DISD Violates a Teacher's Civil Rights

The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) has recently been shutting down exemplary schools (while keeping open the worst ones) and has also decided to extend teachers' work days by 45 minutes (not to provide 45 minutes more education for students, but rather for more pointless meetings that accomplish nothing and from which nobody learns anything -- if my experiences are typical), which has had teacher's protesting the actions. In Texas, it is illegal for teachers to go on strike, so protests, letters and emails are all teachers are really left with.

Now, in the U.S., one of our rights as citizens is the right to petition our government for a redress of grievances (Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution). This includes not only federal officials, but all elected officials. It should thus concern us that a DISD teacher, Joseph Drake, was put on "administrative leave" an hour after sending a critical email to Edwin Flores, a school board member. In other words, it appears that Drake was punished for expressing his opinion as a citizen to a board member. That is retaliation, and an abuse of power. Everyone involved in the decision should be removed from office and imprisoned for corruption and violating Drake's civil rights. Yes, imprisoned. Unless we treat people like this as the criminals they are when they violate citizens' civil rights, we can only expect more of this sort of corrupt behavior to occur. Our elected officials should be too scared to even think about such violations, and treating them like the criminals they are is the only way to do that.

More, it should not be illegal, as it is in Texas, to protest government working conditions. Certainly teachers make a pretty good living here in Texas -- better than do most teachers in most other states -- and that is probably in no small part because of the weakness of the teachers' union, but that's really not the point. A strike is a form of protest, and by prohibiting striking by their own employees, the Texas government is violating the 1st Amendment. (If the state of Texas does not like teachers to be able to strike, they should privatize all the public schools, and then the private schools can prohibit striking by firing anyone who does.) We should thus not be surprised that Flores and the DISD board thinks they can violate Drake's civil rights at will, since such violation is already law in Texas. But that hardly means any of the guilty parties should be allowed to get away with it.

Perverse Incentives and Education in Dallas

The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) has recently decided to shut down several schools to save money. This could be a great opportunity to shut down the worst schools and get rid of all the bad teachers who help make those schools so bad. Instead, DISD has decided to shut down their exemplary schools, meaning they will be getting rid of their best teachers.

What corporation in the market economy would act like this, shutting down their best performing companies and keeping open their worst? If you saw this happening, you would know there were perverse incentives afoot. No company keeps an unprofitable sector of their business around unless there was something in it for them -- unless they were getting subsidies or tax breaks -- or both. And this is what we should expect when we see a school district shutting down their best schools and keeping open their worse.

Of course, it is the state and federal government which is providing the perverse incentives. If there is a low performing school, their solution is to throw more money at it. High performing schools get less money, because it is perceived that they don't "need" it. There is a mistaken belief in government that if something is not working, it is because not enough money is being spent. Thus, there is a financial incentive to shut down good schools and keep bad schools, since the latter get more money. Of course, most of that extra money goes to bureaucrats who are only going to make matters worse, and to utterly useless technology (not all technology is useless, of course -- but my experience is that much of it bought for our schools is utterly useless, especially after, say, a bulb goes out on a $1000 piece of equipment, and the money is not available to buy new bulbs, which are not as sexy as new equipment, even if it is the new bulbs which are actually needed!).

The federal and state governments consistently make our educational system worse and worse -- and then they turn around and blame the teachers, who are doing the best they can in the institutions created by ignorant legislators and selfish bureaucrats. Teacher pay is cut, but not a single bureaucrat's pay -- or job -- is under threat, even though letting go a few of those useless, value-destroying parasites would probably solve most budget problems.

Humility is Arrogance

One of the trademarks of Austrian Economics is that it argued that the economy is too complex to fully comprehend. The conclusion, therefore, is that we should approach understanding it with humility, and we should beware of anyone who says they know how to make it behave as they would wish it to behave. This is always my argument against those who think they know how the economy will or ought to behave, those who believe this or that regulation will have this or that definite outcome -- interventionists and socialists of all stripes. My argument is always that we cannot know what the outcome will be, that the system is too complex to fully comprehend -- particularly since we are elements within that system, meaning the economic system is more complex than we are. I argue that we are necessarily ignorant of what we can do to make the economy behave exactly as we want it to behave -- even as we can understand how people will typically behave given the right conditions, the right incentives, etc. We can make pattern predictions, but not outcome predictions.

I preach humility-- that we have to be honest about our ignorance. Yet when I do, I get accused of arrogance. How is it that the one who argues for humility in the face of our necessary ignorance is the one who is arrogant, while those who argue that we can in fact know everything such that we can plan the economy or, at least, knowingly regulate it, are not? By definition, it is the latter who are arrogant. Basically, I love that the one who says we should have humility when it comes to the economy because it is too complex to control is called arrogant by those so arrogant they think they can understand and control things more complex than they are.

It is amazing how much of a NewSpeak world we live in:

Humility is arrogance; arrogance is humility.

Wisdom is Foolishness

Ignorance is Knowledge.

