Two unrelated news stories on the same day show the contrast between government decisions and private decisions.
Under the headline, “Foreclosed Homes Sell at Big Discounts,” USA Today reported that banks were selling the homes that they foreclosed on at discounts of 38 percent in Tennessee to 41 percent in Illinois and Ohio.
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Banks in general try to get rid of the homes that they acquire by foreclosure by selling them quickly for whatever they can get. Why? Because banks are forced by economic realities to realize that they are not real-estate companies.
No matter how much expertise bank officials may have in financial transactions, that is very different from knowing the best ways to maintain and market empty houses.
Meanwhile, there was a story on the Fox News Channel about schools that are using their time to indoctrinate kindergartners and fourth graders with politically correct attitudes about sex.
Anyone familiar with the low standards and mushy notions in the schools and departments of education that turn out our public-school teachers might think that these teachers would have all they need to make American children competent in reading, writing, and math.
Anyone familiar with how our children stack up with children from other countries in basic education would be painfully aware that American children lag behind children in countries that spend far less per pupil than we do.
In other words, teachers and schools that are failing to provide the basics of education are branching out into all sorts of other areas, where they have even less competence.
Why are teachers so bold when banks are so cautious? The banks pay a price for being wrong. Teachers don’t.
If banks try to act like they are real-estate companies and hold onto a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, they are likely to lose money big time, as those homes deteriorate and cannot compete with homes marketed by real-estate companies with far more experience and expertise in this field.
But if teachers fail to educate children, they don’t lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure. If the schools waste precious time indoctrinating children, instead of educating them, that’s the children’s problem and the country’s problem, but not the teachers’ problem.
Sex indoctrination is just one of innumerable “exciting” and “innovative” self-indulgences of the schools. There is no bottom-line test of what these boondoggles cost the children or the country.
Incidentally, conservatives who think that schools should be teaching “abstinence” miss the point completely. The schools have no expertise to be teaching sex at all. We should be happy if they ever develop the competence to teach math and English, so that our children can hold their own in international tests.
Schools are just one government institution that take on tasks for which they have no expertise or even competence.
Congress is the most egregious example. In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources, and much more.
There are professionals who have spent their entire adult lives specializing in just one of these fields. The idea that Congress can be competent in all these areas simultaneously is staggering. Yet, far from pulling back — as banks or other private enterprises must, if they don’t want to be ruined financially by operating beyond the range of their competence — Congress is constantly expanding further into more fields.
Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on to micro-managing automobile companies and medical care.
They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.
Heh. No Mr. Sowell, the voters will not stop it. Your democratic belief in 'good voter' fooled by propaganda is akin to monarchist belief in 'good king' fooled by bad advisors. It will end up in the same way too. By bloody collapse and revolutions.
I don't think anything is inevitable. While I share some of your pessimism about voters, I think that they can and sometimes do come around. We have to keep up the fight. A win is not inevitable but neither is a loss.
Mr. Sowell,
I have been reading your articles for a while now, and I wanted to say that you have had a huge influence on my political and economic thought. You truly have a gift for explaining big ideas in easy to understand ways. Keep 'em coming!
We can make a difference everyday; when confronted by the views of someone who is clearly ignorant or apathetic on subjects such as this, take a moment to share your knowledge and educate them. Tell them to go investigate themselves -don't simply take your word for it.
It works.
You won't change any minds who worship at the altar of liberalism, but you will make an impact on the undecided and uninformed. Their numbers are legion.
It's amazing how many Americans have absolutely no clue about what is occurring in their country whatsoever - nor do they care, as long as their daily routine is not impacted overmuch.
Doesn't anyone here read critically? This stuff is garbage.
Sowell starts by telling us that because banks are motivated by "economic realities" not to act like real estate companies, they do the competent, efficient, rational thing and dump their inventories of foreclosed houses. Good businessmen they!
Forget about asking yourself if that's really a good idea, or whether it even reflects the facts on the ground (hint -- in selling foreclosed homes, banks engage the same real estate companies as Sowell says are better than the banks at selling homes in order to -- guess what? -- sell the foreclosed homes). Anyway, just take what Sowell says about banks and foreclosed homes on faith.
Sowell then switches gears and shows us, he thinks, how teachers are not like banks selling foreclosed homes:
"The banks pay a price for being wrong. Teachers don’t. . . . [I]f teachers fail to educate children, they don’t lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure."
Sowell concludes in the case of teachers: "Schools are just one government institution that take [sic] on tasks for which they have no expertise or even competence."
How does this relate to Sowell's point that teachers have no money at risk? If you have no money at risk, you're not an expert or you're even incompetent? What do you say about doctors or lawyers, then? Without skin in the game, they're just amateurs and incompetents?
