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We should subsidize it at community colleges with large cohort sizes and commensurate lower marginal costs. We should not subsidize it at schools trying to pla

We should subsidize it at community colleges with large cohort sizes and commensurate lower marginal costs. We should not subsidize it at schools trying to play the rankings game with artificially small cohort sizes and commensurate high costs to the taxpayer for no additional payoff. Why should we subsidize it at all? Because it's a public good.

rayiner 4y ago
Calling things “public goods” is hand waving to gloss over value judgments. Why is teaching humanities a public good?
- hackerlight 4y ago
  It's a public good because of non-excludable positive externalities on our polity, and that's not reflected in the market price due to market failure. The positive externalities are having voters that understand history, sociology, political science and economics. This is good because it prevents populism and because it creates voters who are able to critically evaluate public policy.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    > This is good because it prevents populism and because it creates voters who are able to critically evaluate public policy. I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. In fact, they’re probably worse. They were the ones pushing Marxism on Americans back in the day and similar insanities today, like eg. demonizing and defunding the police. I believe that it makes them negative externality. Now, you may of course disagree. But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      > I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. They are better at evaluating certain types of policies than STEM graduates. I've met a lot of engineers who are incapable of understanding what a social construct is, or the societal consequences of hate speech, or who don't know what market failure is, or who are totally ignorant of the history of slavery and the indigenous genocide, who don't know anything about international relations, or various other things which are just child's play for humanities graduates which all have deep relevance to certain policies. This shows me that a polity with just STEM graduates and tradespeople is a polity that can't function properly. Without humanities education (whether self-education or otherwise), the only response to Biden talking about "white supremacy" in his speech is pitchforks and fascism, because voters miss the reasons why Biden would make such an utterance. The only response to a carbon tax is pitchforks, because they don't even understand what a market failure is. The only response to transgender protection is pitchforks, because they don't even know what a social construct is. STEM graduates don't know what they don't know, and they label their blind spots as negative externalities out of a combination of supreme arrogance (primarily), ignorance and confusion. Policy evaluation isn't really the main point. The antidote to populism is the point. > demonizing and defunding the police. The topic of police demonstrates my point. It's only people from a humanities background that showed an interest in critiquing the police, and they were the ones running the studies on policing going back decades. The STEM folks had zero interest. They'd rather ignore the situation rather than study and address it. That's why society can't function with just STEM graduates. They don't know what they don't know. > But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good. I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology. And that's about 30% of the population against it by default. Argumentum ad populum. That doesn't detract from the correctness of what I'm saying.
      - xyzzyz 4y ago
        > This shows me that a polity with just STEM graduates and tradespeople is a polity that can't function properly. The word “properly” does a lot of work here. In context of the previous sentences, it most straightforwardly means “it cannot function according to the left-wing likings”. And I very much agree with this: if humanities department (as they currently exists) were actually calling the shots, the society would indeed “function properly”, i.e. it would be left wing in all its policies. However, nobody then should be surprised that the right wingers most certainly do not consider funding humanities departments to be public goods: they believe that what these departments promote is in fact the opposite of good. The rest of your comment is some sort of weird attempt to convince me that the society ran only by STEM grads would actually not be good, which is not the view I ever espoused: note how I added “say, STEM graduates”, which clearly implies that they are just an example. I hope that you do not actually have a humanities degree, otherwise you should ask them for you money back! > I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology. I guess it’s easy to assume that your opponents are just wrong and “toxic” in everything they say, but if you make them understand that a reasoned discussion with you is impossible, given how you dismiss it all a priori, they might come to a conclusion that the only way to achieve their goals is, as Clausewitz said, politics by other means. This is an extremely dangerous way to proceed, and I think you should not be so convinced about your side’s invincibility. The society is negotiated peace, and you’d better work to make future negotiations possible.
  - PubliusMI 4y ago
    Why not go the other way and restrict the franchise to those who have obtained themselves an education?
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > It's a public good because of non-excludable positive externalities on our polity, and that's not reflected in the market price due to market failure. The positive externalities are having voters that understand history, sociology, political science and economics. That's nice positive externalities to have, but not once have I seen any evidence that the average humanities graduate possesses those qualities you claim they have. IOW, it's a nice thing to have, but what makes you think that it comes from a humanities degree?

