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The author also has a huge blind spot for treating the world like it's a computer program where you can just increment everybody's account by $100,000 in educat
by Noumenon72 10y ago
The author also has a huge blind spot for treating the world like it's a computer program where you can just increment everybody's account by $100,000 in education coupons and there will be no taxation effects, bubbles, scams, or opportunity costs. No understanding of economic incentives, no humility about the difficulty of social engineering, no respect for freedom. "Let's require all businesses to hire 14% apprentices, this will inevitably have exactly one effect, the positive one I envision. We won't require any input from the people I am commanding to carry out my untested plan."
Like you say, for this to get upvoted there must be a high demand for sweeping, uninformed radical change.
- figushki 10y agoI'd like to propose a Star Trek test. A lot of people get extremely worked up when sci-fi cooks up something entirely unrealistic, and Hollywood has all manner of advisors on call just to keep fans from jumping down their throats. People in computer programming professions should extend the same courtesy to the social sciences we expect from Hollywood. There's no reason for Hollywood to care that they're making stuff up, but they have enough shame to care that their imaginary worlds pass the sniff test. Our pronouncements on education, politics, and economics should require us to do the same.