Want a Stronger Democracy? Invest in Education
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
But he makes no attempt to rule out the possibility that XXX -> {education, democracy}, where XXX might be { wealth, free markets, socialism, various other relevant factors }.
The real problem here is that he seems to want to do 2-variable correlations rather than multivariate regerssion.
We've (in political science) been trying to study democratization in a formal/quantitative way for at least the last 50 years, and every single explanation we come up with, however many variables we put into our regression, fails to informatively explain the data. We have too poor a grasp on the independent variables (what they are, how to measure them, etc.), too poor a collective definition of democracy ("I know it when I see it", essentially), and way way too little data to make definitive causal models. Running experiments to test our hypotheses would take decades, at least, so instead we mine through historical data looking for trends. As Feynman said, “To report a significant result and reject the null in favor of an alternative hypothesis is meaningless unless the alternative hypothesis has been stated before the data was obtained.”
And Aristotle says similar things in the Politics and Poetics. The citizens of Athens who participated at the Agora were literate, concerned men (unfortunately, only men).
The Roman Forum was open to any citizen, who bore the responsibility of educating himself before speaking.
Even modern political philosophers recognize that without an educated citizenry, democracy is impossible. Alexis de Toqueville in "Democracy in America" found the concern of the commoner for the welfare of the nation to be a key to the success of the American experiment of self-government under law.
Looking at how poorly educated our citizens are about the real issues of the day, it's no surprise that we are seeing problems in public policy. I'm not suggesting it's inevitable that the nation will collapse, in fact the article gives me hope we can turn it around. But it has to start with educating citizens about their basic responsibilities.
Of course, there are good and bad ways to do this. Heinlein had a model to ensure only concerned/educated citizens, and he presented it in Starship Troopers. So some thought should go into HOW we educate.
Argentina were an extreme free market country in the late 1800s with little taxation or duties. They had essentially open borders and were one of the main immigration countries of the world in that period. All of this grew the economy for it to end up at the turn of the century as I believe the 6th richest country in the world.
What also happened though was a huge influx of workers from Europe. This was during the a large wave of unionizing and radicalization in Europe, this movement was brought with the immigrants across to Argentina. This spawned a period with many strikes, bombings etc throughout the 20s. Strangely enough that in itself did not lower the economy. What it did do was create enough of a backlash (remember 9/11) that a coup was made possible and the whole downward spiral started.
Read more on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_argentina#Yrigoyen.2...
Since then Argentina has had essentially a mix of either military rule by juntas who carried on strong protectionist policies or democratically elected governments carrying on strong protectionist policies (the Peronistas). The current state of the economy is mainly due to the common factor here "strong protectionist policies".
The current government is carrying on the exact same idiotic policies. Argentina has many great programmers. Many of them are now working for US startups bringing in valuable foreign currency. What is their main tool? Well naturally a MacBook Pro.
In the US the cheapest 13" model costs $1199. In Argentina that costs 8,249.00 Pesos (US $2,162.25). If you're lucky enough to have US dollars it's only $1889. Now the current protectionist peronista government have just approved a further %35 electronic gadget tax that will go on top of this. See more http://econotrix.com/archives/000648.html
You have heard of import duties, well this current government tried to impose export duties on the agricultural industry the number one foreign exchange earner. I could go on.
As always while it is really cool to be able to plot to sets of data on a graph it is not terribly useful with some individual explanation.
I think this that the reason why this study is so attractive to certain people is that it plays into a variation of a classic flaw intelligent people have. Hayek called it the Fatal Conceit. Basically I am more intelligent than the masses, thus I know better. This translates into "I am intelligent, if you disagree with me you must be dumb". In the case of the study author and just about all intellectuals further mutates into "My ideas are obviously right. The masses ideas are obviously wrong. I'm educated. Lets educate the masses to the level where they are at my level so they agree with me."
I am all for education, but I'm much more in agreement with PG's approach to education than the traditional form that tends to be pushed.
Developing countries with poor education often have large classes of people working in informal businesses. These people are often not educated. But in almost all of these countries (where the culture allows it) the parents are pushing their children to be educated. (eg http://econotrix.com/archives/000640.html). Economic development will increase education unless there are certain cultural issues (such as not educating girls etc) that halt it.
In the 19th Century, both nations had vast tracts of land relatively undeveloped...
The U.S. essentially "gave" the land away to vast numbers of its citizens if they'd work it... encouraging and then creating a great class of free-spirited, industrious entrepreneurs with their own capital!
Argentina transferred its land in vast tracts to wealthy landowners and created essentially a division between the wealthy elites and the landless peasant!
The secret to capitalism FAILS when wealth becomes too concentrated... (remedying this is a focus of mine).
I am also working on the same in the financial space.
I'm guessing that education might be key to stronger institutions, which do create stability. Institutions are very strong in Scandinavia and probably in every other Western country as well.
Education is a prerequisite to functional democracy, but some other skills and/or needs are required for us to actually pursue initiatives. External threats? Common goals?
But you are right, it isn't without some very big costs.