Thursday, June 25, 2009

Academic Incest

I am in favor of a moderate amount of it.

Let me explain. Academic incest is when a student goes to the same school for their bachelors, masters and doctorate etc. Or, when a schools faculty is (by design or not) all of the same academic background (I suppose uniformity in academic/ideological beliefs would also qualify for academic incest)

The reason why this is considered to be ‘incest’ (negative connotations intended) is because these practices tend to isolate ideas. These ideas once isolated tend to develop ‘in a vacuum’ and develop provincial school of thoughts: for example in economics: “the Chicago school”, “the saltwater school”, “the Austrian school”.

The assumption is that you can develop your institution into a dynamic center of learning and ideas if you can have some professors trained in each of the ‘schools’ and if your education includes a mix of all the school of thoughts. In short the idea is to take advantage of hybrid vigor.

The problem with the prevailing practice is that you need to create and maintain the pure breeds if you want to have cross breeds. If you do not, then every academic institution produces similar graduates who have been exposed to the same mixes of the different schools of thought and the whole system falls to a dismaying uniformity and lack of originality.

The second reason for moderate academic incest is that the hope of creating a master in all schools of thought is, I think, overly ambitious. It would require a polymath to keep them all straight and then be able to form a synthesis that was as valid and complex as the prior ideas. To expect this to happen as a matter of putting students through the classes is unrealistic. As a president of a corporation or of a nation my preference would be then, to have a board of advisors who are experts each in their own school (which I cannot judge between because of inexpertise).

The third reason for moderate academic incest is that not all schools of thought are created equal. What if the saltwater school of thought is fuzzy headed and mostly wrong? I would do a disservice if I hired professors who where trained in that school.
For example I believe that string theory is an academic black hole. Therefore I would, in hiring for the physics department, like to be able to choose between professors who had spent a lot of time studying it and those who had not. It is better to have choice between viable alternatives because it is more likely for there to be a right choice. If there isn’t the entire field is at least more conducive to new schools of though arising. The economic schools of though I mentioned are in a sense ancient – they all predate 1975 and are less defined now then they were – for the reasons I’ve mentioned.

Friday, June 19, 2009

RIP The Company Man

1950-1975: heyday of the company man. You went to work out of high school gave loyal devoted service until you retired. You earned good wages, had access to affordable health insurance and your company planned and provided your retirement. This is now exceptional.
In many ways this was an artificial time period, a product of World War II solidarity and the political supremacy of the old democrats.
(The old democrats controlled the party from ’32-68. The New Deal was their charter and they sought to provide a comfortable living for the working class and ‘common man’ through the ‘family wage’. I consider the riots of ’68 to mark the transition to the new democrats who wanted to re-invent the world by eliminating traditional mores and customs with the aim of establishing justice without judgment for everybody. To them, the common man is someone with deplorable prejudices and socioeconomic habits that must be re-educated. There are still old democrats in the party but the new are the leaders.)
The opposing political party was concerned with containing communism and promoting business interests. The deal struck between the two was to fund the cold war, protect business by allowing de facto car tels and monop oli es in exchange for conceding labor unions demands and expanding the safety net of the new deal. The market control of the cartels was sufficiently lucrative to let everyone have a piece of the pie.
But what happened to the company man? The new democrats did not dismantle the old system as it was still a source of political power – its decline is a little more complex.
1) Free Trade – this effectively destroyed the cartels as foreign competition put the competitors outside of any one government’s control. The new democrats supported it because it went hand in hand with their internationalist ideals. The opposition party supported it because it benefitted their business allies. (keep in mind business will deal - whoever is in power; so this ‘alliance’ is somewhat asymmetric)
2) Organizational Decay – this refers to the tendency of organizations to become bloated, insular, and unresponsive with time. This is due to inertia, groups within the organization acting for their self-benefit. Market disrupting innovation can hurt it or at best maintain its position as the market leader – therefore its incentive to innovate is small.


P.S. I believe a flux period is beginning for the parties where they can dramatically change across a few election cycles.