Reboot the Humanities

About six weeks ago, Megan McArdle had a post at the Daily Beast asking "What's the use of a PhD?"I've been troubled by her conclusions, especially this, "From the outside, a humanities PhD does not seem likely to ever be a career-enhancing move, for the simple reason that a PhD is a lengthy apprenticeship designed to teach you the skills needed to do exactly one thing: be a professor." 

It is again time for my Renaissance and Reformation class, and my reconnection with the theoretical basis of my work as a humanist. The humanists did not want to prepare students for the cloistered ivory tower. The humanists advocated an active life of engagement in the politics of the city and in business. It was the educational rivals, the scholastics, who saw the purpose of education as a narrow pursuit towards law, medicine, or the queen of the sciences - theology. The humanists argued that we should study man's history and literature to understand how to live - how to live an active life. Even the humanists wary of politics (Petrarch and Erasmus, just to name two) were still engaged in the central pursuit of the Renaissance, the rebooting of western civilization, no small matter. 

How is it then, that further study of the humanities has become an essentially scholastic enterprise? It appears to be the case that the university is dominated by modern scholastics, and that even our core subjects are run by scholastics for scholastic purposes, not to ask how we should live an active life in our community, but rather to ask questions of interest to no one other than fellow academics. For humanists, history is not a subject, it is the subject. Everything has a history, and history can organize any subject meaningfully. The history of the humanists tended to focus on the lives of great men. It did this so it could examine the consequences of human action, and to then ask moral questions about their actions. If we understand something about the nature of causation and the moral significance of our choices, if we understand this well enough to write and speak persuasively among our peers and in our institutions, we are ready to go out into the world. 

Such a modern humanist would understand classical republics, the British constitutional and political history, and American constitutional and political history. They would be prepared to undertake the role of an active citizen. Such a modern humanist would be able to assemble the history of their firm and their industry, so they could argue from evidence of success and failure when a proposed course of action was presented. They could quote the founder and other figures who established the culture of the firm, understand the mission of the business, and had a bigger vision of their role than a job description. 

Florence was a town of business. It had a woolens industry and was the center of banking, thanks to a Papal monopoly. It was not a university town, like Bologna, Modena, or Padua. 

Among the many institutions that need to be rebooted, the humanities certainly appears to be near the top of the list. 

Let old banks die, use the money to start new banks

Paul Romer suggests using the TARP money to just start new banks rather than throwing good money after bad in bailing out banks that are full of toxic assets.

Tom Philpott, over at Gristmill promises to discuss other banking models. He links to Martin Wolf at the Financial Times who writes, "a sizeable proportion of [U.S.] financial institutions are insolvent: their assets are, under plausible assumptions, worth less than their liabilities."

The Independent reverses its opinion of pot.

The Independent, which was an active campaigner for the shift in status from Class B to Class C for cannabis, now reverses its stance and issues an apology.

Congressional Budget Office declares Obama plan is worse than doing nothing.

The CBO reported on Wednesday that Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, by .1 to .3% GDP. CBO does report the Senate bill would produce between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent higher growth in 2009 than if there was no action, but the cost beyond the near term into the medium term would exceed the benefit.

I recall during the ill-advised steel tariff, Mickey Kaus pointing out that the cost per job saved was around a quarter million per job.

This "stimulus" is in the same ballpark. Given the most generously small package, $750 billion and the most generous jobs creation figure 4.1 million, I get $183,000 per job saved. Given that maximal job production at optimal spending is unlikey, the quarter million figure is probabaly more accurate.

With that kind of money, you could pay people not to work until the next recession. Rinse and repeat.

Obama and Congress make hiring a liability

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will have the effect of depressing wages and employment. Making today's HR choices a long term liability will make employers hiring shy. Or more precisely, more shy than they already are.

And this in an environment in which unemployment is higher among men than women. In which pay is as high or higher for women for the same work. And in which women graduate from college more than men.

If the economy were strong, this would be merely misguided. But in a down economy (and unemployment is a lagging phenomenon, so will recover after the recovery is in effect) doing anything to make hiring less attractive is bad medicine.

