J25 - Man and Society (Part I)

The function of the human mind elaborated upon in the previous journal is an aspect of human reason, human reason being man’s characteristic feature. It is reason, the structure of the human mind that allows us to imagine different futures and choose one preferred future and act to attain that future state, that is man’s characteristic feature. Imagination, choice, and action are all one and the same process, the process of human reasoning, a product of man’s quest to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity. This is what sets us apart from all other creatures on the Earth. 

According to Mises, human reason would have never come about if we lived in a world where means were not scarce. “For the primary task of reason is to cope consciously with the limitations imposed upon man by nature, is to fight scarcity.” Of course, it is impossible to imagine a world without scarcity; the human mind, designed as it is to cope with the reality of scarcity, literally cannot understand the concept of infinity or lack of limitations. Even if every external resource was available to all men in abundance, and man was able to move instantaneously about the universe, and had unlimited time to enjoy the goods available to him, still he would have to choose which good to enjoy first. He would still be limited to one experience at a time, and would still have to prioritize his ends, still have to reason and act. Already this hypothetical is difficult to conceive; to hypothesize that man could experience everything, everywhere, and all at once, is beyond human comprehension. We live in a world of scarcity, and our minds have developed thusly.

So, if reason, man’s characteristic feature, has developed to aid man in his struggle against scarcity, and if all action is an external manifestation of man’s reason, and if man is always acting, then man is always reasoning, and his actions are an outcome of reason. We may, therefore, examine man’s actions and attribute them to his reason, i.e., we may seek to understand the purpose behind man’s actions, as they must be purposeful, being the product of human reason. Therefore, all that man is may be traced to human reason and action. But there is something more, if not something separate, that distinguishes man from the rest of the natural world: society. It is indeed true that throughout nature we see many manifestations of organisms working together in vast networks: anthills, beehives, wolfpacks, amoebas, etc. The reason for this is natural selection: animals that worked together tended to survive and pass on their genes to later animals, thus increasingly tending towards a “social” creature. But man is different. There may, indeed, be an evolutionary tendency for man to band together into societies. But, as we have established above, man is different in that he, alone among the creatures of the Earth, chooses. Yes, there are many influences of man’s choices, many of which he may not even be aware of, but still, “to live is for man the outcome of a choice.” An outcome of reason. Therefore, we cannot examine the actions of men and attribute them to raw nature; we must ask what the purpose of those actions are. We see man as the social creature: why? Why does man form societies? 

The answer is the same for every other action of man: to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity. At this point in our evolution, there may be genes which tend to favor cooperation. But, at the beginning, what drew men together was not some “call of the blood.” Cooperation was the reasoned action of men who recognized their own limitations, who recognized the advantages of a division of labor, and who chose to work with other members of their own species in peace to combat scarcity. “Human society...is the outcome of a purposeful utilization of...the higher productivity of the division of labor.” Integration in the social division of labor yields an increased production and utilization of goods and services for every individual; it is therefore in every individual’s interest to join society and so integrate himself into its division of labor. It is no mysterious drive to band together that draws us to each other, but the cold, calculated reasoning necessary to man’s survival. But, given the universal application of the law of association, the universal applicability of the fact that the division of labor results in increased productivity, we may conclude that “human action itself tends toward cooperation and association.” Some form of cooperation is a necessary part of being human.

More than three thousand years ago, Aristotle recognized that man is the “social animal.” Mises confirms this by concluding that “The development of human reason and human society are one and the same process.” This can be seen in the fact that language is a significant aid in the development of conscious thought, and that language cannot be developed in isolation. Additionally, it has often been pointed out by liberal authors, in response to critiques of our hyper-focus on the material benefits of market economies, that concern with more noble pursuits is undeniably more possible and more common where man does not need to worry so much about baser needs and wants. This argument can be broadened to the point where one may argue that the building/changing aspect of man, that distinguishing aspect of our species, would not be possible in a man on his own, who must spend every moment just keeping up with the demands of nature: eating, sheltering, searching for food and shelter. It is the moments of rest that come with the increased productivity of the division of labor that allows man to think of different worlds. It is the confidence that comes with the increased productivity of the division of labor that allows man to take risks and attempt to change the world. It is the lengthened lifespan of a man yielded by the increased productivity of the division of labor that allows enough knowledge to be accumulated and experimentation to be conducted to develop theories of causation necessary to any action. Indeed, it seems that man, so physically insignificant among the creatures of the Earth, would not have survived long in the world without his reason and the human cooperation that it produced. 

The fact that man is not only a creature of reason, but a creature of society, will have great implications for our development of a theory of being human and the projects such a theory will inform.

