"The 'AGI-is-near' community keeps committing the same logical fallacy over and over. Every time there’s an advance, I see the same error."

"Astra, a new model that OpenAI is testing internally, is amazing. No denying that:

"But at the same time, a whole raft of people, some fairly prominent, are running around making a deeply flawed argument about the implications. ...

"[One] tweet went so far as to claim that “the species just crossed a one-way threshold”; Elon Musk took it as evidence that we had reached The Singularity.

"Each is making essentially the same error.

"The fallacy has a name; it’s called the fallacy of composition. ...

"What’s the manifestation of the fallacy in the current case? Thinking that a system that is great at a certain kind of maths problem is great at all maths, great at science or even quite possibly great at everything. The 'AGI-is-near' community keeps committing the same logical fallacy over and over. Every time there’s an advance, I see the same error.

"Here’s how the fallacy works.

1. Someone pretends that all cognition is created equally. (Totally untrue.)
2. Whenever AI achieves success on some form of (fancy) cognition, they want you to believe that success on all forms of AI is imminent. 

"You don’t have to be a cognitive psychologist to realize that this inference just doesn’t follow."

~ Gary Marcus from his post 'OpenAI’s amazing — but vastly oversold — new model Astra'

Even people *with* a sense of humour should be barred

 

"I don’t think people without much of a sense of humour should be allowed to determine what people with a sense of humour are allowed to laugh at....
    "If you don't like something, don't watch it."

~ John Cleese

"Universities are, today, the most dangerous institution in this country.”

 

“I feel that this country is being destroyed by its philosophy. Specifically, by its universities: the most dangerous thing in this country today are the universities, because they are teaching the kind of ideas that would necessarily have to lead to the destruction of this country.... 

"[T]oday, when all those institutions ... are preaching collectivism, mysticism, and above all altruism -- self-sacrifice of yourself ... the disgusting kind of ideas that the whole world has been nurturing for centuries, then when they do that this country cannot [long] survive....

"[W]ith all the faults in American intellectual equipment and there were a lot of holes, at least people were taught pride in their own country and in the good aspects, the great achievements of this country. Today you're supposed to apologise ... because you are ... prosperous. Because you've earned your money you have to feel guilty and apologise for it. That's what we're being told."

~Ayn Rand, from her interview with Tom Snyder [from 14:00]

"Next they will be open to an Army without guns!'

"The Post reports:

"The Labour Party is open to the idea of a frigate-less Defence Force, saying it’s yet to take a position on replacing the ageing Anzac-class fleet.

"Next they will be open to an Army without guns!

"O’Connor said Labour hadn’t completely ruled out upgrading the frigates, though it was worth considering the technological advancements – and steep cost.
    "'We will have to maintain marine capability – how that is structured is for future discussions when in government.'
    "'Money always plays a factor but the commitment to our [Cook Strait] ferries is probably more important than the commitment to the frigates at this point in time.'

"This is a staggering comment by Labour’s spokes[things]. He is saying that they regard the Cook Strait ferries as more important than our navy, There are private ferry operators such as Bluebridge. But it is a core responsibility of the state to defend the country."

~ David Farrar from his post 'Does Labour want a navy without combat ships?' [emphasis added in Farrar's original post]

Something for (almost) nothing?

"There is a very brief window in which mostly American hyperscale data centres could massively expand renewable energy generation in New Zealand, at their own expense, to the country’s much broader benefit.

"I worry, though, that the country will miss the opportunity. ...

"Right now, hyperscale datacentres are willing to pay a high premium for immediacy. Grid connections in the US can take years. Paying more for electricity via standalone generators off-grid makes sense when compute *now* is really valuable.

"If NZ could be the place delivering a rapid yes or no on new generation, with processes running a couple months rather than up-to-years, unbelievable amounts of money could drop here and build out generation capacity.

"That window will not be open forever. ...

"Hyperscalers are willing to pay a lot if they can get access to energy in a hurry, without large fishhooks along the way. ... Over the past two years, the scale of that opportunity has increased considerably. ... At the scale at which these investments are made internationally, the New Zealand Government’s current support for developing next-generation supercritical geothermal generation looks like spare change.

"The companies that would fund the energy and data centre buildout could very plausibly fund a hastening of current work on next-generation geothermal.

"If the work on supercritical geothermal pans out, the country would have near-limitless, low-cost electricity for generations to come. Some of it would power data centres; the rest of it could power everything else....

