Re “This is not some tiny ahistoric digression. A key part of Friedman's argument, one that he will return to frequently, is that Back In The Day schools worked great without government involvement, so why shouldn't we go back to that? The spine of his argument is made of ahistoric nostalgia for a past that never was.”
Part of the American mythos is how many citizens would band together to build schoolhouses and hire teachers for their children. This collective action was not necessarily a formal action of the then instituted governments but it was a collective action of citizens, which is really all that government is.
And I am still waiting for someone, anyone, to explain how extracting profits from our school systems makes them better. Magic Marketplaces indeed!
Re “The union is opposed to market-based education because they're afraid of competition, because "they know they're not doing a very good job" and "they know they're running schools for the benefit of their members, not for the benefit of their members (a typo?)."”
Did anyone ask this asshole (excuse my French) how he knew this to be the case? Did he study teacher’s unions extensively or is he just mouthing an unsubstantiated prejudice? Why were such outlandish statements accept at ace value? If he had blamed the unions on “the Jews” would anyone have blinked?
Re "Neither you nor I," he tells Kane, "are imaginative enough to dream of what real competition, a real free market, could produce, what kind of educational innovations would emerge."
If today’s experience is any measure, when the goal of all large businesses is to create monopolies, and “competition is for suckers,” is that what he is referring to? Create private school monopolies which can then set prices for their “market”?
Re “When I graduated from high school -- it was a long, long time ago, in 1928 -- there were 150,000 school districts in the United States. The population was half its present size. Today, there are fewer than 15,000 school districts. And that came about because of the aggrandizement and bureaucratization of the school district -- assembling mammoth high schools -- some of them with 1,500, 3,000, 5,000 students.
Wait, was the good doctor unaware of usual pattern of American business, in which corporations got larger by absorbing smaller companies and dominated their markets through sheer size; examples being Standard Oil (which had to be broken up by anti-monopolistic government), Big Four Auto Manufacturers (e.g. General Motors), to be followed by Big Pharma, Big Agro, etc., etc.? So Friedman believed this natural aspect of business was a bad thing?
Re “I guess when you're a world-famous acclaimed economist you can just make stuff up or just treat your own anecdotal experience as indicative of the whole world?”
Bingo!
And I wonder why he was a world-famous economist. His Chicago Boys did a good job of ruining several viable economies in South America. What did he actual do to earn such respect, other than bloviate?
As I recall, the Volkswagen was intended to be a car that everyone could afford to own. Now it's a bit more than that. Despite its safety issues, I would buy an original VW today but there is no market for a such a car. Everything is larded up with "standard" extras that increase the cost. Even in the 1960s one could order a car with the features you wanted but now you take what is on the lot.
There are poor neighborhoods without grocery stores. But they have a Dollar General where selection is limited and prices tend to be higher.
The interesting thing is, as you point out, so much is based on lies and fabrications. It gives the sense that what he stood for was rhetoric and the shifting ground that would allow him to always win an argument, whether or not he was correct. He shifts from the common "this would be great for poor people" to "of course poor people would get poor quality education" and constantly shifts the terms of the conversation so he can always claim to have the stronger argument.
Long post, long comments . . . sorry!
Re “This is not some tiny ahistoric digression. A key part of Friedman's argument, one that he will return to frequently, is that Back In The Day schools worked great without government involvement, so why shouldn't we go back to that? The spine of his argument is made of ahistoric nostalgia for a past that never was.”
Part of the American mythos is how many citizens would band together to build schoolhouses and hire teachers for their children. This collective action was not necessarily a formal action of the then instituted governments but it was a collective action of citizens, which is really all that government is.
And I am still waiting for someone, anyone, to explain how extracting profits from our school systems makes them better. Magic Marketplaces indeed!
Re “The union is opposed to market-based education because they're afraid of competition, because "they know they're not doing a very good job" and "they know they're running schools for the benefit of their members, not for the benefit of their members (a typo?)."”
Did anyone ask this asshole (excuse my French) how he knew this to be the case? Did he study teacher’s unions extensively or is he just mouthing an unsubstantiated prejudice? Why were such outlandish statements accept at ace value? If he had blamed the unions on “the Jews” would anyone have blinked?
Re "Neither you nor I," he tells Kane, "are imaginative enough to dream of what real competition, a real free market, could produce, what kind of educational innovations would emerge."
If today’s experience is any measure, when the goal of all large businesses is to create monopolies, and “competition is for suckers,” is that what he is referring to? Create private school monopolies which can then set prices for their “market”?
Re “When I graduated from high school -- it was a long, long time ago, in 1928 -- there were 150,000 school districts in the United States. The population was half its present size. Today, there are fewer than 15,000 school districts. And that came about because of the aggrandizement and bureaucratization of the school district -- assembling mammoth high schools -- some of them with 1,500, 3,000, 5,000 students.
Wait, was the good doctor unaware of usual pattern of American business, in which corporations got larger by absorbing smaller companies and dominated their markets through sheer size; examples being Standard Oil (which had to be broken up by anti-monopolistic government), Big Four Auto Manufacturers (e.g. General Motors), to be followed by Big Pharma, Big Agro, etc., etc.? So Friedman believed this natural aspect of business was a bad thing?
Re “I guess when you're a world-famous acclaimed economist you can just make stuff up or just treat your own anecdotal experience as indicative of the whole world?”
Bingo!
And I wonder why he was a world-famous economist. His Chicago Boys did a good job of ruining several viable economies in South America. What did he actual do to earn such respect, other than bloviate?
As I recall, the Volkswagen was intended to be a car that everyone could afford to own. Now it's a bit more than that. Despite its safety issues, I would buy an original VW today but there is no market for a such a car. Everything is larded up with "standard" extras that increase the cost. Even in the 1960s one could order a car with the features you wanted but now you take what is on the lot.
There are poor neighborhoods without grocery stores. But they have a Dollar General where selection is limited and prices tend to be higher.
The interesting thing is, as you point out, so much is based on lies and fabrications. It gives the sense that what he stood for was rhetoric and the shifting ground that would allow him to always win an argument, whether or not he was correct. He shifts from the common "this would be great for poor people" to "of course poor people would get poor quality education" and constantly shifts the terms of the conversation so he can always claim to have the stronger argument.