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Comment by elygre | Hacker News Reader

As a European exchange student, I took a sociology class as a senior in a US high school. Our teacher ran an experiment with "money", where those with lots of "money" were allowed to change the rules for each round, creating an unfair playing ground favoring the rich.

I objected to the game and the rules, and did not want to play. After the game, in class, he commented that "Exchange students always object that the rules are unfair, while local students always accept that the rich get to set them."

Without even knowing where people are from, I sense a similar trend in this discussion: Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the "greater good".

(Your mileage will vary. Not exact science. Not science at all. Just a feeling.)

(Edit: Spelling)

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I think it's that Americans distrust elites who purport to make decisions on their behalf. American are not objectivist hyperindividualists, they are social creatures that thrive on the narrative of the greater good (the superhero movie is a rather American genre). But American history is littered with questionable judgements of the elites - tuskeegee syphilis experiments, internment of Japanese Americans, various middle East interventions, bailouts post 2008 crash, Vietnam war... Etc.

The American "way" traditionally is that social justice is an individual responsibility. You can see this residually in traditional volunteer fire departments and social clubs like knights and rotary which used to be mutual benefit clubs, providing for members in the event of sickness etc.

I don't understand your argument. When GP says "local students always accept that the rich get to set them.", they are saying US students accepted the fact that the rich got to set the rules. That seems, to me, the opposite of "distrusting elites". It also seemed to be used in favor of Trump: "he's a successful businessman, so he must be fit to lead the country."

Maybe our definition of "elites" is different? To me Americans seem to distrust the government, while trusting rich people much more.

I think you're misunderstanding his usage of "on their behalf." I think the poster means a distrust of claims that a decision is for the third-party's good.

The rich setting the rules is transparently favor of the rich. And you're expected to also optimize for yourself. This might be accepted by some more easily than rules set "for the greater good" if one is particularly cynical about such claims.

A lot of that might be down to an extremely well funded marketing/persuasion campaign.. there is an aspect of genuine belief too though, no denying it.

"the superhero movie is a rather American genre" . - Lol

Sure, where did Zeus, Promethues, Thor, and countless of other 'gods/titans/demi-gods' heroes come from?

Almost all, either European and non European countries have their Mythological beings, (either gods, super human heros, etc...).

The US is just good at creating commercial versions of them and putting them in film, the but concept of 'an hero' is as old as humanity itself.

I suppose that the popularity of the superhero genre in comic books started with Superman, then continued with Captain America, and other indigenous characters.

Characters of the Norse pantheon is a much-much later addition.

>Sure, where did Zeus, Promethues, Thor, and countless of other 'gods/titans/demi-gods' heroes come from?

That's odd that you would outright deny American culture influence on stories like Thor. Not to mention the countless other Superhero movies which are strictly American. Next,the value we place on our superheroes reflect American culture. I'd be hard pressed to call the classical Greek stories of Zeus or Prometheus "superheroes". Zeus wasn't exactly an upstanding role model.

Zeus was practically an anti-hero, and iirc there are arguments that ancient Greek culture treated them as such by way of using them as cautionary tales .

No claim was ever made that the superhero archetype was exclusively American. I used the word "rather" carefully.

>Sure, where did Zeus, Promethues, Thor, and countless of other 'gods/titans/demi-gods' heroes come from?

Hollywood. They come from Hollywood and bear little resemblance to the originals.

Before the US got ahold of them, most of the mythical figures were quite capricious and not terribly friendly to mortals.

Heroes of and for the common man like Paul Bunyan and John Henry are quite American.

They were not like superheroes genre, except high strength.

Haha, I wonder if future historians will talk about the rival D.C. and marvel American pantheons of gods?

But isn't "The rich get to set the rules" exactly the elites making decisions for everyone?

Would you suggest that the iterated interactions between Germany and Greece after the 2008 financial crisis, with Germany's various terms for Greece's financial bailout, were an example of Europeans being more willing to sacrifice for the greater good?

Or how about the current resistance of Eastern Europeans, regarding refugees, after Germany and Merkel volunteered them to sacrifice for certain visions of the greater good?

Or how about Turkey and ... etc etc etc.

America isn't really analogous to individual nations like Finland and Denmark. It's huge - up around 320 or 330 million residents, IIRC.

