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Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

philip.greenspun.com

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Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#81

Post by pelle »

mixmax wrote: post #14
tokenadult wrote: post #2

"Nobody has ever made a compelling argument for how having unionized teachers helps students. Nor has anyone ever made a compelling argument for how having tenured teachers helps student performance. Our country's best performing schools (all of them private) have non-unionized teaching staffs. We can't afford to experiment with unionized teachers anymore. The government created the right for public employees to unio…

Denmark has unionized teachers, and has a long history of public schools. Danes have invented C++(Bjarne Stoustrup), Turbo Pascal, C#, Dephi (Anders Hejlsberg) and Ruby on Rails (DHH). For a country with a population half of New York I think that's pretty impressive. I can't help to notice when working with foreigners that Danes have a much better knack at understanding a problem domain and coming up with creative so…

I also have to point out being Danish myself that the Danish education system is under heavy attack in Denmark as being uncompetitive.

I'm too lazy to google it right now but I remember Danish test results being amongst the worst in Europe.

That said I think Denmark has good enough education and improving it is the least of our problems.

Denmark has had several high profile people in Computer Science. What is interesting is that they have almost without exception been forced to find a home outside Denmark.

Danish culture is very conformist. And it's IT culture doesn't disappoint here. J2EE with Struts and the Waterfall Development model is still seen as cutting edge. Mainframes (proof that we were advanced a few decades ago) are still in wide use in even relatively small companies.

I know lots of great Ruby, Python etc programmers there, who are frustrated beyond belief at the lack of momentum for such languages there. I keep preaching to them to start companies.

The funny little secret about the Scandinavian model is that at least for Denmark and Norway it has essentially been funded by North Sea Oil. Most Danes don't even know this, but it is reported every year by the ministry of finance. They have also been hit really hard by the recession and I'm not sure how they are going to do with lower oil prices now.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#82

Post by mixmax »

laut wrote: post #80
mixmax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark has unionized teachers, and has a long history of public schools. Danes have invented C++(Bjarne Stoustrup), Turbo Pascal, C#, Dephi (Anders Hejlsberg) and Ruby on Rails (DHH). For a country with a population half of New York I think that's pretty impressive. I can't help to notice when working with foreigners that Danes have a much better knack at understanding a problem domain and coming up with creative so…

PHP too (Rasmus Ledorf). But where do all these people you mention live now? On the other side of the Atlantic. Another success story is Skype, which was founded by a Dane and a Swede. Did they decide to start the company in Denmark or Sweden? No, it's a Luxemborg company. Denmark has a history of a relatively free economy. In the 1960's the government was smaller than in the US. And the biggest companies in Denmark…

Yes that is the contradiction - an apparently great educational system paid for by taxes that are so high that the smart and successful Danes leave the country and make their money elsewhere in order not to pay the high taxes.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#83

Post by bd »

mixmax wrote: post #20
Prrometheus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it matters as much how great a percentage of the GDP government spends, so much as how it is spent. Is the government spending money in ways that produce net positive social return? This becomes much harder as the absolute size of the bureaucracy grows. It is harder to manage a multi-trillion dollar budget than it is to manage Sweden. The United States has a large amount of military spending and redunda…

You're hinting at a very interesting problem here: The absolute size of bureaucracy. It seems ( I have no data to back this up) that the efficiency of bureaucracy decreases exponentially with it's size. This is obviously a bigger problem for large countries such as the US. There are advantages to size (setting the global agenda, advantages in areas where absolute amounts of money matter (for instance military - your…

It's possible to have very efficient bureaucracy.

European Commission that basically runs European Union (500M people) has just around 25,000 employees [1].

This is tiny. Just to get an idea about the scale: New York City (8M people) government employs 250,000 people (though to be fair, I have no idea who is included in this total) [2].

EC seems to be doing something very right. They offer very good working conditions (pay, holidays, benefits, security), so they are able to attract good people. There is a tough competition for these civil servant jobs.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_New_York_City

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#84

Post by fizzer9 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #76
fizzer9 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenspun seemed to be talking about public high schools, and that's what I was talking about as well. Standardized testing is just a race to the bottom. As soon as everyone agrees upon the standardized test, anyone who teaches anything outside of the box at all gets punished because an hour spent on something that's interesting and happens to catch the students' fancy on a given day is one less hour spent preparing…

If the students are doing well, spending an hour on interesting side topics won't hurt the test results. If students are doing poorly, then sticking to the basics is the way to go. Walk before running, and all that. As far as the race to the bottom, standardized testing prevents it. The race to the bottom is what you described; make your test easier than others to avoid problems with whiny parents/students. A standar…

The existing situation is this: there are standardized tests, teachers are sticking to the basics -- they have no choice since they've got to teach to the test like everyone else (lest your students score a percentage point lower than another teacher's students), students are doing poorly, students are passing anyway because of the enormous forces on teachers in the broken system.