War is Peace

More Regulation is Deregulation

Corporatism (fascism) is Free Markets

Power is Virtue

Hate is Love

"We are only threatening to kill you for your own good."

The solution to the problems created by power is more power.

The State of the Union 2012

Last night in the State of the Union address, President Obama said he wanted the government to drive up prices for consumers, treat the symptoms rather than the disease of higher education costs, and decrease charitable giving.

With his proposed "Trade Enforcement Unit," Obama is actually proposing to punish countries for selling cheap goods to the U.S. The argument is that subsidizing businesses so they can sell to us cheaper is unfair. However, such actions are actually harmful not to Americans, but to the countries, like China, that are doing it. Americans are benefited by lower prices, because lower prices increase our standard of living. But when you subsidize a company, you have to do so by taking money from the economy -- from your own consumers and from other companies in the country -- to allow a few companies to sell at a lower price. This harms China over the long run and makes their companies less competitive, their economy weaker, and their consumers less wealthy and with a lower standard of living than they would have otherwise had. If China wants to do that to their economy to sell cheaper goods to the U.S., who cares? To point out that we do the same thing is no argument, either -- it only shows our government is just as stupid as the Chinese government on this issue. And what about our companies? We don't have to make those things the Chinese are making -- in fact, comparative advantage suggests we shouldn't try to do so anyway.

Higher education costs so much because cheap money in the form of student loans -- made cheap by government subsidies (at least, until the federal government took over that aspect of the program) and by the fact that 18 year olds do not think about the fact that they will have to pay all this money back -- drives up the price of higher education the same way cheap money created the housing bubble. But instead of addressing the cause of ever-increasing higher prices in higher education, Obama of course only focused on the result. His solution, then, is to use the federal government to bully universities into lowering their prices. Of course, since much of the increasing cost of higher education is due to the development of a massive administrative bureaucracy to in no small part deal with federal requirements, loans, etc., meaning the bureaucracy can't go anywhere, the places where costs will be cut will be in faculty -- especially faculty in areas not considered to be "important," such as the arts, literature, philosophy, history, and languages. Thus higher education will get worse, meaning high school education will get worse (since there will be even less pressure on high schools to teach anything for anyone to get in college).

With the so-called "Buffett Rule," Obama would decrease charitable giving by millionaires, since

Anyone making over $1 million will be required to pay an effective tax rate of at least 30%. At the same time, deductions would be eliminated on Americans earning more than $1 million. In tandem, the proposals would mean a substantial tax hike for the wealthiest Americans. (CNN)

If you eliminate deductions, you eliminate one of the reasons people give money to charities. This is certainly not the only reason people give, of course, but incentives do matter. If you eliminate deductions, you eliminate a reason to give money away -- and you should not be surprised then when people don't give as much. Of course, with less private charity giving, charities will have less money to do their work, and government will "have" to take up the slack. The real result will be that the Left will get to talk about how stingy the rich are and point to how "charitable" government is.

One of the few economically sensible things he said was that we should extend the payroll tax (yes, please, let's not pull more money out of a bad economy!), and that we shouldn't give tax breaks for companies to relocate overseas. Of course, he then went on to say that we should give tax breaks to this, that, and the other company -- when the federal government needs to stop trying to pick winners and losers. It doesn't do a good job of that, as a few scandals of late along those lines shows.

I found the following to be particularly hilarious:

"I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place."

This is hilarious because from day one he engaged in exactly the same policies that brought on this economic crisis. Obama is the kind of doctor who, seeing a man bleeding to death, calls for the leeches! Of course, Obama hasn't the foggiest idea what caused the economic collapse, so he certainly cannot know that what he thinks will help was the cause of the problem in the first place. Among the reasons to support a separation of economy and state is precisely because those who go into government know nothing at all about the economy and how it works. Of course, those who do so understand the economy would have enough sense to call for a separation of economy and state too.

And now for the audacious:

"Let's never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that does the same. It's time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody."

The bailout, handout, cop-out king has the audacity to make this argument? He says "no bailouts" in the same speech in which he praises himself for the GM and Chrysler bailouts? He says "no handouts" when he wants government to subsidize highly unprofitable green energy companies? He says "no cop-outs" in the same speech in which he continues to blame Bush for the bad economy? (Bush deserves all the blame one can heap on him, but after a while, this economy became Obama's fault for continuing on as long as it has.) I would love to have an economy in which there were in fact rule of law, equality under the law, and no bailouts, no handouts, and cop-outs from our government. But Obama violates these things on a daily basis (and by daily, I think I am being overly generous to him).

And then there is the rhetoric. The following sounds like something I would agree with:

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them."

But wait, the bailouts Obama supported allowed "a shrinking number of people to do really well," at the expense of the well-being of the rest of us. And every one of Obama's subsidies, special loans, cronyist activities, etc. are different rules for people he prefers over others. He doesn't believe in equality under the law. He believes in special treatment of some vs. others under the law. His every action shows he in fact opposes equality under the law and supports special laws for certain groups and individuals.

