When we encounter the exact same point being made over the decades despite dramatic differences in circumstances and intervening events, we have located an important handmaiden to ideology. So before we talk about what is intended, let’s go back to 1983 for some wisdom from a veteran European observer of what were the methods of choice during the Cold War. That great ideological struggle that my research says morphed in its strategies and tools but never vanished as we were led to believe. In his book Why Democracies Perish, Jean-Francois Revel has a chapter on “Ideological Warfare and Disinformation.” Since I believe education and especially this forced, largely invisible, psychological emphasis of changing personal values, attitudes, feelings, and dispositions was, and is, a means of ideological warfare, I looked for some advice from the past.
“its job is to fight propaganda not with counterpropaganda but with truth. Unfortunately, this is not something democracies are good at.
They are disadvantaged from the start by the long odds against halting the spread of utopian notions with plain facts. [http://futurewewant.org/ is a link to an example of how ed reform globally is now intertwined with these utopian visions of the future]. And they are unskilled in defending themselves against communism’s falsification of these very facts. [Today it is the idea that the crisis of 2008 and the global downturn proves free markets do not work and the public sector must intervene even more]. As weapons in the ideological war, propaganda and disinformation have a double objective: to concoct false images of Communist reality and of its leaders’ intentions and to circulate through the non-Communist world the plausible lies and deformed versions of events best calculated to disorganize the world.”
Disorganize the world. Still useful if you want economic and political power. When I first read a description of Transformational Outcomes Based education and watched it being pushed in the 90s all over the world everywhere with a tradition of liberty and cherishing individualism it struck me as a coordinated attempt to gain unilateral intellectual disarmament. When I read Psychosynthesis complaining about how those “who identify themselves with their mind and are proud of their intelligence” have “lopsided development” that is difficult to change but those with a “loose self-identity” are more adaptable and amenable to change it gave me pause.
Let’s use education to force a laying down of that mighty weapon–the human mind–lest it develop changes in unapproved directions. We may not be dealing with Capital C Communism anymore but we certainly are dealing with a ruling elite wanting to use the financial and coercive powers of the public sector globally to dictate what any of us can be, or become, or perhaps even do, in the future.
And the media, educators, and NGOs like the UN and the OECD or the World Wildlife Fund are all definitely spreading plausible lies and deformed versions of events that are easy to challenge with truth if enough people are aware and still have Axemaker Minds. Did you know though that there was ” a great and important law of the psychological life?” Roberto Assagioli laid it out in just that language in Psychosynthesis as a tool to be used to “achieve the right inner attitude toward other people and to successfully perform intended actions involving others.” What Assagioli called the “loving will.”
Doesn’t that aim sound almost the same as what Maslow and Rogers and the NEA started pushing in 1962 as the new focus of education where “the important thing is not the specific method used but rather the way people relate and feel toward one another in the classroom?” And this change was important because “pessimistic views regarding the nature of man and methods of discouragement have to be discarded. One has to enter wholeheartedly into a cooperative adventure with those involved.” As Revel and others have noted, we are changing only one side in the Cold War or in the dangerous world of 2013 as we glance at Syria and evil on both sides with chemical weapons use staining multiple hands. Only one side is being asked to disarm and just “feel” that all can be fixed if we just “refashion our interpretation of the lived environment so that we can intelligibly act within in it.”
Can we? That last quote has jumped across a time gap of almost 50 years but has the same pursuit. From the UK this time and a report called “Transforming Behaviour Change: Beyond Nudge and Neuromania.” http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/553542/RSA-Transforming-Behaviour-Change.pdf Before we get to that November 2011 report, let’s go back for that great psychological law: “images and mental pictures tend to produce the physical conditions and the external acts corresponding to them.” Another way of saying this is to point out the “immense power of images.” Assagioli says:
“It seems high time that this law should be utilized for higher and more constructive purposes [than advertising is what he means], and the fullest use of it should be made for the purpose of psychosynthesis.”
As I first explored in this post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/when-gaming-intends-to-shape-and-distort-our-perceptions-of-everything-around-us-viva-la-revolution/ , educators and the ruling elite and those who would like to join have a modern day tool in the computer and adaptive software and especially the coming classroom emphasis around gaming that would have made Assagioli and Maslow drool. No wonder UNESCO sees media education as the means to achieve Marxist Humanism. No wonder CCSSI wants media and digital literacy to be as important as print literacy. The power of images. Especially when schools define ‘engaged learning’ as the goal and immersion in a virtual reality as the means. Then the student can regularly try out utopias or envision potential future catastrophes that MUST be avoided. And precisely what will tell a student that something is in fact unworkable in reality or unlikely to really happen? An actual catastrophe with real lives?
The “Transforming Behaviour Change” report talks about preparing the “brain for social bonding and empathy” but what if we are bonding with bullies who have no desire for Peace in the real world? What if we are being primed to use the “motor-power of imagination” to redesign an economy and society in ways that ultimately cannot maintain the prosperity we will need to consistently keep most people well-fed? Feeling and intuition may create adaptability to transformative change but it is only knowledge that can deal with the inevitable consequences. And personal knowledge is precisely what is being extinguished in order to gain a widespread personality that seeks, or is amenable to, such wholesale change.
“The baby will have disappeared with the bath water” before most of us will even know any water has been drawn. But meanwhile the ruling elite will be “reworking the foundations of economic models” as that 2011 document put it. In a disinterested way of course. No wonder the report keeps mentioning George Soros. We simply use student-centered education to “change your sense of who you are and what you value” and voila! Reimagined human societies and economies can be ours. Education merely needs to create “the development of an inner authority which can ‘write upon’ existing social and psychological productions rather than be ‘written by’ them.”
Maybe we could call that inner authority the common core or triune consciousness (see previous post under that tag) obtained via the techniques of psychosynthesis brought in to achieve a Positive School Climate. All as we chase after this OECD-endorsed utopian vision of “21st Century enlightenment” to get “successful lives in well-functioning societies.”
“Behaviour change becoming an explicit goal of government policy” sounds like something from a science fiction novel, doesn’t it? Not a well-funded initiative of the present called the Social Brain Project. Never forget please that the US and UK are already working together as lead partners in seeking behavioral, economic, and social change as part of the Belmont Challenge and Future Earth Alliance [see tags] work. Hiding conveniently from prying eyes over in Sweden. So once again this is NOT a matter of pulling together sensational quotes. However, I do intend to end with one more from the Social Brain Project so we can ponder what freedom will mean in such a future vision.
“The ‘Think’ approach is more democratic, and contends that if we deliberate collectively as rational agents responsive to argument, we will find a suitable course of action and collectively follow it through.” Now the Social Brain Project clearly likes all that collective decision-making on behalf of all of us but it thinks the “Think’ approach is too reliant on reason and not enough on the unconscious mind and habits. It wants a ‘steering’ approach to behaviour change that “literally changes the subject.”
The subject is not Algebra or English. It is us and our children.
Being launched via transformative education into a world where our perception of reality and new values and attitudes are to be shaped just as surely by deliberate propaganda as anything a Khrushchev or Brezhnev ever sought to do during the Cold War.
Propaganda; deliberate misinformation; dividing the “oppostion” into competing entities through various means; reving up the emotional hype; and last but not least, “winning the conversation” by any means necessary. All are difficult obstacles for the individual and for rational thought.
AMS-
When the theme of the August annual conference of business school professors is entitled “Capitalism in Question,” we really do have a problem with the theme all of our educational institutions are sending out in their coursework and the degree programs.
When you ask Gar Alperowitz to be the keynote speaker http://www.garalperovitz.com/2013/07/strange-days-capitalism-in-question-at-the-academy-of-management/ you might as well be asking one of the modern day advocates for Uncle Karl’s vision of redistribution finally in the 21st century.
Business school profs. I am not surprised but oh my.
Capitalism is NOT in question, the USE of capital is in question. Capitalism in question is a false frame. Let me reiterate, capitalism is not in question.
What is in question is the use and benefit of capital, an asset that provides a revenue stream.
Figuring out a new paradigm for Capitalism is premature until a choice is made with regard to how capital is to be used in the USA, there are 3 choices:
1) For private interests only by the Private Sector, 2) For public interest only for the Public Sector, or 3) For both Public Sector and Private Sector benefit together without the Private Sector’s use of capital being subject to life support from the Public Sector.
Capital is an asset that provides a revenue stream; it is both a Public Sector and Private Sector choice to use capital to provide a revenue stream for Private Sector benefit only, Public Sector benefit only, or both Public and Private Sector benefit without life support to Private Sector use of capital at Public Sector expense.
The frame of whether or not capitalism is broken is a false frame; the frame that is of concern is whether or not capital will continue to be used exclusively for private benefit or whether capital will be used to provide a revenue stream for public benefit.
Capital is an asset that provides a revenue stream. I can’t say that enough.
It is of no consequence to capital whether the revenue stream capital provides is publicly owned or privately owned.
If the problem of capital being used exclusively for private interest to provide a revenue stream of benefit solely to private interest at the expense of public interests is going to be redressed effectively, it will come from using capital in the public interest to provide a revenue stream of benefit to the public in the public interest.
Again, capital is an asset that provides a revenue stream. Capital will provide a revenue stream for either private or public interest; the choice is ours.
Do we the people of the public sector want to benefit from the revenue stream of capital in the same way as the private sector? — Or, do we the people of the public sector wish to empower the private sector to continue to get a revenue stream from capital at public expense by letting the private sector use public money as private capital, and then by recapitalizing their gambling when the private sector misuse the capital they have obtained at public expense?
The choice is ours, we the people of the public sector of the USA.
Do we the people of the public sector want to continue to act against our own best interests with regard to the public use of capital to provide a revenue stream of benefit for public benefit? — Or, do we want to do as the private sector does and use capital in the public interest to provide a revenue stream of benefit to the public and force the private sector’s use of capital to be free of life support from the public sector?
Well, not all capital provides a revenue stream, certainly not a positive one after real estate taxes.
I was not ignoring your points but if you are going to talk in terms of “we the people of the public sector” it would be nice if you explained precisely who that is. Anyway I was correct in that your initial proposal reminded me of Gar Alperowitz and the Democracy Collaborative’s work. Here he is touting the Model of the State Bank of North Dakota. http://www.garalperovitz.com/2013/04/laura-flanders-talks-to-gar-alperovitz-about-what-then-must-we-do/
One more confession-I used to specialize in converting mutual s&L’s to stock companies when in big firm practice so I have had a bit of experience with what makes a bank tick and where the risk is and how to make an excellent fee income in ways that put the bank capital at risk. I think the ND model would have been a nightmare and have long since put the taxpayers at great risk if the bank were transported to an urban area with a political machine in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse community. Only in a society that raises unicorns would it not be turned into a vehicle for crony projects, retribution, and reparations. Much like the urban school districts and now the suburbs based on the on camera smirking from the spokesperson for the Fulton County Schools over a gun incident at a middle school. “We have your money and you cannot touch us” quickly becomes the motto. Perhaps the spokesperson is involved with the Democracy Collaborative’s much discussed vision for Atlanta and is excited about the larger transformation and opportunity to screw with suburban taxpayers and upper middle class children.
