It's worse than just science education. We only beginning to understand what "creative" school did to our kids and K-12.
Once I asked my son "And what did you learn today in your creative school?" He misheard me and answered "It's not that cretinnic!"
Abandonment of Phonics systems resulted in functional illiteracy when high school graduates can only read words they remembered as whole sysmbols, just like Chinese hieroglyphs. They often just cannot make a bunch of letters into a word they know.
"Stupid" insistence of old school on good writing (yes, calligraphy!) and memorization of long poems was not stupid at all. With new discoveries on brain plasticity we began to realise that it was developing important areas of kids' brains critical to their functioning in modern society.
With creative school we literally dumbened our kids to Stone Age. After that, lack of interest to science is kind of understandable
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Creative school impact
In response to a comment about US education.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Hell is officially frozen over
Just a few minutes ago my son told me that there is snow in Las Vegas, Nevada. Well, "the hell is offically frozen over"...
I guess that would be the best for a twitter than a blogspot, still worth mentioning.
I guess that would be the best for a twitter than a blogspot, still worth mentioning.
Social Security: communistic version of Chinese retirement plan
Comment to MarketWatch "Schooled by scandal: Commentary: Madoff case shows investors the red flags of financial advice" in response to comparison of Social Security to Ponzi scheme:
I'd argue on that. Social Security is more of the communistic flavored Chinese retirement plan (that is, Chinese retirement but made more communistic than Chinese do). Let me explain.
In China there is no (at least there was no until lately) retirement plans at all. If you grew old and sick you should have raised children who'd take care of you. Your family is your 401(K). If you did not put enough into your 401(K) - children, well, tough luck. Ponzi scheme or not, this sort of retirement plan was used by humans since we become humans. Unfortunately it does not work in industrial societies where most salaries are pushed below the level where worker can support anybody but him/herself. While most people here are more fortunate, check "Nickel and dimed", so some social solution was necessary.
Social Security is a kind of communistic version of such retirement plan, where all the children are pulled together and forced through payroll deductions to support all aging people.
As any communistic ideas it has some problems with longevity. It also hurts our family values. I bet, if people would look at family as 401(K) retirement savings and not as a way to get regular sex on budget, we'd have much less divorces and much more children per family.
However, doing it in an "honest" way has some problems too. Imagine the state accumulating money for you from the time you graduated from college for 40-50 years. Nation-wide it's a huge pile of money. Can you imagine the temptation politicians and financial guys (like Madoff) would have to use that money on some of their pet projects and us standing in the way? It's like standing between a hungry bulldog and a bunch of sausages.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Ford most advanced factory
http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189
Just beautiful. Now I get why Ford cannot build enough cars to satisfy demand in Eastern Europe.
Just beautiful. Now I get why Ford cannot build enough cars to satisfy demand in Eastern Europe.
Chinese Yuan
In response to:
China's yuan set to weaken for six months:
Analysts forecast gradual depreciation as China grapples with global slump,
December 12, 2008
China's yuan set to weaken for six months:
Analysts forecast gradual depreciation as China grapples with global slump,
December 12, 2008
AFAIK, Chinese offered to buy a lot from us (I mean US) in return for greenbacks and T-bills they accumulated, but they were refused, as their main interests were around newest technologies and industrial equipment with potential military use which they cannot buy in a normal business fashion.
They were also expressing interest in a lot of assets in US, and Russians did so also, again, with negative result out of fear of too much foreign influence on US economy.
Yes, I know, with Japanese owning Hollywood, Saudi, Swedish, Germans and British owning significant sectors of our economy and London City still in charge of financial world, it does not make much sense, but at least those were considereed our allies since WW2 (especially Germans and Japanese). Communists did not won Cold War, but they are certainly willing to buy us in an ol' good capitalistic free market fashion.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Big 3 and US Auto industry
On a MarketWatch I often see comments that bailing out auto makers "is not capitalism". But I think that's precisely the point.
Concentration of autoindustry left us not with capitalistic companies competing on a free market, but essentially with a "ministry of automobile industry" represented by three huge beaurocratic hierarchies of Big 3. And, as any "ministry", it's not a profit maker.
The problem is what to do about it? Theoretically, we could break up these companies, say, making each brand a separate company. Maybe we even can make each assembly fatory an individual company selling their services to headquerters of brand companies. And we could also separate R&D centers selling their innovations to all brands. And their supplier chain is already detached and unified. That would stir up competition back, but temporarily it will result in raised price on cars and make things even worse.
What's even more hard is that they don't compete with other capitalistic companies. Toyota, Honda and Nissan are essentially a similar "ministry of autoindustry" of Japan. And competing with huge semi-governmental structures is next to impossible, that's why they merged together from hundreds of smaller car companies in the early 20th century in the first place.
Essentially what we learn from this is that even poorly managed corporate socialism is more efficient than free market. Otherwise we already would have many small competeing companies instead of three huge conglomerates.
And odd (and potentially wrong) idea on what we can do is to do bailout through people, give that money as a 0% deferered payment credit to US citizens to buy certified made in USA cars by these three companies. This way people will vote which company should stay and which go broke. And then break just one that went broke. We'll be able to check what will happen and it will be a good enough scarecrow to make all three push to the best of their abilities.
Concentration of autoindustry left us not with capitalistic companies competing on a free market, but essentially with a "ministry of automobile industry" represented by three huge beaurocratic hierarchies of Big 3. And, as any "ministry", it's not a profit maker.
The problem is what to do about it? Theoretically, we could break up these companies, say, making each brand a separate company. Maybe we even can make each assembly fatory an individual company selling their services to headquerters of brand companies. And we could also separate R&D centers selling their innovations to all brands. And their supplier chain is already detached and unified. That would stir up competition back, but temporarily it will result in raised price on cars and make things even worse.
