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Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if o
by lazaroclapp 11y ago
Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. Regardless of what it says about individuals, as a measure of the success of a nation, the amount of luxury cars it consumes indicates very little[1]; the reasoning skills and knowledge of their average citizen is a far more indicative of the capacity of a nation.
Now, you can argue that formal higher education is not the only way to instill that knowledge and skills, and also varies widely between education systems. That much is true. But the point is to get easy to measure proxies for what you are really trying to measure. Does the amount of people that go through public education predict the average level of knowledge and reasoning of that country's citizenship better or worse than looking at the amount of things they produce and sell? (not a rhetorical question, both answers can be supported, and each leads you to either HDI or GDP as a "better" measure.)
[1] Well, very little compared to what GDP+GINI would tell you
- hueving 11y ago> Well, very little compared to what GDP+GINI would tell you Well that's a bogus comparison. You would have to compare to GDP + luxury cars.
- lazaroclapp 11y agoThe idea is that a hypothetical Lamborghini-index would give you information that is essentially a tiny subset of what you'd already know from GDP+GINI. So you can compare GDP+GINI to GDP+GINI+luxury cars and conclude there is no advantage of having the extra information. It basically tells you "there are at least n people in this country who can afford a Lamborghini, furthermore if you assume that r percent of people who can afford a Lamborghini actually buy one, then this country has approx m=r*n such people". But basic economic data already lets you estimate m fairly well, so what's the need for knowing n? Perhaps if r varies a lot between countries knowing the actual number of cars gives you some extra information about how much that country in particular values cars as symbols of status. But, would that be useful? Either way, this is very tangential to the point I was trying to make, which is that education and cars are not equal measures of the development of a society and that an educated population is more that some sort of social status scorecard :)
- hueving 11y agoNo, my point is that you would have to compare GDP+GINI to GDP+luxury car.
- yummyfajitas 11y agoReducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. What evidence do you have of this? Further, even if true, you are still measuring the inputs rather than the outputs. Energy consumption is also highly correlated with the technological and social development of a civilization, but it would be as silly thing to include.