To fit in with today’s post where I mentioned Brookings here’s a link to their input of what Thomas and I are talking about. This also fits in with the Career Pathways vision attached to high school transformations. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013/07/17%20living%20cities%20takeaways/Oct%202012%20State%20and%20Metro%20Prosperity%20Collaborative%20Takeaways.pdf
I am going to make this a 2 parter and come back and talk about the pluralist commonwealth vision this goes hand in hand with.
You are misrepresenting what I have said. I advocate a New Order where both Private Capital and Public Capital play by the same rules, so that capital can seek its own private benefit at private expense without the safety net of public bailout, and the public can use managers for public capital to seek the interests of commerce for public benefit at public expense.
I seek to emerge a New Order to replace the existing established order that will use capital, as the tool that it is, to provide a revenue stream of benefit for both public and private benefit, not private capital used as a club to beat the public sector into submission, and manipulate the making and enforcing of unequal law and order to further its own greedy gains, rather than submit to the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order, so that all using capital use it by the same rules.
Private capital does beat the public sector into submission and corruption via flows of money, jobs and other forms of influence. It’s been said that the most efficient way for a business owner to spend money, by a factor of about 10, is to buy a politician. It’s been studied and this is the result.
Do you propose a way to stop this, in a world with a robust public sector?
The better solution is to construct a system of property rights that the private sector cannot overcome, and to minimize the public sector so there isn’t enough there worth stealing. That’s better by far if we can get it done. The problem in 2008 is the government even invented new powers for itself and tricky ways around the checks and balances built into the system, and just outright cheating to pursue its agenda. TARP was passed unconstitutionally for example. Taxpayers were forced to support businesses that should simply have failed and been resolved in the ordinary course of bankruptcy.
Shocking stuff, and since it happened then it seems to just keep happening, but there’s no comfort to be drawn from this regarding a public sector with even greater rights. The problem in 2008 was certainly not that the public sector didn’t have enough rights!!
I am talking about sublated equality in the balance of government, and the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order that will enable FREE MARKET COMPETITION between private capital and public capital without a safety net from the public sector for private capital.
The private sector has been whining and complaining that they want FREE MARKET COMPETITION; since before Adam Smith; what I am saying is that I agree and that the private sector should get what it has always claimed that it wanted — FREE MARKET COMPETITION between private capital and public capital, without a safety net for private capital being provided by the public sector.
Penn State did a special issue in July 2013 called Good Society that laid out much of the vision Thomas would like us to adopt. And it is also the vision attached to these ed reforms which is why I know about it. The paper “The Possibility of the Pluralist Commonwealth and a Community-Sustaining Economy” by Gar Alperovitz and Steve Dubb seeks “changes the basic institutions of the economy, so that the broad public increasingly owns more and more of the nation’s productive assets.” My point is the Soviets tried that and a nomenklatura will always seek that vision so they can be the administrators of those “publicly owned” assets. Like the well-paid hospital and school district executives.
The report mentions the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the American Sustainable Business Council as 2 groups pushng this vision of the “traditional radical principle that the ownership of capital should be subject to democratic control.” That would mean that an electoral majority is free to loot with the power of law behind it. That may soon come to be true but no economic growth and stagnation and a waste of resources and lousy incentives will be what comes in the wake.
There are 4 “critical axioms” of the Pluralist Commonwealth concept in case others want to join in. This doc seems to have gone back behind the paywall. These axioms supposedly build on the evolving forms and structural principles appropriate to the larger emerging challenges: (1) democratization of wealth; (2) community, both in general and as a guiding theme; (3) decentralization in general; (4) and substantial and not complete forms of democratic planning in support of community, and to achieve longer term economic, democracy-building and ecological goals.
Psychological Education with its new values and challenge to established beliefs and desire to provide the interpretive lenses of daily living will be invaluable in achieving the vision at the end of the essay. It acknowledges that America has had little experience with the democratization of wealth of the sort the Pluralist Commonwealth envisions.
“In a nation with little experience with such ideas, the various forms may also be thought as positive ways of challenging in everyday life what Antonio Gramsci termed the dominant hegemonic ideology. The introduction of such themes in local experience may also be understood as the necessary precondition of larger scale applications of the same principles at the appropriate moment.”
That’s the vision we are dealing with and the public sector wants to be the administrator of those “publicly-owned” assets. Now they cannot possible have the knowledge of anyone who created what became those assets however good their intentions. So we are to have an economy in this vision that divorces knowledge from power.
I think that’s a bad idea.
Yes, ALL capital provides a revenue stream, that is the nature and function of capital. When money is used as capital, it is used to provide a revenue stream.
What is your game? You talk about regenerative capitalism in a sophist way, touting information that provides balance based upon definition of what others say or write, rather than advocate metrics of equality as a standard that can be institutionalized as a basis for the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order, that can and will harness capital for the equal benefit of both the private and public sectors, rather than just the private sector, as is , and has been the case for the entire history of the USA that is enshrined in the US Constitution.
Are you trying to lead the sheep to a new slaughter house, because they have figured out that where private capital’s existing order is leading them is to their own destruction, and private capital’s solution is to lead the sheep to a New Slaughter House that they are unfamiliar with by way of unbalanced sophist certainty of definition, rather than the institutionalization of balanced benefit of dialectic balance to provide the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order as protection for the sheep and criminalization and punishment under the law for those who have and would continue to lead the sheep to the slaughter house by way of unbalanced sophist definition used in place of balanced metrics?
Thomas, you just said above that we don’t have much experience with the sort of big-public-sector system that you envision. Robin is being more conservative. I think she is saying that we will do best to stick to a private-sector-dominant society that has generated many good things for us and the rest of the world.
So aren’t you the one proposing to lead us to possible slaughter? You’re the one proposing the radical transformation.
Your “balanced” viewpoint is out of equilibrium. If one gives the private and public sector equal rights in many ways, but you also allow the public sector to make laws that constrain the private sector and to tax the private sector, and to do basically the whole laundry list of stuff (i.e. abuses) that we can read about in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, well then to say the least you’re going in the wrong direction.
Thomas, I am glad you came here. To be honest, it’s refreshing to hear someone state views like yours openly. It shows (along with Robin’s other evidence) that there are actually people who hold the views you do — a fact that boggles some of our minds, but that we’d better reallize so we know what we’re up against.
I am advocating FREE MARKET COMPETITION between private capital and public capital and the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order that applies equally to both private capital and public capital.
It appears to me that what “you people” are saying is that private capital cannot make it in FREE MARKET COMPETITION between private capital and public capital without a safety net for private capital from the public sector.
Your argument is that the private sector is entitled to a hand out of welfare from the public sector on a cyclical basis to resurrect private capital like a zombie, the public sector is tired of resurrecting private capital like a zombie without benefit from the rescue. It is time for private capital to make it on its own in FREE MARKET COMPETITION, without welfare from the public sector, if it can.
It looks to me like you are engaged in unbalanced sophist parsing of definition as used in the writings of others to present a case for capital not being able to be used by the public sector to provide a revenue stream of benefit for the public sector. If this is your game and it appears that it is, it is ludicrous propagandistic nonsense supported by the pedantic parsing of unbalanced sophistry.
Capital is money being used as a tool to create a revenue stream for its owner and as a tool it can be used to secure a revenue stream for its owner whether or not that owner is the public sector or the private sector.
What is the purpose of the public sector? Is it to support itself? Or is to benefit those outside government?
I know that a lot of government people deep in their hearts believe the first answer. But can you see why those of us who are not of the public sector hate that idea?
If we take your argument to its logical conclusion, there would be nothing but a public sector. I think we can get a pretty good idea of that from looking at Communist states in the past century. Do you want to do that again? I don’t.
I am not talking about capitalism versus communism! I do not care one whit about that irrelevant argument.
What I am talking about is FREE MARKET COMPETITION between private capital and public capital without public capital providing a safety net to cyclically resurrect private capital like a ZOMBIE, and have the zombie then claim that the doing so by the public sector is FREE MARKET Privatized Capitalism.
Your use of authority figures on your blog for unbalanced sophist support of unequal logic is a contemptible and disgusting misrepresentation for seemingly disingenuous dialogue in support of more of the same framing of self-serving advantage regarding the use of capital solely for private benefit that is absent the use of balanced logic presented by you in support of what you represent on your blog.
If you have a balanced case to make for whatever it is that you represent, I suggest to you that you make your own case with balanced logic and we will then be able to determine by the question and answer process whether or not the determination of your assertions equals the constitution that the determination of your assertions in your argument represent.
Hi Thomas,
You say that capital provides a revenue stream. Well not all by itself it doesn’t. A factory all by itself doesn’t provide anything. Example: Detroit’s deteriorated, formerly productive infrastructure. The brains “left the building” and all that was left was a decaying building.
The physical stuff is just tools that people can use. To make things go, you need both fungible capital (things) and non-fungible capital (also called “human capital” though that word has enough different shades that I use it gingerly here.) You need brains to use the stuff, for good or ill, efficiently or not. Do you consider that both fungible and non-fungible capital can be deployed for public or private purposes, at the behest of you of the public sector?
To the point, do you think that you of the public sector should be able to employ other people’s brains to purposes you decide?
And by the way, who gave you of the public sector the right to decide what people do with their private capital, including their private fungible capital and private non-fungible capital? Are you really making an argument against private property rights?
You are saying that you do not know the difference between capital and FAILED CAPITAL; what you are talking about is FAILED CAPITAL.
I am proposing a dual system of public and private capital, so that capital can be all that it wants to be, FREE and INDEPENDENT of LIFE SUPPORT from the public sector, and the public sector can get the benefit of using public money as public capital to secure a public revenue stream of public capital for public benefit.
Are you trying to contend that private capital cannot make it on its own without a net and life support in free and open competition with public capital?