If Sowell's point -- which I kinda have to make for him, because his incompetence is showing -- is that the tenure system allows incompetent teachers to keep failing at educating kids, whereas the lean, mean, bank forecloseure machine doesn't, how the heck does Sowell able to conclude that government is therefore incompetent to educate? What about the vast majority of teachers who are experienced and competent? And if the vast majority are not experienced and competent, where do you think you're going to find 7 million or so experienced and competent teacher types? Do you think they're all bagging groceries right now, waiting for the incompetent, tenured teachers to retire? How much, er, "expertise" does a newly minted teacher have? Who do you think would be teaching our kids if the schools were privatized tomorrow?
I save the best for last. Sowell concludes that the worst example of a responsible entity with neither expertise nor competence is Congress:
"Congress is the most egregious example. In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources, and much more."
Parse those one by one and ask yourself, who should be making the decisions, if not Congress? Let's say you don't want natural resources to be regulated at all. Who should make the decision not to regulate natural resources at all, if not our elected representatives?
A better description of your posts I have never seen.
As always, Mike assumes himself to be an expert on any subject. So much so that he knows better than bankers how bankers should behave in order to make money.
If Mike knows a better method by which banks can unload foreclose properties for a better price, he should go present that idea to the bankers. He could make himself and the bankers rich. Instead he just insults bankers for being idiots because they refuse to follow the advice that he hasn't given.
Then he goes on to insult Dr. Sowell for the sin of not believing that public school teachers, are, like Mike, experts in everything they set their minds to.
Worse still, Dr. Sowell also doesn't believe that govt is the rightfull entitity to make all decisions. The cad.
On Drudge this morning, there is a story about a public grade school that gave as a writting assignment, to write a letter to the state legislature in support of more money for public schools.
They didn't even give the kids the option of deciding which side to support. They were told which side to support in order to get their grades.
Retort 1: Banks are not in the business of buying and selling homes. There is a difference between a real estate agent and a real estate investor. One is a middleman with expertise on how to sell property, the other is in the business of BUYING low ans selling high. Both the banks and investors use the brokers to sell for them, but that doesn't mean they both have agenda. IMO real estate investor is a better example for the article.
Retort 2: Teachers are not professionals. As an attorney, I get paid for my knowledge but also put up a big risk every time I give advice. If I'm wrong and my client is injured there are real consequences, not so for teachers. This Mr. Sowell's point. When there are actual consequences for the choices you make people tend to be more cautious.
Retort 3: Regulations are best done at the local level. Maine congresswomen should not tell West Texans how to use their resources and vice versa. Not to mention most federal natural resource and agricultural regulations date back to the great depression. Much has changed since then and I believe the inability for the Federal government to make meaningful changes is inherent in the system. Whereas localized regulations are often times much easier to fix when times change.
You ask: who should decide? Not an uncommon quetion from a "progrssive". The answer is simple, people should decide for themselves.
Mike B wonders where we could find 7 million competent teachers. That is easy, stop requiring a teaching degree and allow people with real degrees and expertise in specific fields to teach.
No one will tie together Sowell's points, because they can't be tied together. That's the point. He flits from here to there and uses words that send dog whistle messages to conservatives, but his argument -- to the extent he makes one -- is nonsensical. In fact, by the end of his column he's making a darn good argument that complex regulatory matters should be left to a class of elite regulators, yet I have a strong sense he would advocate no such thing.
Yes, Mike, but also teaching is neither brain surgery nor rocket science. Millions of children in America have been home-schooled and have exceeded the achievements of the government-schooled kids. Perhaps we could dispense with teachers altogether?
Mike B Why don't we let the free market decide who can teach the best. At this rate we are not even allowed to find out who the best teachers could be.
Thank you, Dr Sowell, for this: "Incidentally, conservatives who think that schools should be teaching “abstinence” miss the point completely. The schools have no expertise to be teaching sex at all."
I often find in arguments with leftists that they assume I want to substitute MY preferences for their own, rather than the truth: I want to deny that either of us have the competence or authority to lord it over others.
A good case in point is when I see people demand that the GOP produce a "jobs bill," as if conservatives think the government IS a producer of jobs and the GOP knows better how to have government control the economy.
Polly, home schooling works really well because there's a 100% overlap of the education process and parental involvement.
I am the first to say that most of the problem with our education system is the values of the families of schoolchildren. Just the values. The kids could do just fine in dilapidated buildings using dog-eared books if they had two (that's TWO) parents who cared. Unfortunately, they don't.
Take it from a kid who, until seventh grade, sat in dilapidated buildings and used dog-eared books. AND HAD AN ENCYCLOPEDIA AT HOME HIS PARENTS ENCOURAGED HIM TO READ.
Common ground here, people. Let's work on increasing the number of two-parent households.
