No, not the card game. I occasionally use this phrase—he or she needs to go fish—as metaphor for what some so-called problem children in elementary schools should be allowed to do.
My source for the phrase is Daniel Greenberg’s Sudbury Valley School (1, 2, 3), which is located on a ten-acre estate in Massachusetts. One of the essential features of the school is that the children, ages four to nineteen, are free to do whatever they want, including fish all day in the property’s pond, instead of attend classes. Indeed, classes are offered only at the request of students; education in the formal or traditional sense is entirely optional. The other essential feature is that large areas of the school’s social and operational behavior, including the hiring and firing of staff, are regulated by democratic vote.
Precursor to this type of school is the much older Summerhill in England (1, 2, 3), founded by A. S. Neill and now run by Neill’s daughter. At Summerhill, though, traditional classes are regularly scheduled, albeit optional, and somewhat more control, including the hiring and firing of staff, is maintained by the owner. Grades, exams, and standard diplomas are absent from both schools. Students who seek higher education are responsible for taking and passing high-school equivalency and college entrance exams.
Whatever one thinks of these two schools—and the opinion is not devoid of emotion—they have proven successful in educating students, or rather, as the proprietors are more likely to say, the students have educated themselves.
Sudbury Valley boasts that eighty percent of its graduates have gone on to college. It also has challenged several chestnuts of the educational establishment, such as the age at which children should learn to read and the length of time required to learn elementary-school arithmetic. Students at Sudbury have become competent readers as young as four and as old as eleven, with some early readers never continuing to read much after that and some late readers becoming voracious at the task. And six years of elementary-school arithmetic was learned by a dozen nine- to twelve-year-olds in twenty contact hours over twenty weeks.
The significance of the fish metaphor is that it represents the peace and quiet of getting completely away from the stresses of modern life, but, more specifically, it represents freedom from one major source of stress in young children’s lives: the coercion of compulsory, government-run education. It also represents a reprieve from the nagging coercions of adults, whether they be parents or teachers.
The guiding premise of both schools, best stated by Greenberg when asked by a new student for advice about going to college, is: “You can do anything you want to do.” You can, in other words, play cards all day, cook all day, take walks, read books, ask staff for a lesson—or fish. The causes of so-called problem children vary, but many are just plain bored of sitting at a desk in a classroom and are sick of having adults lord their size and power over them.
The choice of “doing nothing,” which is “nothing” only in the eyes of adults who think young people should be sitting in traditional classrooms, enables children to relax and become more at peace with themselves and others. When they are ready, they can, if they so desire, choose to pursue other forms of learning and eventually think about what they want to do the rest of their lives. One boy at Sudbury Valley who fished nearly every day for several years became interested in computers at age fifteen. At seventeen he and two friends founded a computer sales and service company; he then went on to college and a career in computers. One boy at Summerhill who had never attended classes taught himself in his last year at the school to pass the university exams.
Equal dignity, or equal respect between adult and child, is what both Sudbury Valley and Summerhill offer their students. That is probably the appeal and success of the democratic meetings for which they are well known. Every member of the staff has only one vote, while the students run the meetings. Empowerment is not too strong a word to describe the effect this has on the students at all age levels. Self-directed, self-responsible young adults are what both schools produce.
Know any children who cannot sit still in a traditional classroom or who are always getting into trouble by being disruptive? My answer to those in charge is that for some of these children the answer may be: let them go fish.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Dangerous Admiration of BS
Why is BS’ing admired, almost to the point of being “cuddly and warm,” as philosopher Harry Frankfurt put it, whereas lying is considered morally repugnant?
Frankfurt examined BS in his 2005 monograph On Bullshit (BS) and distinguished it from lying. The liar, Frankfurt argued, is focused on facts so he or she may state the opposite, but the BS’er is an entertainer or artist who uses words and sophistical arguments to manipulate others. Individual statements of the BS’er may be true, but their truth or falsity are irrelevant. The “show” is what counts. A sales rep, thus, puts pressure on a prospect by saying, “buy now, because I already have two firm offers.” The rep may or may not have two other offers; those particular words were chosen because they provide the most persuasive language.
Frankfurt’s discussion seems to imply that the creative and imaginative skills of the artist are what people admire in BS’ers and lead many to make comments about BS’ers to the effect “He’s good” or “She’s clever.” Such comments may be made about anyone. Politicians, of course, are often consummately admired spinmeisters, as are many lawyers and sales and advertising practitioners. Some admiration may stem from the challenge a BS’er must overcome, such as a sales person confronted with the objections of a particularly difficult prospect. A well-crafted story, not entirely based on fact, to convince the prospect to buy can produce the above accolades.
