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.
