Jane Jacobs vs. Ben Stein.
Jan. 17th, 2008 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsJane Jacobs is an economist with a simple observation with profound implications: regional manufacturing processes ultimately decline in value and must be replaced with newer, different manufacturing processes.
The reason for the declines are varied. The process may be cheaper elsewhere, due to labor costs, or the availability of raw materials. Even if a region has the ideal siting for manfacturing a certain good, other sites will probably be just as suitable, and competition drives down prices and narrows margins. Ultimately, for any region to thrive, it must find newer sources of wealth generation in order to just maintain its standard of living, or it must fail. Failure drives down local prices, which hurts in the short term, but leaves the region fallow for the future as transportation and information access technologies drop the cost of moving into the region and exploiting the depressed land and labor markets.
Regional and global economies grow only as new goods-- new categories of goods-- enter the marketplace. Regional economies shrink as they are incapable of producing new categories of goods and instead continue to rely on existing categories that are rapidly becoming commoditized and marginalized. The global economy suffers if not enough new goods categories enter the market fast enough to supercede the marginalization of existing goods.
In the United States, regional markets are already under pressure. We are rapidly turning toward a time when we will be unable to compete in the global marketplace, and the reasons should be obvious.
We have allowed vested interests to stack regulatory processes in their favor. The vested interests wish to maintain the status quo and existing cash flows, and only enormous pressure gets them to move. Our government is not responsive to the needs of citizens. I'm not in favor of big government, but where we have it, it should be responsive to its duties.
But more than that, we have replaced science education in this country with a paltry shadow of real science. I rail a lot about biology education in this country, and this is the biggie. If Jacobs is correct (and intuitively, what she writes seems to be so), then the next three decades are going to be about biology: the wealthiest nation on Earth™ is going to see a huge increase in the medical needs of its aging population, and pharmcies should be rushing to fill that need. More to the point, to the extent that corporations can maintain its workforce longer and older and still more vibrant and positively contributory to the economy as a whole, the entire marketplace ought to be doing what it can to extend the grey matter of the greying population. Only the biological sciences can do that.
And yet, biology is such a contentious issue that science teachers don't mention the "E" word in class. Entire generations-- three now-- have been subject to unending pressure to not teach biology as anything other than stamp collecting. And what brings my blood to an almost deep-space boil is the way that the yahoos are lying to the yahoos: Ben "former Nixon speechwriter" "former eyedrop shill" "former gameshow host" Stein gave an interview with a Christian newpaper where he claimed that "big science" "is killing the 1st Amendment and inhibiting sound science. He says he's "alarmed" by the way pro-ID scientists have been the target of reprisals and sanction. Well, yeah. When the "pro-ID scientists" can show that Intelligent Design in anyway improves our knowledge, makes verifiable predictions, and extends our ability to cure disease, improve agriculture, stave off antibiotic resistance, and so on, we'll stop laughing at them.
He's telling these people that science needs his kind of questioning: the kind that ends when all questioning has stopped.
So, fine, Ben Stein. Go ahead and wreck this country's future.
Because ID cannot, by definition, create promising avenues of research. It's entire point is to give up when the knowing gets rough. Meanwhile, keep kids from having the education needed to produce a decent future.
I hope that when Ben Stein ends up in a nursing home, his entire staff is made up of pro-ID zealots convinced that his illness, decay, and death are deliberate, intelligently chosen design decisions.
The reason for the declines are varied. The process may be cheaper elsewhere, due to labor costs, or the availability of raw materials. Even if a region has the ideal siting for manfacturing a certain good, other sites will probably be just as suitable, and competition drives down prices and narrows margins. Ultimately, for any region to thrive, it must find newer sources of wealth generation in order to just maintain its standard of living, or it must fail. Failure drives down local prices, which hurts in the short term, but leaves the region fallow for the future as transportation and information access technologies drop the cost of moving into the region and exploiting the depressed land and labor markets.
Regional and global economies grow only as new goods-- new categories of goods-- enter the marketplace. Regional economies shrink as they are incapable of producing new categories of goods and instead continue to rely on existing categories that are rapidly becoming commoditized and marginalized. The global economy suffers if not enough new goods categories enter the market fast enough to supercede the marginalization of existing goods.
In the United States, regional markets are already under pressure. We are rapidly turning toward a time when we will be unable to compete in the global marketplace, and the reasons should be obvious.
We have allowed vested interests to stack regulatory processes in their favor. The vested interests wish to maintain the status quo and existing cash flows, and only enormous pressure gets them to move. Our government is not responsive to the needs of citizens. I'm not in favor of big government, but where we have it, it should be responsive to its duties.