And a lot of those residents, despite how American mass media tries to frame things, come from very distinct, very fractious subcultures with long histories. See the book Albion's Seed for one version of this argument. And fundamentally, a lot of those groups don't entirely have shared values, nor shared respect for shared experts.

This is kind of my point in highlighting Germany's problems relating to other European countries - the same issue of different local cultures, and different values, comes up.

In America, one of the main ways people dance around these tensions is by letting people express their values via money. If something is important to you, then you'll likely put your resources together to support it. And if you have a lot of other like minded people, you'll maybe find a bunch of other like minded people to support it to, and pool your resources. But won't rise to anything like national technocratic support for whatever it is.

It's one basic way of dealing with actual, serious, difficult pluralism.

And that does mean, in practice, people have a default sense that other people ought to mostly be able to do what they want with their money, which scales up naturally to the wealthy or rich as well.

It's not optimal, but it's not really clear there is any kind of optimal - again, looking at various between-nation destabilizations in Europe when it comes to simply relying on technocratic assumptions about the greater good is probably useful here.

A flipside of this is that Americans are also socialized to individualize everything, by focusing on their specific circumstance, behaviors, choices, and believe that one's results are a function of that while thinking second about collective effects.

Second is generous. “Last, if ever” seems to be more accurate, generally.

Surely the Netherlands has private schools?

I don't think the rich are sacrificing anything by this lottery. Some middle-class kids might have to go to a worse school to allow some poor kids to go to a better school but the rich are unaffected.

No idea about the Dutch school system, and my comment is not about the rich vs the poor.

My reflection is more about the general discussion: Is it OK that the court prioritizes "the greater good" over these two individual students? I think I sense different priorities between Europeans and Americans.

It's not so much "the greater good" that's prioritised, but fairness. They don't want rich or savvy kids to have an advantage that other kids don't get.

But I think it's possible to improve over these systems in a way that increases efficiency without harming fairness.

I see, I thought you were commenting on the implementation of the lottery in the first place vs. our North American system of rationing good schools using money (either directly through tuition or expensive nearby real estate).

No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools.

In the Netherlands people value the idea of living in a classless society. It would not be acceptable for certain people to have their own "special" schools where their kids get "special" education.

The way the rich try to get around that is by congregating in the same rich neighbourhoods and sending their kids to the same school. That is why the lottery exists, to distribute the kids evenly in a fair manner.

> No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools.

They don't send their kids to boarding schools in the UK/US/Switzerland?

Sure, but is such a school giving their child any actual advantage? They'll be in a foreign country taught by likely a lower quality teacher (esp. in US private schools, there is a reason our private teachers make $10k less a year).

If they want to work in the US/UK/Switzerland? Or perhaps internationally more broadly? Probably. And I wouldn’t assume those private schools and their environment are giving a lower quality education.

I'd not give private schools much credit, they have a rocky track record of sexual abuse and 2nd rate teachers here in the US.

There are a lot of schools with bilingual programs (English+Dutch) and the programs are of high quality. Seems simpler to go for such a program, no need to send your kid abroad.

Simple economics and public choice theory would say that, if parents are willing to spend lots of money to send their kids to a private school, rather than sending them to public school for free, then they believe (and most likely with good reason) that it is preferable to do so.

This "market" (if you could even call it that) is far from transparent, objectively measuring the effect of one school versus another is hard. The most concerning metric when I look at private schools is the severe pay differential. This isn't cause private schools are getting better deals on quality teachers, they've been self selecting for teachers that local school districts won't hire (for good reason) and get commensurate results. Being in the right social circle is the prime driver of going to private schools from what I've discerned and experienced. Most don't have diversity requirements or scholarships to ensure the classroom isn't a mono-culture of socio-economic status or race.

> Sure, but is such a school giving their child any actual advantage? They'll be in a foreign country taught by likely a lower quality teacher (esp. in US private schools, there is a reason our private teachers make $10k less a year).

If they're rich, aren't they intentionally selecting schools to try to avoid the perceived "lower quality teachers"? I don't think money would be the limiting factor there (effectiveness in turning money into results is a different matter, but after all, school is as much about networking as anything else, and you're probably buying into a very powerful network).