"All of it could be funded by the companies who *right now* are willing to pay a substantial premium for power that can be online quickly enough to matter in the current AI race. Whether or not they are right about the stakes in that race, more generation here would be valuable.

"The opportunity is real, but the largest part of it is time-limited."

~ Eric Cramptom from his op-ed 'The Americans are on the march! Will Wellington welcome them again?'

"None of us are greedy. It’s only the other fellow who’s greedy."

"Q: When you see the bad distribution of wealth, so few who have so much and so many who have nothing… did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether Greed's a good idea to run on? 

"A: Well, first of all tell me: do you know of any society that does NOT run on greed? Do you think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? 

"And what is greed? None of us is greedy, of course. It's only the other fellow who's greedy.

"The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization did not come out of government offices. Einstein didn't build his theory on the order of a bureaucrat. Ford didn't revolutionise the automobile industry that way. The only cases in which the masses have escaped the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about -- the only cases in recorded history -- are those where they had capitalism and largely free trade. 

"If you want to know where the masses are worse off it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise system.

"Q: But it seems to reward the ability to manipulate the system, not virtue. 

"A: And what does reward virtue? Do you think a communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler? Do you think American presidents reward virtue -- do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed, or on the basis of their political clout?

"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? 

"You know I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. And just tell me: where in the world are you going to find these angels who are going to organise society for us? I don't even trust you to do that, let alone myself."

~ Milton Friedman, in conversation with Phil Donahue

Chlöe cries crocodile tears

NEWS: 'Greens push for pause to big data centres consents, citing rising power prices.'

"Net Zero and the deployment of wind and solar generation put far more upward pressure on power prices than AI data centres do. The NZ public have never had a say on whether NZ should pursue Net Zero or not. How about we have a referendum on this?"

~ Zaphodd BB

"You'd think the Greens would want more data centres in NZ serving the world, given our electricity is 95% renewable and therefore better for the planet. Guess popularist derr brainery is more important than lowering carbon emissions eh..."

~ Lewis Holden

"The instinct is 'capitalists are doing something we don’t understand and didn’t think of, so it should stop until we think we understand it and can tie it up in rules so it looks like something we can tolerate grudgingly'.”

~ Liberty Scott

"Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says massive power-hungry AI data centres risk driving up electricity prices for the impoverished. Yet, as she knows, her push for Net Zero makes rising electricity prices a 100% certainty. She cries crocodile tears."

~ Peter Cresswell 

You cannot, yet, be serious

"For three decades the Odysseus of New Zealand politics has navigated the turbulent seas of electoral fortune. ...

"The party has [lately] been on a recruitment drive. Is this time different; are we seeing a party in transition or the beginning of another operatic calamity? ...

"Movements like the New Zealand Party, Opportunities Party and United Future struggle once their leaders depart the stage. Building something enduring requires placing the interests of the organisation ahead of the self, and, well, people who start their own political entities are not team players. ...

"... [T]his is not a party with an ambition to form a government, merely to remain the party to decide who does. New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious'

Billionaires...

"The power which a [b]illionaire ... has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work."

~ Friedrich Hayek from his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom

The UK is apparently nostalgic … for the 1970s?

"If all that’s holding the United Kingdom back is the country’s mood, then the arrival of Andy Burnham as prime minister might improve its prospects. Briefly. If the remedy also requires some particle of coherence and clarity about what the government needs to do, the prognosis is grim. The contradictions and absurdities that he’s ventured so far are remarkable even by the standards of modern British politics.

"To start with the most bewildering, Burnham is apparently nostalgic … for the 1970s? He was alive in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power — but nine years old at the time, perhaps not paying close attention. A slightly older cohort recalls the immediate pre-Thatcher years as an unparalleled disaster, which helps explain why her party won that election and the three that followed.

"The nadir was the 'winter of discontent': strikes in response to the Labour government’s efforts to curb inflation, shortages of food and fuel, trash piled 10 feet deep in London’s squares (Leicester Square was known as Fester Square; you could smell it from Downing Street), more strikes, pickets blockading hospitals, corpses stored here and there while gravediggers pressed for better terms, more strikes. Returning from a little downtime in Barbados, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan sealed his party’s fate by saying he was puzzled by all the talk of crisis.

"This was apparently the golden time that preceded the unforced errors of the 1980s and the following decades, when a global plague of market fundamentalism brought the country low and destroyed the dreams of working families.

