The Zimmerman Trial

[notyoueither]

Sure, large scale procurement can lead to savings, I don't think anyone is disputing that. However, it can also result in hugely inflated costs.

That doesn't mean that those potential savings when realised outweigh other efficiencies that arise when many private groups turn their energies to competing with each other to benefit from consumer decisions.

[Felch]

The argument was never that governments and shops are identical. Government has a different form of competition because it relies on public satisfaction to re-elect those responsible for it.

We elect politicians, not bureaucrats. Who do you think actually runs the government?

No, government grows chiefly as a result of peoples expectations on government rising. Politicians campaign on promises, and government is the tool they have to fulfill those promises. If the people decide they want small government, then they can elect people who run on that promise, and it will happen, but the simple truth is that most people do not want small government. Or rather they don't want it after it's pointed out to them what that actually means losing.

Except small, well organized groups will always get more than large and unorganized groups. That's how a tiny number of sugar growers are able to force Americans to pay outrageous prices for sugar. It's how big corporations are able to get tax laws written that favor them. It's why a few million gun owners are able to
defeat any real gun control legislation at a national level, even for overwhelmingly popular ideas like universal background checks. Government grows because special interest groups want it to be bigger. Some projects are broadly popular, like schools, roads, sewage, and such. But these are mostly handled at a local level.

Local government is generally not corrupt. Large cities foster corruption and waste because they are large. Boston could pour money into the Big Dig, the LAPD can beat the **** out of blacks and Mexicans, and just about everybody in the DC mayor's inner circle can be indicted, but in a small town that wouldn't fly. In a small town or county, there just isn't enough money to steal, and there isn't enough power or isolation to really abuse the people. Most municipalities operate on a shoestring, and they are immediately accountable to the voters to deliver the services that are demanded.

National governments tend to do the most wasteful and pointless crap. The national government gives us wars we don't want, a space shuttle that kept blowing up, the War on Drugs, the TSA, and farm bills that raise food prices while stuffing our mouths with corn and soy byproducts. There are tons of things that nobody wants, but the people who want them are organized well enough to get them anyways. Because the government is so huge and unwieldy, it's impossible to really keep a grip on what's happening. If the professionals are overwhelmed by it, how are voters supposed to make an informed decision about improving efficiency?

[Elok]

In the U.S., at least, the vast majority of government policy is formulated by appointed bureaucrats under the rather abstract guidance of laws so long and convoluted that even the people who vote on them don't read them. If I don't like the way that, say, the parks are run, precisely what am I going to do about it? Am I going to try and get my senator kicked out because of park hours decided by somebody six levels down the totem pole from the Secretary of the Interior--when said senator got one-hundredth of the decision in one house on one law that had a very indirect influence on how the parks work? Or do I try to form an opposing coalition based on a 3,000-item laundry list of offending details from all umpteen different Federal departments?

The sheer size and scope of the government makes transparency and accountability meaningless for all but the most glaring offenses; no one person can even keep track of all the errors/problems, let alone act on them. The media don't bother calling 99.9% of errors to our attention, because most of them (excepting policy wonks who mostly go unread) can't keep track either. Trying to influence the details of policy is out of the question. At a local level, it's far easier because the jerkoff on the county council who wrote the bad law wrote it short and to the point. No maze of middlemen.

Now, that's in theory; in practice, I don't think most people pay any attention to local politics one way or another. And I think bureaucratic muddle is largely inevitable if we're going to have national-scale government at all. Nobody's going to turn out to elect thousands of mid-level paper-pushers. My objection to centralized policy is more that it takes away initiative from people on a local level, and typically allows no leeway for local conditions. The catastrophes of communist regimes are the most dramatic example there, but I've seen what centralized education policy right here in the U.S. does firsthand, and it's not pretty.

[kentonio]

It's typical America. You see something done badly at home, point to a wild extreme like communism states and that's supposed to mean something? How about we look at what happens when there isn't centralized education, and states or counties are able to run their education systems how they like? All those millions of kids being taught about how the world is 6,000 years old, how Jesus played with the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, or how the south was the victim in the War of Northern Aggression, or maybe that those nasty brown skinned folks can't be trusted? After all, the only people the educators will have to answer to are the local residents after all.

[Felch]

First of all, nobody in America is actually taught any of those things. Texas was able to influence the textbook makers (Check out The Revisionaries to see what that's all about), but that is specifically because Texas is ****ing huge, as in, its economy is bigger than all of Mexico. The second biggest state in the Union was able to have a somewhat negative influence simply because its size gives it huge buying power.

I believe this is what you Brits call an "own goal."

[kentonio]

Are you retarded? Seriously, are you incapable of things like basic reading comprehension?

[regexcellent]

I recall most of the textbook changes made by the Texas government being rather positive.