ThomasG,
Don’t confuse or conflate the “public sector” with the “public”. The public sector is the government, including those people who have jobs in government. These are often jobs-for-life with great pensions. The public is simply all the people, the vast majority of whom don’t have those government jobs. Most of those (who are in the labor force) have jobs in the private sector. To that extent, when you talk of competition between the public sector and private sector, you are implying a competition between the public sector and the vast majority of the public itself.
And indeed that’s what it often feels like these days. We are fighting the government for our survival.
Public capital has a steady stream of “life support” from the private sector. One form of that is taxation.
I am not arguing for public bailouts of the private sector, please tell me where you think I said that. I said the opposite — that bailouts like TARP were abusive.
But to envision the private sector always forced to compete with the public sector, while the public sector gets to make the laws and tax the private sector, that’s quite an unfair competition. I made this point already.
And you never answered my question about what the purpose of the public sector is.
David
There you go with unbalanced sophist definition asking for unbalanced sophist definition, so that you can engage in unbalanced pedantic parsing and get away from dialectic balance.
Society divided into a public and private sector is the determination that constitute the whole society.
If you want to know the balance of the public and private sectors of society as a whole, look to the determination of the parts of the public sector and do likewise for the private sector; the determination of the parts of the public and private sectors of society determine the constitution of society as a whole in a dialectic balance between the public and private sectors of society and society as a whole.
When the private sector is on welfare from the public sector, as is, has been, and continues to be the case in the USA, and the private sector makes a claim to pay taxes to the government of both the public and private sectors, as a meaningful contribution to society as a whole as a welfare recipient from the public sector; what is the benefit derived by the public sector from the welfare recipient that is the private sector?
The answer is not much, otherwise the private sector would not be on welfare from the public sector asking to be taken care of as a dependent of the public sector.
We need a private sector in the USA that does not require on going welfare from the public sector in order to be resurrected like a zombie every 30 to 40 years with public capital, more welfare from the public sector, during which time the private sector uses and abuses public sector welfare payments of money as private capital until private sector financialization schemes exceed their on-going welfare payments from the public sector and their private capital based upon public money cyclically fails, again, again, and again, and again………………..
It is time for a change.
It is time for the private sector to grow up, take responsibility for itself and be kicked off of welfare from the public sector.
It is time for the private sector and private capital to compete with the public sector and public capital without constant ongoing welfare payments to the private sector for private sector use as private capital and additional cyclical resurrection welfare payments of public sector money for use as private sector’s private capital to cyclically resurrect a private sector zombie every 30 to 40 years.
It is time for the private sector and private capital to grow up, become self supporting and get off of all welfare payments from the public sector to the private sector, both as ongoing welfare payments and cyclical resurrection payments of welfare to the private sector from the public sector, and if the zombie that is the private sector and private sector’s private capital cannot be weaned off of public sector welfare, to cut off life support to the private sector zombie and discontinue resurrection.
It is time for a change. It is time for the Moral Hazard of ongoing and cyclical welfare to the private sector zombie that eats public sector money for private sector capital to be taken off public sector life support.
Those who desire and want to know how to think for themselves need a
sturdy foundation upon which to base independent thought, and that
sturdy foundation is knowing what the main divisions of language are:
Sophism and Dialectic, what the definitions of sophism and dialectic are,
and how sophism and dialectic are used in language rhetoric and
propaganda.
Sophism is unbalanced logic that is reliant upon definition to provide
certainty and balance.
Dialectic is positively and negatively balanced logic where the
determination of the words used equal the constitution of the meaning
the words convey.
Rhetoric is language used to lead others to a conclusion.
Sophism is used for propaganda that is defined as binary emotional
rhetoric.
Dialectic is used for negatively charged propaganda and positively
charged propaganda.
For those who wish to encourage independent thought and the use of
balanced language that will provide metrics and allow reason to prevail,
rather than propaganda, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding
of sophism, dialectic, and rhetoric; and know how they are used in both
language and propaganda, and that that knowledge be disseminated to the
masses, so that the masses of the populace are able to make sense of the
barrage of sophist and dialectic rhetoric and propaganda they are subjected
to on a daily basis, rather than be led by sophism, dialectic rhetoric, and
propaganda against their own best interest.
It is not enough just to whine about the problem. It is necessary to provide
a solution as a means to redress the problem and what I have written here
is a sound base that provides a solution.
Thomas-
An integral part of the push for this new psychosynthesis/Growth Mindset/Self-authoring stage 4 view of the world is the desire to create new mental models and values to fit the desired new economic system.
This is about 6 minutes on an invitation-only June conference at NYU on the desired new “Regenerative Capitalism.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M_BW1nucL0
It is now being circulated as a vision to march to.
The dialectical scrambling and sophistry are all attempts to create minds compatible with this vision and hopefully willing to act to make it so without ‘fessing up to parents and taxpayers that that is what is really going on.
I love your explanation but try to be careful with the D word. Even though I encounter it by name quite a bit and by function it is a huge component of what is called ‘rigor’ and “higher order thinking,” I get accused offline of already having too intellectual of a blog as it is.
Which is why I always try to interject a bit of humor when I have to be nerdy for reasons of explanation.
Robert Kegan though does call his work dialectical as of May 2013 at an RSA speech. Others do too.
Welcome to ISC by the way.
Robin
Watched your clip on Regenerative Capitalism. The clip didn’t really say anything.
Capital is an asset that provides a revenue stream of benefit for its owner.
Capital will provide a revenue stream for Private interests,
or
Capital will provide a revenue stream for Public benefit.
At present TRILLIONS of Dollars of U.S. Treasury money is used by Private commercial banks as capital to provide a revenue stream for Private benefit at Public expense.
If we are talking about a NEW paradigm, that paradigm will have to separate Private interests from Public interests, and use Private Money as Private Capital separate and apart from Public Money as Public Capital, and put the two separate systems in competition with each other.
When Private Enterprise fails; i.e., the Economic Cycle, Public Capital needs to buy up the Failed Capital Assets as cheap as humanly possible and either sell them at the best price the market will bear, use them as Public Capital Assets to provide a Public revenue stream, or engage in a policy combining both strategies in order to harness the use of capital for Public benefit in the same way as is done for Private benefit.
We need to get rid of the Federal Reserve Banking System and replace it with a banking system based upon the Bank of North Dakota http://banknd.nd.gov/.
Thomas-precisely how can public capital assets which must be managed by private individuals even if they are employed by the public sector ever not become captive to private interests?
I am not following you completely and trust me, no one hates the private upside/public downside cronyism that is just building. If you don’t like that link, I have a lot more that lay out what is being called 4th sector, For Benefit Capitalism or Cooperative Commonwealth in a needs society.
My crucial point is that all these ed reforms ARE tied to a radically restructured society and economy, usually grounded in Green Energy. It is dangerous not to discuss the nature and likely consequences of the attendant reforms at the same time we are discussing what is really going on in education.
I was a Big Firm corporate and securities lawyer who later started the legal dept for what grew into an NYSE-traded healthcare company before being bought out. I have few illusions about the nature of the game on Wall Street and who regulation really benefits. We can have this discussion at a specific level if you would like but I need a more tangible understanding of what you are proposing.
How does the use of capital for public benefit ever really arise apart from individuals in the private sector not playing to a cronyism beat? Every other scenario descends to private individuals and firms using the taxing and coercive powers of govt for their own benefit.
It looks to me like you are proposing the type of changes Gar Alperowitz and the site community-wealth are pushing.
And the idea of using college and university endowments and public pension assets to finance community redevelopment and banks.
Again, we can discuss the viability of this. I have those notes and am familiar with what you seem to be proposing. If that’s what you want to push, please be a tad more specific and away we can go. I don’t agree with you but I can disagree with respect and specifics which does make for a lively debate.
Check out the history of the Bank of North Dakota, the reasons it was founded and the purposes that it served and still serves.
I am talking about using the making and enforcing of equal law and order to enable banking in the public interest, as demonstrated by the Bank of North Dakota, in such a way as to put Fractional Reserve Banking to work turning Public Money into capital to finance the commerce of the nation for Public Benefit, rather than to continue the same practice for exclusive Private Benefit.
I am not proposing working within the existing established order. I am proposing creating a new order based upon dialectic balance of government and the making and enforcing of equally balanced making and enforcing of legislated law and order based upon a Dialectically Balanced Formulary of government that includes all of the people governed.
I agree with Robin about the Bank of North Dakota and maybe I am just saying the same in different words.
Anything would work in North Dakota. ND has just struck oil (and gas.) ND has old time farming families and newcomers who work in the booming petroleum business. All North Dakota needs to do is build infrastructure and institutions. Government stepped in to do that job, partly in the form of the Bank of North Dakota.
Even the affordable housing is needed just because they can’t get housing built fast enough for oil and gas workers. You know these people can and will pay back the cost of their housing through their productivity in the economy. The housing is not for families with generations of those living at public expense. Thus, a spirit of community can develop. You look at another person and say that person is a useful part of your community.
Consider, on the other hand, California. There you have the more productive, the less productive, the unproductive and the actually destructive. The productive would be far less willing to go in with the unproductive on a bank. It would be seen as a transfer of wealth rather than a common tool of convenience and wealth building.
When I make reference to the Bank of North Dakota, I am talking about its sublated dialectic structure; i.e., the determination and constitution of balance that allows the bank to use public capital to obtain a revenue stream of benefit that can be used in the public interest.
I am not interested in pedantic parsing of unbalanced sophist definitions of contention for unequal benefit at the expense of others.
If private capital supports what I advocate, your complaints relative to California, and all such like complaints, will be addressed and remedied with the resources provided by the revenue stream of public capital.
Get it straight, the public sector no longer wants to be reliant upon the private sector. The public sector can and will take care of its own affairs just as it is doing in North Dakota, and expects that the private sector does the same thing, instead of continuing to rely upon cyclical welfare from the public sector.
Private capital and the private sector needs to grow up, crawl out of the cradle and learn to make it on its own, and the public sector and public capital needs to do the same thing, with both being self reliant and not being dependent upon welfare from the other.
What is the problem with the private sector and private capital not wanting to take self reliant responsibility for itself without a safety net of welfare from the public sector?
If private capital and the private sector cannot grow up and take responsibility for itself after over 237 years in the public nursery being reliant upon public welfare from the public sector, it is arrested in its development and is incapable of growing up and being self reliant.
Not to be mean Thomas but whatever it is you do for a living that leads you to such fascinating visions of finance and politics, you have far more time for commenting than most of us.
I agree with David, this is interesting. Facts don’t seem to pierce the vision.
What is the meaning of your so called facts based upon unbalanced sophist definition and rhetoric?