No, usually they're going to a private school to be in a certain social clique. Its actually quite poisonous IMO, had a few upper crust friends who went to O'Dea or Bishop Blanchet for high school here in Seattle (despite not being Catholic), and ended up getting in with those social cliques while letting their old friendships drift.

Most of that group did not make it through college, even for an Associates.

I'm not sure the quality of the private schools you mentioned (O'Dea or Bishop Blanchet) are on par with what others consider as elite private schools. For one, those two schools have tuitions in the 10k-15k/yr range which is pretty low. Private schools in the northeast, like Milton Academy or Phillips Exeter are in the 45-50k/yr range. These schools also tend to have higher than average matriculation rates to elite universities like the Ivies as well. Teachers at those schools are definitely making more than their public school counterparts.

> Teachers at those schools are definitely making more than their public school counterparts.

I'm sure this is correct, but do you have a reference? Anecdotally, I have heard that teachers at top tier NYC private schools make less than teachers at NYC public schools. I don't have a source for that so I'm grateful for any information you can share.

> Sure, but is such a school giving their child any actual advantage?

I think so. It puts them in touch with other rich children from all around the world.

Pretty much, sending your kids to private school in the US all about connections and having them join the right clique, even if they come out with poorer skills overall.

I actually think that American boarding schools can be quite good academically (Andover, Exeter, etc.), but sending your kid to boarding school in Switzerland is likely not about academics in the least.

$10k a year could easily just be a difference in living expenses between the US and Netherlands.

For all practical purposes: no. Less than 0.1% attends privately funded schools inside or outside of The Netherlands.

Sociologist have often found that homogenous countries care more about being "classless" than more diverse countries. Why do you think that US politicians always characterize the safety net as helping minorities and people that don't look like their constituents?

Politicians have even convinced people that "entitlement reform" means getting rid of welfare and when someone call social security an "entitlement" people get offended.

I've had to explain on more than one occasion that by definition social security and Medicare are entitlements and that welfare isn't.

When politicians talk about entitlement reform they are referring to social security and Medicare cut backs but they keep getting voted into office because the very people who benefit or will benefit from the "entitlements" think they are referring to welfare.

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2010/05/07/never-underestimate-t...

The author of that article has one massive chip on their shoulder. Claims about how diverse the US is while criticising open European borders are a bit strange. Ranting at economic and social stagnation in Europe are also odd given how the US is faring. It’s amusing to criticise how European leaders look given current leadership in US - hell, half the photos in the paper this week of political events involving the US show actual family members rather than similar looking people.

That source is not good and doesn’t make a point, never mind the nauseating style.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/08/homogeneity-their-str...

The National Review is definitely not a bastion of liberalism.

> ... when someone call social security an "entitlement" people get offended.

I broadly agree with your overall points but I think it's worth examining this point a bit more. Social Security has been presented at various times (IMO dishonestly) as a pay-in pay-out forced saving system. This is why people unironically refer to it as "my money". The government even sends you periodic updates on how much of "your money" will be paid back to you upon retirement based explicitly on how much you've paid in. My sense, based on limited information, is that this was necessary to maintain some willful ignorance on the fiscal conservative side.

In practice US courts have ruled that SS works like an entitlement (government can rescind or modify at any time), and is not a property right in the conventional sense. But a very large portion of the population, especially during the 70s-90s period, was told that it was just a government operated retirement savings scheme where you pay in and you collect later.

So I think that this specific point about people viewing SS as not an entitlement has reasonable historical explanation. I don't view complainants as being openly hypocritical, since they were told it was not an entitlement but merely a government managed pay-in pay-out mandatory savings system.

That's just the opposite of what I'm saying.

The definition of entitlement is "the fact of having the right to something". I have a right to social security. I paid into it forcefully money I could have saved for myself.

Welfare is not an entitlement.

Politicians who want to cut social security and Medicare purposefully conflate it with eelfare so they can cut it and still get the approval of voters.

These are the same politicians who have people riled up about Medicaid and saying they need to get a job. Until I try to explain that Medicaid is also used to take care of granny in the old folks home. Are they going to tell thier 90 year old mom to get a job?

Edit: re-re-reading here, I now see I misunderstood your response and I'm sorry. I do think you're using "entitlement" in a way different from how most people understand it in a political context, but I also now understand that that seems to be part of your point. Apologies for the confusion (I'm leaving my original response here for context).

