the efficient use of limited resources, but maybe a basic worldview standing behind/over/beyond the drive to efficiency would lend the arguments a bit more weight
Yeah I was surprised that when Johan was describing the recent economic conditions after the move away from socialist policies, how most of the tax burden is falling on low to middle earners etc., no one drew a line from there to the rapid expansion of hardcore right and left wing groups as well the explosion in gun violence.
Worth exploring no?
I am not a libertarian, I'd consider myself to be centre-left in a European context, but enjoy listening to other perspectives. And actually find myself agreeing with a lot of the libertarian policies espoused on this podcast. Even so, I found this interview to be a bit fawning and lacking in depth.
David MacWilliams, an Irish economist has been doing 30 mins a week on prominent European countries. I leaned more in the 30 mins on Sweden there than in this episode.
I've been an avid listener for about 3 years now, but finding myself disappointed more and more often. Seems to be an element of complacency and group think setting in.
Still, I'll be tuning into the next episode anyway
Yeah I found that interesting - I’m sure his book has more details, but I couldn’t tell how he felt about Swedens current conditions. Surely a tax base of the poor is bad?
Surely taxes so high you need to hide personal expenses in companies is bad?
Great point. Economists are similar to highly educated theologians living in a secluded monastery during the Middle Ages.
As always, a great and elucidating conversation. BUT!!
Whenever "learning loss" is mentioned as a product of the shutdowns, I get really confused. What is it? What has been "lost?" Humans are always learning. How many of adults remember the chemistry or algebra or history they were forced to take in high school? Is that counted as "learning loss?" Why not? How does one "lose" learning? Usually this happens in adults because they're not using any of the material in their lives. If that's the case, if they live perfectly fine lives without that information, why were they forced, at great expense and stress, to temporarily memorize it in the first place?
I think that "learning loss" is just a way of saying that arbitrary, institutional, and bureaucratic benchmarks for testing purposes aren't being met, and this makes adults nervous. For some reason, we still equate learning with schooling, despite all the kids schools have failed to serve, all the happy successful adults who look at their schooling (especially secondary) as a miserable waste of their time.
The ability of a child to read, or write, or multiply one digit numbers are not "arbitrary benchmarks." These are baseline skills that are gateways to further learning. Schools that fail to teach kids these skills will fail to teach them all the skills that rely on these skills. Some kids - rich kids - whose schools were shut down benefited from personal, educational enrichment from their parents. The rest probably watched YouTube while their parents took the bus to their service sector job. The reason so many smart, successful adults see schooling as a waste of time is because we got a lot of educational opportunities outside of school. For many poor kids, school is it.
Yes and no. "Poor" kids (I hate that kind of generalization) often get awesome opportunities and have a ton more to offer than boring-ass more affluent kids. They often have parents who are much more flexible, handy, and creative in general. Many of my students, while other kids had private tutors and nannies or whatever, built entire vehicles (one kid built a big rig with his dad), helped parents in agriculture, learned how to cut hair, do nails, plumb, do electrical work, and run food trucks. They've taken away an immense amount of learning and growth that no "learning pod" and the best tech could offer. The FAILURE is that the education system refuses to see those things as financially useful and academic, and still pushes the same college-only agenda as they have been since the 80s.
Why can't the time we force kids to learn "baseline skills" be arbitrary? Why do the Scandinavians not teach reading until kids are 7, while we start at 4 and 5? Baseline skills are best obtained by different humans in different ways and at different times of their lives.
There's no evidence whatsoever that all kids best learn the same things in the same ways at the same times in their lives. There's lots of evidence that teaching kids that way not only produces lots of illiteracy, but makes even the literate kids hate school and learning. We agree that the poor kids get it worst of all, because they don't have the choices rich kids do, or the resources for enriching distractions the middle-class enjoys.
