Re: [luv-talk] How to know when a field is worth learning? (was Victorian Liberals want to privatise ABC and SBS)
How to know if it's worth learning a field of knowledge? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This discussion raises an interesting and important question: how to decide when it is worth spending time and money investigating some field of knowledge or understanding a viewpoint? The book I recommended is only $12 or so, but I agree that the time investment is substantial. How do you know a field of knowledge has any value, without investing a lot of time learning it at which point it is too late? Personally I have wasted a lot of time learning about things that proved to have little or no value to me e.g astrology, deconstruction, literary 'theory', psychoanalysis, behaviorism, string theory, semiotics and post-structuralism . Other things like religion and gender feminism seem to be important IMHO only as social or political phenomena. Others have snippets of goodness within large piles of dross eg modern marco-economics, Austrian economics, Marxism, academic music post ~1920, sociology. I am interested in any ideas beyond these: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4ba/some_heuristics_for_evaluating_the_soundness_of/ Another set of heuristics is to ask, "Does a field allow its practitioners to: 1. Build novel things that work, or 2. Make correct and falsifiable prediction of the future, or 3. Explain the otherwise inexplicable?" As an example, studies suggest that marriage counsellors have less skill in predicting which marriages will survive than simple regresion analyses, and do not reduce the incidence of marriage breakups. My conclusion is that they basically know nothing. In contrast the theory of relativity satisfies all three criteria (GPS needs relativity time adjustments), predicted gravitational red shift and starlight bending, and explained the orbit of Mercury. Psychiatiry may have some grain of truth Its practitioners seem to have no skill in making people well again other than suppressing the symptoms with drugs, have less skill in predicting the behaviour of their patients than simple regressions, but Freud's nephew seems to have had enormous success in inventing modern public relations using some of the insights of his uncle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays ----------------------------------- On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
Firstly please don't edit text that you quote. I've edited it back to what I originally wrote.
My intention was to edit it back to my original satirical text, but I did not make that clear.
You can suggest that I waste some money and a lot of time reading a book, but it's not going to happen.
Looking at your posting history and web site, and this discussion I don't see any evidence you know much about these issues or that you have any will to learn about them so I guess there is not much point continuing beyond these couple of points.
It may seem obvious that spending money on welfare payments, for example, will make people better off. But this ignores second order effects, which are often more important. Recently the ALP introduced changes to make the supporting parent benefit less appealing. They did not do this merely because they are mean and heartless, but because they realise that encouraging people to have children who are going to live on welfare has all sorts of harmful side-effects, such as increasing the number of children who are born into deprived circumstances. Such policies are also costly for the rest of the community in financial terms and in terms of dealing with the dysfunctional and/or criminal adults who come disproportionately from such situations (these effects persist even after correcting for income). The recognition in the US of the downsides of the welfare state has reached the point where some black commentators are arguing that Johnson's Great Society was a plot to put down the black man. Not that I agree with that, but the fact that blacks can argue this shows that people perceive a problem.
Please cite some examples of "community based cooperative solutions" that have worked in practice.
Before the welfare state, there were many cooperative organisations such as churches, clubs, service organisations, mutual societies, and charities which helped people in need. People also saved more money as a nest egg for hard times. Families supported each other more strongly. These solutions were not perfect but neither is the welfare state. The welfare state has had a destructive effect on many of these organisations and mechanisms eg mutual societies have been mostly turned into for-profit companies (eg AMP). Tim Josling
On Sat, 1 Jun 2013, Tim Josling <tim.josling@gmail.com> wrote: [snipped lots of claims which should have citations]
-----------------------------------
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
Firstly please don't edit text that you quote. I've edited it back to what I originally wrote.
My intention was to edit it back to my original satirical text, but I did not make that clear.
There is no excuse for falsifying a quote.
You can suggest that I waste some money and a lot of time reading a book, but it's not going to happen.
Looking at your posting history and web site, and this discussion I don't see any evidence you know much about these issues or that you have any will to learn about them so I guess there is not much point continuing beyond these couple of points.
I have already learned enough about some of the silly ideas that are being discussed. One doesn't need to learn a lot about certain causes to realise that they are advocated by cranks.
It may seem obvious that spending money on welfare payments, for example, will make people better off. But this ignores second order effects, which are often more important.
Actually the second-order effects are that the people in question spend the money and improve the community. If there aren't welfare payments then an economic down-turn leads to shops and factories closing, people being unable to afford housing, home forclosures, and the urban blight that's well documented in many parts of the US nowadays.
