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Emotionally this sounds appealing. But it seems to me that htis is just another example of the kind of government that brought California to bankruptcy. Govern
by CWuestefeld 17y ago
Emotionally this sounds appealing.
But it seems to me that htis is just another example of the kind of government that brought California to bankruptcy. Governing by emotional appeals to the way our values tell us the world should behave is not a recipe for success in a world that behaves as the chips fall.
More to the point, read Friedrich Hayek's The Fatal Conceit for a discussion of the hubris of believing that we can engineer a world to our liking, and that this world be at all sustainable.
- Alex3917 17y agoExactly. Why should the government be spending more on the school system than on prisons? There isn't even a real argument, it's just being taken as a given. If anything improving the prison system should be given higher priority than fixing the college system, because prisoners have to be there. They don't have a choice. Whereas students can just opt out of college, or else go to a private college.
- bilbo0s 17y agoVery good point.
- jfornear 17y agoI think this idea is premised on the notion that there may be an inverse relationship between education and crime. http://www.jstor.org/pss/27529879 http://www.jstor.org/pss/27529879
- hugh_ 17y agoAre the folks in prison really the same folks who would otherwise be attending the University of California? I think they're generally pretty different demographics. Better K-6 education could probably decrease crime, if we can turn the illiterate, shiftless dullards who make up the lower rungs of society into literate and hardworking (if still dull) citizens. But this requires more a new educational strategy rather than just more money, and I don't know if anyone has thought of a good one yet.
- Alex3917 17y agoAt the risk of being pedantic, the study you cite is about educational attainment vs incarceration, not education vs crime.