My original point is: is there any specific example of government funding useful goods? You written that bad scenario implicates that you don’t have a good scenario of government funding. Is there any specific cases of good gov’t funding?
The administrators of public schools are appointed by the state. Therefore, the administrators cannot compete with private agencies. Why do they study keynesian?
In every free market, a philosopher would be clever and smart enough to find a way to make much money whilst spending little time. Philosophers also need money to do experiments, public funding is too little.
Yes, but his ability to make those specific demands comes from the coercion of those not seeking to satisfy his demands. He is only able to make demands because he is the beneficiary of the coercive actions of the public education system. Nothing wrong with demanding quality from the good or service you’re considering the purchase of, its the means by which you attained the power to make those demands.
But you’re only considering ‘more different views’ w/i the context of the beneficiary of a coercive public education system. ‘Better funding’ doesn’t come from nothing. It comes from a much larger context. ‘More different views’ is a good, if we assume it’s a good, that can reside in any particular place. You’re simply looking at a single place and don’t consider that this financing of ‘more different views’ or being made possible by other places where ‘more different views’ can and do exist. And you’re doing this by saying the people in the place that you’re discussing are more deserving of such a good, for whatever reason. Why is it better for ‘more different views’ to exist at that particular set of buildings than at a coffee house or at my home? Why is this place better than that place? If the people in your preferred place decided to change places, would the new place become the important place or does the importance stay at the old place?
I’m a philosopher. We’re all philosophers. We need funding. Are we going to have to sacrifice concentrating on philosophy and go to an unfulfilling job or are you going to go steal some money and fund us?
I only ment that knowledge, like any other good, has no objective value. It is only valued by individuals who can use it to further their own goals. It so happens that scientists’ goals are often the pursuit of truth or otherwise altruistic (though not in the Randian sense of the word), so other’s ends are served as well.
Tools can be used to further the ends of the user without knowledge of how or why the tool works, or even what it is beyond a very macro understanding of cause and effect (e.g., “I push the gas pedal and it moves forward”). When incorrect information is used, one’s goals are not furthered as well as when correct knowledge is used. This feedback mechanism insures that people will tend to favor correct knowledge over the incorrect, without knowing any epistemological details of why some information isn’t proper knowledge. Of course, I don’t think it can be stated enough that in the social sciences,this feedback is much, much weaker (so I see a larger need for epistemology). Its hard, for example, not to doubt the engineering knowledge which produced a faulty product or a collapsed bridge.
I am confused what this means so I am going to attempt to suggest why this is probably problematic for an austrian economist(and you may or may not consider yourself one) and why the denial of a verifiably sound knowledge implies that contextual knowledge and skepticism would be the only possible options. You may have unwittingly ascribed yourself to contextual knowledge by defining knowledge in a subjective way with “knowledge, like any other good, has no objective value. It is only valued by individuals who can use it to further their own goals.” This is your definiation of knowledge and I am not sure many people would agree with it for several reasons. Particularly becuase, then you go on to invoke the idea of “correct” and “incorrect” as if it still holds objective value, this is problematic because if you deny the existence of objective knowledge then “correct” knowledge would apply only to the way individuals or institutions defined knowledge (which changes). So basically applying your defintion to knowledge you last example does not hold. “It is hard, for example, not to doubt the engineering knowledge which produced a faulty product or a collapsed bridge”, yet, if knowledge is the furthering of ones own goals then if you wanted the bridge to collapse (for insurance fraud, another lucrative contract) then according to your definition this would be correct knowledge and thus an individual can go on favoring collapsed bridges.
Basically, if you claim that “I know A=A and A does not equal not A or B” you ascribe to the anglo-analytic school of thought. If you claim the principle of non-contradiction cannot be know for a variety of logical lapses (agrippan trilemma, probalems with perception, etc.) then you have two options you can say things only seem correct but the possibilty of knowing absolutely does not seem to exist (skepticism) or you can go with a post-modernist interpritation where “knowledge” is contextual and judged by the way society, individuals, institutions define it. So “knowledge” is being able to cohere to those definitions and usualy “soft” power plays some role in the predominance of certain “knowledge” as dictated by institutions. I do not think Mises who roots his praxeology in aristotelian apriorism would accept skepticism or contextual “knowledge”, since logically his conlsuions follow from a priori axiomatic reasoning. I will take your last post as a statement concerning your prefrence for contextual knowledge, this does not mean you are “wrong” or “right” since simply you ascribe to knowledge so much as it coheres to your defninition. So it seems the question is now, in regards to formal education, for you is how do you get institutions to cohere to your idea of knowledge?
Better funding (more non-public education people’s money?) means more views represented? If you put more money in one place by taking it from another, then there’s less money in the other place. Is the ‘better funding equals more different views’ law universal? If it’s universal, then why apply it more vigorously in one area over another? Are we to remain in the darkness while the University folk manufacture our knowledge? Can these university folk think outside the university and w/o my money? If they can’t, then neither can I. If they can, then so can I. We are both equally human. I’m a philosopher. I’m a teacher. I’m a student. I need more funding. We’re all philosophers, teachers and students. We all need more funding. We’re all equal under the law. We qualify. It’s one against one and all against all.
History, though Mises was Aristotelean in practice, his description of praxeology was Kantian. Rothbard was the one who attempted a shift back to Aristoteleanism.