January Day

While the actual plan for the mid-year partner project (“January Day”) wasn’t developed until October of this year, having some sort of mid-year event had been planned since last year. Part of the reason for this addition to the EMC2 curriculum has been my feeling that a year is too long to be spending on some of these EMC2 projects; I’ve suggested multiple times that we turn the class into a semester-length course, offered in both semesters. Students who have accomplished what they want to accomplish, or who are struggling to go any deeper with their line of inquiry, could then complete their work by the end of January and then be done (or perhaps re-enroll but change topics), while students with larger projects, or who were really interested in going deeper with their line of inquiry, could re-enroll for the next semester and continue their work. The coordinators and I have not decided to pursue that set-up, but I did want to break-up the year into sections with some kind of demarcation event because I think a full year of “exploration” is a little excessive. The first semester is indeed all about exploration: students can bounce around, researching various aspects of their broader topics, and get experience in their field of study. But the second semester we want to be different; the second semester is all about building. Once the students have explored various parts of their topic, they should be in a position to choose one particular aspect and come with an idea of how to advance knowledge of that aspect. Research may of course continue into the second semester, but this research should be much more purposeful, in that it is conducted to patch holes in knowledge needed for the crafting of the student’s final product. 

So, what would this mid-year event look like? Well, first of all, I wanted to showcase the knowledge that students would have gained during the first semester. That is, I wanted to start treating them like quasi-experts in their fields. Such a showcasing usually takes the form of a symposium or a science-fair-type thing. However, EMC2 already has a symposium at the end of the year for all of the students, and many of the students will be participating in the Capital District’s STEAM Exposition, which has a science-fair feel. So, we didn’t want to be unduly repetitive. We did feel, however, that students should experience presenting their topics, and that repeated presentations would increase the benefits of presenting, namely the internalizing of information and the attempt at connecting it to the outside world, of making it matter for people. We also wanted this event to help the students develop skills that they were struggling with. Communication has been a big issue for many of the students, but collaboration was a bigger issue, for all of the students. Therefore, I suggested that we make this a partner project. This way the students would have to work with each other, and explore how their topic connected to other topics. I also suggested that every pair of students be given their own classrooms for January Day and present about their topics to several groups of students. This would give a sense of ownership and pride in their knowledge, and also allow them an opportunity to make the attempt to connect multiple times. There was also discussion of some sort of scavenger hunt, but I think it was ultimately concluded that that would just confuse things too much. 

So, the goal of January Day is simple: Collaborate with your partner to create some sort of product that represents a synthesis of both projects and communicates the importance of the projects to an outside world, and then prepare a 10 minute presentation of that product. Like other assignments in EMC2, the details were left to the students as an opportunity for creativity and necessary freedom for individuality and purposefulness. That is, requirements were left vague so that students could shape their products and presentations as they wished, hopefully in a way that contributed to the continued progress of their projects. To ensure that we weren’t demanding too much from the students, the coordinators decided that January Day would count as the students’ SDAs for the month of December. 

I believe that this project will help all of the students with their goals for their projects and with contribute to the coordinators’ goals of making the students better thinkers and questioners. As discussed in other posts to this site, each one of the students’ projects is a truth claim about the world, an argument. Arguments are tested by fire and thereby improved when they are exposed to the real world, and exposure to the real world helps students focus their efforts on useful applications of their topics. January Day exposes the students’ projects to the real world. More than that, January Day requires that the students explore how their topics are related to each other, which will require them to think about their projects from different perspectives, and I think that this exercise in different-views will prove useful to their overall understanding of their topics. This project should force them to think and to question. Furthermore, as discussed above, it will give them experience working together and speaking publicly and authoritatively about their topics. And, if they’re motivated, it will force them to be creative as they seek to create a shared product that actually contributes to both of their projects. Everyone has something to gain from January Day.

That being said, it must be remembered that January Day. There’s no guarantee that it will be as helpful for everyone as I hope it will be, and even if it is successful, that doesn’t mean that it was the most effective method of achieving those successes. So, I look forward to seeing how January Day works out, and reading the reflections from the students, and assessing whether January Day was as purposeful as it needs to be survive as part of the program. I almost hope it doesn’t so that I can work with some of the students to craft a better alternative.

J24 - What Makes Humans Different?

There’s a game that some of the students like to play, where they bring up the idea of objective value and start talking about different amounts of utils that various things must have, thereby arousing my indignation that such a nonsensical theory could still be being taught in Western schools. I know that they only engage in this conduct because they get a kick out of seeing me get upset. But I really don’t care. The subjective theory of value is one of the greatest intellectual developments of all time. It reveals to us the fact that the human mind is the source of all meaning in the universe. To misunderstand the theory of value is to misunderstand the world and humanity’s place in it. How could I possibly not rise to its defense each and every time the topic is raised? 

