Ipods More Important Than Education
Cafe Hayek notes that it’s iPod sixth birthday:
The iPod will be six years old next month. The newly released iPod Classic with 160 GB of memory is $50 cheaper, holds 40 TIMES more songs, plays color videos and displays photos than the original. It is smaller, lighter and has a better battery. I wonder how the BLS takes account of the quality differences when measuring the price index and inflation.
In other words, because we think education is to important to be left to the markets it hasn’t improved over the last six years unlike iPods which have undergone massive innovation. Some things are to important to be left up to the markets. Unfortunately a large portion of the population believes education to important for substantial innovation and improvement.
And to think that same portion of the population think one’s health care is to important to be constantly improved upon. A Foolish mistrust of capitalism is at about the same level as religious credulity in silliness.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
You’re saying that being skeptical about the purportedly miraculous benefits of an abstract economic concept is equatable with being unskeptical about the purported miracles performed by an abstract metaphysical entity?
Anyway, you’re still confounding technology and services. If we had a helmet that instilled knowledge directly into neurons, I’d want pblic companies innovating it. But education is a service industry; are haircuts 4 times better and much cheaper than they were 6 years ago?
September 7th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Sticking with the Apple theme wouldn’t you say there iTunes music service is top notch. Quite an improvement over other services. Markets improve service just like they do products. Where there is competition their is innovation.
But your right education is a service that just to important to be improved. However finding cheap and easy ways to download songs now thats important enough to be improved.
September 7th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Dude, web sites aren’t part of the service industry, they’re still technology. As you’re well aware. Want to answer my question about hair cuts?
September 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am
iTunes is most certainly a service.
So providing education to a child is like cutting their hair?
If we think about the hair cutting industry in the same way that we think about personal mp3 player industry it’s hard to deny capitalism’s impact on innovation. Going past the last 5o years we see differing hair styles often times as a function of the innovations of that decade. For example in the fifties slicked back hair was common due to the development of hair gel.
Capitalism also provides perhaps a more important function other than generating the innovation that completely redefines an industry. It also generates incremental changes and slight variations to products in an industry that specifically targets small demographics. The overall affect is that more people are satisfied with the industry then would be if capitalism was unable to create multiple version of services and products.
In alot of ways, iPods strength is not the inexorable reduction in physical size and accompanying large increases in memory size, its strength is derived from many different iterations and features. You have the Nano with emphasis on size while the standard iPod provides larger memory capacity. You have iPod video enabling you to view movies. Hell they even have an iPhone.
The hair industry can boast the exact some kind of plethora in features. You no doubt go to the standard hair cutter place, but if you wanted more stylized hair you could go to salon. Perhaps you wanted to go to a barber shop and talk sports with the good olde boys. How did you want your hair? Short, long, in the medium, all options are on the table and they all cost roughly the same. What color would you like your hair, burnt-sienna, platinum blond, or perhaps nuclear green? Did you want your hair shampooed first or how about a shave afterwards.
It’s foolish to think the hair industry has not gone through rapid innovations similar to the mp3 player industry has in the last 6 years. Perhaps not in the last 6 years but im sure within the last 100 years it has undergone some rapid changes thanks chiefly to capitalism.
Education? No massive innovation and hell hardly any incremental change. It’s not getting cheaper, not expanding in features, and its not becoming more efficient. Unlike your hair or iPod, education is much to important for these things.
September 10th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
but the question remains–how do you set up an “education market” that strives for quality and efficiency while still remaining accessible to everyone? Sure, anyone can complain about the current system, it’s clearly not ideal. And I can see the positive aspects of a for-profit school system, allowing good schools to attract more money and others striving to do the same. But how do you set it up so that everyone can afford to send their kids to school? Or do you feel entrepreneurs will cater to the budget education market? Is education even profitable?
well, those are my thoughts in rant/ramble format. respond as you see fit
September 11th, 2007 at 8:16 am
So the hair care industry had undergone in the last 100 years the same types of innovations that consumer electronics like the Ipod have undergone in the last 6 years? Hell, by that standard, you have no argument; public schools have undergone massive innovation and improvement in the last 100 years.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:59 am
You misunderstood the argument.
But how has education gotten better in the last 100 years? In the last 30 years most measures shows our education slipping while at the same time increased in cost significantly.
Let me say this differently. What the fuck are you talking about?