Expectation of truth is doubtless the reason we are offended by the liar, but why not the same for the BS’er? After all, the overall impression made by the BS’er is false, even though individual statements made by such a person may be true. BS, as I suggested in a conference paper, is a species of lying, the two behaviors occupying opposite ends of a continuum.
In a post-publication interview, Frankfurt named marketing (of course) and, perhaps surprisingly, democracy as causes of the preponderance of BS in our culture today. Marketing, because salesmanship and advertising are falsely assumed to mean lying in order to separate consumers from their hard-earned dollars. And democracy, because in such a system we are obligated to have an opinion about everything; since we cannot know everything, says Frankfurt, our opinions amount to BS.*
One consequence of the connection between democracy and BS, Frankfurt continued, is that the highly educated, because they have the linguistic skills with which to express their opinions and the arrogance to neglect facts in the process, are more prone to BS than their lesser educated counterparts. Does this “democratic skill” cause admiration of others who exhibit the same?
Rationalization abounds to justify BS, such as “everyone does it,” “everyone knows it’s done this way,” and “that’s how business (or politics) is conducted.” Not “everyone” does know it, however, and if everyone did know it, how would that justify departures from the truth? Storytelling belongs in the art of fiction, not in business, politics, or daily conversation. Justifying fabrication in negotiation and salesmanship is precisely what gives capitalism a bad name.
The danger in admiring BS, and not carefully distinguishing it from the creative fiction of a true artist, is that habits of mind become established and human relationships end up being built out of little more than BS. Perception of the truth becomes nearly impossible, because every statement is for show, not a description of facts. Politics has become almost entirely a BS show, with honest intention seemingly nonexistent.
Worst of all, parents can encourage this habit in children at an early age. Smiling approval of a less-than truthful statement can communicate a “you’re clever” message to a child. For example, a boy who wants to get his way makes something up that will please his mother. The mother plays along, knowing fully that the gambit is less than genuine. A pattern of behavior has just been sanctioned by the mother.
Commitment to facts and truth, when such encouragement is continued throughout childhood and adolescence, goes out the window. Of course, parents who exhibit the same behavior become their children’s models. The BS habit becomes ingrained in the child’s subconscious and he or she may not even be aware that anything is wrong. “My parents do it. Everyone around me does it. Politicians do it. It must be right.”
From this beginning in the home, we derive a culture of BS.
* The fundamental cause is altruism, specifically the premise that self-interested behavior, which is required in our daily lives, is opposed to character and morality.)
Frankfurt examined BS in his 2005 monograph On Bullshit (BS) and distinguished it from lying. The liar, Frankfurt argued, is focused on facts so he or she may state the opposite, but the BS’er is an entertainer or artist who uses words and sophistical arguments to manipulate others. Individual statements of the BS’er may be true, but their truth or falsity are irrelevant. The “show” is what counts. A sales rep, thus, puts pressure on a prospect by saying, “buy now, because I already have two firm offers.” The rep may or may not have two other offers; those particular words were chosen because they provide the most persuasive language.
Frankfurt’s discussion seems to imply that the creative and imaginative skills of the artist are what people admire in BS’ers and lead many to make comments about BS’ers to the effect “He’s good” or “She’s clever.” Such comments may be made about anyone. Politicians, of course, are often consummately admired spinmeisters, as are many lawyers and sales and advertising practitioners. Some admiration may stem from the challenge a BS’er must overcome, such as a sales person confronted with the objections of a particularly difficult prospect. A well-crafted story, not entirely based on fact, to convince the prospect to buy can produce the above accolades.
Expectation of truth is doubtless the reason we are offended by the liar, but why not the same for the BS’er? After all, the overall impression made by the BS’er is false, even though individual statements made by such a person may be true. BS, as I suggested in a conference paper, is a species of lying, the two behaviors occupying opposite ends of a continuum.
In a post-publication interview, Frankfurt named marketing (of course) and, perhaps surprisingly, democracy as causes of the preponderance of BS in our culture today. Marketing, because salesmanship and advertising are falsely assumed to mean lying in order to separate consumers from their hard-earned dollars. And democracy, because in such a system we are obligated to have an opinion about everything; since we cannot know everything, says Frankfurt, our opinions amount to BS.*
One consequence of the connection between democracy and BS, Frankfurt continued, is that the highly educated, because they have the linguistic skills with which to express their opinions and the arrogance to neglect facts in the process, are more prone to BS than their lesser educated counterparts. Does this “democratic skill” cause admiration of others who exhibit the same?
