[FRIAM] of straw and steel

Mon Jul 5 13:44:35 EDT 2021

My habit of reading titles of books on bookshelves of journalists, etc., 
shows *Caste* appearing on the shelves of Judy Woodruff and Jonathan 
Capehart. David Brooks sits too far from his bookshelf. I don’t recall 
Sandel’s book showing up, but I first heard about him from Owen 
Densmore, who watched Sandel’s course on Justice at Harvard.

On 2 Jul 2021, at 21:33, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:

> EricS,
>
>
>
> Have you looked at Sandel’s Tyranny of Merit or Wilkerson’s Caste?
>
>
>
> If on thinks hard enough about “merit” it becomes deeply 
> confusing.  The idea of Merit is something that I got on my own, 
> right?  So working back from now to birth whence exactly did I get 
> that merit.  Even what I got from my genes was random right.  At what 
> point do get to embrace my merit as of my own making?  So far as me, 
> myself, is concerned, it’s all luck all the way down. That is what 
> the declaration of independence means when it says that all [humans] 
> are created equal.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
>  <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
>  <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
> Sent: Friday, July 2, 2021 7:47 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] of straw and steel
>
>
>
> I think there is some version of this for college tuitions, too, 
> though I am partly muddy-headed and what I say next will probably fail 
> the logical map at some points.
>
>
>
> The general idea is some combination of what is in Ginsberg’s book
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Faculty-Benjamin-Ginsberg/dp/0199975434
>
> but even more so in some article I read in J. Higher Ed or something 
> (which I have not succeeded in finding and I need now for other 
> projects), to the effect that:
>
>
>
> 1. There is been a massive cumulative re-allocation of money out of 
> need-based grants and to merit-based scholarships over the past 40 
> years or so.
>
> 2. Sounds good, of course: who could be against rewarding merit.
>
> 3. Except that, de facto, what one largely rewards is preparation, 
> which is a proxy for parental wealth and membership in one of the 
> culture’s preferred classes, races, regions, or what-have-you.  The 
> part of this that I am pretty sure is in Ginsberg is also fishing for 
> parental wealth by building snazzy student centers, on-campus water 
> parks, etc.  All that at enormous cost.  The punchline of all this is 
> that WHEN THE BUSINESSMEN TAKE OVER THE CONCEPT OF THE UNIVERSITY, THE 
> UNIVERSITY BECOMES A BUSINESS.  So, monies spent, such as tuition 
> deferment whether called grant or scholarships, is in their worldview 
> VENTURE CAPITAL.  (That was what was in the JHE article.)  And the 
> return that venture capital is seeking is parental tuition money.
>
>
>
> So how does this map to Glen’s EricC’s comments: The nominal 
> tuition is very high (4x what it was in the 1970s, per faculty 
> actually teaching or doing research).  That high tuition isn’t 
> actually cost-received from most parents, because a significant 
> fraction of it was spent either giving their kids scholarships, 
> building water parks and student centers, or whatever.  However: if 
> they had given it in need-based grants, they wouldn’t be getting 
> _anything_ from the parents.  So in the businessman’s world, the 
> investment gathered a maximized monetary profit, which was the 
> criterion for how to make it.
>
>
>
> As in EricC’s point below, there will be some very rich parents with 
> kids so lazy or dull that they aren’t well-prepared even with 
> opportunities, so one can’t give them scholarships, and those will 
> pay the sticker price.  Those are the ones who buy the article at $19, 
> or medical products or services at list price.  High profit but small 
> margin on them.
>
>
>
>
>
> In all the recent and ongoing conversations about tuition jubilee or 
> free college in the US, I worry that everything real and solvable gets 
> ruled out before we ever start, because the above characterization of 
> the real business model isn’t front and center.  Not very different 
> for medical products and services (I am trying not to use the 
> completely bleached expression “health care”), though that has 
> been around long enough that a fuller story is not so uncommon to 
> find.
>
>
>
> It is right that we have mortgaged a whole generation of kids with 
> unplayable tuition loans, and probably somebody should eat that cost.  
> Kind of like when German banks bought junk mortgage bonds in the US, 
> they should actually have been allowed to fail for having not done due 
> diligence, rather than being bailed out by a government that then had 
> to get the money to float them by leaning on somebody else (the Irish, 
> the Italians).  That of course doesn’t really work for the reasons 
> correctly given in Minsky’s Ratchet
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Stabilizing-Unstable-Economy-Hyman-Minsky/dp/0071592997
>
> But the threat of it somehow should be used, while the problem is 
> building, to keep the banks doing due diligence, and to stop the 
> schools from hiking tuition and spending to profit on the margin, or 
> medical products and services skyrocketing as a negotiating point 
> against insurance companies, etc.  The system either gets fixed as a 
> system, or not at all.
>
>
>
> There must be a really great book somewhere, which gets the data and 
> the economics better than I can, and also explains this clearly enough 
> that it can be an everyman’s book.  It’s messy and a bait 
> indirect, but it’s not so hard as to be incomprehensible.  Does 
> anybody know such a book?
>
>
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 3, 2021, at 5:51 AM, Eric Charles 
> <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com 
> <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
>
>
> Something Glen's analysis,  there are MANY things in the modern 
> economy that fit things model,  including healthcare.
>
>
>
> The insurance companies demand a steep discount in procedures.
>
> The hospital's have costs to cover.
>
> The only possible consequence is to dramatically increase the sticker 
> price.  There hospital doesn't expect someone to pay that much for a 
> major procedure,  they expect bulk buyers (i.e., insurance companies) 
> to drive buisness at ther bulk price. (If some random person does pay 
> sticker price every so often,  all the better, but that's not ther 
> primary goal.)
>
>
>
> Mattress companies, clothing stores,  etc. that have massive sales 
> 3/4th of the year are doing the same sort of thing.
>
>
>
> See also my continuous complaints about the "Big Mac Index". Only a 
> small % of Big Macs in the U.S. are purchased at sicker price.  The 
> sticker price is primarily intended as something to discount off of.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:56 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com 
> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
> Maybe. But remember, despite the prescriptive linguists out there: a) 
> "troll" is not an insult and b) it can be accidental.
>
> All 3 of Russ' "people with grants", Barry's "rent seeking", and 
> Pieter's "publishing profits are bad for science" responses are a 
> trawler's delight! Rather than talk about the Strawman fallacy and 
> it's variations, we're talking ... [sigh] again ... about capitalism 
> and money.
>
> Call it naivete if you want. But it was a very effective troll.
>
> On 6/30/21 7:47 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Oh, I see.  The point is to make getting the individual item so 
>> expensive that it just balances driving to the library (or doing ILL) 
>> with subscribing to the Journal.  It's pure manipulation; costs have 
>> nothing to do with it.
>>
>> Glen, I think you persistently confuse naivete with trolling.
>
> -- 
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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