Galt's Gulch

The Builders, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Posted by straightlinelogic 4 years, 5 months ago to Government
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A resource, natural or otherwise, is a resource because it has at least one use. Resources are not the ultimate source of wealth, the minds that discover uses for them are. Very few wealth-creating ideas are tabula rasa, without antecedent. They build on prior discoveries and ideas. Innovation, when allowed to proceed, is a compounding, exponential process, creating new possibilities that lead to more innovation. It epitomizes organic adaptation, the bottom-up, decentralized progress that humanity makes when it’s not smothered by its diametric opposite—top-down, centralized command-and-control.

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SOURCE URL: https://straightlinelogic.com/2019/11/18/the-builders-by-robert-gore/#more-42480

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  • Posted by AMeador1 4 years, 4 months ago
    Education is the key! The average person has no clue about what this all means or how to analyze it or conceptualize it. The education system, including college, is not teaching people about this stuff in any reality based meaningful way. My daughter is attending Cornell University right now and she was going to minor in Business Administration (they have a different title for it - can't recall off hand), but she just dropped that path. She took Intro Micro and Macro Economics and was in the Advanced Micro/Macro class this semester and she was just frustrated with it as it was all just a bunch of memorization of formulas and static facts without it being conceptualized - so effectively meaning nothing. Just a class to get through. It's not taught in HS worth a damn either.

    Now, I cannot claim to be an economics guru either - especially in terms of a formal training. - but have learned a lot listening to political discussions for years. So I feel a bit better off than most in getting this - but so many people don't pay any real attention to politics either - not in depth. They just don't get it. Too many steps removed from what's going on to put 2 and 2 together. It's a shame!
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    • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 4 years, 4 months ago
      I too studied Economics and Bus Admin. The only thing I learned that was useful was Economies of Scale. I applied it to every job I've had to do the job efficiently. For a while, I set up companies so that they could move parts and product used in production in the most efficient way, therefore decreasing the time involved in producing.

      Other than that, studying Econ and Bus. was a waist of time.
      Just as you and Robert are conveying, there is no real world application for these courses.
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    • Posted by straightlinelogic 4 years, 4 months ago
      In my latest book, Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godfather, I dismissed the MBA (I have an MBA) as essentially worthless. That's not hyperbole. Much of what passes for education these days is merely indoctrination that is the diametric opposite of education. It cripples rather than liberates minds.
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      • Posted by AMeador1 4 years, 4 months ago
        Yeah, I have an Associate In Science Degree - specialized in Computer Programming and Applications - but I had been in IT for some time running my own business before going for that. I learned nothing from the degree. I taught some things to a couple of the professors. I did it just to have the paper so I could open some doors at the time. The classes I took, in most circumstances, would be more IT related classes than in many BS degrees for Computer Science. And many of those coming out of these degrees cannot write a simple business application. The can't write code to produce a report. It's ridiculous. Just time and money wasted showing that you can play the game - but so long as so many companies are so damned bent on have their degree requirements for jobs they hire for - it will not change. I find it very frustrating,

        My daughter is getting into plant genetics and general biology based genetics - so for her it is a good route to go. She will have access to equipment, labs, lab training, etc that she would not be able to do and learn on her own. But she wants to have her own company doing this kind of work, thus her interest in the Business Admin minor. But not at the price of giving up time to learn the genetics material better - especially when she's getting nothing out of it.

        I think it is interesting that the Ayn Rand Institute is so focused on the degrees as well. They, and Rand, clearly recognize the lack of real education in college - due to methods, indoctrination, etc... yet they almost exclusively focus on people with high end degrees in Economics, Politics, etc... and their time is heavily spent on lecturing at colleges. I think they are missing a lot of people that they could use in their cause because of this approach.
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        • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 4 months ago
          I went back to school to study IT a few years after I graduated with a bachelors degree in business. About half my job was designing and writing software for an oil and real estate company and thought I might learn something that would help my work. (My employer effectively invented fracking and built a "new town" near Houston.) One assignment of my first course was to create a system design and I suggested to the professor that I had a project that I was just starting at work that I'd like to use for the system design. He thought it was not appropriate for the course to use a real world system design. That was when I decided that my conclusion about going back to school to learn something useful was flawed. I could see the fear in the professor's eyes; teaching real world knowledge might interfere with the propaganda, and control of students would deteriorate if outside influence was allowed.
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        • Posted by mccannon01 4 years, 4 months ago
          Other than honorary, James Watt, Michael Faraday, and Thomas Edison didn't have any degrees, either. IMHO, no modern corporation would give any of them a job above menial services.
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        • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 4 months ago
          That was my undergraduate degree as well. I already knew everything from working in the field - and my professors knew it as well.

          My MBA, however, was actually useful. Learning how to do business cases for funding, analyzing how to go about marketing and advertising, understanding beta values and financing values, and especially the organizational and legal studies were all very valuable. Now that's not to say I've had to use many of these skills in my employ, but they have enabled me in my side jobs to go about my business with more confidence.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 4 years, 4 months ago
    The builders in the US will have to start the rebuilding after the CivilWar erupts here. The US in this current state along with the mounting debt will fracture this country. Individual builders will have to be patient and even will have to move into the areas of the US that have restructured itself that will allow the freedom for the builders to create anew.
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  • Posted by shaifferg 4 years, 4 months ago
    Part of the problem with teachers and professors is their imcompetence in the subject they are supposed to teach. Fear of being discovered! There are teachers out there that actually believe mastery of a subject is not a requirement to be able (even allowed ) to teach it. The SMEs (subject matter experts) of the 90s result in the poor fruit we are able to harvest. I aquired a bachelors degree in education primarily for the pay rais that went with it. In none of the education courses was it required to even know what you were going to teach....only how to do it! No one is willing to give credit to our military training programs but they do well in 3 to 6 months what it takes civilian institutions 2 years to do poorly. I was able to use my 6 months Army school in Radar Maintenance as a foundation for continued learning and a 30 year career teaching. Peter Principled administrators resulted in early retirement...the systems and changes they were demanding destroyed a working program.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 4 years, 4 months ago
    Change will happen very suddenly ... after what may be a wait longer than our lives. The one element that your "Builders" analysis underestimates is exactly what Atlas Shrugged encapsulates - the seemingly interminable wait that producers must suffer through before the world is ready for producers like us. The only major problem with Atlas Shrugged is its oversimplification about the return of the producers. New looters and moochers will arise from the ash heap of history along with the producers.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 4 months ago
    I think there's real risk in how people will respond to the next financial crisis caused by excessive leverage. The crisis would be easily manageable, but the reaction is where the risk is.

    I would like to see the problem fixed sooner, even if it's by little incremental steps. I don't believe in the Genesis flood story.
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