Facts that are subject to metrics based upon derivation from sublated dialectic balance mean something, but so called facts based upon unbalanced sophist rhetoric and definition are NOT subject to balanced meaningful metrics and are therefore meaningless.
I don’t feel I understand your definition of “dialectic”. Not to boast too much, but if I can’t understand it, I doubt the masses can.
I don’t know what is “positively and negatively balanced logic”, although I have quite a good idea of what logic is. Mine is the traditional, mathematical view. Is your “balanced logic” consistent with what is conventionally called “logic”? Can you prove it? If not you can talk about some sort of “balance” but you probably should not say it’s “logic”.
Maybe you consider the mathematical type of logic to be “sophism” because it depends on definition. But whatever you call it, it’s still mathematical logic.
What I am talking about with regard to balanced and unbalanced logic; i.e., dialectic and sophism, is the same balance that has been postulated by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and G. W. F. Hegel since 400 B.C.
Now I would agree that Hegel’s Framework is deeply involved in this vision. It also has a tragic track record.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/pulling-up-the-moorings-once-again-to-transform-reality-into-the-history-of-desired-desires/
I am not at all interested in an unbalanced sophist slant on dialectic balance. My nephew is a physicist and uses sublated dialectic balance to derive solutions that affect the real world, and that is what we here are talking about, real world problems that have to be addressed by real world solutions, rather than unbalanced sophistry that contends over unbalanced definitions and tropes to pedantically parse to the lowest point of defined certainty in the absence of natural balance.
I looked up sublation and this link looks informatove:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufheben
” … In sublation, a term or concept is both preserved and changed through its dialectical interplay with another term or concept. Sublation is the motor by which the dialectic functions. …”
I would be interested to know how your nephew uses the idea in physics. Can you point me to a paper or anything where I can see an application? It sounds like one could imagine particle annihilations this way, but the analogy to government would seem to break down pretty quickly … please explain more!
You say elsewhere that the public sector wants to go off on its own now. Well good for it, it’s been a long childhood, now we’re raised Frankenstein’s monster. Is it American as apple pie if we must admit we are Dr. Frankenstein?
You don’t want the private sector to depend any more on the public sector as well. But before you go off on your own, I am sure you would want to square accounts. You’ve taken an awful lot in taxes in the past 200 years. Surely you agree that it wouldn’t be fair simply to have taken that and now, when you are satisfied, disclaim any responsibility in return. You want to do the right thing and pay it back because until then I, the private sector, think I should own you.
I’ll be happy to provide my address, although the IRS already has it. Normally I’d say Ben Bernanke could just print the money, but that would be massively inflationary and reduce the value of what you send to me, and China would object for the same reason, and anyway you want to get away from the Fed (maybe something I can agree with there!) so rather than increasing the money supply, just have the Treasury obtain the money in the markets to pay back what it owes me in fair value, and we’re square!
Sublation is the process whereby the determination of the parts equals the constitution of the whole.
Do you really think that the private sector and private capital that cyclically fails and has to be recapitalized at public expense, as a zombie, should continue to be allowed to maintain an umbilical life support line to public sector capital?
I see that you are trying to personalize an impersonal conversation. No doubt the reason why is that you cannot defend Zombie Capitalism and you want to degrade the conversation down into personal recrimination.
The private sector uses public money as private capital to engage in commerce and banking for private profit; how exactly is it that paying a small amount of taxes for the free use of Public Welfare Money that the private sector gets through the Federal Reserve translate into some sort of a debt to the private sector from the public sector as a result of the payment of taxes by the private sector for the FREE USE of trillions of dollars of public money as private capital???????
No, I am mentioning your nephew because you mentioned your nephew and I was following up on your comment.
You are simply wrong about some sort of periodic general bailout of the private economy by the public sector. Even if there were such a bailout, all the public sector’s money came from the private sector, so it would have just meant giving back what it had taken. It could have been good public policy, providing some sort of social insurance, like Social Security (though very pointed questions can be asked about that program, too.)
But I’ve never received a periodic government bailout.and neither have any of my friends. In 2008 a few major banks and financial institutions were bailed out. Not “everyone”. Many people lost their jobs and then their homes. Nobody bailed them out. Even the bailout programs (HARP, then HAMP) are really pass-through to the banks rather than helping many homeowners.
Note that this bailout came from the private sector. Government employees kept their jobs. The national debt increased, taxes were raised (Obamacare is a tax, unless it isn’t — maybe John Roberts was just doing some dialectical thinking rather than simply fudging.) But of all real estate markets in the country, DC metro is probably the only one that never skipped a beat. Public sector workers didn’t lose their jobs nor their houses. The public sector has been well protected as the private sector has endured terrible prolonged pain. Some bailout.
You are simply making up this idea of periodic bailouts. It’s just not true, a fantasy. Like that pink elephant standing in your living room. As such, I don’t think it even qualifies as a part of a dialectical discussion. It’s not even a part of the truth. It doesn’t exist.
One other point about public and private capital. While we may not know everything that goes on in Open Market Operations, the standard tool of longer-term Fed monetary policy is to buy US Treasury bonds. So when Ben prints, he doesn’t give the money to the private sector. Nope, he gives it straight to the US Treasury.
And the public and private sectors are only the two parts of the whole economy dialectic because you’ve declared it so. Now I will define a new dialectic of “producer / leech”. Aren’t the producers in that model entitled to object to the dialectic, rather than conforming to it, and just act to get rid of the leeches?
Let’s try to bring this back to the blog’s main topic. What are your feelings or opinions about Common Core? How do you think that education should be revised to teach dialectical thinking or other notions you have discussed here?
Speaking of which, David, it’s Carol Dweck and her Growth Mindsets being rolled out as the answer to the achievement gap.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/09/11/03mindset_ep.h33.html?tkn=OMMFBUpoZuQwY4qvMMvS1tu%2BEpDD9iqQZV0U&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1
Almost as good as Brookings having a program today on the book I mentioned with hashtag #Endangering Prosperity. The Metropolitanism newsletter announced it this morning. Starting to fell like there ‘s crystal ball in my closet.
Well I read the article and was thinking “this isn’t too bad”. It’s just good manners and good teaching to try to keep the students engaged and not scare those who are having difficulty if it can be avoided. They have to be calm to be able to learn. Once they see they can learn they build confidence and their performance will be better than it was when they had no confidence. All this is true in my experience as a teacher and a learner.
But the enlightening part for me was the “quiz” at the end. I said that intelligence can sometimes change, it’s not always fixed, and I really like the hardest problems and they don’t make me feel dumb. I think that’s a pretty good growth mindset, but the result was that I showed a “neutral mindset” and am not sure that people can change their intelligence.
Moral of the story: if I were faculty where such a program is being implemented, I would do my best to keep a straight face and act like a true believer in any meetings. You can’t show any reserve or reasonable doubts about these things.
Honestly I did not know there would be this avalanche I just saw the book was pushing PISA like so many others on specious grounds. Daughter’s paino teacher just brought me a hard copy from today’s WSJ. Here’s the online link.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579042672762472600.html
You are deluded. ALL money in the USA comes from the PUBLIC U.S. Treasury where it is materialized out of thin air as fiat currency by way of the Federal Reserve. When Ben prints, as you say, the money goes into Private commercial banks where it is used by way of Fractional Reserve Banking to create capital for the Private Sector.
What I am talking about here is basic operation of the U.S. Economy; if, as you say, you are so deluded and have your head so full of propaganda as to have not even a basic understanding of the U.S. Economy. You need to have less certainty in what you do not know and use the resources of the internet and books, so as to sufficiently educate yourself with metric based information, rather than the belief that you so freely proclaim with unbalanced sophist certainty, as fact of definition by your own deluded mind.
You appear to be like someone that has been propagandized by church doctrine based upon unsupported belief.
Whatever your problem is, if you do not know, cannot understand, and are not interested in educating yourself, I do not feel that you have anything to contribute to dialogue other than false argument and contention based upon the propaganda of your minders.
I have entered my last post 3 times because your program keeps displacing my answer, so I have attached the post I am answering this 3rd time:
David commented on Shifting the Way People Relate and Feel Towards One Another is the Crucial Leverage Point.
in response to ThomasG:
“Sublation is the process whereby the determination of the parts equals the constitution of the whole. Do you really think that the private sector and private capital that cyclically fails and has to be recapitalized at public expense, as a zombie, should continue to be allowed to maintain an umbilical life support line to public […]”
David on September 12, 2013 at 4:29 pm said:
“No, I am mentioning your nephew because you mentioned your nephew and I was following up on your comment.
You are simply wrong about some sort of periodic general bailout of the private economy by the public sector. Even if there were such a bailout, all the public sector’s money came from the private sector, so it would have just meant giving back what it had taken. It could have been good public policy, providing some sort of social insurance, like Social Security (though very pointed questions can be asked about that program, too.)
But I’ve never received a periodic government bailout.and neither have any of my friends. In 2008 a few major banks and financial institutions were bailed out. Not “everyone”. Many people lost their jobs and then their homes. Nobody bailed them out. Even the bailout programs (HARP, then HAMP) are really pass-through to the banks rather than helping many homeowners.
Note that this bailout came from the private sector. Government employees kept their jobs. The national debt increased, taxes were raised (Obamacare is a tax, unless it isn’t — maybe John Roberts was just doing some dialectical thinking rather than simply fudging.) But of all real estate markets in the country, DC metro is probably the only one that never skipped a beat. Public sector workers didn’t lose their jobs nor their houses. The public sector has been well protected as the private sector has endured terrible prolonged pain. Some bailout.
You are simply making up this idea of periodic bailouts. It’s just not true, a fantasy. Like that pink elephant standing in your living room. As such, I don’t think it even qualifies as a part of a dialectical discussion. It’s not even a part of the truth. It doesn’t exist.
One other point about public and private capital. While we may not know everything that goes on in Open Market Operations, the standard tool of longer-term Fed monetary policy is to buy US Treasury bonds. So when Ben prints, he doesn’t give the money to the private sector. Nope, he gives it straight to the US Treasury.
And the public and private sectors are only the two parts of the whole economy dialectic because you’ve declared it so. Now I will define a new dialectic of “producer / leech”. Aren’t the producers in that model entitled to object to the dialectic, rather than conforming to it, and just act to get rid of the leeches?
Let’s try to bring this back to the blog’s main topic. What are your feelings or opinions about Common Core? How do you think that education should be revised to teach dialectical thinking or other notions you have discussed here?”
ThomasG’s answer:
ThomasG on September 12, 2013 at 7:19 pm said:
You are deluded, David. ALL money in the USA comes from the PUBLIC U.S. Treasury where it is materialized out of thin air as fiat currency by way of the Federal Reserve. When Ben prints, as you say, the money goes into Private commercial banks where it is used by way of Fractional Reserve Banking to create capital for the Private Sector.
