From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 18:13:01 MDT
--> Max More
> Since I no longer consider myself a strict libertarian. one role for
> government that I would at least *consider* (still with general
> skepticism
> about govt. interventions) is limited, temporary, and carefully tracked
> subsidies for workers displaced from traditionally stable industries in
> order to acquire different skills. Since just about all industries may
> potentially be disrupted these days, the subsidies would not be the
> preserve of a few. Companies often do a fine job of providing training,
> which is one reason such a program should be limited. However, if done
> right, it could assist a market economy to reallocate human
> capital (to use
> the bloodless language of the economist) more quickly in cases
> where it is
> not clearly in any individual organization's interest to do this,
> but where
> it is in the general interest. In practice, I can think of all kinds of
> reasons why this wouldn't work well, at least after the first few years,
> but I wouldn't rule it out in principle.
So let me see now: you'd go for enforcing an unaccountable monopoly on
assisting workers to retrain, managed by people who have no direct incentive
to make it work? Why oh why wouldn't this training be done far better in a
market environment by companies who provide services in new industries and
have an economic incentive to retrain people? Or by the invisible hand
notifying universities and educational establishments that money can be made
by retraining people? Or by free market, competing training institutions
that make their profit from future wages of the people they retrain?
All of these entites have a direct incentive to do the job well, all
currently exist (no need for intervention to make that happen), all are in
competition with thousands or hundreds of similar
organizations/businesses/etc. No need for government to jump in and screw
things up by trying to impose the vision of the few on the current
distributed model that's doing just fine. Not to mention taking people's
money in taxes to do a worse job that is already being done.
Gah. Speaking as someone who has retrained and is constantly working to stay
up to speed, anyone who claims they can't retrain under their own steam or
can't break into a new labor-short industry just doesn't want to do it badly
enough.
Reason
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