[Felch]

Are you retarded? Seriously, are you incapable of things like basic reading comprehension?

What did I fail to comprehend? You said something about how Communism doesn't count when discussing centralized government (bull**** it absolutely does), then you spouted lies about American education. If you meant to say something else, then I'm afraid you need practice operating your keyboard, sir.

[Elok]

It's typical America. You see something done badly at home, point to a wild extreme like communism states and that's supposed to mean something? How about we look at what happens when there isn't centralized education, and states or counties are able to run their education systems how they like? All those millions of kids being taught about how the world is 6,000 years old, how Jesus played with the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, or how the south was the victim in the War of Northern Aggression, or maybe that those nasty brown skinned folks can't be trusted? After all, the only people the educators will have to answer to are the local residents after all.

...there's no particular reason why a centralized government can't teach crap science, or crap history, or crap anything, just as well as a local one. It simply has to be broadly popular misinformation. E.g., that people in Columbus's time thought the world was flat, or the various silly myths we've attached to the founding fathers (though the more recent textbooks have ditched the former and mostly shrugged off the latter). Alternatively, whoever gets to call the shots may subscribe to spurious ideas, and try to foist them off on the students.

In any case, there are a number of problems caused by current centralized education policy. First, the curriculum is set by people who have typically not taught in years or decades, if at all. Much of the time decisions are made by experts on a particular subject with no educational experience whatsoever--in consultation with elected officials who don't know a blessed thing about the subject or how to teach. The result is usually a pretty useless curriculum that teachers are forced to follow as best they can.

Furthermore, since many of our elected officials are motivated by suspicion or outright hostility towards teachers--they have this bizarre idea that a teaching job is some kind of sinecure--they saddle schools with a barrage of standardized tests which waste prodigal amounts of time and money while skewing the curriculum heavily towards rote memorization at the expense of critical thinking and creativity. On the plus side, private testing companies earn a lot of money that way.

[Elok]

Also, rubbish material gets put into the social studies curriculum the way things are now. It's just either liberal rubbish material, or else generally accepted falsehoods that fit our narrative. So, for example, students will get to learn about perfectly irrelevant societies who accomplished nothing of note, because to do otherwise would be eurocentric. Frequently the information is still misleading--like, a book will shoehorn in a chapter on "African culture," with a few miscellaneous wads of info plucked from the literally thousands of cultures on the continent, all tossed in together without an overarching narrative or context. I assume some dullard somewhere upstream thought it would be uncouth not to mention "African culture," but didn't realize that Africa's not a country.

Similar examples abound: Native American cultures are routinely idealized, with even their humanizing flaws glossed over. The lives or contributions of women and minorities will be promoted even when it doesn't make sense to do so; an attentive eighth grader can probably tell you that a black guy invented the traffic light, but will have no clue who invented the car, or the steam engine, or the rocket. I certainly couldn't. And, for all that, sneaky little details slip through. Around March, I read an account of Britain's wars to open up trade in China. For some strange reason, the words "opium," "addiction" and "smuggling" were all absent. I honestly don't know why.

[rah]

Yes, I have to agree that I prefer school curriculum to be determined at a more local level, to minimize the damage. At least if they're teaching crazy crap in god forsaken places, it's usually the same crap their parents believe so the parents get what they deserve. I'd cringe at the thought of the religious folks gaining enough influence at the national level and dumb down the entire country. (further than currently)

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The fact that centralized eduction is being touted as a success is mind numbingly stupid even for kentonio. The absolute failure of the educational system despite the funding at all time high levels (i.e costs of delivering eduction) with No, Repeat No appreciable gain in eductional outcomes is all that needs to be said about the governemental/centralized inefficiency and lack of institutional efficiencies without proper incentives.

Big education is broken that is all.

[regexcellent]

I wouldn't knock standardized tests. Teachers themselves are at fault for ****ty education as much as crappy management. Standardized tests are key to enforcing any kind of standard on unionized school district employees.

[kentonio]

Yes, I have to agree that I prefer school curriculum to be determined at a more local level, to minimize the damage. At least if they're teaching crazy crap in god forsaken places, it's usually the same crap their parents believe so the parents get what they deserve. I'd cringe at the thought of the religious folks gaining enough influence at the national level and dumb down the entire country. (further than currently)

It's not the parents suffering, it's the kids getting brought up with the same backwoods primitive bull**** ideas forced into their heads as their ****wit parents. Hey if that's what you guys want for the next generation, then fair play to you.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I wouldn't knock standardized tests. Teachers themselves are at fault for ****ty education as much as crappy management. Standardized tests are key to enforcing any kind of standard on unionized school district employees.

When the emphasis becomes how to take a (and in Georgia's case how to cheat towards ) standardized tests rather than undertanding the concepts and the material it is a large problem.