"Admittedly, despising Thatcher and her works will always be an article of faith for the British left. Burnham is hardly unusual in this respect. What’s more surprising, especially for a leader who says he means to unite the country and overcome factionalism in his party, is to extend much the same contempt to the pragmatic centre-leftists led by Tony Blair, who resuscitated Labour after two decades of humiliating defeat and set the country on a more moderate, popular, social-democratic course. It isn’t just Thatcherism that Burnham aims to reverse, but 'four decades of neoliberalism.'

"Bring back council estates, cheap buses and organised labor. Nationalise a few industries. Maybe reopen some mines (though, obviously, people wouldn’t be allowed to burn the coal)."

~ Clive Crook from his column 'Andy Burnham’s ’70s Show Will Need a Little Work' [hat tip Samizdata]

"Since you [also] mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved: 

• Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40% 

• Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished 

• Basic rate: 33% → 25% 

• Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986) 

• Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990) 

• Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third 

• Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners 

• Home ownership: 55% → 67% 

• Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults 

• Foreign holidays: roughly doubled 

• Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten 

• Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms 

• Infant mortality: down almost 40% 

• Real GDP: up by almost a third 

• GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s 

• Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s 

• Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million 

• Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon 

• Britain became a net oil exporter 

• London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986 

• Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90 

• National debt: 47% of GDP → 28% 

• State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39% 

• The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000 

• Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25% 

• Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms 

• Higher rates of income tax: nine → one 

• Death duties: fourteen rates → one 

• Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years 

• 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector 

• The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987 

• British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90) 

• BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen 

• “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986 

• British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline” 

• The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed.

"Over to you."

~ Eamonn Butler, Adam Smith Institute

"[L]iving standards stalled not because of neoliberalism but because Britain stopped being a free market economy, drifting into a more heavily controlled and interventionist system well before the pandemic accelerated the trend."

~ Is Britain Actually Neoliberal? The Spectator's Michael Simmons - INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

RELATED: "... the worst year in modern British political history..."

... and ...

"The wealth of nations is the work of the people, not of their governments."

"The wealth of nations is the work of the people, not of their governments. If they had no other maker of their wealth than their governments, all nations would be in misery. 

"Government represents an expense, a consumption of national wealth" 

~ Juan Bautista Alberdi in his seminal 1854 book, Sistema económico y rentístico de la Confederación Argentina según su Constitución de 1853 ('Economic and Revenue System of the Argentine Confederation According to its Constitution of 1853'), drafted while living in exile in Valparaíso, Chile [hat tip Libertario]

"Wealth inequality isn't proof that you're being robbed."

"Wealth inequality isn't proof that you're being robbed. It assumes successful people are partially your property and that their gains should have belonged to you. 

"Other people becoming productive doesn't make you poorer. It is precisely why ordinary people today live better than kings did centuries ago. 

"They don't owe you anything and aren't your property."

~ Rock Chartrand

Poverty...

"For most of human history, poverty was normal. Prosperity is the strange achievement. 

"Young people should learn what made that achievement possible before they vote to destroy it."

~ Magatte Wade

This is what a Luxon-led Government means by being "pro-business"

This Luxon-led Government is pro-business.

That is to say, it's pro particular businesses. Particularly one that begins with an 'F' and ends in 'letcher.' Have a city to rebuild, or a convention centre to build (and burn down), and that particular business will assuredly get the nod -- along with a large cheque paid for by you and I.

Ronald Reagan famously observed the principle of pro-business governments like this one: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it.” All three are in operation in the decision to shell out $60 million of your money (along with a new tariff) to subsidise Fletcher's to keep open a cement business. 

Why do Fletcher's need the subsidy? Because National's Emissions Tax Scam was going to stop the business moving. And a business that doesn't move, along with any associated businesses needing Fletcher's cement, don't pay any tax.

Does the Emissions Tax Scam make any sense? Nope, not unless you think shackling producers makes sense -- shackling and then subsidising to avoid the scam's implications. To quote a friend back in 2009, the scheme is "criminally absurd," and a decent government would by now already scrapped it (in favour, perhaps, of a subtle and sensible carbon tax).

