O_O

[oyceter]

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education... Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.

via WSJ editorial, via owlectomy

I just. Sometimes I feel like a snot for assuming people know things, because god knows my learning curve has been very steep and is still going, but other times, all I can say is O_O. WHUT.

(Okay, this is where I admit having a Tumblr might be useful, since that was too long for Twitter and feels too short for a single blog post. But I Luddite-ly cling to my blog, because I like typing! A lot! My opinions, I show you them!)

Comments

[chomiji]

Huh. It's interesting how much that sounds like the arguments against having a government health plan, and we see how well the market economy has done by poor people there ... .

And has he checked out the supermarkets - if they actually exist at all - in the poor areas of most cities?

[oyceter]

And has he checked out the supermarkets - if they actually exist at all - in the poor areas of most cities?

I KNOW RITE.

I am just... "O_O. Have you ever BEEN in a poorer neighborhood?! Why do think the free market solution there right now is peachy keen?!"

[yeloson]

I imagine he would be unable to connect the words he is saying to this right here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/americas/04haiti.html?_r=1&ref=world

But yeah.

[oyceter]

I ROLL MY EYES SO MUCH. They do not feed them WUT.

[vom_marlowe]

LOL WUT.

Supermarkets for the poor are why I grew extra produce for neighbors. Free Market--fixing things for the poor since....um, when again?

My eyes roll forever.

I suppose he also thinks ketchup is a vegetable, AMIRITE?

[oyceter]

OMG he is an economics professor too. WTF. Now I am just "You ignorant asshat."

Poor people have worse health and tax the health care system because they don't eat organic vegetables grown in independently-owned farms! It's all their fault and has absolutely nothing to do with systemic inequality! @@x1000

[noldo]

The nice little rich California suburb I currently live in has a sharp income drop a few blocks to the east of me. If you live there, the nearest grocery store is, in fact, two miles away. In a rich-people area. And probably out of your price range if you don't live in said rich-people area. If you don't want to walk to this rich area, your choices are: a liquor store, and a liquor store. On what planet does this gentleman live such that he assumes poor people now have all this wonderful grocery choice?

[oyceter]

I KNO RITE!

Capitalism! Solving the grocery store problem for poor neighborhoods by not providing them with any at all!

[maevele]

it's all I can do not to start screaming.

[oyceter]

SRSLY! I read that, and was all, ".... WUT. Did he just say that?"

And then reread and was just. O_O. WUT.

[daedala]

I'm fairly sure the subtext is that if they'd have good supermarkets if they deserved them!

*sets fire*

[saraht]

Ahahah. Someone pointed out, rather timidly, that they'd heard that the supermarket supply in poor areas maybe wasn't all that great, all the time, and got this response:

You've highlighted a "chicken - egg" issue that plagues the provision of most goods and services to certain areas of our cities. That discussion is outside the scope of this forum, except to point out that too much "help" from the various levels of government is a major reason why those areas exist.

Right. "But the market is clearly failing the poor in the very analogy you cite!" "THAT'S BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT MAKES POOR PEOPLE EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE."

[trinker]

Intent, it is magical!

And poor people TOTALLY DESERVE IT FOR BAD CHOICES!

[heresluck]

All I can say is that apparently he's never shopped for groceries in a town under 25,000 that's NOT a suburb of a major metropolitan area. And so, from my small rural community in the upper midwest, where the free market has served us so well that our second grocery store CLOSED last year (leaving us with -- oh yes -- a monopoly), I stick my middle finger up at Donald J. Boudreaux.

[nojojojo]

::boggles in fury:: $550K, for a company that rakes in billions, is chump change. Hell, it's tax deductable; probably helps them more than it hurts. Cheapskate fuckwads...

[nojojojo]

What gets me, beside the utter batshittery of what he thinks the free market does for poor people's supermarkets -- good grief, that crap alone gave me flashbacks on the A&P near my grandma's house, which offered half an aisle of sodas, cheap Kool-Aid ripoffs that contained oil as one of the top ingredients, and Sunny Delight, but NO ACTUAL FUCKING JUICE --

-- I'm boggled by the utter stupidity of his comparison from a business standpoint. I know it's the same "let's apply business principles to education!" schtick that the wealthy so often want to impose on the poor (never their own kids, note; they spare no expense for them), but there's such a glaring problem with this logic that I'm amazed it continues to get traction. In the product development lifecycle, research and development is a necessary investment. If you consider the product that might result worthy and potentially lucrative, you put money into R&D. It's usually a good investment as long as the outcome is reasonably assured -- tax deductable, even. Skimp on R&D and you usually get a shitty product, and the company dies.