So I have one comment about education during the pandemic and a question for you. The comment is: The HUGE issue I have is the national lack of flex during and especially AFTER schools reopened to change the way things are done. There were massive missed opportunities to level the playing field in so many ways (for example, making internet access free and available BY THE STATE to every single household with school-aged children in it - I realize that hedges on pinko, but I think I'm right about this), make changes to what kids (I teach HS) have to take away from the end of primary and secondary ed (i.e. certification, training, college course options, etc.), and evolve out of the 1919 schooling, much of which has been the same since, well, 1919. Instead, countrywide, there were very few if any changes. The push was to return to "normal". I can't say for sure why, but I have my guesses and they are not charming. Districts bleed money to bullshit left and right and then sit back while teachers are blamed for decisions they don't make - the pandemic was no different. ANYWAY...
My question: What are some ways you think would change all this? To say "it's complicated" is an understatement at best. Ditching standardized tests (or changing them by region) has been a ridiculous failure, wheels spinning trying to create tests that apply to maybe some kids in some areas and diversifying every. single. year to accommodate whatever the guess is that kids maybe know in a certain area or demographic (talk about day-drinking certifiable horror show). Often this "testing" is left to teachers to create, by site(!!!) and the information that comes from it can never be used to help kids because it's always different. So how do we, as a giant country, provide public tax-paid education to all children in an equitable (barf) way that ensures national success?
There is also the poverty question, "enriching distractions", and illiteracy. We (OK, *I*) could talk about that shit for hours. But I would love to hear what you think about changes to make (and I'm serious - not being passive or catty here....what do you think?).
These are really important observations, and I don't disagree at all with your pinko-bordering idea (to be fair, the entire concept of public schooling is anti-libertarian, but I believe deeply in it). I'm afraid the changes I think need to be made are so radical as to be practically useless.
I think it's so complicated because we humans, our brains and our minds, are the most complicated thing in the observable universe. We all learn best different things in different ways at different times in our lives, but school is set up as if the opposite is the case.
One of the very few rock-solid findings in psychology is the association between mental health and a sense of control in one's life. School allows for very, very little control on the part of the students. The institution has convinced most people that kids need to be advancing on the same subjects at the same rates doing the same things in order to become educated adults, prepared for college and/or the workplace. It's such an obviously false and failed concept, it's hold on popular conceptions of education is baffling. If education professionals started telling parents to bring in their babies for walking classes, in a generation or two people would think that school was necessary to learn how to walk. But I digress. As I often do...
So, school disallows for the thing, sense of control in one's life, that we KNOW humans need in order to truly thrive. I think the changes we need are so fundamental, it would redefine what school is. School would have to become consent-based in order for it to be effective for most of the kids it's supposed to serve. But I know that's not going to happen anytime in the near future.
So, practically speaking, I think the practice of forcing millions of kids to work for free to temporarily memorize arbitrarily chosen material for the purposes of test-taking is a huge waste of time and resources. The first step to creating a system that truly serves each individual kid would be to let every single kid have an Individualized Education Plan, that they would take part in creating, allowing them the years of practice necessary for someone to learn how to make choices, decisions, and take responsibility for their own education.
I know that there are too many people who don't respect kids enough to allow this to happen, hence, the uselessness of my opinion on the topic. I pretty much have the same attitude that Richard Elmore does, as he describes in this brief video.
https://youtu.be/gE7zAsafmEo?si=ohrGeiMbE04NfNKs
Elmore is dead on, and he uses specific successful examples instead of arbitrary generalizations.
I'm not sure if you are in education, but just a quick FYI: IEPs are legal documents that must be followed to the letter and are subject to extreme legal ramifications if not. Until or unless that changes, IEPs are probably not the best way.
If we take a look at the founding principles of public school and the reasons they were created in the first place (ex: preparation for factory work, which at the time was stable and lucrative enough for people to afford homes, have weekends "off", and buy a new car every once in a while), we see that the workforce needs, higher education, and wealth concentration no longer supports this ideology. But the ed system has changed very little in the last 100 years (except the removal of trade courses like mechanics, woodshop, etc, NOT a gain), so children leaving this system have few useable skills and a national cohort of competition.