What I am talking about here is basic operation of the U.S. Economy; if, as you say, you are so deluded and have your head so full of propaganda as to have not even a basic understanding of the U.S. Economy. You need to have less certainty in what you do not know and use the resources of the internet and books, so as to sufficiently educate yourself with metric based information, rather than the belief that you so freely proclaim with unbalanced sophist certainty, as fact of definition by your own deluded mind.
You appear to be like someone that has been propagandized by church doctrine based upon unsupported belief.
Whatever your problem is, if you do not know, cannot understand, and are not interested in educating yourself, I do not feel that you have anything to contribute to dialogue other than false argument and contention based upon the propaganda of your minders.
ThomasG’s Continued Answer Regarding David’s Post September 12, 2013 at 4:29 pm on Shifting the Way People Relate and Feel Towards One Another is the Crucial Leverage Point:
With regard to education, David, balanced sublated dialectic, rather than the unsupported definition of unbalanced sophist logic is what we need in the Public Schools and in all parts of the education system, so that people can be educated to have independent thought and think for themselves in their own best interest, rather than be led like sheep with the unsupported definition of unbalanced sophist logic.
When my niece and nephew were young children they were told by their respective school principal and school superintendent that if you can think for yourself, we don’t want you here, because you are a contrary danger to the good order of the school; this type of thinking is at the heart of what has enabled a small minority of the Private Sector with Private Capital to take control of the USA as a nation, and use the USA and its resources for their own private benefit at the expense of the greater good of the Public Sector as a whole and to perpetuate a practice of using Public Money by the trillions of dollars as Private Capital.
I find it odd to say the very least that people on this blog who claim to be so very unaware of the workings of the U.S. Economy with regard to Private Capital would be trying to lead a dialogue on education. Most generally I would expect a higher threshold of knowledge, awareness and understanding from a pretender to the cause of educational reform.
Thomas,
Who precisely is the pretender?
Thomas, I did not say that when Ben prints, the money goes into private banks.>b> You turned around what I said, backwards. I am not responsible to police all your statements for this sort of thing, but you’ve done too much of this sort of twisting stuff already.
I said that when Ben prints, the Fed uses that newly created money to buy Treasury bonds. Therefore the first recipient of that money is the Treasury. Not private banks.
On the other point, if there were no productive private sector activity, the government would be able to buy very little. The value of the US dollar would go down. We would lose the “petro-dollar” status that may be helping to support it as the reserve currency, and without that and lacking adequate domestic productivity, there would be little to support its value.
Generally speaking the private sector produces fungible goods and services that can be sold, and the public sector does not. Therefore without the private sector, it’s hard to talk about productivity of the public sector, and its value would appear to be very low. Thus it’s reasonable to say that whatever wealth the public sector was generated, at least mostly, by the private sector.
So you got it wrong both ways. Ben prints and gives currency to the Treasury. But that currency would be near worthless without the productivity of the private sector.
If you can still find it, the Fed Board of Governors used to put a book called “Modern Money Mechanics” that, up until a few years ago, you could ask them to mail you or download from their website. It was excellent. Lately the Fed has stopped providing that book. But many MBA or economics textbooks, or writings in wikipedia, would surely confirm what I’ve said. I welcome your evidence to the contrary, but please excuse me if I don’t hold my breath.
As I said before, capital is an asset that provides a revenue stream.
Would Treasury bonds pay a revenue stream to the Public Sector, as well as the Private Sector?
Would bonds that are created in the private sector pay a revenue stream to the public sector as well as the private sector?
Does management enabled by law and order to manage capital assets, whether they are bonds or the means of production and distribution, care whether or not they are working for the public or private sector? — Or, is the problem the making and enforcing of law and order?
At present the private sector in the USA is subject to the making and enforcing of unequal law and order that empowers private sector benefit at public sector expense; would the making and enforcing of equal law and order that empowers both the public sector, as well as the private sector, to manage capital for both public and private sector benefit, in the same manner, not provide management in the public sector to function on an equal basis with the private sector?
The problems that you perceive with capitalism are problems with the making and enforcing of unequal law and order that empowers the whole dumb show.
If we want public sector management to be able to use capital in the same way as the private sector, the draw back at present is the making and enforcing of unequal law and order that empowers the private sector at public expense; that problem can be addressed by the making and enforcing of equal law and order that empowers the management of capital in both the public and private sector equally.
Would the making and enforcing of equal law and order with regard to the management of public and private capital not empower public and private management equally, separate and apart from ownership of the capital assets being managed; i.e, private or public?
The Constitution of the USA is not based upon equality because the US Constitution leaves the people out of the dialectic balance.
If we want balance in benefit from capital, we first need balance in the Dialectic Formulary of Government that includes the people as a base, that will empower the making and enforcing of equal law and order that guides the rule of law to provide law and order equally in both the public and private sectors.
It is not possible to achieve balance with sophistry, because it is unbalanced logic by definition that does not allow the determination of the parts to equal the whole.
What we really want is what we empower by the making and enforcing of law and order.
Will we empower the making and enforcing of unequal law and order that in turn empowers privatized capitalism?
Or, will we empower the making and enforcing of equal law and order that empowers both the public and private sectors to benefit from the use of capital to provide a revenue stream of benefit to the public sector, as well as the private sector?
The ousted Australian Labor Party Government engaged in a great deal of social engineering. This was part of its agenda since the days of Gough Whitlam. I came across the following when researching the Human Rights laws that are so stifling to freedom. They are so sure of themselves that they speak openly of changing behaviour and thus changing thought. Their arrogance knows no bounds.
” Australian Public Service Commission, Changing Behaviour: A Public Policy Perspective (2007) 29, which found that “carefully planned, comprehensive, long-term approaches encompassing education and information, legislation and restrictive measures” are the most effective in producing normative and behavioural change.”
Hi Annie.
That’s a great quote. Yes, Australia adopted the Ted Sizer, James Comer, and Howard Gardner ATLAS-Authentic Teaching and Learning for All Students in 2002 and the tenets of the Coalition for Essential Schools and as you know now has the Core Skills put in place in 2008 and amended in 2012. Got to get the globe in sync to gain comparable useful mindsets for the all expansive public sector.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-education-transforms-values-and-feelings-and-beliefs-to-control-behaviors-are-we-free/ was the post I did on the Australian well-being framework and how closely it dovetails with the actual implementation we are seeing in the US and also Canada.
Europe has also established SWPBS-Schoolwide Positive Behavior Systems conferences in recent years that Martin Seligman jets off to.
If Transformational Outcomes Based education was controversial in the 90s, we just get all the tenets under new names and different initiatives this time. Still fits to drive behavioral change and new, more Marxist Humanist values. Just like Irina Bokova of UNESCO and Michael Barber of Pearson have laid out.
I think we are supposed to act as marionettes unaware there are any strings.
I am talking about nothing more than the use of capital as a tool to obtain a revenue stream of benefit for its owner.
To a degree what I am talking about has been institutionalized in North Dakota for many years to successfully provide the benefit of a revenue stream of capital to the people of North Dakota that is as American as apple pie.
The successful model of the Bank of North Dakota demonstrates that the public sector can use public capital to benefit the public sector separate and apart from reliance upon the private sector.
It is time for a change in the USA; to expand the American as apple pie model of the Bank of North Dakota to fill the position of a National Banking System for the USA that can expand upon the good and successful work of the Bank of North Dakota, as a replacement for the Federal Reserve Banking System, a private institution.
Let’s get real. As someone who is a small business owner in the private sector, as well as having been a city manager in the public sector, I can speak to the real-life impacts of these issues on a smaller scale, which is where we should start to best understand the issues at hand and their impacts.
As for small business investing capital in the local community: This benefits both the investor of capital and those who choose to use the product or service, as well as employees who are hired. Competition is integral to the success or failure of small business, and the clients’ needs and wants must regularly be assessed and taken into account. There is no coercion at this level with respect to clients, as there are many choices to be made among similar businesses. Businesses cannot tax, but they can produce an excellent product or service and thereby garner a solid and respectable reputation. Further, there are no bailouts if a business fails, nor should there be. There should not be ill-conceived regulations, fees and taxation that chips away at any business’s legitimate success.
As for the public sector: As a former city manager, what I experienced was eye-opening. In general, the elected council, over decades, spent and indebted the city without serious concern as to the consequences for the citizen-taxpayers, and they were devoid of any business common-sense, which is useful in sound decision-making. They, as well as the the staff, desired to increase their “revenues.” From where? From the taxpayer, which translates into higher taxes, fees, and more regulation, further burdening local businesses. The power to tax is an awesome power, but few elected officials, especially over time, look at the responsibility/accountability part. The public sector/government, from my experience, across the board, does not understand how to operate on sound economic principles for success. When I “served” my stint, the public sector mantra was, and still is, how to get back to the boom time (up until 2008) when real estate taxes had doubled, so that “public” projects could be increased, even as that put a severe strain on the businesses and individuals throughout the city and the county.
Lawmakers in cities and counties create their own ordinances and policies, even while they fail to follow them, as well as other state and federal laws. Government has the authority to create programs and legal entities that are highly corruptible while receiving taxpayer subsidies, even while they misappropriate and misuse taxpayer funds. I have seen it, as it is ever so easy to use OPM (other people’s money) as they choose. The potential for corruption far exceeds anything local businesses can achieve, and good luck trying to hold the public sector accountable. They are a protected class and defend themselves with taxpayer dollars.
Finally, few, except those chosen at a national or state level to benefit from bailouts, believe in “crony corporatism” (crony capitalism is a misnomer). This type of activity creates a special class and corporate welfare to boot.
Thanks AMS.
The true non-cronyist private sector has to provide a product or service people want at the price they offer it at. If they cannot do that long-term they cannot survive and the burden of failure rests with the people who tried. As you said it is very chastening.
There is an old expression among extraordinarily successful people who have built up well-known businesses from scratch that you NEVER forget the stress of making payroll. They never forget not taking a draw but still funding their employees salaries.
To a large extent the public sector operates for the benefit of private individuals using taxpayer money and plenty of for-profit businesses want on that gravy train too. But it absolutely breeds corruption. All Dodd-Frank did was give the Too Big To Fail money center banks more ability to call on taxpayers without reform. But at least there are shareholders who are supposed to lose it all in the event of failure.
It was the increase of deposit insurance that gave s&l’s the ability to say upside is ours and downside is the taxpayers. And that eventually created the dynamics of that bailout.