Recently the ALP introduced changes to make the supporting parent benefit less appealing. They did not do this merely because they are mean and heartless, but because they realise that encouraging people to have children who are going to live on welfare has all sorts of harmful side-effects, such as increasing the number of children who are born into deprived circumstances. Such policies are also costly for the rest of the community in financial terms and in terms of dealing with the dysfunctional and/or criminal adults who come disproportionately from such situations (these effects persist even after correcting for income).
http://thesocietypages.org/editors/2013/01/29/shotgun-wedding/ In terms of the incidence of single-moms the opposition to abortion seems to be a bigger factor. The benefits for parents have always been quite small, being a single-parent has always meant either having a well paying job and day-care or living in poverty. Claims that young women get pregnant for welfare payments seem to be based on citing a small number of individuals rather than a statistical analysis. If they wanted to impose a financial penalty for having children that doesn't hurt the children then they could just make the enforcement of child support more rigorous. I recently discussed such things with a single-mother who told me that she didn't bother attempting legal action to get child-support because her ex didn't have enough money to cover the legal fees - so legal action would leave her worse off financially. If child support was deducted by the ATO then that would reduce welfare payments while also discouraging men from getting women pregnant when they have no intention of supporting the child. http://tinyurl.com/l2x2mls Also if the aim was to discourage people from having children then they could subsidise the contraceptive pill. In Australia the PBS makes "the pill" quite cheap for concession card holders (not much more than $1 per month according to the above article) but in the US the Republicans want to keep it expensive. http://www.mamamia.com.au/parenting/morning-after-pil/ Apparently in Australia the "morning after pill" (actually up to 5 days after) cost $20 to $30 in 2010, a quick search didn't turn up the current price. Anyway it seems that at least 3 years ago they could have reduced the price if they wanted to prevent babies from being born into poverty. They could also reduce the vasectomy price to zero, over the long term it's currently the cheapest form of contraception ($350 in Australia according to a forum post) but the price may help deter some men. Of course the easy way of disproving that the welfare changes advocated by your Libertarian ideas have anything to do with improving the situation for children is that fact that in the US there's a strong correlation between politicians having Libertarian ideas and wanting to ban all forms of contraception, sex education, and abortion.
The recognition in the US of the downsides of the welfare state has reached the point where some black commentators are arguing that Johnson's Great Society was a plot to put down the black man. Not that I agree with that, but the fact that blacks can argue this shows that people perceive a problem.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html According to the CIA world fact book 12.85% of the population of 316,668,567 are black. Of any group of more than 40 million people I'm sure that you can find any strange idea being represented. For any minority group you can find some members of that group who have strange ideas which oppose the best interest of the group. For example consider all the poor white people in the US who vote against health care reform. There was a particularly amusing Youtube video of a Tea Party woman stridently opposing health care reform who revealed that her husband had no health insurance and would benefit from the legislation that the Democrats were proposing. Leading a political campaign to prevent one's spouse from getting potentially life-saving health insurance - wow.
Please cite some examples of "community based cooperative solutions" that have worked in practice.
Before the welfare state, there were many cooperative organisations such as churches, clubs, service organisations, mutual societies, and charities which helped people in need.
Relying on churches is a really bad idea, it's a form of forced religious conversion. Also all the methods you cite are based on local support, this goes badly when there are poorer regions. For example in the US the southern states receive more federal funds than they pay in federal taxes. Strangely they are also the states that are most in favor of the Libertarian ideas. We're back to members of some minority groups opposing their own interests.
People also saved more money as a nest egg for hard times. Families supported each other more strongly.
People only save money if that is possible. As Libertarians want to remove the minimum wage, ban unions, and do everything to avoid allowing workers a decent salary that isn't a reasonable suggestion.
These solutions were not perfect but neither is the welfare state. The welfare state has had a destructive effect on many of these organisations and mechanisms eg mutual societies have been mostly turned into for-profit companies (eg AMP).
Mutual societies were turned into for-profit companies because there was profit to be made. That's a success of Libertarian ideas! Also as far as I can tell AMP NEVER AT ANY TIME operated as a welfare organisation. They operated solely on behalf of their customers. As far as I can tell AMP never provided pensions for widows, orphans, the disabled, the elderly, or people who were seeking work. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
participants (2)
-
Russell Coker -
Tim Josling