Because I Can

Often my political opinions would be categorized as conservative in the US. That doesn't match my stance on immigration, the legal drinking age, "faith-based initiatives", etc. I'm also apathetic on the war in Iraq, because it's a mess now, but it wasn't exactly Disneyland under Saddam Hussein either. But I don't call myself a conservative, maybe a lower-case L libertarian or something. Conservative and Liberal are relative terms, which make them, like most other labels in American politics, worthless. If it's very easy to read too much into a label, it's probably a terrible label.

What is conservative? Is George W. Bush conservative? He oversaw a huge expansion of government, including a new entitlement program. If he's a conservative, is Ronald Reagan a liberal? If cutting taxes made Bush a conservative, and thus Clinton a liberal, was Bush Sr. a liberal? And was JFK a conservative? If supporting free trade is conservative, is George W Bush a liberal for supporting steel tarriffs? I could go on forever, but I don't want to.

Then there's the abortion debate. Pro-Life and Pro-Choice are propagandist labels; Pro-Abortion or Anti-Abortion would be more accurate. Think about it - how many of those who are Pro-Life truly oppose all taking of life from others, including war, capital punishment, the FDA, mandatory indefinite life support, and other sources. For that matter, though, how many people who call themselves Pro-Choice support school choice, freedom from closed or union shops, free trade, eliminating the FDA, assisted suicide, and other libertarian positions? Again, there are people in both camps - but those are not the only ones who bear those labels.

Further, the opposite of Pro-Life is not Pro-Death or Anti-Life, but Pro-Choice. Isn't this odd? You have to choose whether you live or get to choose something. Why can't people just say pro-abortion and anti-abortion? That's all it is. Not much to read into that. For that matter, why can't we just use our coordinates on the political compass? As they write

There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher?

I'm (7.75,-0.36).

Labels: Losers, Politics

I thought it was just sportswriters, but now apparently anyone that writes for newspapers can be stupid (HT: Tim).

My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.

Cell phones? What have cell phones done to destroy the intellectual makeup of young people? Because they can't sneak away from their parents as easily? Oh, I get it, they use abbreviations instead of write out entire words in text messages. MaB if U tried 2 txt real fast u wood 2. At least they're efficient. Sometimes.

As for TV exposure, that's arguable, because you can find some links, but merely watching TV doesn't make one that much dumber. But the iPod thing, that's clearly the sign of an old man ranting. "Those dang kids listening to their music all the time! Back in my day, you listened to the same songs everyone else did on your transistor radio, and that's if you were lucky."

Nor does he speak merely of the notion that kids these days are overprotected and wussified and don't spend enough time outdoors and don't get any real exercise and therefore can't, say, identify basic plants, or handle a tool, or build, well, anything at all. Again, these things are a given. Widely reported, tragically ignored, nothing new.

No, my friend takes it all a full step — or rather, leap — further. It is not merely a sad slide. It is not just a general dumbing down. It is far uglier than that.

So kids don't do scouts anymore? That seems to be your complaint. But what about this stuff, identify basic plants? How basic do you mean? Poison Ivy (that sounds more like a cry for us to all be boy scouts)? Handle a tool? Yeah, why don't those kids take shop class? And they can't build anything. These are the children of today, look at that crap! But here it gets good, on why the system is broken.

Hell, why should they? After all, the dumber the populace, the easier it is to rule and control and launch unwinnable wars and pass laws telling them that sex is bad and TV is good and God knows all, so just pipe down and eat your Taco Bell Double-Supremo Burrito and be glad we don't arrest you for posting dirty pictures on your cute little blog.

Amazing how people believe their own hyperbole. Fast food loses its appeal as tastes mature and kids appreciate better food, particularly after college life. As for ruling a stupid class of subjects, that actually is harder, because there is the difficulty on their part of actually executing your commands. The War in Iraq could have turned out differently if the occupation was better planned before the start of the war - the invasion itself was brilliant, but while we've gotten better at military conflict, we haven't gotten that much better at occupation and establishing new governments. As for passing laws telling them that sex is bad, that was done centuries ago, actually, and striking down anti-sodomy laws is really a rather recent phenomenon. And I can't remember any laws suggesting that TV is good, or for that matter that God knows all. Again, secularization is a recent phenomenon, as religious education was actually a significant motivation for the first public schools. But enough about facts. Let's look at a Jayson Stark style argument.

Hell, some of the best designers, writers, artists, poets, chefs, and so on that I meet are in their early to mid-20s. And the nation's top universities are still managing, despite a factory-churning mentality, to crank out young minds of astonishing ability and acumen. How did these kids do it? How did they escape the horrible public school system? How did they avoid the great dumbing down of America? Did they never see a TV show until they hit puberty? Were they all born and raised elsewhere, in India and Asia and Russia? Did they all go to Waldorf or Montessori and eat whole-grain breads and play with firecrackers and take long walks in wild nature? Are these kids flukes? Exceptions? Just lucky?