What you are talking about is a defect in the U.S. Constitution that institutionalized a sublated balance of government that leaves out all of the people that the government rules in the U.S. Formulary of Government, and thereby institutionalized and enshrined the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order in the USA.
If the problem you are talking about is to be seriously addressed, it will need to be addressed by inclusion of all of the people ruled by the government of the USA in a dialectic formulary of U.S. Governance; i.e., “All of the people governed equal the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that in turn equal the government.” In this way all of the people that are ruled by U.S. Government can impose balance on the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order, and since all of the people governed includes both the public and private sectors of the society as a whole, the people as a whole can, in their own best interest, decide in mass what their own best interest is, and thereby be an effective check and balance to the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order by legislative authority.
There is plenty of cronyism in the public sector, as no sector (non-profit as well) is immune to corruption. Although when you make the laws and policies in a city or county, there is an even better opportunity for personal gain unseen by the residents/businesses/taxpayers.
As a city manager, putting numerous projects and services out to bid in a RFP, brought in new businesses who offered a better product or service or a similar product or service for a lower price. But, and this is a big but, city council often ignored the comparisons among price and product and opted to favor an existing company, with neither a price nor a product benefit to taxpayers, or to give the business to an established crony.
How did these decision-makers benefit? That I will leave up to your imagination.
My answer to another post is also the answer to this post:
“What you are talking about is a defect in the U.S. Constitution that institutionalized a sublated balance of government that leaves out all of the people that the government rules in the U.S. Formulary of Government, and thereby institutionalized and enshrined the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order in the USA.
If the problem you are talking about is to be seriously addressed, it will need to be addressed by inclusion of all of the people ruled by the government of the USA in a dialectic formulary of U.S. Governance; i.e., “All of the people governed equal the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that in turn equal the government.” In this way all of the people that are ruled by U.S. Government can impose balance on the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order, and since all of the people governed includes both the public and private sectors of the society as a whole, the people as a whole can, in their own best interest, decide in mass what their own best interest is, and thereby be an effective check and balance to the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order by legislative authority.”
David said: “Generally speaking the private sector produces fungible goods and services that can be sold, and the public sector does not. Therefore without the private sector, it’s hard to talk about productivity of the public sector, and its value would appear to be very low. Thus it’s reasonable to say that whatever wealth the public sector was generated, at least mostly, by the private sector.” — David on September 12, 2013 at 8:13 pm
ThomasG’s Answer: You, David, are using unbalanced sophistry to parse false certainty from what I said.
I know about Modern Money Mechanics and I also know that if you admit that you do also, that you are intentionally trying to misrepresent the fact that the U.S. Treasury is borrowing fiat currency by way of Treasury Certificates from the Federal Reserve for interest paid to the Fed for the face value of the fiat currency, and that in turn that same money by way of Quantitative Easing is deposited in PRIVATE Commercial Banks where one tenth is kept in reserve and nine tenths is used as capital to make private loans for private profit at PUBLIC expense, and that in this way the money supply is expanded.
You, David, seem to be pedantically parsing the route by which the money arrives at PRIVATE Commercial Banks to avoid the fact that the money does in fact go to PRIVATE Commercial Banks by way of the U.S. Treasury.
Productive activity is the result of capital that enables that same productive activity, and the dialogue we are engaged in is my advocation of the use of both Public Capital and Private Capital to engage both the Private Sector and the Public Sector in Productive Activity and FREE MARKET COMPETITION with both Public Capital and Private Capital, without a safety net for Private Capital from the Public Sector, so that both the Private Sector and the Public Sector can engage in Productive Activity without the Public Sector having to be a safety net for the Private Sector.
From the way that you are responding to my posts, David, it is obvious that you do not think that the Private Sector and Private Capital would fare very well in FREE MARKET COMPETITION with the Public Sector and Public Capital engaged in Productive Activity in competition with the Private Sector and Private Capital.
ThomasG,
Thank you for this interesting conversation. This will be my last reply to you so, at Robin’s sufferance, you can have the last word. I cannot continue to try to parse certainty from what you say — be it true or false, whether by sophistry or other means, pedantically or not.
If I mow your lawn and you pay me $10, and I go to McDonalds and buy a cheeseburger, coke and several large orders of fries with it (but not all at once, they taste best when fresh from the hot grease, so I finish one order and then get another) you got your lawn mowed, McDonalds got the $10 out of which at least $5 is pure profit on a variable cost basis, and I got clogged arteries. Does that mean McDonalds is benefiting unfairly, and I got ripped off, because you had me mow your lawn?
Likewise if the Treasury receives a billion dollars and deposits it in commercial banks, is it fair to say the government wasn’t given the money? Heck they can even withdraw the money from those accounts, at least in theory, whereas I could not get my $10 back from McDonalds.
If the government, with its taxing, lawmaking and police powers, is allowed unfettered competition with the private sector, any remaining business owners who can would be well advised to move out of country. (Would I be right to suspect that you think it unfortunate that people can leave this heaven-on-earth if they find other countries more accommodating?) A good example is the student loan forgiveness program for those who work in “public service” jobs for 10 years. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/your-money/relief-from-student-loan-debt-for-public-service-workers.html?_r=0
This is a law, made by the government, to benefit the government. Student loan debtors will compete for those public sector jobs so they can get loan relief. And who pays? Why of course, it comes out of government revenue, that is, money from taxes and money Ben or his successors printed. Government will get better workers at cheaper rates, and the private sector is, as usual, quite defenseless against it.
You want to take whatever limited safety net government provides business (for almost all businesses, that net is nonexistent anyway) but you are not mentioning the safety net the private sector provides the public sector. Why not get rid of them both — don’t take any taxes, and give up any special relationship with the Fed, and give up your regulatory powers over the banking system, and your lawmaking ability and judicial authority, and there’s surely many more things the public sector should give up to make for a fair balance of power, and then let’s compete. Deal?
It’s been an interesting conversation today, I hope you agree, and here I am signing off. I am still here for ISC, but ThomasG, goodbye.
David, I do not give a hoot in hell about your unbalanced sophist frame of fair and unfair.
What I care about is dialectically balanced government and the making and enforcing of dialectically balanced equal legislated law and order by which the government rules that applies in the same way to the private sector/private capital and public sector/public capital, so that both can engage in productive activity of commerce and banking in a FREE MARKET ECONOMY.
The private sector and private capital has been whining, complaining and agitating for what I am proposing for the term of my natural lifetime and prior to that.
I am just saying that the public sector and public capital should give the private sector and private capital what it wants and see whether or not the private sector and private capital can get out of the sand box and be self sufficient without whining around like little children wanting to be taken care of by the public sector and public sector money.
The determination that created the U.S. fiat money supply is credit and therefore the National Debt is equivalent to the money supply.
If the National Debt is paid off there will be no money supply.
Money comes into being by way of Aristotle’s Primal Triad from debt, and the private sector uses nine tenths of that same public money as private capital.
The public sector does not need a handout from the private sector and private capital, the public sector needs the use of its own self generated fiat money to use as private capital in the public interest, and the private sector and private capital needs to do what it has been preaching by welcoming FREE MARKET COMPETITION with the public sector and public capital without the security of a public sector safety net of public welfare, both on an ongoing basis and as cyclical bailout.
The private sector and private capital is a thankless and abusive child that needs to learn what it is to be self sufficient, without whining to parental authority of the public sector for money as both an ongoing allowance and cyclical bailout to continually save the private sector and private capital from its wasteful, squandering ways.
It time for a change. It is time to kick the thankless child of the private sector and private capital out of the house of the public sector and public capital and let the thankless child of the private sector and private capital learn what it is like to earn its own way without being dependents in the house of the public sector and public capital.
In reference to: “ThomasG’s Continued Answer Regarding David’s Post September 12, 2013 at 4:29 pm on Shifting the Way People Relate and Feel Towards One Another is the Crucial Leverage Point:
With regard to education, David, balanced sublated dialectic, rather than the unsupported definition of unbalanced sophist logic is what we need in the Public Schools and in all parts of the education system, so that people can be educated to have independent thought and think for themselves in their own best interest, rather than be led like sheep with the unsupported definition of unbalanced sophist logic.
When my niece and nephew were young children they were told by their respective school principal and school superintendent that if you can think for yourself, we don’t want you here, because you are a contrary danger to the good order of the school; this type of thinking is at the heart of what has enabled a small minority of the Private Sector with Private Capital to take control of the USA as a nation, and use the USA and its resources for their own private benefit at the expense of the greater good of the Public Sector as a whole and to perpetuate a practice of using Public Money by the trillions of dollars as Private Capital.
I find it odd to say the very least that people on this blog who claim to be so very unaware of the workings of the U.S. Economy with regard to Private Capital would be trying to lead a dialogue on education. Most generally I would expect a higher threshold of knowledge, awareness and understanding from a pretender to the cause of educational reform.” — by ThomasG September 12, 2013 at 8:04 pm
Robin on September 12, 2013 at 9:05 pm said:
“Thomas,
Who precisely is the pretender?”
ThomasG’s Answer: Are you pretending not to know? If so, you have answered your own question.
Robin and David, my years are many. 64 in October. My travels wide, my parents educated in Europe, my Dad a proud Polish military engineer, who ended up designing oxygen systems for the early Apollo Program and virulently anti-Communist and vocally pro America. My Liberal Sciences Degree put me in an Algebra classroom for over 20 years and a graduate degree got me nowhere but I enjoyed the company. My school was a majority of white students when I arrived and majority Hispanic when I retired. I’ve dealt with parents, admin, politicians, and fools.
I say all that to say this. I’ve met folks from all over and educated up the wazoo, dumb as stumps and brilliant as the stars, rich, poor, hyper, laid back, funny, lame, but never, no not once, have I seen or read someone as pompous and bloviating as our new poster ThomasG. What a windbag.
Bless you both for your respect and manners to him, better thee than me. I gave up keeping my mouth shut around folks like that when I retired.
Tina B on September 13, 2013 at 10:38 pm said:
“Robin and David, my years are many. 64 in October. My travels wide, my parents educated in Europe, my Dad a proud Polish military engineer, who ended up designing oxygen systems for the early Apollo Program and virulently anti-Communist and vocally pro America. My Liberal Sciences Degree put me in an Algebra classroom for over 20 years and a graduate degree got me nowhere but I enjoyed the company. My school was a majority of white students when I arrived and majority Hispanic when I retired. I’ve dealt with parents, admin, politicians, and fools.