“An ETS is the best tool to reduce emissions," says the Taxpayers 'Union' in response to the subsidy's announcement, before going on to pontificate that "it should not sacrifice industry at the altar of net zero, only for taxpayers to fund the rescue. ... It is a false economy," they say, "to make businesses unviable through carbon charges, then bail out those with the best lobbying teams in Wellington. The Government must review its industrial allocation settings [sic] across all trade-exposed sectors.”

In two sentences this illustrates everything wrong with this government, with the Taxpayers 'Union,' and with the so-called policy 'settings' about which they argue.

Yes, it's false economy. But it's worse than that. The whole Emissions Tax Scam is a gun pointed straight at producers' feet. To impose the tax, and then subsidise its payment, makes no sense on any level. It's simply insane. The argument isn't about tinkering with 'policy settings,' it should be about removing the insanity, and danger of the slippery slope back to the Muldoonist 'picking losers' policies we once escaped with so much pain. 

In reality, as RD points out below, it's a strong example of Luxon and Willis’ net-zero scheme being unworkable (not to mention immoral), then socialising the cost of the failure by picking favourites at taxpayers' expense.

Expect to see more of it in the very near future as its unworkability (and immorality) become more obvious even to those who espouse it.

" Stop saying 'free.' "

 

"Stop saying 'free.' 

"Start saying 'funded by taxpayers.'   

"Thank you."

~ The Moderate Case

A reminder

 

Suckers

"'We must never stop believing in a country called New Zealand' [says Winston Peters launching his campaign for another ministerial limousine]... 'Remember who you are New Zealand,' he blathers]...

"Classic Winston Peters nostalgia: 'Let's remember who we are' stuff wrapped up in patriotic packaging. 

"Those lines usually come out during speeches about immigration, Maori co-governance, 'wokeness,' or foreign influence. It's pure emotional rhetoric designed to stir up a sense of loss and cultural erosion while conveniently ignoring how his own policies have shifted with the wind over the years. 

"Personally I'm still waiting for the abolition of Maori seats that he promised was a bottom line in 2017. 

"Suckers."

~ Amy Jones

"And that's before getting into the other myriad reasons to criticise govt education."

"The fact that so many graduates leave [govt] education believing capitalism is simply plutocracy or corporatism should be a sufficient indictment of the system on its own. 

"An education system that cannot distinguish voluntary trade and property rights from political favouritism has failed at teaching even basic economics and civics. 

"And that's before getting into the other myriad reasons to criticise it."

~ Rock Chartrand

Adam Smith v "The Future of Housing"

I spent a day yesterday at a trade show and "Future of Housing Summit," replete with politicians and panellists full of observations about "The Future of Housing." And my mind went back to Adam Smith's famous observation:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

If I had taken a bingo card with me that included the words "government," "sustainability," "climate," and "social housing," I would have won not just a meat pack but the whole cow.

Suffice to say that almost every panellist but one were calling for government to not just "put a finger on the scale" to correct some perceived "market failure," but even a whole hand, if they could. The politicians themselves by contrast simply threw word salad at the assembled throng -- obscuring Chris Penk's one actual announcement.  TOP's Daniel Eb was the exception, who casually informed us all that the job of government is to determine how society should be made up.

The one difference to the panoply of paternalistic panellists was one Vincent Holloway of the boutique Brooksfield Homes, in answer to the question "What needs to be done to fix productivity and waste in construction?" His quick answer: "Remove Regulations!"

If I told you that my clapping was the only applause in the room, you will get some idea of those there assembled. You won't be surprised to hear that there was much more applause from the floor for the idea that we should all "join Institutions" so we can lobby governments and assemble together more often.

At least they knew enough to gasp when Mr Eb spewed forth.

"A subsidy arrives as mercy. It stays as an expectation. Then it becomes the thing men vote for instead of working for."

"Rome fed 200,000 families free grain by 46 BC, and it called this generosity. Julius Caesar inherited a dole of 320,000 recipients and trimmed it, not out of principle but because the treasury was bleeding. This was the annona, the grain distribution that started as emergency relief under the Gracchi in 123 BC and hardened into a permanent entitlement. Once free grain became a right, no politician could touch it and keep his head. 

"You already know how this works, because you watch the same play run today. A subsidy arrives as mercy. It stays as an expectation. Then it becomes the thing men vote for instead of working for. 