My friend would say, well, yes, that's precisely what most of them are. Lucky, wealthy, foreign-born, private-schooled ... and increasingly rare. Most affluent parents in America — and many more who aren't — now put their kids in private schools from day one, and the smart ones give their kids no TV and minimal junk food and no video games. (Of course, this in no way guarantees a smart, attuned kid, but compared to the odds of success in the public school system, it sure seems to help). This covers about, what, 3 percent of the populace?

As for the rest, well, the dystopian evidence seems overwhelming indeed, to the point where it might be no stretch at all to say the biggest threat facing America is perhaps not global warming, not perpetual warmongering, not garbage food or low-level radiation or way too much Lindsay Lohan, but a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better.

Let's just take his word for it, despite the fact that you may actually have evidence to suggest that the future isn't completely full of idiots, or at least that it's not more full of idiots than before. I mean, it's not like you could actually do research and determine whether a random sample of young successful people had a public school education, etc. You're a newspaper columnist, your job is to give the people what they want. And what they want is for you to bash the kids, because the kids have better things to do than waste time reading a newspaper. What a load of garbage.

Labels: FJM Style rip, Losers

Bryan Caplan writes

Arnold writes:

I carry around an entrepreneurial idea of an American equivalent of the "gap year," which would be a year of education in between high school and college. This year would involve finding a part-time job, living in and
cleaning an apartment, learning to cook one's own meals (and pick out fresh ingredients to go into that cooking), learning personal finance, learning something about household wiring and plumbing, and taking courses in philosophy and mathematics. I have not found a single person who doubts that this would be better for young people than the typical college freshman experience.

Maybe Arnold's "gap year" would be better for the young person's soul. But
would it actually be a prudent unilateral course of action? I very much doubt
it. After your gap year, you'd still have to do a regular four-year degree to
signal that you've got the Right Stuff. Unless the world changes a lot,
employers are going to treat the gap year like a gap in your resume, nothing
more. And are household management skills so difficult that people can't learn
them by doing once they get their first real job and their own apartment?

Point by point, Arnold's gap year.

finding a part-time job,
Many people do this in high school. Some people get summer jobs. Some people do this in college. If it's a way to make money, worthwhile, and accessible, then you'll see it happen.

living in and cleaning an apartment,
Living in an apartment is like living in a house except it's not as big. To clean it, you still use a vacuum cleaner, a toilet brush, a mop, some cleaning chemicals, etc. You should know something about how to clean a house if you ever lived in one, even if you were a kid. Parents who aren't worthless as human beings have their kids do chores at some point. If your parents get a maid when you're young, they're doing you a disservice, and wasting money too.

learning to cook one's own meals (and pick out fresh ingredients to go into that cooking),
You can learn this young too, and it's best with parental supervision anyway. But honestly, give the kid a damn cookbook. It's not that hard, really.

learning personal finance,
Very simple lesson. YOU ARE NOT THE GODDAMN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. YOU CAN ONLY SPEND MONEY YOU HAVE. This involves such advanced skills as COUNTING YOUR DAMN MONEY and KEEPING TRACK OF HOW MUCH YOU SPEND. Then it gets harder when it gets to PAYING YOUR BILLS ON TIME, which of course involves such skills as WRITING NUMBERS and READING A CALENDAR. But ultimately, YOU ARE NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT sums the whole thing up. As for investing and that sort of thing, a lot of it is common sense, but you can read up on that on the internet. But nobody does that before graduating college anyway.

learning something about household wiring and plumbing,
Household wiring? I guess you mean how to handle a bad fuse, or as is more often the case, how to flip the switch on a circuit breaker. Or maybe DON'T PLUG IN 80 THINGS IN ONE OUTLET. Every college student should know stereo wiring by buying a stereo. As for plumbing, there's flushing a toilet, jiggling the handle, and knowing the back of the toilet. Stuff to pick up when you live at home in MIDDLE SCHOOL.

and taking courses in philosophy and mathematics.
People need to learn more math. But where do you take courses? Oh, I don't know . . . IN SCHOOL?! Maybe instead of taking a year off, you should try learning math in school. Philosophy, as we all know, is useful in trying to impress people while talking to them, but is ultimately worthelss, particularly as a job skill.

Caplan's desire to be polite is sickening. Maybe it's good for the young person's soul? (Well, what's an atheist gonna know about the soul anyway :-p ) Forget the signaling. How worthless is one if he has to take a year off because he had adolescence and never grew up? That's not good for the soul; it's good for making you pathetic, disgraceful, a loser, and aware of it. It's about as good for the soul as constantly referring to the driver's manual every single time you come to a 4 way stop. The only people who would need this would be the ones who were Billy Madison, in such a case it would be better for their soul than mooching of their parents the rest of their lives. But otherwise, it's pretty damn worthless.

If Kling were genuinely entrepreneural, he'd institutionalize this and create a rigorous program. But as an idea to try on your own, no way.

Addendum: I can understand this if you've had some problems you need to straighten out, or if you're going to do something like pay your own way through college. But for a more typical case, where the student goes to school and is at least partially(and more often fully) supported by parents, my case stands.

Labels: Economic Stuff, Losers