Alex Gugie wrote a journal, some time ago, in which he discussed the Las Vegas Shooting and presented a “secular view of the sanctity of human life,” or a scientific method of appreciating other human beings. He claims that understanding the complexity of the human mind, and the millennia of evolution that produced it, should instill a sense of awe in all of us, an emotional response that makes us adverse to terminating the existence of such complexity (killing a human being). Two questions arise when reading this explanation of the value of human life. First, why do we appreciate this complexity; why does a full apprehension of the complexity of the human brain strike us with awe? And second, why is this complexity worthy of this awe? A system of morality, the subject of Alex’s overall project, is a set of norms, a series of “shoulds.” It’s one thing to marvel at the billions of neurons in a human brain, and to feel that the delicate complexity of the network they form should be protected, but the question of whether this complexity should cause such a response in us must be, at some point, considered in a project such as his. 

These questions have simple answers, but answers of incredible significance. First, we are awestruck by the complexity of the human brain because we are builders, and we cannot fathom how such complexity was built. It’s like seeing a stunning piece of art, or walking through New York City. How could this be? It seems impossible. We are impressed by complexity because we aspire to build complex things. The complexity of the human brain is still beyond our understanding, let alone replication, and the fact that this complexity was not the result of any conscious design, leaves us builders feeling rather small, awestruck. Second, this complexity is worthy of awe and sanctity because it has produced builders.

There are many creations of nature that are so incredible and unlikely that a full list would take a lifetime to enumerate. Why is the human brain, in particular, worthy of more respect than any other brain? That is, why is Alex talking about human life, instead of all life (the existence of life, itself, is a wondrous ultimate given)? Yes, the human brain seems to be the most advanced of the primate family, but is this difference in degree really enough to distinguish between the sanctity of the species? What sets humans apart? What makes us different? 

We are builders. And this is not a simple concept. Building is the arrangement and use of means in the pursuit of various chosen ends. But, means and ends and arrangements are themselves products of the human mind. Iron ore is merely an arrangement of chemical elements until the human mind classifies it as otherwise. Moreover, metal hand-tools do not exist in nature. The idea of them originates in the human mind. That alone is a tremendously distinguishing aspect of human beings: we imagine. What other species can see something which does not exist? I believe imagination is a severely unappreciated topic worthy of greater study. Regardless, the human mind gives the chemical elements of iron ore their meaning and significance by connecting them with the idea of a nonexistent metal hand-tool, and then the human mind develops a plan for transforming the chemical elements of iron ore into the metal hand-tool, shaping the world into a version that suits the mind better. No other species does this. No other species looks at the world, imagines a different world, and acts to bring this imaginary world into reality. What makes humans different is that we have created the world as we know it by giving the arrangement of elements around us meaning, and act each day to change this world into a better world, a new world that is even more the product of the human mind. 

This function of the human mind, this is what sets us apart. Whether or not the human mind can be wholly attributed to the human brain (to be discussed in other journals), the human brain is certainly what made this human mind possible. All of evolution has been a series of steps bringing life from 1 to n. The difference between the brain of a toad and the brain of an ape is just one of degree. The human brain is different. The human brain represents something new, a leap from 0 to 1. It represents a singularity in nature, whereby a species is no longer just the product of its environment, but its environment is a product of the species. With the advent of human beings, an element of purpose was introduced into a world of unconscious processes. Humans imagine, they choose, they act to change things, they build. This, this is what is worthy of our awe and respect. The complexity of the human brain makes human life sacred only because this complexity brought us from 0 to 1. Human beings are not special because we have complex brains; our complex brains are special because they have created human beings.

J23 - Topic Change: A Theory of Being Human

I find it necessary to change my topic of study. I am interested in the exploration of climate change as an economic opportunity, and I will likely return to it at some point, either this year or some future year (although next year I already want to do my EMC2 project on chronicling the history of economic thought from the Marginal Revolution to Behavioral Economic). But I think that if this project is going to be meaningful, and compelling, I need to be really motivated to put in quality work and not just bullshit my way through, and the necessary next part of my project, research on changes in the environment from climate change, doesn’t motivate me enough. So, to keep going, I need to change focus a bit.

