Ob links

shrik
consonant (896763)
The Motherlode
The Cult
Alterslash

Archive/Search



Please direct questions and comments (both yours and /.!) to the email address on the /. user page.

Listed on BlogShares

Clicky

Friday, July 28, 2006

Counter-intuitive, I say

Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)

by Lemmy Caution (8378) Alter Relationship on 5:09 Thursday 27 July 2006 (#15787659)

Don't apply the same model to food that you apply to shelter. Your core insight, that well-meaning infusions of charity can have unexpected and unpleasant consequences, is well taken. But not all markets work the same: housing is sui generis (particularly when it is land and location that is the cost-driver.)

Also, education is not a panacea. You can over-educate a population past its economic opportunities and create a variety of problems, from the widescale loss of the best-and-brightest to other countries, to a population of resentful, overeducated people who are only able to find jobs in the lower ranks of the agricultural and industrial sectors (this is much of what happened in parts of Latin America - the Sendero Luminoso of Peru was largely officered by a generation of well-educated poor youth who found no job opportunities awaiting for them after their much-vaunted education was finished.)

England did not have the most widely educated population back when it was the richest, most powerful nation in the world. I think you might find the correlation between education and prosperity, historically, to have a number of suprises.
Comments: Post a Comment