On Mon, 24 Jul 2017 21:48:56 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 7:12:44 AM UTC+5:30, Ben Finney quoted
> Thomas Jefferson's :
>
>> The cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance.
>
>
> An interesting standard of “trivial”… given…
You're reading the quote out of context.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote what he did, he was comparing the cost to the
US government of paying for universal education for a subset of the
population (mostly white males under 16, I expect) to the relatively low
standards required at the time, versus the societal costs of a broad
population of know-nothings. Especially know-nothings who have the vote.
Despite the shift to universal education, and the general increase in
standards, I believe Jefferson's equation still broadly holds. We
probably wouldn't find it cost effective to educate everyone to a Ph.D.
standard, but to a secondary school standard is very affordable.
Jefferson wasn't comparing the cost of ignorance to *student debt*
because such a thing didn't exist in his day. I don't believe that
Jefferson imagined that a societal Good like universal education would be
treated as not just a *profit centre*, but *weaponized* and deployed
against the middle class.
In the US and UK, and a lesser extend Australia, we have managed to
combine the worst of both worlds:
- a system which spends a huge amount of money for degrees which,
for the majority of people, will never repay their cost;
- that cost is charged to the receiver, ensuring that the majority
of them will start their working career in debt, and often that
they will never pay of that debt during their working life;
- ultimately leading to a transfer of assets from the middle-class
to the elites;
- while nevertheless keeping the general population remarkably ignorant.
Jefferson was, in a sense, naive: while he recognised the rather brutal
costs of ignorance, he assumed that well-meaning people of good will
would agree that they were costs. Unfortunately ignorance is an
exploitable externality and to some people, the ignorance of others is a
benefit, not a cost.
The people who gain benefit from ignorance are not the ones who pay the
costs. Consequently we have sectors of the political elite who gain
benefit from the ignorance of others, while the rest of us have to pay
the costs:
- ignorance encourages people to vote against their own interests;
- ignorance can be manipulated by demagogues;
- the ignorant and fearful has become a powerful voting block that
votes in politicians who do their best to make them more ignorant
and more fearful (a vicious circle);
- ignorance can be used against subsections of the public by
increasing apathy and discouraging them from voting.
Likewise there is a vast collection of economic interest groups who
thrive on ignorance:
- scammers and spammers;
- the advertising profession in general;
- merchants of woo, such as those who invent dangerous fad diets
and the anti-vaxxers;
- PR firms that exist to obfuscate the facts ("Doubt is our product",
as one such firm said to the tobacco companies);
- media that thrives on inventing fake controversy and false equivalency;
and so on.
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