But more than that, we have replaced science education in this country with a paltry shadow of real science. I rail a lot about biology education in this country, and this is the biggie. If Jacobs is correct (and intuitively, what she writes seems to be so), then the next three decades are going to be about biology: the wealthiest nation on Earth™ is going to see a huge increase in the medical needs of its aging population, and pharmcies should be rushing to fill that need. More to the point, to the extent that corporations can maintain its workforce longer and older and still more vibrant and positively contributory to the economy as a whole, the entire marketplace ought to be doing what it can to extend the grey matter of the greying population. Only the biological sciences can do that.
And yet, biology is such a contentious issue that science teachers don't mention the "E" word in class. Entire generations-- three now-- have been subject to unending pressure to not teach biology as anything other than stamp collecting. And what brings my blood to an almost deep-space boil is the way that the yahoos are lying to the yahoos: Ben "former Nixon speechwriter" "former eyedrop shill" "former gameshow host" Stein gave an interview with a Christian newpaper where he claimed that "big science" "is killing the 1st Amendment and inhibiting sound science. He says he's "alarmed" by the way pro-ID scientists have been the target of reprisals and sanction. Well, yeah. When the "pro-ID scientists" can show that Intelligent Design in anyway improves our knowledge, makes verifiable predictions, and extends our ability to cure disease, improve agriculture, stave off antibiotic resistance, and so on, we'll stop laughing at them.
He's telling these people that science needs his kind of questioning: the kind that ends when all questioning has stopped.
So, fine, Ben Stein. Go ahead and wreck this country's future.
Because ID cannot, by definition, create promising avenues of research. It's entire point is to give up when the knowing gets rough. Meanwhile, keep kids from having the education needed to produce a decent future.
I hope that when Ben Stein ends up in a nursing home, his entire staff is made up of pro-ID zealots convinced that his illness, decay, and death are deliberate, intelligently chosen design decisions.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 02:53 am (UTC)Yep.
Whenever you hit something in Natural History that cannot be explained by known theory, you are supposed to just believe in Genesis. The odd thing is that the ID'ers cannot explain, in any scientific way, why you should believe in Genesis rather than in Prometheus, Tiamat or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Nice essay
Date: 2008-01-18 04:33 am (UTC)In the US and most developed nations, politicians and bureaucrats truly _are_ responsive to the needs of citizens. They're just more concerned with citizens who have businesses than citizens who merely have jobs. And in turn, they respond better to citizens who have jobs than to citizens who don't.
It isn't a matter of bribery or campaign contributions, or really anything to do with money at all; it's about ideology and persuasion and the tangible consequences of legislation and regulation.
You'll actually find it easier to understand why economic development can lead to stagnation and all those other effects if you maintain an accurate mental model of what's going on out there.
. png
nice essay, except the end
Date: 2008-01-18 09:40 am (UTC)On the other hand, to treat science as a kind of religion where X (e.g., big science) is good and Y (e.g., creationism) is bad is also to miss the point. The problem with high school science education isn't that the wrong set of facts are taught (or not taught); it is that the students don't do science. If we start with the idea that the best way to learn is to do, then high school science classes should be a bunch of science-like activities. Where you collect real data. And if ID proponents can come up with a data collection exercise they like, more power to them.
Seth Roberts
www.sethroberts.net
Re: nice essay, except the end
Date: 2008-01-18 02:34 pm (UTC)Any scientific theory has to be testable, and disprovable. You never prove anything in science, you just fail to dis-prove it every time you try. If somebody starts trying to mix in faith, divine intervention, or gary larson's "and then a miracle occurs" step anywhere, it becomes Bad Science. It's just fine to put in a "we aren't sure about this step here" as a placeholder, with the intention of coming back later to deal with it... but handwaving the issue away by saying "god takes care of that part" is just irresponsible.
Pro-ID folks often bring up the old "Scientists cling to their dogma just as much as anybody else does!" line, and to some extent, they do. Human beings are human beings, after all. However, such holdouts don't often last long*. At heart, science is all about proving a currently held notion wrong, so you can propose your own theory to go on top of it. If somebody today managed some experiments that disproved a widely held belief, and it stood up to independent peer review and testing, they'd be holding a Nobel prize before long. The folks that Ben Stein is trying to champion haven't done work that holds up under such scrutiny.
I'm not trying to start a fight with anybody here, but just to more clearly delineate why these two philosophies Just Don't Mix.
*you might find a few people out there who still cling to the idea of phlogiston and pre-plate-tectonics geology, but they're not exactly making big contributions to science at the moment.
Evolution?
Date: 2008-01-20 02:30 pm (UTC)Interesting thought... What if this is actually an example of "evolution at work?"
The smart survive. The dumb flock to the ID camp and eventually die off due to disease and starvation that could have been prevented...
Mother nature is a bitch. Don't mess with her. Cheer for her instead. :-)
// Frank