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> It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. To expand this more globally - anything that

by mbesto 2y ago

> It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. To expand this more globally - anything that requires human interaction fails at scale. Healthcare, trade skills, education, housing, etc. is all "failing" to some degree no matter how much technology we throw at it. The costs continually go up and the value isn't paired to it.

jppope 2y ago
Seems like you're listing highly regulated industries not human interaction.
- consteval 2y ago
  These industries, more or less, need to be highly regulated because we've faced the alternative and it's worse. The quality of education went up SIGNFICANTLY when the state took more control over it.
  - seabass-labrax 2y ago
    Part of that is questionable, because the state gets to set the means by which the quality of education is measured. However, a more objective measure is the extent of education; certainly, the introduction of national education has always produced a much greater literacy rate.
    - consteval 2y ago
      The thing is extent and execution are intrinsically linked. Meaning, unregulated markets mean the extent will be limited because people will just choose not to get educated. Which makes sense, if they themselves are uneducated they don't have perfect reasoning skills or future outlook. A market relies on the participants having visibility and ability. They need to see the alternatives, understand them deeply, and have access to them. Turns out you can't do that in a bunch of markets, education being one of them. So, it can never be a true free market.
  - snowfarthing 2y ago
    Did it really improve, though? There's evidence that Colonial/Revolutionary-Era American populace was highly educated, and that education had been gradually going downhill as the United States gradually adopted the Prussian model of education -- an education system designed to produce loyal soldiers and interchangeable worker widgets. There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure". Yet there is this endless cycle of increasing regulation, where a politician or bureaucrat identifies a problem with the market -- real or imagined -- and then offers a solution. That solution the situation even worse, but politicians and bureaucrats will blame this on "market failure", and then insist on another solution ... and so it goes. Yes, it's true that some regulation is necessary. But how much effort is put into place to make sure that the regulations put in place do what they are supposed to do? What effort is put into place to identify the nasty side effects of otherwise good regulations? The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed. And that's even before we get into the fact that regulations have their limits: people can handle only so many rules, particularly if they are onerous, and will start ignoring regulations when it's the only way to get things done. An example of this is a report from the FAA, where they identified around 2,000 pilots who didn't report disqualifying health conditions. Why? Because the conditions were quickly resolved, and their livelihoods depended on flying, so they didn't want to go through the hassle of waiting three months for their license to fly to be cleared again. What's worse, of the 2,000 or so pilots who did this, only 4 or so had serious-enough conditions that they shouldn't have been flying!
    - consteval 2y ago
      > Did it really improve, though? Yes. > There's evidence that Colonial/Revolutionary-Era American populace was highly educated I've never seen this evidence, but to speculate: probably since the colonist were, well, colonists, and literally building every industry from the ground up, they had to be. After this though, in the 19th century, we knew most people could not read or write. > an education system designed to produce loyal soldiers and interchangeable worker widgets True, but worker widgets who can read. > There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure" I experience the opposite, but granted I live in Texas. The default mode is regulations are bad, and the less the better. > The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed It's not an assumption, it's an observation. When it comes to education and others. The thing is the free market relies on there being a free market. Not every market can be a free market. That's a problem. I've already explained how education can never be a free market above, but another example is healthcare. I can't compete in healthcare because of the HUGE time investment in schooling. I also have zero choice as a consumer - I just go to the nearest hospital. There's also no visibility in price because you have to diagnose me first, and that can be wrong or things can pop up later. Healthcare is not, and will never be, a free market. Even now the US has a largely socialized healthcare system, it just so happens to be the worst socialized healthcare system. Primarily because we've handed it off to the private sector, who have incentives to actually make it worse. Meaning, insurance thrives when you receive less care. The inefficiency is built into the profit motive, and you can't get around it.
- hackable_sand 2y ago
  > anything that requires human interaction fails at scale
- hooverd 2y ago
  Regulations are neutral. Some are bullshit. Some are written in blood.
czinck 2y ago
To put a name on this, it's the Baumol effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect. Essentially, as productivity increases in most industries (from automation), it drives up labor costs in the industries that can't be automated (healthcare, education, performing arts, etc), which drives up the price of those services (healthcare), or drives down the quality to find a market clearing price (increasing student to teacher ratios).
floatrock 2y ago
> anything that requires human interaction fails at scale What do you mean by "fails"? It doesn't have the zero-marginal-cost dynamic favored by the investor class of the tech industry? Don't confuse "you can't scale human interactions" with "human interaction fails at scale". The former is talking about the venture-capital-accelerated winner-takes-all business strategy, the latter is a misunderstanding of civil societies and living a rewarding life because you can only envision such things through the lens of owning a zero-marginal-cost process.
firejake308 2y ago
I understand education and healthcare, but how do trade skills and housing require human interaction? For housing especially, a lot of foreign/remote investors can own houses and just collect rent checks from tenants in a pretty hand-off manner. Housing is supply-limited, sure, and heavily regulated, sure, but I don't think it requires human interaction, and certainly not to the scale of education or healthcare.
- mbesto 2y ago
  > trade skills Who installs pipes, builds walls, installs electrical conduits? Humans. > just collect rent checks from tenants in a pretty hand-off manner Dwellings still require regular power, heat, security, support and regular maintenance. Those all require human beings.
naijaboiler 2y ago
Is not the absolute cost that goes up per se. It’s the cost relative to cost of things that scale. Education, nursing care, even doctoring all have significant human to human interaction at a personal level for there to be success. When the cost of other things like commodities drop 100x, those human interactions services don’t and therefore become relatively more expensive even despite massive productivity gains those fields

by mbesto 2y ago

jppope 2y ago

Seems like you're listing highly regulated industries not human interaction.

