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The problem is simple. Teachers teach because they want to teach, administrators "administrate" for the money. And that's where it goes. The market won't work

The problem is simple. Teachers teach because they want to teach, administrators "administrate" for the money. And that's where it goes. The market won't work right for teachers because some of them would do it for free if they had some other way to eat. To fix it will take more than administration. It will take leadership.

zanny 12y ago
> because some of them would do it for free if they had some other way to eat. Then I fail to see what the problem is. Obviously, there is an oversupply of teaching staff, or else wages would be higher since good professors would be a scarce commodity. That obviously is not the case, thus wages fall. I guess when you have an excess of a generation going to college on false debt, you get an excess of teachers too. I'd imagine of the college going populace instructors make up a significant fraction.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >Then I fail to see what the problem is. That's because you're thinking like a market rather than a human being.
  - thejdude 12y ago
    Wow. HN really IS the reddit of a few years ago... You can have your opinion, but if you can't behave in public, please bury your ad-hominem s___ in someone else's backyard.
    - base698 12y ago
      It's not really an ad hominem. I took it more as the reasoning in "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets."
      - thejdude 12y ago
        Ok. It sounded pretty harsh over here. Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them. Not all reasons or incentives for actions in a market have to be monetary. IOW: if something is of value to people, it will usually be done. If that doesn't happen, usually people say they want something, but do not really care that much.
        base698 12y ago
        I don't really get what you are saying. The book I mentioned has some interesting arguments and anecdotes. One is also in Predictably Irrational: in short parents were always late picking up the kids from day care. The day care decided to issue a fine for late parents. The unintended consequences of this were that the parents were way more late on average because they felt they were paying for it. It switched the system from one based on social norms to market norms. At ball games everyone used to be forced into the same shitty seats. Now the well to do get a pass and have luxury seats with better food and views. Instead of fostering community it further alienates the rich and the poor. This leads to a filter bubble of sorts that prevents both groups from empathizing with each other. Same with courts and the legal system, fasttrak lanes, free shows put on that have secondary markets.
        thejdude 12y ago
        I didn't get that you were talking about a book, sorry. If you say that basing all interactions around money or segregating people into different groups that get different service can be a bad idea, I agree.
        eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        >Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them. No, they're the sum of the constitutive people, minus all the parts that don't deal with property, trade, contracts, and debt, plus distortions added by institutional arrangements.
        12y ago
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      >HN really IS the reddit of a few years ago... I would say the same damn thing regarding the knee-jerk right-wing proprietarianism, except that rich Bay Area techies have had a tendency towards the less-well-considered forms of "wannabe ubermensch" libertarianism for a long time now. If you pointed out that leftists cluster on Reddit you <i>wouldn't even be correct</i>, as Reddit was pretty unambiguously rooting for Ron Paul in the past couple of elections.
      - thejdude 12y ago
        I was talking about the tone, which sounded like a personal attack to me. HN used to have a more civil conversational tone. Reddit always seemed divided to me, lots of leftists and lots of libertarians. Maybe the Paulians were noisier and more visible. HN seems a bit more libertarian to me, maybe because people here have higher incomes.
        eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        The tone was, I admit it, meant to be harsh. The reason for that is precisely because the high-income techno-libertarians feel entitled to be blithe about it. There's something irritatingly privileged about ideologies with lots of money behind them, that by some wondrous magic they are allowed to utter assertions where others (with less money them) are required to set out extensive proofs, and the most unpopular (who have basically no money) are required to display conclusive empirical evidence.
        dang 12y ago
        > The tone was, I admit it, meant to be harsh. The reason for that is precisely because the high-income techno-libertarians feel entitled to be blithe about it. Please don't. Being harsh is not a good way to argue against blithe nonsense. It's a way to corrode the discourse and ruin the community [1]. If you're patient and reasonable, there's at least a small chance that you'll evoke that quality in others. If you're harsh, the chance of provoking the same and worse is high. 1. That particular comment was actually relatively mild. This is a personal appeal to drop the harsh tone on HN in general.

zanny 12y ago

> because some of them would do it for free if they had some other way to eat. Then I fail to see what the problem is. Obviously, there is an oversupply of teaching staff, or else wages would be higher since good professors would be a scarce commodity. That obviously is not the case, thus wages fall. I guess when you have an excess of a generation going to college on false debt, you get an excess of teachers too. I'd imagine of the college going populace instructors make up a significant fraction.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>Then I fail to see what the problem is. That's because you're thinking like a market rather than a human being.
- thejdude 12y ago
  Wow. HN really IS the reddit of a few years ago... You can have your opinion, but if you can't behave in public, please bury your ad-hominem s___ in someone else's backyard.
  - base698 12y ago
    It's not really an ad hominem. I took it more as the reasoning in "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets."
    - thejdude 12y ago
      Ok. It sounded pretty harsh over here. Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them. Not all reasons or incentives for actions in a market have to be monetary. IOW: if something is of value to people, it will usually be done. If that doesn't happen, usually people say they want something, but do not really care that much.
      - base698 12y ago
        I don't really get what you are saying. The book I mentioned has some interesting arguments and anecdotes. One is also in Predictably Irrational: in short parents were always late picking up the kids from day care. The day care decided to issue a fine for late parents. The unintended consequences of this were that the parents were way more late on average because they felt they were paying for it. It switched the system from one based on social norms to market norms. At ball games everyone used to be forced into the same shitty seats. Now the well to do get a pass and have luxury seats with better food and views. Instead of fostering community it further alienates the rich and the poor. This leads to a filter bubble of sorts that prevents both groups from empathizing with each other. Same with courts and the legal system, fasttrak lanes, free shows put on that have secondary markets.
        thejdude 12y ago
        I didn't get that you were talking about a book, sorry. If you say that basing all interactions around money or segregating people into different groups that get different service can be a bad idea, I agree.
      - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        >Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them. No, they're the sum of the constitutive people, minus all the parts that don't deal with property, trade, contracts, and debt, plus distortions added by institutional arrangements.
        12y ago
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >HN really IS the reddit of a few years ago... I would say the same damn thing regarding the knee-jerk right-wing proprietarianism, except that rich Bay Area techies have had a tendency towards the less-well-considered forms of "wannabe ubermensch" libertarianism for a long time now. If you pointed out that leftists cluster on Reddit you <i>wouldn't even be correct</i>, as Reddit was pretty unambiguously rooting for Ron Paul in the past couple of elections.
    - thejdude 12y ago
      I was talking about the tone, which sounded like a personal attack to me. HN used to have a more civil conversational tone. Reddit always seemed divided to me, lots of leftists and lots of libertarians. Maybe the Paulians were noisier and more visible. HN seems a bit more libertarian to me, maybe because people here have higher incomes.
      - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        The tone was, I admit it, meant to be harsh. The reason for that is precisely because the high-income techno-libertarians feel entitled to be blithe about it. There's something irritatingly privileged about ideologies with lots of money behind them, that by some wondrous magic they are allowed to utter assertions where others (with less money them) are required to set out extensive proofs, and the most unpopular (who have basically no money) are required to display conclusive empirical evidence.
        dang 12y ago
        > The tone was, I admit it, meant to be harsh. The reason for that is precisely because the high-income techno-libertarians feel entitled to be blithe about it. Please don't. Being harsh is not a good way to argue against blithe nonsense. It's a way to corrode the discourse and ruin the community [1]. If you're patient and reasonable, there's at least a small chance that you'll evoke that quality in others. If you're harsh, the chance of provoking the same and worse is high. 1. That particular comment was actually relatively mild. This is a personal appeal to drop the harsh tone on HN in general.