rayiner 4y ago

Calling things “public goods” is hand waving to gloss over value judgments. Why is teaching humanities a public good?

hackerlight 4y ago
It's a public good because of non-excludable positive externalities on our polity, and that's not reflected in the market price due to market failure. The positive externalities are having voters that understand history, sociology, political science and economics. This is good because it prevents populism and because it creates voters who are able to critically evaluate public policy.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  > This is good because it prevents populism and because it creates voters who are able to critically evaluate public policy. I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. In fact, they’re probably worse. They were the ones pushing Marxism on Americans back in the day and similar insanities today, like eg. demonizing and defunding the police. I believe that it makes them negative externality. Now, you may of course disagree. But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    > I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. They are better at evaluating certain types of policies than STEM graduates. I've met a lot of engineers who are incapable of understanding what a social construct is, or the societal consequences of hate speech, or who don't know what market failure is, or who are totally ignorant of the history of slavery and the indigenous genocide, who don't know anything about international relations, or various other things which are just child's play for humanities graduates which all have deep relevance to certain policies. This shows me that a polity with just STEM graduates and tradespeople is a polity that can't function properly. Without humanities education (whether self-education or otherwise), the only response to Biden talking about "white supremacy" in his speech is pitchforks and fascism, because voters miss the reasons why Biden would make such an utterance. The only response to a carbon tax is pitchforks, because they don't even understand what a market failure is. The only response to transgender protection is pitchforks, because they don't even know what a social construct is. STEM graduates don't know what they don't know, and they label their blind spots as negative externalities out of a combination of supreme arrogance (primarily), ignorance and confusion. Policy evaluation isn't really the main point. The antidote to populism is the point. > demonizing and defunding the police. The topic of police demonstrates my point. It's only people from a humanities background that showed an interest in critiquing the police, and they were the ones running the studies on policing going back decades. The STEM folks had zero interest. They'd rather ignore the situation rather than study and address it. That's why society can't function with just STEM graduates. They don't know what they don't know. > But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good. I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology. And that's about 30% of the population against it by default. Argumentum ad populum. That doesn't detract from the correctness of what I'm saying.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      > This shows me that a polity with just STEM graduates and tradespeople is a polity that can't function properly. The word “properly” does a lot of work here. In context of the previous sentences, it most straightforwardly means “it cannot function according to the left-wing likings”. And I very much agree with this: if humanities department (as they currently exists) were actually calling the shots, the society would indeed “function properly”, i.e. it would be left wing in all its policies. However, nobody then should be surprised that the right wingers most certainly do not consider funding humanities departments to be public goods: they believe that what these departments promote is in fact the opposite of good. The rest of your comment is some sort of weird attempt to convince me that the society ran only by STEM grads would actually not be good, which is not the view I ever espoused: note how I added “say, STEM graduates”, which clearly implies that they are just an example. I hope that you do not actually have a humanities degree, otherwise you should ask them for you money back! > I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology. I guess it’s easy to assume that your opponents are just wrong and “toxic” in everything they say, but if you make them understand that a reasoned discussion with you is impossible, given how you dismiss it all a priori, they might come to a conclusion that the only way to achieve their goals is, as Clausewitz said, politics by other means. This is an extremely dangerous way to proceed, and I think you should not be so convinced about your side’s invincibility. The society is negotiated peace, and you’d better work to make future negotiations possible.
- PubliusMI 4y ago
  Why not go the other way and restrict the franchise to those who have obtained themselves an education?
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > It's a public good because of non-excludable positive externalities on our polity, and that's not reflected in the market price due to market failure. The positive externalities are having voters that understand history, sociology, political science and economics. That's nice positive externalities to have, but not once have I seen any evidence that the average humanities graduate possesses those qualities you claim they have. IOW, it's a nice thing to have, but what makes you think that it comes from a humanities degree?