I agree with Donny that government intervention may do some benefits, like the invention of the Internet. But according to extrapolation and statistical analysis, it is less probable that government would do us more good than bad. We individualists generalize the previous statement as an axiom.
IMHO, I agree that certain types scientific funding have been and would be beneficial to our economy. What Donny is advocating is a meritocracy.
Yes, and the slaves picked a lot of cotton. You see government goods because it’s easier to see goods than the negation of goods. It’s like the FDA. It’s easy for people to say the FDA helps save lives by controlling the drug market. What they don’t see is the death of millions who die waiting on drug approval or who die because the FDA destroys the incentive for people to invest in drug manufacturing. And when the drugs do FINALLY make it thru, their becoming antiquated and have to be priced sky-high in order to recoup investments. The high cost of these new drugs push out other innovations because there’s now less money to be spent on healthcare.
If we handed over ALL of the economy to the government, we could thereafter give it credit for every new good.
Politicians did not invent the internet. That’s like saying that politicians ‘invented’ the phone networks, or the transistor, or packet switching or any other technology. The only things politicians invented are fraud, robbery and murder. Force (i. e. government) can only destroy.
Yes they did: http://mises.org/daily/2211
I am already aware that private agencies invented telephone wires that helped the innovation of the internet.
Do not assume – Just because I said it, it does not imply any endorsement of government.
Yes, I know that government intervention almost killed the Internet.
pairynoid, I know how the FDA and the government kills people. But my point is that government sometimes do good things (yes they are extremely rare)
According to this article, yes they did invent the internet. No, I am not favoring any government nor any scientific funding. (Theoretically, scientific funding may benefit, but it does not: proof: government wasted tens of trillions of dollars in science.)
Well, just because something is written on a Mises’ article, it doesn’t mean it’s true : P. Nobody invented computer networks. They are a natural outgrow of computers and telecoms.
I’m not saying you endorse government. But I’m saying that your analysis of what it does is not accurate. The gov’t causes a lot of destruction, and at the same time it can fund some useful activity. But so what ? What follows from that ?
Sorry, I don’t have much time to post, but I did want to point out that I’m not advocating a meritocracy at all. In fact, as far as this thread is concerned, I’m not advocating anything at all. I honestly can’t believe how much exception people are taking to what I’ve said. All I’ve been trying to get across is that public funding likely results in there existing some better philosophy programs. For all you people disputing that fact, take a moment to think about what your objection is, and ask yourself, “Does my objection entail that public funding produces worse philosophy programs?” If not (and I promise, no one’s made such an objection plausibly here), then you are attacking a straw man. I have taken no other position than that, except that public funding benefits the people who receive it (which also has been objected to for some inexplicable reason). These sorts of conversations shouldn’t need to be had on an economics message board.
I’m going to say I agree with Donny. If you subsidize something, you got more of it. If you subsidize philosophy programs, you get more of them. That’s why people are lulled into philosophy graduate programs when there are no jobs for anyone graduating outside the top 10. If you disagree with Donny, ask yourself this - would the market have created such a surplus of philosophy PhDs? If not, then government must have.
We have a local black radio guy that laments high school graduation exams. He says they’re institutionally racist because more blacks are failing it than whites. Well, if you buy into public education and kids are failing such a ridiculously easy exam, shouldn’t you ask why they’re not being taught rather than ask why the test is, ahem, ‘so hard’? He talked about how it was hurting ‘our children’ because ‘that diploma’ opens doors. lol. ‘That diploma’ opens doors because of the mistaken belief ‘that diploma’ means something. Try testing these kids so you know the cold, hard facts. They may be missing opportunities because they’re not opportunity producers, meaning their contribution isn’t going to be any greater because of that piece of paper. Their contribution is going to be based on whatever it is they know and how beneificial that is to the market.
But you don’t agree with him. What you say is right - if something is subsidized we get more of it. In this case we get more propaganda, not better education.
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Danny just keeps on repeating that philosophy programs are better…better than what ? He even ackowledges that public funding crowds out free enterprise, but fails to draw the propper conclusions from that premise.
I think the problem here is that many libertarians, including very often myself, go from very true statements to sort of false ones by following mistaken chains of logic. An example is the idea that publicly financed philosophy education must be propaganda. There are plenty of true statements one can make, such as programs have institutional incentives to not challenge the statist quo, but I don’t think you can get all the way to all such programs being propaganda. The average professor will not directly feel the state over them, nor will they think about it. If there’s more educational programs, because forming such programs is subsidized, won’t there be increased competition for students, and increased competition for jobs? Won’t that improve education quality?
That public education is propaganda is not only an idea that can be deduced from libertarian principles and/or political economy : Public education is propaganda. That’s a fact - something that’s going on in the real world.
Not necesarily.
Maybe, but notice that those are jobs in the minister of propaganda. And there’s no demand for propaganda. Propaganda is imposed at the point of a gun.
Because you say so? I’ve worked in public settings, teaching philosophy at a state school. Yes, there are statist trappings, and pressure not to challenge the state - but these pressures don’t filter down too effectively to the level of the individual classroom instructor. In he classroom, plenty of philosophy professors will ask hard questions.
On competition for students, do you honestly mean to say that you’re not sure that more programs at more schools will lead to increased competition? No, there is no demand for propaganda - but there is demand for philosophy education. Doesn’t that imply that philosophy education is not propaganda?