"The Roman citizen once farmed his own land, served in his own legion, and expected nothing from the state but courts and roads. By the time Trajan was staging 123 days of games in AD 107, slaughtering 11,000 animals and pairing 10,000 gladiators for the crowd, that citizen had become a spectator. He no longer fought Rome's wars: hired auxiliaries and Germanic mercenaries did. He no longer fed himself: Egypt and North Africa did, shipped in on the public account. He no longer chose his rulers in any meaningful sense: he cheered them in the Colosseum and collected his ration. 

"The free grain and the free games purchased compliance, not compassion. A man dependent on the state for his dinner and his entertainment does not organize resistance to that state, and every emperor from Augustus onward understood the arithmetic. Panem et circenses [bread and circuses] was a bribe paid in exchange for civic surrender, and the mob accepted the terms gladly. 

"Here is the mechanism the welfare enthusiast never grasps. Virtue is not a feeling. It is a practice, and practices atrophy when the incentive to perform them disappears. Take away a man's need to provide, defend, and decide, and you domesticate him rather than liberate him. Rome spent four centuries proving it, then handed the ruins to Odoacer in AD 476 without much of a fight, because the men who might have fought had long since learned to wait for the grain ship instead."

~ Handre

"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs [had back in the Yugoslav civil war]. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the “right” to education, the “right” to health care, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."

~ PJ O'Rourke from his 1993 'Liberty Manifesto'

"Social justice..."

“[The] development [of law] during the last hundred years has become increasingly one of the destruction of justice by 'social justice', until even some students of jurisprudence have lost sight of the original meaning of 'justice'. In substance this has meant that the individual ... has become increasingly subject to the commands of authority....
    "This totalitarian trend appear[s] under a moral guise. It is indeed the concept of ‘social justice’ which has been the Trojan Horse through which totalitarianism has entered.”

~ FA Hayek from his 1976 book Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice [pp 135-6]

Reminder: “Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office & the policeman."

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. 

"He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. 

"He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. 

"Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. 

"Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state, who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent of the national income. 

"The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. 

"This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.” 

~ A. J. P. Taylor from his English History, 1914-1945 [p.25]

The natural condition of humanity before capitalism expanded globally: Poverty

 

"In 1820, 94 out of every 100 people lived in extreme poverty. Forty-three children out of every 100 died before the age of five. Eighty-eight adults could not read. Not a single person was vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, or tetanus.

"That was the natural condition of humanity before capitalism expanded globally.

"Two centuries later, those numbers are 10 people in extreme poverty, 4 child deaths per 100, 85 who can read, and 86 vaccinated. The world's population grew nearly eightfold during that period, and the number of people living in misery fell in absolute terms.

"The explanation lies in the mechanisms capitalism introduced at global scale. The price system began allocating resources to where they were most valued. Property rights gave people a reason to innovate, invest, and save. Free trade connected regions that had been isolated from one another, generating mutual gains where precarious self-sufficiency had existed before. Together, these mechanisms made wealth creation a continuous process.

"No other economic system in human history has produced this result. Socialism promised equality and delivered scarcity. Feudalism kept the majority trapped in subsistence for centuries. Capitalism was the only one that raised the floor for everyone."

~ Students for Liberty [Data: OurWorldInData]

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried in the same way that 'Real Capitalism' has never been tried. 

"The difference is 'Almost Socialism' resulted in the impoverishment & death of hundreds of millions of people. 

"While 'Almost Capitalism' has lifted billions from absolute poverty."

~ Mark Antro

"Modern schools have largely abandoned the task of preparing young people for independent adult life."

"Modern schools have largely abandoned the task of preparing young people for independent adult life. Instead, they function as institutions of ideological formation. 

"Hordes of students now leave education with weak literacy and numeracy, almost no understanding of basic economics or finance, and little practical knowledge of how to think clearly or argue rigorously. Instead, they are exposed to a curriculum shaped by critical theory and political activism, frameworks that encourage students to interpret the world primarily through lenses of oppression, privilege and systemic guilt rather than through evidence, reason and individual agency. 

"The state’s near-monopoly on schooling and teacher training has inevitably made education a vehicle for the dominant political and cultural worldview, resulting in a system that produces graduates who are often poorly equipped to create value in the real world, but well-versed in the language of grievance and institutional critique. 

"The problem is compulsory, state-controlled education. When schooling is funded and directed by the government, it tends to serve the interests of those who control the state rather than the interests of individual students and their families. True educational improvement requires breaking that monopoly - through genuine parental choice, competition between providers, and a curriculum focused on knowledge and capability rather than political formation."

~ Creative Deduction