From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 00:44:42 MDT
--> Max More
> Reason -- of course I am highly sympathetic to your perspective on
> retraining. I really do doubt that a government program could be
> structured so as to do more good than harm over the long run, for all the
usual
> reasons. However, I wouldn't rule it out completely.
See article reference at the end of this e-mail: I do wonder why people who
are constantly beaten by the evil dwarf want to go back and give it one more
try to get the gold. Time after time after time. (Perhaps if I try it this
way, I won't get beaten. Hmm). Meanwhile the good elf on the other path has
given up and gone home. Anyway.
> At 05:13 PM 8/31/2002 -0700, Reason wrote:
>
> >So let me see now: you'd go for enforcing an unaccountable monopoly on
> >assisting workers to retrain,
>
> No. Where did I say anything about enforcing a monopoly? I specifically
> said a "limited" and "temporary" program. As for "unaccountable" I said
> "carefully tracked". I suspect that you are expressing the
> equivalent of a patellar reflex. :-)
Well, yes, quite possibly.
If it's limited and temporary, it will simply fail. No harm done aside from
the money that was taken from people who had no say in how it was spent. But
real world government programs tend not to be temporary. Failure only brings
expansion. Past a certain point of expansion, government bodies tend to get
annoyed at non-government entities doing the same thing (better) .
Legislation is passed restricting the activity to the government. While it
would be nice to believe that one could engage in limited, accountable,
temporary government programs, observation of government and history would
seem to indicate that this rarely happens.
> I would also want such a program to require repayment by the retrained
> person over some reasonable period of time. This would not only keep the
> cost down, it would give them an incentive to avoid the
> government program and instead find a company willing to do the training.
> In most cases that is how it should be. I'm only thinking of cases where
ex-workers are
> effectively stuck without access to such retraining. In other
> words, cases where there are no obvious incentives for companies to
provide
> training. (A situation you seem to rule out in principle.)
My mind works this way: if the people that know best (i.e. people in the
industry) judge there is no need to retrain or see no money to be made in
retraining people, than that industry has no great need for retrained
people. If some entity without market constraints (government) decides to
retrain people for this industry, all they are doing is lowering wages and
the change of any of the retrainees finding work by increasing the supply of
people with those skills. If there is a need for people in an industry, the
profit motive will lead to a) people retraining to get in, since wages will
be raised in the absence of sufficient numbers of workers, and b) entities
forming to make money from retraining people. As I said before, this already
happens, and is being managed in a distributed fashion by the people who
know best.
Now I don't believe that there is such as thing as "stuck without access to
retraining." Stuck without access for retraining into a skill that industry
decision makers have judged to be over quota, sure. But not for skills that
are in demand.
> Of course, a sound
> first step would be for the government to supplement private services that
connect
> available workers to companies who need skilled workers and are
> willing to do the training.
>
> > managed by people who have no direct incentive
> >to make it work?
>
> That is always a problem with government. And it's one of my reasons to
> doubt that my tentative proposal would actually work as intended.
Ok, good. So we're on the same page there. See earlier comment and article
reference at the end. Why keep going back? Would you invest in a business
that you had even a fraction of the same concerns with? Of course not. So
why suggest another beating by the evil dwarf, figuratively speaking?
> > 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?
>
> It is done better. However, I am not at all sure that it works well for
> everyone. How many of these "competing training institutions that make
> their profit from future wages of the people they retrain" can you point
> to? Perhaps you know of many that I don't.
Every major technology consulting company. Think about it. More obviously,
there are some small schemes involving sending people to university in
exchange for some percentage of their wages for the first X years after they
graduate. I don't think any of those really got off the ground. (Some guy
was trying to set up a dotcom...hmmm...memory crank...aha...
http://www.myrichuncle.com/).
> By the way, rather than the
> government directly doing the training, it would be better to
> contract out
> this work to private companies. This could be set up precisely to
> include a
> component of revenue to these companies that depends on the results.
But again it comes back to why government decision makers would be better at
directing money than the people who have been in the industry for decades?
If someone in the industry decides to set up a consultancy/retraining
entity, they seek backers who get to choose whether or not to invest. They
better be on the ball or they won't get the money they need. If government
does it, it just takes the money via taxes and uses it. No choice, no
accountability, and rarely any good talent directing where the money goes.
> >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.
>
> That is the standard libertarian response. I agree there is a lot
> of truth
> to it. But it seems just a bit too easy a response. People unemployed in
> Pittsburgh, living there with all their family and social
> connections, who
> received a lousy government education, might find it overwhelmingly
> difficult to zip over to L.A. to train as postproduction workers, or to
> Silicon Valley to train as programmers (while paying housing costs about
> four times what they are used to) or to learn bioinformatics in San Diego
> or Massachusetts.
Well, yes, and I might find it difficult to retrain as an astronaut. Small,
feasible steps are what needs to be taken; and programs for these already
exist. You don't produce a skilled bioinformatics professional out of a
clerk overnight (or even with a four year degree).
> It makes good sense to have a *very* strong presumption against
> government
> programs given a government structure anything like we've seen
> historically. I'm not quite willing to write off all government
> programs --
> if a real need exists that the market does not handle well due to
> externalities,
I'm not convinced that there is such a thing as a real need that the market
does not handle. If someone has a need, they are willing to exchange goods
and services to satisfy that need. Ergo there is profit to be made, so
people will come along and try to fill that need. Etc.
> and if there may be a way to shape incentives to prevent
> expansion of the program and to keep costs minimal by running it
> more like
> a business. (Every government agency should be such that if the
> bureaucrats
> figure out how to put themselves out of business by turning
> things over to
> the market, they should receive a large reward.)
But why spend all this money and all this effort to make government entites
run like businesses when real businesses and the market do it all already
without all the extra effort?
As usual, very relevant article on Mises.org this week:
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1035
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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