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Tyler Cowen had Dan Wang (author of Breakneck, originator of the 'China is run by engineers, US is run by lawyers' meme) on his podcast last week. IMO, Tyler's podcast is at it's best when he's debating rather than interviewing, part of why his year-end reviews are some of his best episodes. It's particularly interesting watching someone intelligent actually defend America and moreover champion causes that inevitably would code as lower-status to the intellectual class.
tl;dr, Tyler's views —
Massive quotes incoming. Skip ahead if you don't want to read Tyler's arguments:
And honestly, this seems to me to be the revealed preferences of most people. Europeans and Chinese who move to the US largely move to the burbs and buy the big car even while (at least the former) tut-tutting about how barbaric it all is. People, at least once they hit a certain age, want the SFH and the big yard with the fence and the space to raise their children.
On the pandemic and vaccines:
And yet. And yet! At one point we have this brief exchange:
I can buy some of Tyler's takes, and as I mentioned it's refreshing to see an actual contrarian take about the competence of America. But at some point, it just transcends a contrarian take into cope territory. Why are we complacently accepting that China is going to be the global center for auto manufacturing on top of drones and everything else? Life might be good now, but if China is just 1950s America, and 1950s America was just 19th century Britain, aren't we headed for the same stagnation and broad irrelevance of the UK today?
Maybe some of the catastrophizing about China is overwrought and some of America's apparent weaknesses are just the invisible hand of the market moving in mysterious ways, while the gleaming bridges and HSR to nowhere are albatross projects and a drag on growth. Maybe our apparent decadence and vice are really just the product of a system optimized for giving it's people a good life, while Chinese grind 996 work weeks for shit wages to stroke Xi Jinping's ego. But man, I don't want to get hit with the rare earth metals stick whenever the POTUS doesn't kowtow to the emperor. I'm still torn between whether the economists should be running the show or whether we should keep them as far away from the levers of power as possible.
Make some actual tariffs that bite and laws that promote onshoring; and if consumers don't even notice an increase in prices it ain't working. If your argument is that we can't match the Chinese in whatever way, deregulate or bring Chinese companies here so we can learn from them or do whatever it takes to compete. Instead, we just decided to sell them H200s and erode one of our few remaining advantages (maybe someone more plugged in can comment on how significant this is?).
Bizarre question by Cowen
Cowen retroactively defines an attractive suburb as a sprawling American suburb. No wonder Wang is confused.
American suburbs are the result of uniquely American circumstances from the mid/late 20th century: white flight, stranger danger, infinite money, fertile population, car lobbies & cheap gas. China has little to do with these circumstances and therefore, little to do with the American suburb.
Agreed. The whole "suburb" thing as defined here in uniquely American. Here in the UK we also have homes with a yard and a dog and a car (though some of the most expensive properties in central London won't have an exclusive yard and potentially not even off street parking given that they literally share walls with their neighboring super expensive properties (they are terraced, not detached). They are amazing places to live (hence the prices) but Cowen's phrasing would put them as not "attractive".
Plus the whole controlling your school district is a very American thing as well, it just seems quaint and weird in the UK: schooling should be run by professionals, not the whims of a bunch of parents who don't know shit about pedagogy. As we move to a more and more multi polar world US citizens need to realize that the rest of the world doesn't think like them and while in the past they had the luxury of being able to ignore what we said without much consequence this is fast dissipating and they will now need to learn some cultural sensitivity like the rest of us.
In a better world yes. Unfortunately some of our professionals like to ban teaching phonics and think Gender Queer is good content for 8 year olds. I like having a democratic veto over these people. If the school board goes looney enough then they can be voted out. As a taxpaying voter I get a say.
You're referring to American schools here, so clearly Tyler's whole "we control the schools thing" isn't going so well lol
There are a number of options here, assuming that government schools exist. ("Every school a charter school" type approaches are clearly possible, but they don't have a particularly good record in practice) In order of desirability I would put them as:
In the UK, (1) got us acceptable outcomes under Blair's rotation of education secretaries, and very good outcomes under Gove, (2) got us okay outcomes for most kids but some schools decided not to teach the kids to read, (3) got us "The perfect Ofsted lesson - how to impress school inspectors by never, ever teaching the kids anything" and (4) is outside the Overton window.
I suspect most Motteposters would disagree with me and rate (4) above (3). They may be right in a US context.
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hmm? school boards across the country were deposed and much of this stuff was stopped in localities across the country, including my locality
the "professional experts" were booted over their political insanity and covid insanity and now not a single one has a seat anymore and the explicit progressive politics has ended with teachers being sanctioned and punished for attempting to push it
what are you talking about?
I'm trying to imagine this scenario except instead "the whims of a bunch of parents who don't know shit about pedagogy" have no power and their only option is a march through institutions to retake the professional expert class (sacrificing a few generations in the meantime) or just move away to some other place?
unless you're claiming the progressive politics rearing its face in gender politics and racial politics in education generally or of children is some uniquely American thing, which is hard to swallow, I'm trying to craft a decent point out of this
even if it's true, like every one else who swims in the American empire's culture, when it's happening here you can look forward to it happening in your county as well (BLM protests coming to a town near you!) and then you can tell us your surefire effective way to depose an entrenched professional class
I know it's easy for euros to feel they know quite a bit about America, American politics, and Americans, because they're steeped in our culture and read discussion of our politics on the American internet, but it's important to remember their understanding and knowledge is quite limited and heinously manipulated. Being American and not blue-tribe, living in Western Europe and watching the media the Europeans consume there is quite eye opening. The whole continent's (or at least the Western part of it) accurate understanding of America is a casualty of American media's attack on typical Americans.
Mostly just being snarky.
My point was that this ideal of the best way to run schools "parents in the suburbs control it" has resulted in (edit) mediocre educational outcomes in the western world, and generally a system full of absolute fucking insanity like gender and racial politics. Maybe having technocrats would be even worse, but the status quo is extremely far from "good".
I'm Canadian, it's too late for us, we went full retard a while ago. I'm not actually sure what the most effective way to depose an entrenched professional class is, maybe american suburban parents are the dominant strategy. Given their efficacy however, we might be fucked if they are.
adjusting for demographics, the US school system is one of the best in the world as measured by proxies like PISA, with the school systems with the most involved parents, i.e., suburbs, scoring near the top
homeschoolers do even better than that
to be fair, I think this is despite the school systems and not because of them; what made you think US primary schools were "some of the worst educational outcomes in the western world"?
racial and gender politics were imposed from above and through institutional capture; it was never imposed because parents wanted it or through parental control
parental control was the check and moderation on each of the "professional educators" newest idiocy from abandoning phonics to gender politics to common-core
I was being too snarky, I amended to "mediocre"
Middle of the pack in achievement
Pretty expensive but again, with middling outcomes.
I would posit that having massive demographic achievement gaps is a failure state.
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Now imagine how poorly American pedagogists would behave if they could run wild and never answer to voters or parents. Which is my response to BurdensomeCount rather than Tyler.
I'm deeply skeptical of would-be technocrats. Self appointed "experts" aspiring to shape society free from petty concerns like consent from the governed so consistently go against my preferences. This happens to be a good example of the "experts" not clearly aligning with broader societal preferences, expectations or goals. Maybe American school administrators are especially unaligned with any positive societal outcomes and BurdensomeCount is fairly pointing out how British schooling is well managed by competent professionals. That's certainly not a point in America's favor given how school administrators seemingly run rampant. But that is especially not an argument for why they should be freed from the last bit of voter influence over them.
Fair point!
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