Education is not the product in America; education is the R&D. The product, if you want to get all businessy, isn't even the students; it's what those students will later produce. And what well-educated students produce IS A THRIVING COUNTRY. All these assholes applying business models to education aren't just doin' education rong, they're doin' business and democracy rong too.

...But I am increasingly convinced that democracy isn't what they want, at the end of the day. So I suppose that from their perspective, they're doing it exactly right.

[natlyn]

Education is not the product in America; education is the R&D. The product, if you want to get all businessy, isn't even the students; it's what those students will later produce. And what well-educated students produce IS A THRIVING COUNTRY.

Word.

[daedala]

He blogs at Cafe Hayek.

...

"Hayek" is Sekrit Internet Code Word for fucking asshole libertarian. (I don't actually know about what Hayek himself wrote; he's quoted in Wikipedia as saying, "probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire capitalism," so I'm thinking he probably isn't as bad as the quality of his devotees implies.)

[sarasusa]

So much yes to all the comments!

[vom_marlowe]

The company even admits that they're doing it so they can have a bunch of educated workers who speak a little English. I just....WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM? AAAARRRGH.

[yeloson]

This, so much this.

I keep remembering a story about Toyota considering opening a plant in South Carolina or Toronto- S. Carolina offered them FIVE YEARS WITHOUT TAXES, if they opened the plant.

They did the math and realized the tax offset wouldn't be worth the cost it would take to train the workers in the US- they were comparing high school grads from the US to high school grads in Canada, and the quality difference was so great, they realized it wouldn't just cost them now, but continually as they replaced workers.

[fightingarrival]

There is so much wrong with that quote that the mind boggles, but you already know and other people have already said it, but FO' REAL?

I'll just leave my own living experience here: I don't live in a food desert, however I don't drive. It's a twenty minute walk to my nearest supermarket up and down a massive hill. The closest supermarket accessible by public transportation is a half-hour away. The one good supermarket I have easy access to - wholefoods, lol - is near my job, because people with serious money live and work there. The other supermarkets I go to my cowrokers refer to as ghettomart. They're not nearly as bad as they could be, but they are substandard.

So, yeah. >:(

[dragovianknight]

In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.

Y-yes? I mean, isn't that the way it actually is?

[lea_hazel]

Am I missing a punchline? Isn't that pretty much how it is?

[torachan]

Meanwhile, government-run markets and restaurants have eliminated hunger for this city in Brazil...

[nightowl]

I think the issue is that the writer of the article is actually criticizing teachers unions for saying that "market forces can't supply quality education." He attempts to demonstrate how illogical those teachers unions are by arguing that a "free market" type of approach to education (where everyone gets to pick the bestest school out of all the varied competing options, because we know how many options people actually have in real life) IS actually a viable way to fix the problem of low-quality education. After all, he argues, no one would ever want our grocery stores to be run like public education! This supermarket analogy fails because the writer is trying to say that a public, government-run supermarket (like public education) would be almost certainly be "abysmal," whereas a privatized supermarket with free market-style competition (like private education) would be more quality. This is obviously wrong because the corporate supermarkets are consistently failing the poor, who are NOT getting excellent supermarkets even though, hey, supermarkets are competing with each other!

I might have just been exceedingly unclear in the above paragraph there because I am way tired, but I hope I at least kind of explained why the article is really fail?

[nightowl]

This is...wow! Thanks for the link!

[bibliofile]

Yes, this. So much.

[pseudo_tsuga]

It's jerks like those that make me wonder why I chose my major sometimes. I promise not all economists are free-market assholes! Just...many. (sob)

[sethg]

One of Hayek’s chief accomplishments, as I understand it, is a book, written in the 1940s, predicting that the socialistish policies that the British government of that time was introducing would inevitably turn Britain into a totalitarian country. Of course, like all good prophets, the failure of Hayek’s prophecy does nothing to harm his reputation among the true believers.

Also, Hayek saw nothing wrong with government intervention to protect the environment, or with socialized medicine. I think this makes him a liberal Democrat by today’s standards.