I say all that to say this. I’ve met folks from all over and educated up the wazoo, dumb as stumps and brilliant as the stars, rich, poor, hyper, laid back, funny, lame, but never, no not once, have I seen or read someone as pompous and bloviating as our new poster ThomasG. What a windbag.
Bless you both for your respect and manners to him, better thee than me. I gave up keeping my mouth shut around folks like that when I retired.” — Tina B on September 13, 2013 at 10:38 pm
ThomasG’s Answer: Tina B, “Where’s the Beef?” That burger don’t have any beef. I see no content in your post, only personal recrimination.
However, Tina B, what I did see is a lengthy effort to establish credentials in an effort to try to override facts presented in the form of sublated dialectic by way of a pompous use of unbalanced sophist opinion.
Tina B, You are trying to get others to accept what you say on the basis of proffering established credentials, rather than on the content of what you have to say.
If you, Tina B, have something to say about what I have posted, you are free to make your case and we will see whether or not your credentials will sustain your argument.
No case, few credentials, just a hat tip to two people I agree with while stating the obvious about your dissertations on this thread. I called you pompous and that is blatantly evident by the repetitious words you write as well as their quantity.
You can blabber back at me all you want but collectivism has been tried and found wanting. You may be a socialist, communist, liberal, progressive, whatever you call yourself but you are not one of us, so why are you here? I mean it is your right to post but don’t expect to convince anyone who is a regular here of your way of seeing things. Have you read every one of Robin’s posts? And all the responses? I have and I find your’s puffed up and pompous. Argument? No. Just my comment on my impression of you. Case closed.
Tina B commented on Shifting the Way People Relate and Feel Towards One Another is the Crucial Leverage Point:. Tina B on September 14, 2013 at 3:47 am said:
“No case, few credentials, just a hat tip to two people I agree with while stating the obvious about your dissertations on this thread. I called you pompous and that is blatantly evident by the repetitious words you write as well as their quantity.
You can blabber back at me all you want but collectivism has been tried and found wanting. You may be a socialist, communist, liberal, progressive, whatever you call yourself but you are not one of us, so why are you here? I mean it is your right to post but don’t expect to convince anyone who is a regular here of your way of seeing things. Have you read every one of Robin’s posts? And all the responses? I have and I find your’s puffed up and pompous. Argument? No. Just my comment on my impression of you. Case closed.”
ThomasG’s Answer: Tina B, It seems like with all of that education you tout that you have, and your experience as a teacher could give you a little more focus; i.e., the whole irrelevant ideology thing that you seem to be transfixed on.
We are talking here about the use and benefit of capital, as a tool, and whether or not capital, as a tool, is limited to the use of the Private Sector or can be used just as effectively, as a tool, by the Public Sector.
You have inserted yourself into this dialogue, so, Tina B, if you are not just a one trick pony that can scholastically regurgitate proffered credentialed authority, rather than present your own argument of balanced logic that will stand on its own merit to refute what I have said on this blog, get on with it.
You say that you are 64 years old. Well, young lady, I am 68 years old, and I do not give a care about so called teachers who want a free ride on the certainty of credentialed authority that both expect and want to be believed on the basis of logically unsupported sophist regurgitation and citation.
Tina B commented on Shifting the Way People Relate and Feel Towards One Another is the Crucial Leverage Point:. Tina B on September 14, 2013 at 3:47 am said:
“No case, few credentials, just a hat tip to two people I agree with while stating the obvious about your dissertations on this thread. I called you pompous and that is blatantly evident by the repetitious words you write as well as their quantity.
You can blabber back at me all you want but collectivism has been tried and found wanting. You may be a socialist, communist, liberal, progressive, whatever you call yourself but you are not one of us, so why are you here? I mean it is your right to post but don’t expect to convince anyone who is a regular here of your way of seeing things. Have you read every one of Robin’s posts? And all the responses? I have and I find your’s puffed up and pompous. Argument? No. Just my comment on my impression of you. Case closed.” — Tina B on September 14, 2013 at 3:47 am
ThomasG’s Answer (cont.): Tina B, this blog is about dialogue on developing an Education Model.
Dialogue on developing an Education Model is what I am interested in also, but not an Education Model based upon ideological propaganda of ‘them and us,’ as you said in your post.
I am interested in dialogue to develop an Education Model based upon the precepts of Balanced Logic that will contribute to students being educated to develop independent thought, rather than be forced fed education based upon an Ideological Model that trains them like monkeys to believe and follow, so that they are easily controlled by the existing order and the prevalent ideology that controls the existing order.
Thomas-
You are insulting people and not saying anything of substance. Your ramblings about public capital are astonishingly naive at best as David and I have both discussed in detail.
I will start deleting your comments unless they contain details about the education model and not just buzz words about sophistry and balance and dialectical.
Robin
And that word sublated.
You throw it out that like it’s Excalibur and you want to wield it to slice and dice your commentary opponents with vocabulary.
But some words are in the way and that is one of them.
I thought “sublated” was the best part, maybe if you wanted to write a different blog than this one it would deserve its own tag. It led me to this site
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/easy.htm
which really was interesting and where I got to learn something about dialectics and so on.
ThomasG, I have thought for a day and hope you would clarify something for me. When we posit a dialectic (say, pedantic vs. non-pedantic) we immediately begin to discuss the balance between those two poles. We value both. I think you would say that the constitution includes both. I think you would not imagine getting rid of one and only having the other. This is what you describe as balance.
However, in my world, goal-oriented activity can often be described most cleanly as unbalanced action. A do-gooder may envision a good vs. evil dialectic, but he does it with the purpose of promoting the good and eliminating the evil. Unbalanced.
I think that reasonable actions in this world sometimes seek to preserve balance but often seek to simplify it by eliminating it, favoring one desired pole over the other undesired one. When you describe an argument as being unbalanced, as you have to several of us here, I do not see that as a criticism. You say you want to teach balance in the schools, but are we to promote balance in the murderer vs. non-murderer, or the embezzler vs. non-embezzler, dialectics? Do we spend a week on the virtues of honesty followed by a week on the techniques of embezzlement? As a student I’d surely enjoy the second unit more, but can we really run our schools that way?
Merely defining a dialectic is not enough to justify preserving balance within it. Do you agree?
It seems that this condition of being “balanced” is a significant one, not just to ThomasG. It appears in the name of SBAC, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that Robin identified for us long ago. http://www.smarterbalanced.org/
They don’t mention what balance they are providing in their assessments. (I had written “tests” there but as we’ve learned, an assessment can have a much broader meaning than a test, and the only samples they give on their website are sample tests.) Do you think it’s the public sector vs. private sector balance that ThomasG stresses?
There is a political theory concept called “the Radical Middle” and it is based on the type of problem you were focusing on. If you have to reach a consensus on competing views, the presence of radical views skews everything in that desired transformative direction. Balance sounds fair but if the positions are illegitimate, then so will the consensus result.
If you want a government-directed economy, starting with the position that the classic contrast between the public and private sector is no longer relevant to laying out the stakeholders in the 21st century goes a long way towards getting you there. I have seen that type of language all over the world but most unnervingly it was in one of President Obama’s budget docs within the last several years when his administration announced it was shifting to an open Industrial policy direction for the economy. Like other countries use it said.
I would give you a cite if I had not been working on footnotes since dawn. To call my brain mush would be to give it too much rational capability after a long morning.
There is great stealth transformation potential if radical propositions can be called “balanced.” Alarms remain off until it is too late. Remember the goal is to get enough desired mindsets and non-Axemaker Minds in an electoral majority of voters. With electoral power comes the truly radical transformation to make change irreversible. That’s the theory and truthfully that’s what we are living through. Except I am writing about it while we are still in the transformation stage. But the boat has left port. How close to shore it is varies among communities and states and countries. But what I have been describing is going on globally as I have mentioned. It is key that Robert Kegan in a Foreword to a 1994 book thanks his friend and teacher, the late Larry Kohlberg. That would be Universal Love and the 7 Stages of Moral Development. So what was hugely controversial in Hong Kong is coming here but it is hiding under unappreciated definitions of “college and career ready” and what PISA really measures to make it all the way to US classrooms without anyone recognizing the tsunami type changes.
Robin’s Rule No. 3 after Get the actual definitions of terms used and figuring who is on the Board and where funding comes from is always check the Acknowledgments page of books to see who is being thanked for helping or inspiring.
Robin on September 14, 2013 at 1:30 pm said:
“Balance sounds fair but if the positions are illegitimate, then so will the consensus result.” — Robin on September 14, 2013 at 1:30 pm
ThomasG’s Answer: I am a member of the Occupy Movement, I have been criminalized for politically protesting the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order. I advocate, have advocated in the past, and will continue to advocate in the future, as a member of the Occupy Movement, for a new balance of government in the USA from a dialectic formulary of “executive + legislative + judicial branches of government = Government as a Whole,” a formulary of government that excludes all of the people ruled, to a new formulary of government where “All people ruled by government = executive + legislative + judicial branches of government = Government as a Whole.”
What I have advocated and continue to advocate is balanced government that includes all of the people governed as a check and balance, with the formulary of all other balance subject to government rule being based upon dialectic balance of the government as a whole and subject to check and balance by all of the people ruled.
The probability is that if the system I envision for government in the USA is implemented that there will be a mad scramble to educate the general population, so as to protect the minority that at present rule by the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order.
What I envision is a dialectically balanced government that is inclusive of all of the people ruled, that is empowered by dialectic balance of a new Constitution and formulary of government to make and enforce equal law and order.
I am not looking for a band aid to remedy the making and enforcing of unequal legislated law and order by the existing order, I am advocating a new order of government in the USA empowered by the people to make and enforce EQUAL legislated law and order.
For balance to exist in society as a whole in the USA, the USA must first have a dialectic formulary of government that includes all of the people governed, as I have previously indicated; all other balance within society as a whole will then be subject to the making and enforcing of equal legislated law and order that will pass balance down through the society as a whole, so that all of the people governed as a whole have a voice as to how they are ruled and are empowered to speak by referendum to redress imbalance.
Robin commented on Shifting the Way People Relate and Feel Towards One Another is the Crucial Leverage Point.
Robin on September 14, 2013 at 6:53 am said:
“Thomas-
You are insulting people and not saying anything of substance. Your ramblings about public capital are astonishingly naive at best as David and I have both discussed in detail.
I will start deleting your comments unless they contain details about the education model and not just buzz words about sophistry and balance and dialectical.
Robin”
*******
Robin on September 14, 2013 at 6:56 am said:
“And that word sublated.
You throw it out that like it’s Excalibur and you want to wield it to slice and dice your commentary opponents with vocabulary.