consteval 2y ago
These industries, more or less, need to be highly regulated because we've faced the alternative and it's worse. The quality of education went up SIGNFICANTLY when the state took more control over it.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  Part of that is questionable, because the state gets to set the means by which the quality of education is measured. However, a more objective measure is the extent of education; certainly, the introduction of national education has always produced a much greater literacy rate.
  - consteval 2y ago
    The thing is extent and execution are intrinsically linked. Meaning, unregulated markets mean the extent will be limited because people will just choose not to get educated. Which makes sense, if they themselves are uneducated they don't have perfect reasoning skills or future outlook. A market relies on the participants having visibility and ability. They need to see the alternatives, understand them deeply, and have access to them. Turns out you can't do that in a bunch of markets, education being one of them. So, it can never be a true free market.
- snowfarthing 2y ago
  Did it really improve, though? There's evidence that Colonial/Revolutionary-Era American populace was highly educated, and that education had been gradually going downhill as the United States gradually adopted the Prussian model of education -- an education system designed to produce loyal soldiers and interchangeable worker widgets. There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure". Yet there is this endless cycle of increasing regulation, where a politician or bureaucrat identifies a problem with the market -- real or imagined -- and then offers a solution. That solution the situation even worse, but politicians and bureaucrats will blame this on "market failure", and then insist on another solution ... and so it goes. Yes, it's true that some regulation is necessary. But how much effort is put into place to make sure that the regulations put in place do what they are supposed to do? What effort is put into place to identify the nasty side effects of otherwise good regulations? The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed. And that's even before we get into the fact that regulations have their limits: people can handle only so many rules, particularly if they are onerous, and will start ignoring regulations when it's the only way to get things done. An example of this is a report from the FAA, where they identified around 2,000 pilots who didn't report disqualifying health conditions. Why? Because the conditions were quickly resolved, and their livelihoods depended on flying, so they didn't want to go through the hassle of waiting three months for their license to fly to be cleared again. What's worse, of the 2,000 or so pilots who did this, only 4 or so had serious-enough conditions that they shouldn't have been flying!
  - consteval 2y ago
    > Did it really improve, though? Yes. > There's evidence that Colonial/Revolutionary-Era American populace was highly educated I've never seen this evidence, but to speculate: probably since the colonist were, well, colonists, and literally building every industry from the ground up, they had to be. After this though, in the 19th century, we knew most people could not read or write. > an education system designed to produce loyal soldiers and interchangeable worker widgets True, but worker widgets who can read. > There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure" I experience the opposite, but granted I live in Texas. The default mode is regulations are bad, and the less the better. > The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed It's not an assumption, it's an observation. When it comes to education and others. The thing is the free market relies on there being a free market. Not every market can be a free market. That's a problem. I've already explained how education can never be a free market above, but another example is healthcare. I can't compete in healthcare because of the HUGE time investment in schooling. I also have zero choice as a consumer - I just go to the nearest hospital. There's also no visibility in price because you have to diagnose me first, and that can be wrong or things can pop up later. Healthcare is not, and will never be, a free market. Even now the US has a largely socialized healthcare system, it just so happens to be the worst socialized healthcare system. Primarily because we've handed it off to the private sector, who have incentives to actually make it worse. Meaning, insurance thrives when you receive less care. The inefficiency is built into the profit motive, and you can't get around it.
hackable_sand 2y ago
> anything that requires human interaction fails at scale
hooverd 2y ago
Regulations are neutral. Some are bullshit. Some are written in blood.

czinck 2y ago

To put a name on this, it's the Baumol effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect. Essentially, as productivity increases in most industries (from automation), it drives up labor costs in the industries that can't be automated (healthcare, education, performing arts, etc), which drives up the price of those services (healthcare), or drives down the quality to find a market clearing price (increasing student to teacher ratios).

floatrock 2y ago

> anything that requires human interaction fails at scale What do you mean by "fails"? It doesn't have the zero-marginal-cost dynamic favored by the investor class of the tech industry? Don't confuse "you can't scale human interactions" with "human interaction fails at scale". The former is talking about the venture-capital-accelerated winner-takes-all business strategy, the latter is a misunderstanding of civil societies and living a rewarding life because you can only envision such things through the lens of owning a zero-marginal-cost process.

firejake308 2y ago

I understand education and healthcare, but how do trade skills and housing require human interaction? For housing especially, a lot of foreign/remote investors can own houses and just collect rent checks from tenants in a pretty hand-off manner. Housing is supply-limited, sure, and heavily regulated, sure, but I don't think it requires human interaction, and certainly not to the scale of education or healthcare.

mbesto 2y ago
> trade skills Who installs pipes, builds walls, installs electrical conduits? Humans. > just collect rent checks from tenants in a pretty hand-off manner Dwellings still require regular power, heat, security, support and regular maintenance. Those all require human beings.

naijaboiler 2y ago

Is not the absolute cost that goes up per se. It’s the cost relative to cost of things that scale. Education, nursing care, even doctoring all have significant human to human interaction at a personal level for there to be success. When the cost of other things like commodities drop 100x, those human interactions services don’t and therefore become relatively more expensive even despite massive productivity gains those fields