Why professors, pundits, and policy wonks misunderstand the world

Which is cheaper than housing even a small number of them in prisons. One of the hopes is that by eliminating much of the desperateness from poverty, we'll save a bundle from the accompanying reduction in crime.

'jerf didn't say that academia is evil because Stalin, but rather that intellectualism which becomes too far divorced from reality can be an extremely dangerous force; he cited Soviet central economic planning as an extreme example of the sort of danger to which he refers.

I don't think it is controversial to say that Soviet economic policies were derived primarily from a political theory which was developed by people whom it's accurate to describe as "intellectuals", in the demonymic usage we seem to be taking as conventional in this thread. I also don't think it's controversial to say that these policies produced widespread, severe privation among the population on whom they were tried.

And I don't think it is accurate, or fair, to say that 'jerf meant this example as a general indictment of modern academia. Nothing in his comment seems to me to suggest anything of the sort. But I can see how, if I were myself an academic and an "intellectual", I might take some of what he did say as a very direct attack on my identity and sense of self-worth, and respond to that rather than to the arguments actually being made.

I hope I'm not coming across as patronizing here. I'm really not trying to be. It's just that, as a tradesman, I don't really have a dog in this fight, and as someone who's worked among academics in the past, I've had the opportunity to develop some insight into some patterns of thought which people who work in that paradigm might share. Among those, I think, is a general feeling of being constantly under attack by a populace which is both ignorant of what science and academia actually do, on the one hand, and on the other deliberately misinformed by a variety of demagogues for their own political benefit.

It wouldn't surprise me to see someone, who is accustomed to what I'd almost call this siege mentality, to react aggressively to anything which looked even a little like a critical analysis of the value of academia or intellectualism as a whole. It's very natural to respond in such fashion to an attack on one's livelihood. But I don't think what is going on here really is such an attack, and maybe the conversation we could all have about what 'jerf is saying would be more interesting and mutually satisfactory than the one we currently seem to be having.

Either that, or I'm completely wrong about what's going on and I've totally misread the entire situation. I don't think that's the case, but how can I be sure?

I was a little confused by this statement. I thought that the populists of yore like William Jennings Bryant were opposed to the gold standard, and the modern consensus is that the gold standard is a bad thing. So weren't the populists right about it?

- The idea of educating intelligenzia by having them work on the fields for a year sounds a bit too much like the cultural revolution of China in the 1960's. It was bad.

- It seems very silly to me to question the value of education. Learning about earlier mistakes is a great way to avoid repeating those mistakes. Learning is good.

- If education is only available for those with a lot of wealth, it certainly brings about both an alienating effect and a lot of bitterness. That's too bad. I'm from a country with free universities and government subsidized students' loans. I think it's a good system, couldn't have afforded any university education without it, being from a poor family.

- In the discussion an idea seems to loom that a less informed opinion is evened out by the fact that more people share it. This I can not abide, although it is the basic idea of democracy. I always thought democracy is mostly a safety measure against tyrants and a pretty ineffective mode of government in its weakest. An enlightened democracy is much better than a populist one. Both are better than a non-democracy, at least most of the time.

- The difference between an enlightened democracy and a populist democracy is evident in its leaders. John Stuart Mill was an enlightened democrat for one. The bad ones can be spotted out by their spitefulness.

- Too bad some populists riding on the tide of anti-intellectualism have managed to turn democracies into tyrannies. Sometimes ships capsize.