“Teacher licensure is a function of government. And, as such, it satisfies a political motive, and nothing else.” Jim Fedako from antipositivist.
Just FYI–a few days ago I got a new computer onto which I loaded the Linux system. It loaded quickly and cheaply (zero cost) and connected to the internet immediately. I mention this because, in the last year, I had occasion to connect two computers to the internet using Windows XP. In spite of being fairly computer savvy, it took a total of at least 10 hours to accomplish these two connections. In one, I simply moved a previously-connected computer from work to home–still took 5 hours. This is relevant here because Microsoft seems to have a monopoly on operating systems. It does not and never had, but has attracted attentions from the “regulators” in the U.S. and the EU.
If the top 500 companies are listed, 20 years later, few of them will still exist. The regulators are redundant. The same kind of wastage and contraction experienced by Microsoft will take care of monopolies which will be competed out of existence. Government monopolies, such as education, go on forever.
from the book: Shadow Dancing
on the Grave of Hope:
What is acceptable in the social services would be unsatisfactory in consumer technologies, engineering, food, or any other industry in which products must be satisfactory or not be purchased. None of the following, of course, could happen because their areas operate under the umbrella of (mostly) free enterprise. If most of the bread you bought was inedible, if your internet provider could only connect you some of the time, if your new car needed to be towed every 5,000 miles, if your washer repair took eight years and lasted three weeks and if your new computer ran at the same speed as one a decade older, the reactions would be predictable. What would you say if the people doing this said they were experts because of long experience, that what they did was OK because most people agreed with them and their plans for failed enterprises represented the best of social justice and modern logic? Would you be convinced or would you notice that they couldn’t do what they said they could? Would you demand that they do much better? What would happen if the "new, improved" product did not work as well as the one you were forced to replace? If any other, non-governmental industry turned out as many defective products as the social services, the courts would be even more crowded than they are. You cannot, of course, sue any government entity from individual employee to entire departments for failure, so the courts, and incompetence, remain undisturbed.
Cults denigrate non-believers, try to manipulate facts, spread hysterical propaganda, do what is necessary to maintain the flow of government money, try to force their views on others so they can take their right, and righteous place as the leaders of the non-virtuous proles and keep up the recruitment of true believers. No data from outside the Blessed Circle are allowed in. Those who currently believe themselves to be the Masters of the Universe lecture the Unanointed with the disapproving tone and words of an intellectually limited, chronically scornful, schoolteacher. When you take government money you get infected by politics whose symptoms include rhetoric and lack of results. Men react to situations in predictable ways. History hasn’t changed and it won’t because human tendencies don’t change.
If the social sciences were to follow the trends of computers and other successful consumer products, they would center on products that are expensive to develop, but cheap to produce. Techniques would not be tried en masse until they were developed to the point of working quickly and well. In operations such as teaching, rehabilitation and therapy, the productivity increase would come in terms of effectiveness and decreased time. Most procedures in the social sciences come from epiphany, which is cheap, and are applied to thousands or, in the case of education, millions, which is extremely expensive, especially when they are ineffective or so inefficient that much more time is wasted than used.
Almost any government intervention will produce results which are inefficient and eventually chaotic, although the reverence for such interventions continues on its unstoppable course. One wonders why this is true, but true it is. Underlying it is undoubtedly the love of INTEND, the propaganda of IS and the neglect of DOES. Government forays into the social sciences have always delivered outcomes humorous, tragic, or both.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
