This article from The Economist reports that the government schools evidently have downgraded high-school economics to where, not being a requirement, it isn’t taken much, and almost no one is training to teach the subject. The Economist itself, oddly, is pretty much OK with that. Given the likely content of the subject as taught, the conclusion may be better justified than one might at first suppose.
In a recent Daily Article, I read a quotation of Joan Robinson that succinctly explained why everyone should take or otherwise acquire a good grasp of economics. I’ll paraphrase from memory: “The reason for studying economics is to avoid being fooled by economists.”
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This seems to me good news for places like the Mises Institute.
I do believe that as the new generations rise and the older, statists die out, those that have invested so much time and energy in the internet will be rewarded.
I see no other persuasion of economics that has taken the internet by such a storm outside of the MI.
Years from now, I project that Mises will be a commonly held name among the majority of people.
“the economist” reflects the total muddle that is economics today. it’s a toilet-read at best; less witty than “the spectator”. i’m glad i stopped my subscription years ago.
There needs to be a systemic infiltration of mainstream economics departments in every university by libertarian economists. If students are reading the “right” materials, they come out thinking the “right” way. Just as the public education system has brainwashed the bulk of the population and stripped them of any critical thinking ability, so too libertarians must engage in ruthless dissemination of their ideas in educational institutions. Long-term, this is the only way to stem the decline.
Indeed, so long as it is taught in a way that is conducive to critical thinking, rather than just producing cogs who can regurgitate libertarian economics without understanding it.
“I do believe that as the new generations rise and the older, statists die out, those that have invested so much time and energy in the internet will be rewarded.”
I agree. It really is amazing how many people on the internet are libertarian or libertarian-leaning (although I hear the proportion was even higher in the early days). Its funny to hear left-liberal bloggers whine about how libertarians are “over-represented” on the Net.
“I do believe that as the new generations rise and the older, statists die out, those that have invested so much time and energy in the internet will be rewarded.”
I agree. It really is amazing how many people on the internet are libertarian or libertarian-leaning (although I hear the proportion was even higher in the early days). Its funny to hear left-liberal bloggers whine about how libertarians are “over-represented” on the Net.
“There needs to be a systemic infiltration of mainstream economics departments in every university by libertarian economists.”
“Indeed, so long as it is taught in a way that is conducive to critical thinking…”
If only there were a systemic infiltration of critical thinking taught by libertarian philosophers…
I just finished my senior year a public High School, and the introduction to economics class I took was a joke. We didn’t touch on anything besides supply and demand graphs, and capitalism was described in the textbook as a purely theoretical system which could never work in the real world. Thankfully, I’ve attended a couple of FEE seminars and took an economics class at Columbia one summer, where I learned basic economic principles despite the socialist teacher. Hopefully they teach economics at the University of Chicago.
It’s probably for the best that economics has almost no place in K-12 public education: we know what that “economics” would most probably look like (best evidence would be the Econ courses actually offered in HS).
Nor do I see much success in store for “infiltration”
of publicly-funded education. The effort would probably be better utilized in working against the basic idea of public funding of education.
In that respect, it’s similar to the public clamor over one or another form of immigration restriction: the parties simply have no recognition that it’s the welfare state that’s the source of whatever beefs they may have–and that trying to control particular outcomes while continuing the cause–merely shifts the distortions and (usually) increases the costs.
Public education is probably the oldest and most deeply-entrenched form of socialism in the entire American experience; but its crippling effects were largely hidden and somewhat “manageable” until the relatively recent advent of the “entitlement” mindset and legal environment, fueled by understandable
movements to remove racially-motivated barriers.
Almost nothing is more important than freeing education of the young from control of the coercive authority, first of the centralizing federal government and later, perhaps, even from the several states. The argument was made (successfuly) about 65 years ago that centralization was necessary to assure all of a uniformity of curricular quality. But along with some hoped-for improvements in the ‘backwaters” and in certain impoverished places, the entirety has (somewhat predictably) tended toward equalization at a much lower general level. (Just recall the 8th-grade exit exam from Salinas, KS–circulated on the WWW a few years ago–that many of today’s teachers couldn’t pass.)
Moreover, Mises has made the case eloquently that, in a “balkanized” (multicultural) environment, the control of education becomes, increasingly, a political “plum” of warring factions with which to
propagandize and oppress neighbors and their children with the very sort of economic misinformation that leads directly to restrictionism,
breakdown of trade relations, and war. Mises was of the opinion that even more illiteracy than actual was a smaller price to be paid (than the death and destruction otherwise the likely result).
It really is amazing how many people on the internet are libertarian or libertarian-leaning (although I hear the proportion was even higher in the early days).
Indeed…I don’t think it’s true at all any more. In the ’80s and early 90s – before Microsofties discovered the Internet – you were hard pressed to find anyone on the Internet proper (i.e., not AOL) who wasn’t libertarian. Nowadays there are the occasional groups of us (e.g., here at mises.org), but mostly there doesn’t seem to be much difference from genpop.
Step one: Reduce the number of people that need to be re-educated due to misinformation.
Step two: Educate the people that are searching for knowledge and truth and who have already come to the conclusion that such knowledge and truth is practically non-existent from any of the sources of the propaganda arms of the power elite who are overseeing the unConstitutional coup.
Step three: A generation emerges that is wise economically; that knows humans are subjective and knows that property rights are human rights.
Step four: A classical liberalism civilization blossoms.
Bruce:
Daydreaming accomplishes nothing.
Not only that–your first three steps are all just the same thing. And the last (Step four) is just what we’d hope would be the necessary outcome of the first three.
The big question remains: HOW?
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