Rationalization abounds to justify BS, such as “everyone does it,” “everyone knows it’s done this way,” and “that’s how business (or politics) is conducted.” Not “everyone” does know it, however, and if everyone did know it, how would that justify departures from the truth? Storytelling belongs in the art of fiction, not in business, politics, or daily conversation. Justifying fabrication in negotiation and salesmanship is precisely what gives capitalism a bad name.
The danger in admiring BS, and not carefully distinguishing it from the creative fiction of a true artist, is that habits of mind become established and human relationships end up being built out of little more than BS. Perception of the truth becomes nearly impossible, because every statement is for show, not a description of facts. Politics has become almost entirely a BS show, with honest intention seemingly nonexistent.
Worst of all, parents can encourage this habit in children at an early age. Smiling approval of a less-than truthful statement can communicate a “you’re clever” message to a child. For example, a boy who wants to get his way makes something up that will please his mother. The mother plays along, knowing fully that the gambit is less than genuine. A pattern of behavior has just been sanctioned by the mother.
Commitment to facts and truth, when such encouragement is continued throughout childhood and adolescence, goes out the window. Of course, parents who exhibit the same behavior become their children’s models. The BS habit becomes ingrained in the child’s subconscious and he or she may not even be aware that anything is wrong. “My parents do it. Everyone around me does it. Politicians do it. It must be right.”
From this beginning in the home, we derive a culture of BS.
* The fundamental cause is altruism, specifically the premise that self-interested behavior, which is required in our daily lives, is opposed to character and morality.)
Friday, July 27, 2007
Curiosity for Subtle Detail
As a young man I accepted the wisdom of doctors and their prescriptions without question, never bothering to learn the names of the drugs they ordered. After reading Jerome Groopman’s book How Doctors Think, I am not so sure I want to go back to a doctor! The ten to fifteen percent error rate in diagnosis and similar percentage in the misreading of x-rays and MRIs does not give one confidence in the medical profession. The nearly socialized nature of the medical market today does not help and no doubt contributes to the penchant of doctors to interrupt patients after only eighteen seconds and decide on a diagnosis within twenty. Add to this the failures to probe or to consider alternative, possibly subtle, explanations of symptoms, the stereotyping of patients, the worshipping of averages, the “this is how we’ve always done it” mentality, and the pressures to conform and not order more tests—and you have a prescription for bad medicine.
But Groopman’s book is not just about how doctors think—or rather, do not think; the errors apply equally to teachers and other professionals, as well as to anyone who has a problem to be solved or person to be judged. The arrogance, for example, that doctors are sometimes accused of is not the prerogative of medicine. Groopman’s parents were told by his fifth-grade teacher that he was “not college material” and an Ivy-League-trained first-grade teacher of the son of one of my colleagues predicted that the boy would become a high school dropout. (The colleague’s son is now applying to graduate school.) What are these errors and how can they be avoided?
Groopman’s book is a work of epistemology that describes how everyone tends to think at one time or another. Better thinkers, though, as Groopman points out, do not often make the mistakes he discusses and, more importantly, make concerted efforts to learn from the mistakes they do make. (One doctor that Groopman mentions keeps a log of each mistake he makes and analyzes why the error occurred.) Bad thinkers are not usually aware that they have committed any such errors, or if they are, choose to do nothing about them. I would characterize the essential mistake described in Groopman’s book as a mental passivity that lacks curiosity for subtle detail.
Curiosity is an eagerness to know, and knowing subtle detail requires the ability and willingness to make fine distinctions or to delve deeper and deeper beneath surface appearances. Not many people seem willing, or perhaps know how, to go this distance. The curiosity does not require a college education. I recall a garage door repairman who told me about a difficult-to-diagnose malfunction; he finally figured out that the sun’s reflection off the car that was frequently parked in front of the garage interfered with the electric eye controlling the door. With an eager glint in his eye, the repairman said, “That was an interesting problem!” This man certainly did not have a college education and possibly not a high school degree, but he did have what I would call a curiosity for subtle detail.
Judging other people—as doctors must judge their patients; as also parents must judge their children, teachers their students, managers their employees; as everyone must judge others with whom they come into contact, whether friend or foe—is not an easy task. It requires effort to gather data—facts—about the other person. Failure to gather one fact can change a negative evaluation to a positive, or vice versa. Omniscience is not possible, so rules-of-thumb based on past experience help make decisions. The better the past experience the better the rules-of-thumb. This means that accumulated knowledge is a factor in making sound judgments, but interest and desire to go beyond what too often become comfortable rules-of-thumb are what cause one person to see facts that another does not. Continued observation, not contentment, and a determined search for clues that might solve a problem or explain a behavior are what separate good thinkers from bad. And, further, as new evidence arises, the additional information is acknowledged by the good thinker and revision of a previous judgment, if necessary, is gladly made.