Now, it seems like a very late date to be changing topics. But, in fact, I changed topics a long time ago. It just took me until now to recognize it. My journals have been loosely relating back to the environment and climate change but, really, those aspects were really just implications drawn out of what I was really exploring, which was economics, the nature of economics, the human mind, human will, human nature, paradigms, and purpose. And for all the writing that appears on my site, there’s twice as much writing in my notes about education, morality, and epistemology. Whatever I’ve been working on, it’s not about climate change. It surely has implications for climate change, but I think it would be a mislabelling to say that this project is about climate change. 

The big problem I’ve been struggling with for the past couple months has been trying to see a connection between all of the students’ projects (which I sense exists because I spend just as much time on each of their projects as I do on mine). I expressed this struggle of mine in an email to the other coordinators at the beginning of the month: “This past month I've been catching glimpses of something, flashes of insight into an idea that is really big and really complex and somehow connects a lot of these projects. I've been doing some research into epistemology for Jonah [whose project I now know connects back to purpose and ultimate ends], and Alex touched upon epistemology in his attempt to bring morality to a human level [and now realizes that morality is a social issue], and my project has been centered on the relationship between man and the external world, and...I don't know, I just keep feeling like they're all connected. But, more than those, I feel like our new focus on argument and questioning is connected, too, and that these beginnings of thoughts in my head wouldn't exist without this last ingredient. But it's been difficult to pursue these thoughts because I don't know what this theory that I'm crafting is a theory of, exactly, except maybe some kind of theory of being human, and this lack of direction leaves me just waiting for more flashes. Still, I feel like if I could put all of it together, it would move us all forward a hundred paces.”

This is what I’ve really been working on. I’ve been trying to test the theories of my students by questioning them in my own notes, and doing research on their topics, and building an underlying theory that could support their arguments or reveal their flaws. It seems, indeed, that this is a “theory of being human.” An exploration of the human condition (scarcity) and its implications for human nature. The results of this exploration will obviously have tremendous implications for Jonah’s project on education, and Alex’s project on morality, but I think it will also have implications for all the projects. Noah is doing his project on comedy...Bergson points out that we only really laugh at humanness; we find animals funny when we recognize ourselves in them, and a landscape is never comic. Moreover, jokes, like every other product of man, are purposeful. So, his project is connected. Ved’s project is about robots, which are built by man for a purpose. Mikayla is now critiquing consumerism, or human nature. Silma is exploring dreams, and how our actions impact our dreams and our dreams impact our actions. It’s all connected. And I know it’s connected. And sometimes I can see how it’s all connected. And these days all I want to do is actually connect them and make the connection explicit. 

So, that’s what I’m gonna be working on through this project, now. Again, I’ve been working on it, both here under the guise of climate change implications, and in my notes and private correspondence. But I want to develop this theory I’ve been constructing and make it explicit, and test it against the world, question it, improve it, and use it to make my students’ projects better through testing, questioning, and improvement. This is what I’m motivated to do. This is what I want to work on now. 

My project is now the development of a Theory of Being Human.

GMO Project Laid to Rest

As a coordinator for the EMC2 program this year, I was given four students to guide, advise, and assist. Unfortunately, one of my students, Shika, has decided that her obligations are too demanding to meet all of them. She has decided that she will no longer be participating in EMC2, freeing up some time to satisfy more urgent tasks before her. I bear her no ill will, and I wish her well in all of her other endeavors. Learning how to say no to too much work is a lesson that took me many years, and much misery, to learn. I respect that she seems to have already learned it.

Of course, that leaves a project unfinished. Now, one could say that no project is truly finished. Not in research, anyway. I’ve never known an intellectual to stand back from their writing and lab results and notes and say that there was nothing more to be done. However, there are natural points of demarcation, where projects may be laid to rest if necessary. Shika’s project, I believe, had not yet reached such a demarcation, and that leaves me a little sad. I’ve decided to briefly bring her project to a point where it can, in fact, be laid to rest, as a tribute to the work that she has already done.

Shika was studying GMOs. Apparently, it was a topic that had interested her for a long time (she posted an essay to her website that she wrote some years ago in which she called for the banning of GMOs). By the time she started her project this year, she had grown to the point where she no longer believed that GMOs should be banned (after all, we have people to feed), but she did believe that they should be labelled so that people could make informed choices in the market. So, her project was going to focus on reasons for labelling GMOs, and perhaps with a call to action. As she began to research, though, she became interested in the backstory of GMOs, the drama that comes before the product gets to the store shelves. She became interested in the history of Monsanto and its contracts with farmers who use its seeds and its legislative power. She became concerned with the plight of these farmers, who weren’t understanding what they were agreeing to or else were deceived about their future of growing GMO crops. She became angry with the monopolistic nature of the big GMO seed manufacturers. 