The standardized tests are part of what's broken in the system. Also part of what's broken is that there are enormous forces preventing teachers from failing students who actually fail.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#85

Post by pelle »

mixmax wrote: post #82
laut wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP too (Rasmus Ledorf). But where do all these people you mention live now? On the other side of the Atlantic. Another success story is Skype, which was founded by a Dane and a Swede. Did they decide to start the company in Denmark or Sweden? No, it's a Luxemborg company. Denmark has a history of a relatively free economy. In the 1960's the government was smaller than in the US. And the biggest companies in Denmark…

Yes that is the contradiction - an apparently great educational system paid for by taxes that are so high that the smart and successful Danes leave the country and make their money elsewhere in order not to pay the high taxes.

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad.

While not as bad now, there was a time when the word "udenlandsdansker" (Danish emigrant) was synonymous with traitor when used by Danish politicians.

The way I look at it is that my parents paid 70% taxes when I was going through the educational system, so I could go through the educational system. I have also paid plenty of Danish taxes myself to put other peoples children through school.

While I have great love for my country, I am not indebted nor indentured to it.

We already went through a period in Danish history http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stavnsbånd (in Danish) where men between 18 and 36 were forced to stay and work for the local land owner.

I do not think there is a need through law, guilt or propaganda to enforce a new version of this indentureship.

There are many reasons to stay in Denmark, but there are also plenty of good reasons for entrepreneurs and other over achievers to leave:

http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/07/01/silicon-vikings...

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#86

Post by [deleted] »

pelle wrote: post #85
mixmax wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is the contradiction - an apparently great educational system paid for by taxes that are so high that the smart and successful Danes leave the country and make their money elsewhere in order not to pay the high taxes.

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad. While not as bad now, there was a time when the word "udenlandsdansker" (Danish emigrant) was synonymous with traitor when used by Danish politicians. The way I look at it is that my parents paid 70% taxes when I was going through the educational system, so I could go through the educational system. I have also paid plenty of Danish ta…

[deleted]

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#87

Post by mixmax »

pelle wrote: post #85
mixmax wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is the contradiction - an apparently great educational system paid for by taxes that are so high that the smart and successful Danes leave the country and make their money elsewhere in order not to pay the high taxes.

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad. While not as bad now, there was a time when the word "udenlandsdansker" (Danish emigrant) was synonymous with traitor when used by Danish politicians. The way I look at it is that my parents paid 70% taxes when I was going through the educational system, so I could go through the educational system. I have also paid plenty of Danish ta…

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad. it wasn't meant that way, just pointing out the bad politics of not letting people reap the rewards of what they sow.

I'm thinking of moving away myself, if it wasn't for the good friends and beautiful girls I would have gone already.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#88

Post by pelle »

mixmax wrote: post #87
pelle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad. While not as bad now, there was a time when the word "udenlandsdansker" (Danish emigrant) was synonymous with traitor when used by Danish politicians. The way I look at it is that my parents paid 70% taxes when I was going through the educational system, so I could go through the educational system. I have also paid plenty of Danish ta…

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad. it wasn't meant that way, just pointing out the bad politics of not letting people reap the rewards of what they sow. I'm thinking of moving away myself, if it wasn't for the good friends and beautiful girls I would have gone already.

Guess I misunderstood ;-)

Just heard the argument I thought I heard so many times before.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#89

Post by barrkel »

bd wrote: post #83
mixmax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're hinting at a very interesting problem here: The absolute size of bureaucracy. It seems ( I have no data to back this up) that the efficiency of bureaucracy decreases exponentially with it's size. This is obviously a bigger problem for large countries such as the US. There are advantages to size (setting the global agenda, advantages in areas where absolute amounts of money matter (for instance military - your…

It's possible to have very efficient bureaucracy. European Commission that basically runs European Union (500M people) has just around 25,000 employees [1]. This is tiny. Just to get an idea about the scale: New York City (8M people) government employs 250,000 people (though to be fair, I have no idea who is included in this total) [2]. EC seems to be doing something very right. They offer very good working condition…

The EC is only the inter-government stuff. To be fair, you'd have to include all the employees of all the member states' governments too; or alternatively, compare e.g. London governmental employees, though scaled to population and leaving out actual England and UK administration.

For example, http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/investorrelations/... shows that Transport for London (buses, trains and underground) alone employs about 18,000 people (and probably quite a bit higher now).

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#90

Post by mixmax »

pelle wrote: post #88
mixmax wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel bad. it wasn't meant that way, just pointing out the bad politics of not letting people reap the rewards of what they sow. I'm thinking of moving away myself, if it wasn't for the good friends and beautiful girls I would have gone already.

Guess I misunderstood ;-) Just heard the argument I thought I heard so many times before.

No worries, just wanted to clear it up since I've heard the argument endless times too.

And I hate whiners...

Btw. are you ever in Copenhagen?

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