Obama's Positivism

In the past several months, during the transition, two characteristics have emerged that have caught my attention. One is the President is interested in talking to anyone from the intellectual elite, right, left, or center. A sit down dinner at George Will's house with Bill Kristol and David Brooks being just the kind of thing I am thinking of. His appointments have struck the same tone, selecting well respected experts, including Bush Administration folks, rather than selections calculated to please his base.

Throughout the campaign, and mentioned again during the Inauguration, was a declaration of a post-partisan approach: "the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply." The combination of an appreciation of expertise and intellectualism plus a rejection of ideology is often a signal of Positivism.

"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works (...)." Is this pragmatism, or Pragmatism? The philosophy of Pragmatism being an American variety of Positivism.

In government, the most common variety of Positivism is Technocracy. The fact that Obama was always very nebulous (Hope and Change) and short on actual explanations on the how can now be read as meaning there never was any agenda more specific than to put the experts in charge. Technocracy is the form of government where the experts decide policy and administrate its implementation. Technocracy, like all other forms of Positivism fancies itself scientific, and hence non-partisan.

Obama said "On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics." To him, politics is not a process in which interested groups meat, contest, dispute, and sometimes compromise. Such a notion is petty, false, and worn out. Rather disinterested experts will be the arbiters of policy and the intrusion of the pubic into the affairs of government will be regarded as ungrateful, petty interference.

Discarding the will of the people, all to common for the technocrat, for the expert opinion arrived at scientifically by the best and brightest might be worth it, if it worked. It does not. Experts possess a general expertise about abstract examples, general circumstances, but no one is an expert in their own circumstances but themselves. Great plans devised by benevolent experts are always a mess.

Do not impose experts on the people, but let the people decide themselves, through the political process and through the market.

A Do-Nothing Congress Explained

This has been one of the most do-nothing congresses in quite some time. I think I now know why. Its leadership is significantly to the left of the rank and file. This is why the congress does nothing, and when its forced to do something, it calls a recess and goes on vacation as it did when drilling was such a big issue. Nothing the leadership wants to do would be acceptable to the rank and file and so either the leadership gets defeated by its own party, or the leadership caves to the rank and file.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd craft a bailout plan with the approval of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the OK of Obama, and 40% of democrats vote against it. The leaders don't control the party. They know it. They could dodge a vote on the drilling issue, but not on the bailout issue. Even when Reid, Pelosi, and Obama provide cover, 40% of Dems turn and go the other direction.

Looking at the Missouri delegation, its the far left that voted no, and most of the Republicans. Roy Blunt is the outlier, I suspect because he is part of the leadership that negotiated the plan.

Using the scoring method of voteview.com, here is the Missouri Delegation again, in order of their voteview score, with their bailout vote and party affiliation.

* Dist. 1 - Rep. William Lacy Clay No 49 D
* Dist. 5 - Rep. Emanuel Cleaver No 113 D
* Dist. 3 - Rep. Russ Carnahan Yes 133 D
* Dist. 4 - Rep. Ike Skelton Yes 212 D
* Dist. 8 - Rep. Jo Ann Emerson Yes 256 R
* Dist. 9 - Rep. Kenny Hulshof No 286 R
* Dist. 7 - Rep. Roy Blunt Yes 342 R
* Dist. 6 - Rep. Sam Graves No 362 R
* Dist. 2 - Rep. Todd Akin No 407 R

Missouri Congre4ssional Delegation on the Monday Bailout vote

* Dist. 1 - Rep. William Lacy Clay No
* Dist. 2 - Rep. Todd Akin No
* Dist. 3 - Rep. Russ Carnahan Yes
* Dist. 4 - Rep. Ike Skelton Yes
* Dist. 5 - Rep. Emanuel Cleaver No
* Dist. 6 - Rep. Sam Graves No
* Dist. 7 - Rep. Roy Blunt Yes
* Dist. 8 - Rep. Jo Ann Emerson Yes
* Dist. 9 - Rep. Kenny Hulshof No