At the time that Shika left the program, she had not yet realized that her project needed to shift from labelling and spend some time on learning market structure and business ethics. But I knew it. Labelling is a surface-level issue, something that everyone talks about. Dig a little deeper, and you start to find all the other interesting aspects of a subject like GMOs. She wasn’t gonna stick with labelling for long (after my prodding), even though that was her ultimate motivation. And, indeed, I was gonna bring her back to it after some proper research on the other aspects.

How do companies come to dominate an industry? There are, essentially, just two ways. The first way, the political way, is to get the government to enact a bunch of regulations that your competitors can’t afford to comply with or perhaps have the government grant you an outright monopoly. The second way, the economic way, is to serve the consumers better than your competitors, and thereby drive them out of the market. There’s nothing inherently bad about dominating an industry, about having market power. In a free market, whatever power a business has ultimately comes from the consumers. The consumer is king in a free market economy. So, there’s nothing inherently bad about Monsanto having market power if the consumers have willed it to be so.

However, it is entirely possible that Monsanto may be using its market power to do horrendous things in the production of its product, including bankrupting poor farmers or locking them into a never-ending debt cycle. If the problem with Monsanto is its industry practices, and not its product (although Shika believed that GMOs could cause some health issues for a few people), then that’s the problem that we should be focusing on. And how do we solve this problem? By appealing to a higher power, of course. The first instinct of a student today would be to appeal to the government, to get the FTC to classify Monsanto as a monopoly, or a human rights bureau to condemn its practices, and begin to crack down on its practices through regulation. 

But I think that there’s a much more elegant solution, one that ties Shika’s project together nicely. Appeal to the consumers. That is, tell consumers what Monsanto is doing, and then let them determine the punishment, let them determine whether Monsanto can continue its abuses. And, of course, the way to do this would be to start labelling GMO products. At the end of the year, after studying in-depth the GMO market structure and the abuses it involves, Shika could have presented her findings and made an argument for GMO labelling based not on the boring assertion that consumers should know what they’re buying, but that consumers should know who they’re buying from. Much more interesting.

This is the direction that I believe Shika’s project was heading, given her interests and my influence. Perhaps she’ll return to it someday; I think the result would be magnificent. But, at least we’ve sketched out the path that was before her, a hypothetical EMC2 project that can, for now, be laid to rest.  Thank you, Shika, for your thought-provoking research and questions.

Comment on Gugie's "Transience of Desire"

Comments I shared with Alex Gugie on his latest journal, "Transience of Desire" which I believe are relevant to my own project.

First, just a small thing.  You say that “the conscious existence of nearly all people is characterized by a desire to feel better in the coming moment than we did in the previous one.”  This is not strictly true.  Now, there’s not a lot of people who would’ve caught this nuanced distinction, so it’s probably not necessary for you to know this.  I only point it out because you said something similar in your "A Basis for a Moral System" journal, and I don’t want you to continue under a misapprehension.  Strictly speaking, it’s not that we want the future to be better than the present.  We want the future to be better than it would have been without our interference.  When human beings act, they are always comparing hypothetical future states, not intertemporal states of existence.  This follows from the nature of value.  Value is subjective, yes?  It cannot be objectively measured.  And it cannot be objectively measured because value is really just a preference.  Valuation is a choice between alternative ends, a preferring of one to another.  As value cannot be measured, different values cannot be compared.  There cannot be any intertemporal comparisons of utility.  It’s not just impossible; it’s nonsensical.  So, we act not to make the future better than the present, but to achieve the best possible future we can bring about.  

I dwell on this point about value because I think it implies a bigger criticism of this piece.  From my perspective, I don’t think it’s true that desires are all ephemeral and that the satisfaction of one desire leads to the creation of a new desire.  It’s more like: we all want a lot of things.  But we can’t attain all of our ends.  We live in a world of scarcity, which means that there aren’t enough means to attain all of our ends.  There’s the specifically economic point about the resources available to us not being plentiful enough to satisfy every human desire.  But there’s also the more general limitations of scarcity in that we have a limited amount of time in our lives and only one body with which to enjoy each minute.  This scarcity necessarily implies choices.  We have to prioritize which ends are going to be attained, and which aren’t.  Action doesn’t so much reveal our desires as it reveals our choices.  And I think this point clears up some of the confusing points in your journal, such as when you were describing the phenomenon of people going to work every day even while griping about their jobs, because they actually wanted their paychecks.  It’s not that they didn’t actually want to stop working.  They just wanted the money more.

