Lurking behind all this are two emergencies. One is the calamity for individual households whose breadwinners are pushed out of previously stable trades by a political vanity project by the progressive left.
The other is the economic disaster of “human capital” destroyed. The 190,000 people who will no longer be employed by Germany’s car industry after the green transition, for instance, are 190,000 people who know how to perform highly skilled tasks. They will no longer be practicing those industrial arts or—crucially—passing them on to the next generation of apprentices and younger workers. Once that deep well of knowledge is depleted, it isn’t obvious how it can be replenished.
IMO, destruction of human capital is one of the most overlooked crises that western societies are facing.
Speaking as a university professor in the US and the parent of two kids, my very strong impression right now is that the education I grew up with (and of those who grew up together with me), is superior to the education of today, at both the grade school and college levels.
In fact, both my wife and I sometimes feel sad that we don't think our children are achieving the same levels of academic ability that we had at their age. We try to supplement their education at home, but it's hard to find the time and we don't think the school systems are doing a good job; despite us sending them to schools that are already considered quite good for our area.
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I don't know what you're talking about. Our best proxy for human capital (the number of years your butt was in a classroom seat) has never been higher. You sound like a science denier.
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Most academics, if they learned of my views, would probably call me that.
"Follow the science" has become one of my most hated phrases because of how often it actually means "Listen to the government agencies."
Who can forget Fauci claiming that he represents science. The same guy who admitted to lying about masks for political reasons, and who records show tried to cover up the lab leak theory.
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Unpaywalled version of WSJ article:
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There used to be really nerdy, bookworm kids. I was one of them. Extremely well read, knew a lot about everything just from reading, voraciously.
Maybe they're out there, but I don't meet these kids anymore. I met a high school age boy recently, obviously really bright and was in at least the top 1% of his grade, but didn't know some basic history/geography that came up in the conversation. Things that I would have known at that age, easily, just because I was a bookworm.
And also, he didn't read at all. He listened to tons of audiobooks - amazingly, some of them at 3x speed! Insane. But didn't read at all.
Two points on the audiobooks instead of reading
  • You're limited in your books, if you only listen to audiobooks. You'll mostly get popular, recent books.
  • Even at 3x speed, a fast reader can read quite a bit faster than an audiobook.
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One can pauze audiobooks but I would guess that audiobook listeners do not pauze the book as often as readers pauze to ponder a point, think about how it relates to the rest of their knowledge and experience, try and find an example or a counter-example etc. I often pauze when reading when something I read does not sit right with me. I try to think about why I'm having this reaction. Similarly when something resonates much in a positive sense. I probably interrupt the process of reading a little too much with this kind of meta analysis, and getting side-tracked or going off on tangents (i write these up sometimes. can take a while to finish a book if there's many of these) but a little of this seems to me to be a good thing. And it seems to me that with audiobooks this kind of thing perhaps does not happen as much as would be desirable because the default is for it to keep playing. It seems to me that listening to books is a more passive process that conditions the consumer more towards being in the passenger seat. Could be off on this.
There's probably benefits as well as downsides when comparing listening to books versus reading them. I'm unclear as to the "net effects" And now that I think about it one could listen to books in a way that one could easily pauze and have a similar process of following up on occurring thoughts and feelings
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A scenario of weak sales, greater Chinese competition and a costly strategy for electric vehicles that did not captivate the consumer. They were dependent on Chinese consumption. When German executives returned to China after the pandemic… the Chinese used the time to invest, became more competitive, cheaper and faster
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