Really interesting, shocking quote from the original article, but the Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News, IMO. The original Wired piece is great, though.
I agree. And I have no problem with people having their opinions. I know it feels like my own beliefs are in the minority here, and I don't have a problem with that, but Hacker News is always a better site when it sticks to what it's best at: hacking, technology and entrepreneurship. The politics and religion discussions here are always huge distractions.
But the question "What's the best way to teach children?" is very relevant, so I'm inclined to allow it even if it does meander into political questions on occasion.
Everything is politics. But reactionary free-market worship is too simplistic to be allowed here. Cato only exists because advocating private ownership of profit turns out to be profitable, not because they have any insightful analysis.
There's a difference between simple and simplistic. Simplistic is pretending the only incentive force at work in a national scale institution is the profit incentive.
Simple is acknowledging that a small institution with the mission statement to advocate for profit incentive as the singular organizing principle of our economy probably believes in its mission statement and operates for the purpose of the private profit of its owners.
I've seen a few _interesting_ notes from CATO, but nothing I would call subtle or anything but free market fundamentalism. They tend to pick up every single news story and view it through a free market, shrink govt, give an individual the profit lens. Which is why they can only write a short, generic paragraph of comment on an interesting story about Khan Academy. OP should have been a link to Wired.
I have serious problems with the policies that CATO advocates. I expect them to explain and justify their policies, not appeal to a committee of Norwegians for authority. I expect the same of you.
You seem to be arguing against a point I didn't make. I didn't say that "Hacker News is more qualified on economic issues than Cato" as you put it. I said that I found the case made in this blog post to be questionable and that this political content is not well-suited to Hacker News.
I was not impeaching the intellectual output of the Nobel laureates associated with the Cato institute, but I do have to note here that none of them wrote this blog post, nor is there any indication that any of them reviewed it. I could further debate your name-dropping, but I've wasted enough key-strokes on this as is.
If politics is not suitable for HN then why do we have lots of articles about 'open source', patent reform, privacy issues regarding Facebook,Twitter, articles about wikileaks, lulzsec, the FBI, etc.
These are all primarily political and non-technical issues that affect our industry just as the Khan Academy affects our ability to learn in the politicized education industry.
"the Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News, IMO"
Sorry, but you dismiss Cato because of its "free-market spin" and then call its main thesis "questionable", when 10 Nobel Laureates, who probably know far more than us on economic issues, are associated with Cato. I'd also note that Paul Krugman, Delong, and Sachs -- all very prominent Democratic supporters -- are very pro free market as indicated on the links you'll find on their Wikipedia pages.
You would think that at least a few of these Laureates would entertain the possibility that under the right conditions a community of technocratic professionals freely debating the merits of various policies could have a better answer than any single individual picked by a committee of Norwegians. It's almost like this is a free market of ideas, and you being downvoted is an invisible hand telling you to have better ideas if you want to make it.
Well, only 2 are dead, and those two (Hayek and Friedman) are probably the most famous libertarian economists/thinkers. I think it would be safe to assume they would support the article above.