In this present moment, there are a lot of things that I want.  I want to work the night shift somewhere so I can make some money.  I want to study so that I can get good grades.  I want to write this feedback.  I want to read some Bastiat.  I want to sleep.  I want to fuck a girl.  I want to get high.  There are a lot of things I want.  But I chose writing as most important, so that’s what my action reveals.  As soon as I get done writing this (and, indeed, at every moment in the process of writing this), I’ll have to choose again.  Sleep?  Get high?  It’s not that these desires appeared after I satisfied my desire to write.  They were always there.  We always want everything, don’t we?  It’s that I had to set these desires aside in the pursuit of my most valued end, and, once I’ve attained that end, I can now choose another end to pursue.  The “enlightened” complain that people always want more.  I contend that people always wanted more.  But, as they get some, they become positioned to seek more.  I think that your journal shows some confusion on your part about this.

As I hinted above, some of our desires are more long-term, and these we generally call more virtuous.  We do go to work, even though we say we’d rather sleep in the moment, because we value our long-term end of a steady income more than the short-term gain.  We study at night not because we prefer studying to video games, but because we prefer good grades to video games, and studying is a means to this important end.  So, I think your journal was a little confusing in that it was kind of saying that desires were only short-term things.  The truth is, every action of man is always a pursuit of his currently most-valued ends.  Eating the gallon of ice cream and going to the gym...it’s the same mechanism driving both actions.  It’s just a choice of ends.  So, this new direction for your project, getting people to put the needs of society over their own short-term desires, is an attempt to change the ends people choose, not to make people give up their ends.  Do you see what I’m saying?

And that leads to a comment on the relationship between individuals and society.  Their interests are not opposed.  And I think you know this, but your journal was a little unclear, and this lack of clarity, coupled with your affinity for declaratory statements, made it seem like you viewed the desires of individuals as conflicting with the needs of society.  But it’s important, I think, to reflect on what, exactly, society is.  Society is comprised of human beings, yes?  And human beings act, yes?  That is, everything they do is the outcome of a choice.  Which means that people chose to be a part of society.  Indeed, people chose to create society.  Society is a product of human thought and will.  And because society is a product of human action, and because human action is always purposeful, then society must have a purpose, yes?  What is the purpose of society?  You said it in your last journal: it provides us with things, it satisfies desires that we could have never had or gotten satisfied in isolation.  Society is a tool.  A tool that helps us achieve our individual ends and desires.  If it didn’t, we wouldn’t bother with it, as it does, indeed, restrict us.  So I think it’s a mistake (perhaps just of word-choice) to describe the interests of individuals and the interests of society as conflicting.  Society, after all, is a product of, is composed of, and exists to serve, individuals.  As your close companion on this journey, I understand what you mean, but I would urge you to be a little more precise with your language for the sake of a wider audience.

All that being said, I think that there were some good things in this journal.  First of all, I liked that you returned to natural science a bit.  It seems that you’re very comfortable there, and I think that makes your work better.  The idea that desire is ultimately a component of our biology is an important one, and could have a big influence on your project.  At the same time, there’s no real argument in that point.  The argument you seem to be making in this piece, in the part that makes sense, at least, is that we don’t have to let our desires control us.  Again, I think this is imprecise, in light of that fact that we’re always driven by our desires.  It’s just that sometimes we desire things that are more socially beneficial than others.  The idea behind your argument, though, seems to be that, because desires are so transient, because they’re randomly generated by our biology, and because there are other, better desires to choose from, we can disregard our momentary urges and focus on long-run goals, like the preservation and flourishing of society.  Okay.  Fair enough (besides the language).  You also say, at the very end, that desire both drives and limits us.  Again, sloppy language.  Desire always drives us, whether for good or bad.  

I think changing that last sentiment, that desire both drives and limits us, could be tweaked, in light of the discussion above, to say something like desire can both drive and limit us.  That is, that competing desires, for short-term pleasure and long-term gain, can balance each other out, so that we can act to preserve ourselves in the present and we can act to preserve society in the long run.  Because desire is a common factor in all our actions.  It’s just a matter of what we desire.  

The Economic Effects of a Schooled Generation

*originally written 08/31/16*

In my original writing of this piece, I discussed seven different effects of mandatory public schooling on the economy. However, the full exposition was necessarily lengthy and, in an effort to keep my articles within a reasonable word count, I was forced to reduce the scope of this piece. All this to say that, although I only talk about two more-often-overlooked effects, I am not unaware of other issues like actual money costs, limits on workforce participation, and degree inflation (partially discussed elsewhere).