Ameya argued that basic academics lend themselves to higher thinking, and that's true, but I'll quote Gerald Graff here: ". . . no necessary connection has ever been established between any text or subject and the educational depth and weight of the discussion it can generate." That was in 2001, so maybe things have changed. Here's the whole paper on this: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/26320/pdf
I would also argue that kids don't "work for free" in school. While there are some resemblances to prison, I think the bigger issue in schools is that what they are told are necessary elements to functioning in our society are archaic and land low-paying jobs. 40 years ago this was not true. 100 years ago it was unimaginable.
Fact of the matter is that those people in charge of making decisions about the state of education don't get to be in charge without a little learning loss of their own. They are so removed from results beyond graphs and charts, lean heavily into spending choices (money bleeding to shit publishing companies and now tech companies looking to reach their hand into that giant bag of money), and make enough money themselves that they and their children never endure the results of their poor policy choices. The unions, while also having a mass of money and an agenda of their own (I pay into it and like when our union negotiates pay raises etc., but divorce myself from their politics), do show that states with strong teacher unions have better ed outcomes (whatever that is), more purposeful use of curriculum, and higher morale.
So ideally yes, every kid making their own choice in what and how they learn would be great. But it's not feasible in the system we have in place. Imagine you have 175 students (my daily cap, and it's full) all with different "ways" of learning, at different levels of learning, with different interests and goals, and a law in place that says I have to ensure that they get what they need. Imagine you make 57G a year (the national average). Imagine you are surrounded by millions of other teachers and students with this situation. Imagine money-grabbing tech and publishing companies offering empathy-based product (ya know, "for the children") that does nothing for student growth in your classes but is nevertheless purchased by higher-ups because they have to spend their money or lose it.
Tough one. Thanks for the convo.
Yes, I should have said "something like" an IEP. It's been 20 years since I taught, in Special Ed.
Thanks for sharing that Graff article! It looks fascinating and I'll be sure to check it out.
Probably have to agree to disagree whether or not kids are working for free in school. I don't mean to imply that none of the work done in school is worthwhile, just a lot of it is for some, and most of it is for others. Doing that useless work involuntarily for the benefit of the institution and its employees could accurately be described with lots of ugly words.
As far as how self-directed education would look for a teacher, depending on what you teach, you'd probably have a lot fewer kids, who would choose to come to you to learn what it is you're teaching. And your teaching would likely change as the requirements for how you teach and assess teaching would change from being generated by the state to being generated by you and your students.
It is, indeed, a tough one and a bit of a pipe dream, for now. I do think that European style voucher systems are inevitable (along with more and more micro-schools) and I hope we can learn from them how they avoided the predicted pitfalls of such systems.
Anyway, thanks for getting my brain working again and have a great holiday!
Many good points here and Johan is obviously quite brilliant but…
I’ve noticed that when examining one side of the coin the gents tend to emphasize individualism and individual experience. This is Kmele talking about How to Be Anti-Race or Michael brushing off crime statistics because individual people don’t feel safe on the subway or the idea that urban elites paint rural America with too broad a brush when really Kansas is composed of actual individual people (who knew?!)
When it comes to free trade however it’s all stats and efficiency measures. People in Ohio living in a gutted town with the occasional train explosion or hourly worker that gets every raise vaporized by health insurance premiums should just look at this great economic data and understand that actually they’re fine.
As someone who has generally libertarian leanings this is a circle I’m trying to square in my own brain too. Anyway, will try to dig unto the book sometime.
There is a cognitive dissonance here. One thing that's a worsening problem that doesn't seem fed into the calculus - we (and those I talk to) can't find people interested or capable of doing the work we need done in this economy. Meanwhile, there is a growing pool sitting on the sideline, either uninterested in what's out there or uninspired to find purpose or make a living through it. This is not just old men and ladies yelling at clouds about the yoots of today. It is a genuine problem.