I understand what you're saying — and as I said I agree with the thrust of your post — but your use of the word "entitlement" is not universal.

The courts, in particular, disagree with your use, and specifically distinguish the concept of a property right from things the government has promised to give you. SCOTUS has ruled that SS is the latter and not the former.

The fundamental difference, in my lay understanding, is that the government needs to use an argument like eminent domain to deprive you of a property right, but can arbitrarily stop or reduce social security at any time if they so desire (as they can with welfare or medicare).

Well, I am sure that they do other things. The government can't stop parents from giving their kids extra tutoring, or sending them to summer programs.

Educations is way more than what goes on inside a classroom, and there are many ways to get ahead.

> No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools.

Yes, The Netherlands has private schools (and international schools) but not many. Here's one example: Luzac [1]. Its an exception though, and its very expensive. I've been to one of these and seen the nephew of lawyer Bram Moszkowicz over there. Also, you can expect other of the higher echelons like monarchy on such a private school. But again, it is very much the exception.

[1] https://www.luzac.nl/

There are private schools of a sort. They're called "bijzonder onderwijs" (special education), and include religious (protestant, catholic and muslim) schools, Montessori, Dalton and Jena-plan schools, and a bunch of others. But they all follow the exact same rules as public schools, need to meet the same criteria, and are funded in the same way, which means they're equally accessible to rich and poor.

It depends on private in which sense. The Netherlands has "freedom of education" and equal funding for public and private schools. As long as you can get enough interest and meet quality criteria, you can start a private school and get public funding for it.

Additionally, there are some (but very few) private schools which don't take government funding and emphasize small class rooms, etc. Typically only the truly rich kids go to private schools, and only when they have difficulty achieving the standards parents want :)

Like in most countries, it is probably linked to social class.

I studied at a private school in Amsterdam when I lived in the Netherlands in the 70's. Most of my parents professional colleagues sent their children to private schools too. The reasons included quality of education, availability of certain subjects and the relative lack of troubled and disruptive students.

A relative recently married a Dutch man from near Rotterdam. He and his siblings went to private schools.

I recall nearby state run schools were pretty dismal. Perhaps things have changed.

> Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the "greater good".

That may be the general case, but in this specific case a school system and court intentionally chose not to allow two students to voluntarily better their individual positions in a way that wouldn't affect the positions of others. That is some sort of perversion of personal greed into a form that instead limits what others may have.

Well, maybe. From the article, the judge argued that allowing the swap would enable strategizing:

> So to allow trading would be to enable strategic behavior in future years. This would make the workings of the lottery system less clear. But it could also give an unfair advantage to students that are better at strategizing — and to students that have more resources to make good strategic decisions.

I would argue that there is a "greater good" at play, and that while this particular instance would not change anything, allowing it would open the door for future problems.

I then believe that Europeans are more willing to accept that consequence than Americans are. (YMMV, not science, just a feeling, etc) (edit: formatting the quote)

I just don't see the judge's argument. By that logic we should only allow people who pass a rigorous certification to invest on the stock market. Casual investors should be banned because they will just lose money and that's (somehow) unfair.

The point of the stock market is to speculate. The point of the educational system is not.

Exactly! So why not let more students go to the schools that are their choices (and their parents)?

From the article, "...not all schools are the same. Some schools offer music and dance classes, others offer more sports classes."

How could forcing students to speculate at non-core subjects that don't interest them (and lie beyond their talents) be better for them or for the common good?

The answer to your question is in the article.

Not an answer, a dismissal, of that question is in the article. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is an extraordinary claim to say that disadvantaging many is for the common good.

> voluntarily better their individual positions in a way that wouldn't affect the positions of others

Except that it does affect the positions of others, by pushing them down the list. If there were another opening at someone's preferred school, that doesn't mean that someone would get it. Others likely want it, and one may be ranked higher. But by voluntarily swapping in this way, the results of each of the schools' lotteries are discarded, and others are disadvantaged as a result. One way to keep it fairer would be to modify the algorithm to rank and swap in such cases. Ranking would be necessary, because it could be that three people in school B want to attend school A, while only two people in school A want to attend school B.