The first issue I’d like to address is the public schools’ attack on diversity. In rhetoric, certainly, schools appear to praise the existence of diversity. However, diversity simply means “the existence of difference,” and schools systematically attempt to eliminate the differences between their students. Schools assume that everyone starts out with the same knowledge and abilities, assumes that everyone learns and develops at the same pace, and, by teaching everyone the same material, attempts to create a population where everyone has the same knowledge and skills.

This is, in effect, an attack on the division of labor. Economic growth is based on social cooperation, which is, in turn, based on recognition of two fundamental economic principles: The Inequality of Nature and The Law of Association (more commonly known as the Law of Comparative Advantage). The Inequality of Nature means that every individual has different preferences, laboring abilities, and resources upon which to labor. The Law of Association states that when people specialize in the work that they’re relatively better at (the type of labor with the smallest opportunity cost for them) and then trade the product of their work for the product of others who also specialized in the work that they were relatively better at, productivity is increased and all parties are made better off. Social cooperation and economic growth are not about having more people who can work together to create bigger things; they are about having more different people who can exploit their differences to increase total production of many different things. Hayek put it like this: “It is, then, not simply more men, but more different men, which brings an increase in productivity. Men have become powerful because they have become so different: new possibilities of specialization – depending not so much on any increase in individual intelligence but on growing differentiation of individuals – provide the basis for a more successful use of the earth’s resources.”

Differences, in knowledge, in skills, in inclinations, are therefore valuable to an economy. By attempting to eliminate (or at least severely limit the development of) these differences, public schools weaken the very foundations of our division-of-labor-based economy. They therefore limit the pace and extent of economic growth, resulting in a lower standard of living for all.

The second issue that I’d like to write about is the schooled mindset and its contribution to the decline in entrepreneurship. Now, there is a myth being spread in this country that tons of young people are starting their own businesses and becoming entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, it’s only a myth. According to data from the Federal Reserve, less than 4% of adults under 30 own stakes in private companies, down from more than 10% in 1990. There are many reasons for this trend: increased regulation, taxes, occupational licensing, and student debt. However, I believe that another major contributing factor is the psychological effects of spending 12-16 years in school.

To clarify, an entrepreneur is an individual who begins producing a good today knowing that it will only be of use at some future date, but not knowing what the value of the good will be at that future date. His uncertainty is what sets him apart; he produces for tomorrow without knowing what tomorrow will need. If his predictions are accurate, he will make a profit. If not, he will suffer a loss. A successful entrepreneur, then, makes a profit by correctly predicting a future change in demand and by acting to meet this future demand. Moreover, he must foresee this change more clearly than his fellow industrialists, who would otherwise also move to meet the future demand and bid away the entrepreneur’s profits.

In light of our preceding discussion on schools’ attack on diversity, we can easily see one way that schooling hurts entrepreneurship. By reducing differences between students and by forcing them all to learn the same material, schools make it difficult for students to think independently and plan for the future in ways different than their peers. However, schools do much worse than this: they create a mindset in their students that excludes entrepreneurial tendencies.

Schools encourage conformity. To succeed in school is to do exactly what you’re told to do, to meet or exceed the expectations on a standardized rubric. If you try something else different, you run the risk of “failing.” Outside of the classroom the situation is quite similar. To be a success in the social scene of the school, one must emulate one’s peers as much as possible, up to and including one’s hairstyle.

Schools also encourage passivity. Students sit passively at their desks all day long, with raw information being fed to them. They passively do their homework like they’re told, using the methods that they’re taught. They passively cycle through the school system, one grade at a time, taking the various subjects in the order that they’re prescribed. They passively apply to college in their senior year, without much thought of alternatives. And, when they’re done with college, they passively send out their resumes and wait for someone to call them back and just give them a good job. The schooling system assures students that it will take care of everything, and the students passively accept this. 

Finally, schools encourage a submissive, permission-based mindset. One cannot offer an opinion on a subject unless he is an expert. The teacher always knows better. The student cannot do or build anything with his knowledge until the teacher decides that he knows everything he needs to know (through testing) to do so. If the choices are A through D, the answer cannot be E. Everything is pass/fail; there is no way to grade “different.” Everything is planned by someone else and assigned. Students are conditioned to sit quietly, raise their hands when they wish to speak, ask permission to go to the bathroom, and accept the teacher’s views as authoritative.

Through all of this mental warping, by encouraging conformity, passivity, and submissiveness, schools reduce their students’ creative and entrepreneurial capacities. This hurts our economy by reducing our ability to envision and create a better future, resulting in a reduction in everyone’s living standards from what they might have been. 

