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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 posit

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.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      You seem to strangely think that the liberal arts uniquely boosts left-wing policy as if that's not true for knowledge and education generally. The glimmer of fact you've observed is that useful domains inform change, and change happens to be advocated for by the left most of the time. Medical sciences, part of traditional STEM, informed the covid response, and surprise, the reactionaries were against that. Climatology, same story. Transgender treatment, which is psychiatry and peadiatrics, same story. So it's not liberal arts per se. It's just facts of the world that justify change, and reactionaries who are opposed to any change (unless it points in the direction of allowing negative externalities such as pollution to persist or right-wing authoritarianism) regardless of the discipline it's informed by, STEM or liberal arts. Further, neoclassical economics is typically considered a centre-right or at least neoliberal paradigm and is taught to all econ students. The way of addressing market failure that I mentioned (e.g carbon tax) is actually a right wing preferred response to climate change. It's only the hard right which doesn't understand this and opposes a carbon tax. Perfect example of the need for liberal arts. The educated old-school fiscal conservatives know better. Because they are educated in these topics. International relations which can inform non-pacifist intervention is taught by the liberal arts. At least this domain is not tied to the left-right spectrum in any way. It's simply informing foreign policy. It's pretty valuable to have voters who know foreign policy, left or right! The solution, going by your opinion that no left-wing boosting thing should be funded, is clearly not to defund climatology, medicine, sociology, history, economics and international relations. You don't stop agitation for change. You just get uninformed agitation like the Bolsheviks. A smart left that is capable of picking and choosing what to change is a necessity, because their moral impulse to drive needed change in the face of perceived unfairness isn't going away by removing their education. "I guess it’s easy to assume that your opponents are just wrong and “toxic” in everything they say" I assume the nationalists and polluters to be wrong and toxic, yeah. There's such a thing as the false balance fallacy. Not everyone is extended a hand of understanding if they are actively dumping waste into my backyard and lobbying for policies to enable that. I consider myself to be center-right economically, in favor of lower taxes and lean regulation and smaller entitlements, so my comment is about the anti-intellectual reactionary right. I can see eye to eye with non-science denying anti-authoritarians individualists (which is to mean non-nationalists, for example, because nationalism is a collectivist morality) on both the left and the right.
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?

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.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    You seem to strangely think that the liberal arts uniquely boosts left-wing policy as if that's not true for knowledge and education generally. The glimmer of fact you've observed is that useful domains inform change, and change happens to be advocated for by the left most of the time. Medical sciences, part of traditional STEM, informed the covid response, and surprise, the reactionaries were against that. Climatology, same story. Transgender treatment, which is psychiatry and peadiatrics, same story. So it's not liberal arts per se. It's just facts of the world that justify change, and reactionaries who are opposed to any change (unless it points in the direction of allowing negative externalities such as pollution to persist or right-wing authoritarianism) regardless of the discipline it's informed by, STEM or liberal arts. Further, neoclassical economics is typically considered a centre-right or at least neoliberal paradigm and is taught to all econ students. The way of addressing market failure that I mentioned (e.g carbon tax) is actually a right wing preferred response to climate change. It's only the hard right which doesn't understand this and opposes a carbon tax. Perfect example of the need for liberal arts. The educated old-school fiscal conservatives know better. Because they are educated in these topics. International relations which can inform non-pacifist intervention is taught by the liberal arts. At least this domain is not tied to the left-right spectrum in any way. It's simply informing foreign policy. It's pretty valuable to have voters who know foreign policy, left or right! The solution, going by your opinion that no left-wing boosting thing should be funded, is clearly not to defund climatology, medicine, sociology, history, economics and international relations. You don't stop agitation for change. You just get uninformed agitation like the Bolsheviks. A smart left that is capable of picking and choosing what to change is a necessity, because their moral impulse to drive needed change in the face of perceived unfairness isn't going away by removing their education. "I guess it’s easy to assume that your opponents are just wrong and “toxic” in everything they say" I assume the nationalists and polluters to be wrong and toxic, yeah. There's such a thing as the false balance fallacy. Not everyone is extended a hand of understanding if they are actively dumping waste into my backyard and lobbying for policies to enable that. I consider myself to be center-right economically, in favor of lower taxes and lean regulation and smaller entitlements, so my comment is about the anti-intellectual reactionary right. I can see eye to eye with non-science denying anti-authoritarians individualists (which is to mean non-nationalists, for example, because nationalism is a collectivist morality) on both the left and the right.

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?