But some words are in the way and that is one of them.”
ThomasG’s Answer: Robin, I am trying to engage in a balanced dialogue with you people in regard to a model for education in the USA, and you people are name calling, making threats, and being abusive.
With regard to sublated balance in dialogue, if you propose a different model for dialogue, please indicate what that model is, rather than engage in name calling, abuse and threats; this type of behavior is not helpful with regard to productive dialogue to establish a proper model for education.
BTW, how is it that words used in balanced dialogue can be “in the way?” Sublated dialogue is balanced dialogue. What is it exactly that you are saying, that if I will not accept an unbalanced frame of dialogue set by you, that you will delete my comments? Well, that is a rather childish approach to a dialogue on education, but if that is your choice; what is the value of the dialogue on education that you are hosting on your website, other than propaganda on your own ideological point of view?
ThomasG
Thomas-
David has asked you a question so I will let the comment stand. If you want to start a blog on utilizing the dialectic in educational discourse and the beauties of public capital, I will let you link to it but we are not going to continue to play this game of quoting and answering, and going nowhere.
Calling me childish for stepping in on a hijacking attempt is not winning you any awards for civility. When working on footnotes is more interesting than reading certain points for the umpteenth time, then it’s not a helpful discourse.
If you throw out any insults though in your response to David, I will edit it and insert brackets where I took something out.
Robin, before I came to trust what you wrote, I needed to know your worldview. I need to know someone’s lens on the world before I try to see it through their eyes. Many of the responders here give us a peek at their lives and what has lead them to caring about CCSS and their effect on our children and our children’s children in their lives here in the home of the brave and land of the free (as my Dad believed it to be when he abandoned his family in eastern Europe and brought my Brit mom and me to America).
Having three kids, and now 9 grandkids, 7 of which are in public schools and the oldest (16) being home schooled by me, and having taught over 3000 or so other folks’ children, I have experience in Ed behind me for my worldview. That as well as 50 or so years as a practicing Christian who still believes, ” All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” 2 Tim 3:16. And I wish I were more winsome but I am still working on that.
Foil hat wearer alert: I am suspicious of our govt as never before, and I will read ISC regularly as Robin has her finger on the Public Education Kool Aide drinking masses like no one else on the web. I am learning daily that in a multitude of words, well according to Ecclesiastes 10, anyway,
“Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious,
but fools are consumed by their own lips.
13 At the beginning their words are folly;
at the end they are wicked madness—
14 and fools multiply words.
No one knows what is coming—
who can tell someone else what will happen after them?
Not you, not I, but at least Robin’s research rings true to what I saw happening my last 15 years in my local school system. And I drank that Kool Aide myself for most of those years. I was no dummy, but I didn’t see it coming. I was what I now call a true believer, in that I wanted to see only the good in the system and vocation I had chosen to be my life’s work.
I retired from a school that was in a corrections mode, with 2 years left before the state dumped the admin and picked their own. The creativity was out the door and the template teaching was on it’s way. I hear they are full swing into facilitating, not teaching, group work not individual accomplishment, cut n paste not read and write from treasured sources, PBS not consequences for inappropriate behaviours. All the power stripped from the teacher and given to the children. Collectivism, propaganda preaching, and deep learning that means the children end up knowing nothing of true moral or ethical value, and precious little content of any kind.
That’s what I know. And Robin is giving me the background on the why of it. And for that I will always be grateful to her website. She is already accomplishing a tremendous amount here. (And ThomasG is totally confusing the issue.)
I calls it like I sees it. My street creds and my background allow me to speak to this issue, just like many folks here.
Tina B on September 14, 2013 at 9:58 am said: “(And ThomasG is totally confusing the issue.)”
ThomasG’s Answer: From an educational prospective I thought you might be interested in reading the following link http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598772/Trivium-and-Quadrivium-Cliff-Notes-by-Gene-Odening since you are a teacher.
David on September 14, 2013 at 8:30 am said:
“I thought “sublated” was the best part, …”
ThomasG, I have thought for a day and hope you would clarify something for me. When we posit a dialectic (say, pedantic vs. non-pedantic) we immediately begin to discuss the balance between those two poles. We value both. I think you would say that the constitution includes both. I think you would not imagine getting rid of one and only having the other. This is what you describe as balance.
However, in my world, goal-oriented activity can often be described most cleanly as unbalanced action. A do-gooder may envision a good vs. evil dialectic, but he does it with the purpose of promoting the good and eliminating the evil. Unbalanced.
I think that reasonable actions in this world sometimes seek to preserve balance but often seek to simplify it by eliminating it, favoring one desired pole over the other undesired one. When you describe an argument as being unbalanced, as you have to several of us here, I do not see that as a criticism. You say you want to teach balance in the schools, but are we to promote balance in the murderer vs. non-murderer, or the embezzler vs. non-embezzler, dialectics? Do we spend a week on the virtues of honesty followed by a week on the techniques of embezzlement? As a student I’d surely enjoy the second unit more, but can we really run our schools that way?
“Merely defining a dialectic is not enough to justify preserving balance within it. Do you agree?” [Definition will not create the determination that equals balance. ThomasG]
ThomasG’s Answer: David, the topics of both sublated dialectic; i.e., The Trivium discussed by Gene Odening to Jan Irvin at the following website http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598772/Trivium-and-Quadrivium-Cliff-Notes-by-Gene-Odening , and definition used to define and give meaning to unbalanced sophism appears to be something new to you and Robin, but dialectic and sophism have been a topic of conversation within my circle for well over 40 years.
For me there is nothing personal about dialogue concerning basic principles upon which language and understanding of the natural world is based, but I do understand that people do take dialogue of this type personally, because someone whom I respect very much, Socrates, was condemned to death because of his advocation of balanced dialectic to determine truth, rather than unbalanced sophist definition and tropes to determine self-serving interests.
With regard to inconsequential emotional interaction of a subjective binary nature; i.e., good/bad, right/wrong, winner/loser, and the like, can carry people through their day to day subjective concerns without doing too much damage to the world around them, sophism serves a social function.
However, with regard to the understanding of nature, science, social structure, economics, and the like, it is important to get past the subjective view of sophism, and view serious matters in a measured and metric fashion where the determination of the parts of a thing equals the constitution of what the thing is; i.e., the parts of a car equals the car, the parts of a fan equal the fan, so that like in nature the parts of that which exists in the natural world is equal to the constitution of that which exists in the natural world; this type of language enables math, science, social structure, economics and the like, and has enabled the world to develop from the Stone Age to our present level of development.
If we are going to continue to grow and develop both as individuals in a greater society and as a greater society, it is important that we do not teach students the sophist values of social interaction as a metric for understanding the natural world, all that is in the natural world and what the dynamics of the natural world is as it relates to science, social structure, economics and the like.
It is unfortunate that our kitchen table conversations concerning sophism and dialectic is apparently new to you and Robin, and therefore something that you wish to contest, because as it was said in a prior post, it is something that “boggles the mind.” This type of a negative reaction to sublated dialectic says something about our society and that language in education has been so corrupted over the years that people would even consider adopting a Sophist Model to understand nature and the math, science and language of nature, rather than a Dialectic Model of language based upon nature.
If you are interested in education and people within society having independent thought, so that they can know their best interest and be of benefit to society in a meaningful way, both personally and to the greater society as a whole, education in sublated dialectic and rhetoric is of the utmost importance.
BTW, With regard to the lengthy link you provided on Hegelian Dialectic, Hegel did not originate dialectic. Dialectic tracks all the way back to Greece and Socrates in 400 BC and can best be understood through the works of Plato on Socrates and Aristotle, as well as Hegel. Dialectic later became a part of the Trivium in the Medieval Era and was institutionally established to be a part of the Trivium, the curriculum that represented a Liberal Arts Education.
I wish sophistry and the dialectic were new to me. I am just too busy between book, blog, and being a mom/cook/chauffeur to engage in continued dialogues that I view as unproductive to either me or my readers.
I get to make that decision. Visitors do not get to decide what the rules would be if this were their blog. Life does not work like that. I have a great deal of proprietary knowledge that has taken me years to build and I get to decide when and under what terms to use it.
I am cocky enough that playing “if you really knew you would engage” does not work as bait with me.
David on September 14, 2013 at 12:41 pm said:
“It seems that this condition of being “balanced” is a significant one, not just to ThomasG. It appears in the name of SBAC, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that Robin identified for us long ago. http://www.smarterbalanced.org/
They don’t mention what balance they are providing in their assessments. (I had written “tests” there but as we’ve learned, an assessment can have a much broader meaning than a test, and the only samples they give on their website are sample tests.) Do you think it’s the public sector vs. private sector balance that ThomasG stresses?” — David on September 14, 2013 at 12:41 pm
ThomasG’s Answer: David, I stress the classical teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
I DO NOT, in any way, advocate for the Common Core Curriculum.
However, I do advocate the classical teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. I support what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have to say as being pertinent to the field of education. I advocate that the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have served the greater good of education in the world as we know it today, and that teaching based upon Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle should be preserved, protected, and defended as a 21st Century curriculum in Public Schools as a means of developing a successful student population in the USA with independent thought and knowledge that will be successful in both college and post graduate studies.
I advocate the Trivium that was developed from the teachings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and maintain that the Trivium as a curriculum of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric is just as relevant today as when it was initially developed.
The teaching of grammar, logic and rhetoric should be (prescriptive) a central part of education, but it has been excluded in the bureaucratic education system for many years. The art of communicating well-reasoned ideas is essential for any valid and productive conversation, as well as progress.
But, instead, we now have the art of “winning the conversation” by any means necessary, whether it be by using false premises in the logic “equation” or bulldozing and bullying the “opponent” by readying an answer that is often presented in derogatory terms, rather than listening and weighing the evidence. Thus, real dialogue is essentially destroyed. Maybe that is the real purpose for some.
AMS-
It’s no secret I have a copy of the Learning Progressions contemplated for the classrooms in the future. I got it on a server overseas where I suppose it was supposed to be safe from US prying eyes. I was actually tracking an alarming professor and then recognized what the search had pulled up. The vision is literally to control vocabulary so you are limiting and prescribing the language most students have to think with. Language is the tool of thought and just another way to limit it within useful parameters.
I was so saddened to see that by 6th grade the assumption on vocabulary and what could be read was below what a fluent 2nd grader could know and accomplish.
Robin & AMS, You both might want to take a look at “The Making of Citizens, A Comparative Study of Methods of Civic Training” by Charles Edward Merriam, a Professor of Political Science in the University of Chicago, with regard to the use of education to make citizens.