These are just two ways in which mandatory public schooling hurts our economy (by hurting our children). There are other ways that they hurt the economy (at least five) and, while any one of them might have a small effect on the economy (though doubtful), together they no doubt have a quite substantial effect. This is not to say that public schooling has no economic benefits; it does. However, it is in no way conclusive that schools are an economic boon on net. In fact, when we consider the possibility of a free market in education providing all of the benefits and none of the disadvantages of the government version, it seems all the more likely that the opposite is true.

J22b - Question Journal: Liu's EMC Art

After reviewing the thinking and artwork of Julia Liu through her EMC2 website, I have generated the following questions in the hopes of providing a challenging new perspective that will help her grow and further develop her already-impressive project.

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When did you begin creating art? Why did you start? Why do you continue? What role does art play in your life, currently? Why didn’t you give your October collaborators a theme to work within? Why do you think it’s important to have a theme? Why is it important to have a distinctive style? Do you think that you’re work this year has helped develop your own style? Could a search for your own style be related to your theme of identity? Isn’t a sense of constraint also related to identity? What exactly do you mean by identity? 

Why is art important? What is the purpose of art? What role does it play in the human experience? What is the purpose of your project? What do you hope to accomplish? What will your end product be? Why should the rest of us care (so what)? What does your art say about you? What about you made you choose this project?

Will you be using other mediums soon? Will you do any more digital art? Will you do a sculpture? Does a lot of practice in one medium or in one style translate into better skill in other mediums or styles? Could you do a piece where different parts were done in a different medium? What would that say about identity? What would your idea about a canvas of unfinished pieces say about identity? How can you show progress, beyond demonstrating better technique? 

How have you addressed your frustrations and surprises with your October collaborators? How will you collaborate moving forward? How can your art contribute to other students' projects? Who is your audience/stakeholders? Is the community that you want to involve bigger than GHS? Who’s art do you look up to?

Do you find questions useful for your project? In what way are are questions useful for you?  How does your project present an argument, a truth-claim about the world? What are you saying with your project? Why should we listen? Why should we believe you? Why do you care? How will your experiences with this project affect you in the future?

J22a - Questions Journal: Goes' Market Environmentalism

Is climate change real? What are some of the specific threats posed by climate change? How exactly are we acting to prevent or reverse climate change? How much money is being spent on climate change research and response? Are there any entrepreneurs who are already capitalizing on the opportunities that you’re talking about? Are any big foundations or governments making investments with an eye towards the effects of climate change? What other environmental issues need to be reconsidered in light of the theory you're presenting here?

Why don’t you address the issue of externalities in your SDA on price theory? Isn’t the climate the ultimate public good? Isn’t the market incapable of providing public goods? How can the market work when environmental goods like the ocean and the air and forests don’t have prices? Are you saying that they’re not valuable if they don’t have a price? Why don’t they have a price? Should they have a price, since they’re so important? If the market is so powerful, why didn’t it prevent climate change in the first place? How would a socialist society handle these problems? 

Doesn’t responding to climate change require a concerted effort from everyone? Can’t only the government force everyone to act in the right way? Can’t the ideas you’re advocating be implemented by governments just as well, if not better, than they could by private individuals? If not, why not? Since you admitted that laws are needed to the market to function properly, aren’t you admitting that government is necessary for the market to function? Does it actually hurt to have the government fighting climate change, even if we should also prepare for its effects? 

Why haven’t I heard your definition of economics before? Are there other accepted definitions that you’ve recast? Why exactly were the accepted definitions unsatisfactory?  What other paradigms, besides the view of climate change, are you actually going to attack through your project? Why do you think people have this current view of climate change in their heads? What’s the best way of spreading your view?

What does it mean to say that the human mind is the source of meaning in the universe? Do things not exist without us (is this some philosophical point about trees falling in the forest)? How can we be opposed to nature if we are products of nature? Isn’t that a narcissistic view of humanity? What about animal rights? How can we objectively say that humans are worth more than the rest of nature? Are you saying that? What are other implications of the subjective theory of value? What does that mean for the practical aspect of your project? 

Does your project have a practical aspect? What’s one tangible opportunity presented by climate change? How do we take advantage of that opportunity? What will the world look like in twenty years? Fifty years? How will it look differently depending on whether we do what you recommend or not? Are we seeing changes already? What does seeing climate change as an economic opportunity actually mean/look like? How likely is this to happen? How will changes in technology affect the climate change debate and response?

How exactly are you going to sell this as a better view of climate change than the one we currently have? Is it a better view, or merely a different view? How important is this? How can you relate your project to other students’ projects? What will your end product look like?