In other words, this was yet another State of the Union in which the President of the United States was allowed to demonstrate his overwhelming economic ignorance. It's an annual tradition we have gotten accustomed to decades ago -- but we shouldn't let ourselves get used to it.

The Wisdom of Watching Waves

Watching waves roll in can tell you a lot about the world.

On the weekend of the 13th, I was in Hermosa Beach, on the pier, watching the waves roll in . The waves moved in smooth, almost unnoticeable, until they approach the shore, where resistance changes the wave's shape, eventually turning it into much more complex foam as it breaks. Still, the energy of the wave drive the foam to shore.

Energy plus resistance creates work and more complexity.

The waves came in in predictable patterns. Small waves gave way to lager waves and larger waves, until the largest wave of the series came, then the waves would come in smaller and smaller. After I saw the waves get bigger, I would predict that a new wave of waves was coming. But I could not predict which wave (the next? or the next?) was the first of the new series, or the last of the old. After I saw the next wave was smaller, I could predict the next wave after it would be smaller, and that they would get small for a while, but I could not predict which one was in fact the peak wave. That is, it was possible to predict the pattern, but not the nature of each wave.

As with an economy, perfect prediction was impossible, even as pattern prediction was possible.

I believe Hayek made a similar observation in regards to the economy, in fact. Nothing a little wave-watching couldn't tell you. And that's a pretty simple system.

Open Source Legislation?

Gus diZerega argues that democracy is a spontaneous order. In the broadest sense of political action, it certainly is. In the sense of government as a set of organizations, it is not. Of course, the first requires the existence of institutions and organizations, so in a real sense, if democracy is the first, it is also necessarily the second as well. One can argue about whether or not protests are part of a democracy proper, but if they are not, then you probably believe government is necessarily an organization and cannot be a spontaneous order.

But what if citizens participated in the creation of legislation. Rarely does a government actually contribute to a spontaneous order developing into more of a spontaneous order as opposed to trying to develop it into an organization. Certainly things like SOPA, PIPA, the ongoing concentration of power in the hands of the Presidency, etc. are strong indications of a move away from spontaneous order and toward government becoming more of an organization. However, there is also the OPEN Act, which is an alternative to SOPA and PIPA, and may or may not be much better. Why, then, bring it up? Because of the way the legislation is being created: democratically. If you go to the OPEN website, you "can annotate the bill with comments and suggestions for its author, much like they would a Wikipedia document. There's a field where you can submit your e-mail address to receive updates about changes to the bill and its path through the maze that is our legislative process." Truly democratic bill creation? So it seems. Of course, the final arbiter of what does in fact go in is the sponsor, meaning the legislation is not truly a spontaneous order. But there is at least some possibility of ideas coming up the sponsor would not have otherwise come up with.

I am not going to argue that such a process will come up with better bills. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Maybe it will be a mixed bag. But if all bills were created this way -- and were required to be created this way -- we would have a much more open process. We would see what is in the bills before they were voted on, we would see their creation, and we would have a hand in that creation. It is not quite common law, which does not require legislation, but it is no longer "experts" designing laws for the rest of us.

Knitting Together the Humanities and the Sciences

What do the humanities study? Beauty, ethics, language, the arts, history, epistemology, ontology, meaning, values, etc.

For a long time now, the sciences and the humanities have been divided. The sciences were understood to be sciences because of their ability to be mathematized and to give predictions. The humanities could not be mathematized nor made predictable, so they were shuttled off into their own area. And ignored by science. Though there was some effort at turning the humanities into science, the favor was mostly returned.

However, what if reductionist science is only half of the equation? What if complexity and emergence -- aspects studied by the humanities -- are legitimate areas of study for science? How does that change the relationship between the humanities and the sciences?

Many in the humanities have studied the impact of the economy and society on the humanities and artistic production -- mostly through Marxist lenses. Many in the humanities have used anthropological and cultural studies to study the humanities and artistic production. Many in the humanities have used psychological theories to study the humanities and artistic production. And they are right to do so, because the mind/brain, culture, and society are important elements to understand the humanities, and the production, appreciation, and understanding of the arts. But psychology, anthropology, and economics and sociology are all sciences. They are just complex sciences. They cannot be reduced to physics. They have their own emergent properties. Out of our psychological, culture, and sociological interactions -- out of this milieu -- come the arts and humanities. We are already in a situation to use science to understand the arts and humanities -- so long as we are using the right science, and not the wrong ones (mathematized sciences, like physics), which are far, far, far too simple.

Chaos theory, self-organization (including spontaneous order) theory, bios theory, complexity, emergence, information theory, network theory, etc. are all part of the new science of emergent complexity that is central to reconnecting the sciences with the humanities. More, it will help us to stop doing bad science in the complex sciences, particularly the social sciences, which are between the sciences of psychology (broadly understood) and the humanities. This suggests that the mathematical approaches so popular in economics in particular can do little more than mislead us. More appropriate to understanding self-organizing social networks are the methods of the humanities. Spontaneous orders are the stories of our lives we are living with others. We need to understand them as such. That is a very different approach than the attempt to turn economics into something akin to mathematical physics.