> Except that it does affect the positions of others, by pushing them down the list. If there were another opening at someone's preferred school, that doesn't mean that someone would get it. Others likely want it, and one may be ranked higher. But by voluntarily swapping in this way, the results of each of the schools' lotteries are discarded, and others are disadvantaged as a result.

You're creating a strawman and arguing against that. I am talking about the exact situation that is covered in the article.

This is what the article says: Suppose a student loses the lottery at their number one school (school A). But they win the lottery at school B. And suppose that another student likes school B best. But loses the lottery at school B, and wins the lottery at school A. Then these students won each other’s jackpot. And so they both want to trade.

The article continues: With these trades, more than 600 further students could get a place at their top choice school, it later turned out. So many students wanted to trade.

This prospective trade wouldn't disadvantage anyone. It would only swap positions to increase people's choices and positions.

> Ranking would be necessary, because it could be that three people in school B want to attend school A, while only two people in school A want to attend school B.

That is exactly what I wrote, "That is some sort of perversion of personal greed into a form that instead limits what others may have." Do you honestly not see the injustice with choosing to disadvantage all five instead of only one in your example?

That's a nice way of implicitly slandering Americans while hiding behind "just a feeling", yet it doesn't change the fact that it was a group of Europeans, not Americans, that brought this lawsuit forward.

There's nothing about this particular lawsuit that suggests the people involved are of the "rich get to set the rules" mentality — rather, it's a perfect example of something that superficially seems completely fair for everybody involved but, in reality, actually isn't.

I think it's in part because so many Americans see themselves as potential millionaires.

Even for those where the deck is stack against them from birth, they still seem to have hopes of becoming one of the elite one day so they accept a system that's unbalanced in favor of the elite.

> I objected to the game and the rules, and did not want to play. After the game, in class, he commented that "Exchange students always object that the rules are unfair, while local students always accept that the rich get to set them."

Isn't objecting to unfair games super silly as life is inherently unfair.

Here in the states we use the word "freedom" to mean "the person with the most money gets whatever they want".

> "Without even knowing where people are from, I sense a similar trend in this discussion: Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the 'greater good'."

I would speculate (without exact justification) that this is because Europeans are nowadays heavily indoctrinated in socialism. What you call "greater good" may not be a market-efficient solution or effective altruism.

I would speculate (without exact justification) that this is because Americans are nowadays heavily indoctrinated in neoliberalism.

Though Europeans are catching up there too.

Or what you call "market-efficient solution" or "effective altruism" hurts the greater good.

Well, I am not against the greater good. But who is in charge to define and enforce it? Does surrendering individual liberty (in this case, school choice) to the bureaucracy help achieve the greater good?

So first of all, I didn't downvote you, so I hope you're not replying thinking I did. It's the crux of the article that more "personal freedom" in that regard doesn't help. Also, comparative studies between US educational outcomes and Nordic countries tends to find better averages and less disparity than here. The choice between which is "better" is a moral argument.

My comment re: greater good vs. market-efficient is yes, it isn't market-efficient for some values of the words "market efficient," but for the values that these people hold, it is "better" for their definition of "greater good." Btw, I did invoke my own definition of "greater good" above, one which you may disagree with.

> "The choice between which is 'better' is a moral argument."

I wouldn't disagree with you on this. But I just couldn't see how forbidding students to choose school would imply, quoting the OP of this thread, to "sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the 'greater good'". I guess it is less of a concern for Nordic countries who have genuinely good public school systems. If schools perform equally well, then perhaps people would not be uncomfortable with the fact that an AI rolls the dice to decide who goes to which school. But this is definitely not the case for the US public school system. If the goal is equality > excellence, you'd more often than not get equally bad results than "better averages" + "less disparity". Not to mention that restricting the freedom of choice gives rise to a bureaucratic system that feeds itself and cannot be hold accountable to what it does.

Think about this, if one is not so fortunate to be living in an affluent neighborhood, chances are that the schools are mediocre or bad, teachers teach to the test and don't care if students learn or not, dropout rates high, and college admission rates low, and if one still wants to go to college in this condition, they better get the heck out of there. School choice could potentially give them a chance to study in a better school and go to college.

The danger lies not in this legal case itself, but that it further empowers the government to interfere and exert more control on how an individual live their life and spend their money. On the end of the spectrum, you'll get totalitarian states. I hope that is not what the West is heading to.

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