Only halfway through, but very interesting conversation so far. Very interested to hear that manufacturing capacity in the United States has doubled since 1990.
Would have love to have asked (or if anyone knows, please pitch in):
1. How has the composition of that manufacturing output changed? (For example, fewer car engines, more jet engines? More espresso machines?)
2. What happens in the event of war? Would the Western powers be as capable of transitioning to wartime production as they were when General Motors was turned on the Third Reich?
In other words, even if China makes 1.5% of the profit on the sale of an iPhone (or some aircraft component, say), is there something very strategically valuable that we're ceding to an increasingly hostile power, should the worst happen?
Thanks for a great episode 🙏
Johan Norberg is liberalisms modern hero, and absolutely the best author around!!! Read his books people, start with a bang, and read Open!
Thanks, just bought it.
I just havent seen a libertarian free market work out in any country around the world. In fact, many libertarian utopias that have been attempted have been laughable at best. Im more of a Keynesian social democrat, so I think while annoying to free market apologists, I think a fair amount of regulation in the free market is necessary!
“In fact, many libertarian utopias that have been attempted…”
Which ones in particular are you referencing here?
I havent seen a single example or country where a libertarian utopia has worked out! I guess maybe they weren’t “libertarian” enough
True libertarianism has never been tried. 🤭
I guess that’s why it’s simultaneously laughable and yet an example cannot be identified? I’m going to blame learning loss here.
Dude fucking do a basic Google search
Would it be accurate to say that late nineteenth century USA was essentially a libertarian economy? Virtually no government regulation of the economy.
No "libertarian utopias" ever existed, google search or ill-defined term or naught. So let's position your stance appropriately - do nations do better with highly-regulated/closed economies or with less-regulated/open economies? What does the past tell us? What does Sweden, the subject of the discussion, tell us?
People are more important to me than the market
Markets are pretty important to people.
I don’t know about “utopia,” but Estonia is often heralded as a free-market success story.
Really enjoyed this episode. When are you going to have Russ Roberts on the podcast? Or Moynihan do a one on one episode with him. Tired of your teasing.
Good episode - main gripe which I don’t recall being mentioned: while it’s true that many “anti-capitalists” complain about wealth in general, the other part of that complaint is the means by which the wealthy get wealthy i.e. labor. It’s not simply that innovative idea=wealth but rather innovative idea + labor=wealth. I think the most important/valid part of an “anti-capitalist” critique against free markets is the critique of unfettered capitalism being absolutely brutal when it comes to labor conditions historically. So many workers fought and died to secure such norms as the weekend and the 40-hour work week. I’d be very interested to hear a part ii to this conversation that addresses the brutality of labor conditions over time and what has worked (free market vs. government intervention) to improve those conditions. I think a good part iii to the conversation would be environmental implications of a free market capitalist economy. Thanks lads as always for thought provoking stuff!
Working in the trades I agree that there is an insane labor shortage however I’m suspect of the “people aren’t willing to work” trope because I personally do not know any of these people and also can’t find them. Every once in a while you’ll meet someone who has a cousin who’s boyfriend is on the dole or whatever but can’t find a measurable amount of these mythical beasts anywhere.
Maybe we should allow asylum seekers to work but that would require Congress to get their collective thumb out of their
I like the historian/economist episodes. I continue my request for you to get Bret Devereaux on the pod.
thanks for the link to his e-book on sweden. i'll definitely read that after i'm done my pk dick re-read binge.
there's also a niffy doc on sweden that norberg produced some time back available on yt. just an hour long, & very much worth a look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq3vVbdgMuQ&ab_channel=FreeToChooseNetwork
Yay!
I listened to this whole episode thinking it was Bjørn Lomborg in my head. Sweden, Denmark, close enough.
Sold me on buying his book. I like the thought about conservatives not really caring about free markets, they just had a common enemy against the communists.