I can understand someone saying, “Deregulation isn’t enough.” But you could double the supply of public housing without making a noticeable dent in the housing shortage. Rent subsidies are much easier to scale up, but subsidizing demand without increasing supply is almost the definition of crazy policy. Furthermore, if you want to create high-paid job opportunities for non-college workers, a rapidly growing construction sector is a dream come true.
Tag: war
Teachers Who Quit to Create Schooling Alternatives
It’s not uncommon for public school teachers to experience burnout or feel demoralized by the weight of their work. Many leave the classroom and the education profession behind to pursue other careers. In fact, U.S. Labor Department data reveal that public school educators are quitting their jobs at record-breaking rates.
“The Grid” is the Problem, Not the Solution
Extreme weather often results in power loss to large numbers of people. I’ve experienced multi-day outages from thunderstorms, blizzards, and ice storms in the midwest and hurricanes in the southeast. Most Americans probably recall similar outages. That’s what happens when you string wires and transformers all over the place then pray nothing knocks them down or stresses them out.
Erratic Behavior
Isn’t it odd when someone known for erratic behavior erratically does something with which an observer agrees, suddenly that erratic behavior becomes the mark of “stable genius?” On the other hand, the action becomes betrayal. Check out Senator Lindsey Graham, for instance.
They Know Better
Moral reasoning is hard. It’s so hard, in fact, that most people do little moral reasoning. Instead, as Daniel Kahneman would expect, they perform a mental substitution. Rather than wonder, “What’s morally right?,” they ask, “What’s socially acceptable?” In decent societies, this seems fairly harmless. When your society is even selectively evil, however, the substitution is disastrous. Strictly following standard social norms in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or Maoist China is murder. Which brings us to a pressing question: How do you know whether your society is evil?
Free Daniel McAdams
It seems like a trivial thing, Daniel McAdams’ getting banned, for life, from Twitter for using “retarded” in language attempting to describe Sean Hannity. But it is more than a ripple on the pond.
Kids Aren’t Stupid
A bunch of people are clamoring to ban vaping, ostensibly because young people are doing it and it’s bad for their health. Young people aren’t stupid. They know it’s not good for their health. Neither are sugar, caffeine, alcohol, sitting around all day, or school. Driving a car dramatically increases chance of death or injury. They know all this too. And, just like all humans, they choose a level of risk they are comfortable with.
Mao Is Murder
Mao Zedong’s most famous aphorism could well be, “Revolution is not a dinner party.” But perhaps he should have said, “Revolution is a dinner party where the main course is human flesh.” Here’s one gripping episode from Frank Dikötter’s The Tragedy of Liberation.
Do the Math
Have you come to the conclusion that we, the people, are innumerate? If not, how do you account for the fantasy of voting or the illusion of government education? One of the major goals of government schooling is the cultivation and advancement of innumeracy. Another major goal, of course, is illiteracy.
Entangling Alliances Make For Forever Wars
In March of 2018, US president Donald Trump promised “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon.” That December, he issued an order to begin withdrawing US troops. Apparently the order never got executed. Most of a year later, US forces remain.