What's even more hard is that they don't compete with other capitalistic companies. Toyota, Honda and Nissan are essentially a similar "ministry of autoindustry" of Japan. And competing with huge semi-governmental structures is next to impossible, that's why they merged together from hundreds of smaller car companies in the early 20th century in the first place.
Essentially what we learn from this is that even poorly managed corporate socialism is more efficient than free market. Otherwise we already would have many small competeing companies instead of three huge conglomerates.
And odd (and potentially wrong) idea on what we can do is to do bailout through people, give that money as a 0% deferered payment credit to US citizens to buy certified made in USA cars by these three companies. This way people will vote which company should stay and which go broke. And then break just one that went broke. We'll be able to check what will happen and it will be a good enough scarecrow to make all three push to the best of their abilities.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Great Depression? Great Flood.
In response to The liquidity trap. Commentary: Financial engineering seems worse than the alternative by Jim Anderson - Dec 4, 2008
el000:
Liquidity trap of course exists, but in 30s one factor was absent, which is present today: huge amounts of live money pumped into the banks instead of bad debt and bad securities.
As such, they replace invetment tools in banks and hang there as investment (makes sense in deflation) but early or later banks will need to make these money grow, not just sit there in piles, and with financial market solutions shut down, what direction will they go?
For now, these money are hanging in investment mode like a dark cloud in the sky full of water. But any point of condensation or triggering event and the drought is over and they will start to rain on real economy, and then inflation will start. Not fun either, but the deflationary state of the economy is simply not stable this time.
Deflation during Great Depression was like drought resulted from no rain. With those clouds of money in our economy sky we are heading to the Great Flood instead. Of course, not today. A very good (and very interesting) question is when?
el000:
Translated to polite language, what you say means that trickle down economy (money flowing from rich to poor) does not work. Yes, I completely agree with you on that. Rich getting richer does not make economy work, otherwise there would be no 19th century overproduction crisises.
Giving money to banks is essentially making rich richer (as you said "BILLIONS FOR THE THIEVES, NO QUESTIONS ASK"). Now "thieves" have tons of greenbacks and sitting on them because deflation makes it sensible and liquidity trap is in place, Great Depression seems inevitable.
But consider such scenario: Obama tries to press on China to free Tibet and pushes Georgia into NATO. China and Russia are pissed off and sell a lot of greenbacks on international markets. Dollar plunges, because they still have tons of them. Your rich "thieves" scurry to save their money and selling dollars for euros, yens, franks, yuans, rubles... making dollar plunge even deeper and making it irreversible. With exchange rate crushed everything imported (that is nearly everything in your local Wal-Mart and gasoline) becomes more expensive. That's called inflation. At the same time our export becomes less expensive and more competitive. It will begin to make sense to produce here and export out there. Depending on how much dollar will fall, we may become destination for outsourcing instead of China. Especially, if we fix our education to continue having great workforce.
And "Free Tibet"/Georgia with panic on ForEx is just one scenario, there is a lot of other potential triggers around.
Of course, free market style as descibed here, it will really hurt too, and trickle-UP elements like infrastructure works or direct cheap credits from the government bypassing banks would soften it a lot. In the end, I am not saying that what's coming is better than Great Depression (although it could be, only complete idiots would not learn in a hundred years), I only say that the Great Depression scenario is not stable today.
el000:
Liquidity trap of course exists, but in 30s one factor was absent, which is present today: huge amounts of live money pumped into the banks instead of bad debt and bad securities.
As such, they replace invetment tools in banks and hang there as investment (makes sense in deflation) but early or later banks will need to make these money grow, not just sit there in piles, and with financial market solutions shut down, what direction will they go?
For now, these money are hanging in investment mode like a dark cloud in the sky full of water. But any point of condensation or triggering event and the drought is over and they will start to rain on real economy, and then inflation will start. Not fun either, but the deflationary state of the economy is simply not stable this time.
Deflation during Great Depression was like drought resulted from no rain. With those clouds of money in our economy sky we are heading to the Great Flood instead. Of course, not today. A very good (and very interesting) question is when?
el000:
Translated to polite language, what you say means that trickle down economy (money flowing from rich to poor) does not work. Yes, I completely agree with you on that. Rich getting richer does not make economy work, otherwise there would be no 19th century overproduction crisises.
Giving money to banks is essentially making rich richer (as you said "BILLIONS FOR THE THIEVES, NO QUESTIONS ASK"). Now "thieves" have tons of greenbacks and sitting on them because deflation makes it sensible and liquidity trap is in place, Great Depression seems inevitable.
But consider such scenario: Obama tries to press on China to free Tibet and pushes Georgia into NATO. China and Russia are pissed off and sell a lot of greenbacks on international markets. Dollar plunges, because they still have tons of them. Your rich "thieves" scurry to save their money and selling dollars for euros, yens, franks, yuans, rubles... making dollar plunge even deeper and making it irreversible. With exchange rate crushed everything imported (that is nearly everything in your local Wal-Mart and gasoline) becomes more expensive. That's called inflation. At the same time our export becomes less expensive and more competitive. It will begin to make sense to produce here and export out there. Depending on how much dollar will fall, we may become destination for outsourcing instead of China. Especially, if we fix our education to continue having great workforce.
And "Free Tibet"/Georgia with panic on ForEx is just one scenario, there is a lot of other potential triggers around.
Of course, free market style as descibed here, it will really hurt too, and trickle-UP elements like infrastructure works or direct cheap credits from the government bypassing banks would soften it a lot. In the end, I am not saying that what's coming is better than Great Depression (although it could be, only complete idiots would not learn in a hundred years), I only say that the Great Depression scenario is not stable today.
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