Curiosity for subtle detail is a commitment to observation, the commitment of a scientist in all areas of one’s life. It is a commitment to spot the relevant in the mass of data that daily confronts us and sometimes a commitment to stand in opposition to the conventional wisdom that might ignore or silence us.
But Groopman’s book is not just about how doctors think—or rather, do not think; the errors apply equally to teachers and other professionals, as well as to anyone who has a problem to be solved or person to be judged. The arrogance, for example, that doctors are sometimes accused of is not the prerogative of medicine. Groopman’s parents were told by his fifth-grade teacher that he was “not college material” and an Ivy-League-trained first-grade teacher of the son of one of my colleagues predicted that the boy would become a high school dropout. (The colleague’s son is now applying to graduate school.) What are these errors and how can they be avoided?
Groopman’s book is a work of epistemology that describes how everyone tends to think at one time or another. Better thinkers, though, as Groopman points out, do not often make the mistakes he discusses and, more importantly, make concerted efforts to learn from the mistakes they do make. (One doctor that Groopman mentions keeps a log of each mistake he makes and analyzes why the error occurred.) Bad thinkers are not usually aware that they have committed any such errors, or if they are, choose to do nothing about them. I would characterize the essential mistake described in Groopman’s book as a mental passivity that lacks curiosity for subtle detail.
Curiosity is an eagerness to know, and knowing subtle detail requires the ability and willingness to make fine distinctions or to delve deeper and deeper beneath surface appearances. Not many people seem willing, or perhaps know how, to go this distance. The curiosity does not require a college education. I recall a garage door repairman who told me about a difficult-to-diagnose malfunction; he finally figured out that the sun’s reflection off the car that was frequently parked in front of the garage interfered with the electric eye controlling the door. With an eager glint in his eye, the repairman said, “That was an interesting problem!” This man certainly did not have a college education and possibly not a high school degree, but he did have what I would call a curiosity for subtle detail.
Judging other people—as doctors must judge their patients; as also parents must judge their children, teachers their students, managers their employees; as everyone must judge others with whom they come into contact, whether friend or foe—is not an easy task. It requires effort to gather data—facts—about the other person. Failure to gather one fact can change a negative evaluation to a positive, or vice versa. Omniscience is not possible, so rules-of-thumb based on past experience help make decisions. The better the past experience the better the rules-of-thumb. This means that accumulated knowledge is a factor in making sound judgments, but interest and desire to go beyond what too often become comfortable rules-of-thumb are what cause one person to see facts that another does not. Continued observation, not contentment, and a determined search for clues that might solve a problem or explain a behavior are what separate good thinkers from bad. And, further, as new evidence arises, the additional information is acknowledged by the good thinker and revision of a previous judgment, if necessary, is gladly made.
Curiosity for subtle detail is a commitment to observation, the commitment of a scientist in all areas of one’s life. It is a commitment to spot the relevant in the mass of data that daily confronts us and sometimes a commitment to stand in opposition to the conventional wisdom that might ignore or silence us.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Privilege, Peer Review, and Piracy: Q & A
Three recent posts produced several questions and comments.
Follow the Government Intervention. In “The Market Gives Privilege to No One” I stated that certain groups of professionals do not usually work weekends and that the computer industry’s “24/7” indicates the ultimate in free-market service. “But I work weekends,” protested one doctor and one professor and shock was expressed that I was asking them to work around the clock!
Concerning the latter, no one person that I know of in the computer industry works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The designation “24/7” means that customers can get service whenever they need it; the 24/7 company covers the entire week, around the clock, with service workers. Educational services on Saturdays and Sundays are scarce. Medical services are nonexistent, unless you are willing to subject yourself to waiting six hours or more in a socialized hospital emergency room. Government intervention, especially restriction of the supply of doctors and hospitals in the medical market, creates these service distortions and gives the professors and doctors a privileged life. On the medical market, see "100 Years of Medical Robbery" and "Real Medical Freedom" by Dale Steinreich.
One professor recited a common view that some academics hold: students are not customers, but products to be sold to businesses, that is, students are “work in progress” that become “finished goods” upon graduation. At best, this description of students is metaphor, at worst it is profound insult. The product of education is the knowledge the professor is supposed to be conveying to students and knowledge is what students are buying with their tuition payments. If professors view students as products in a production line, is it any wonder that students feel like numbers on a roster? Why do professors view them this way? Follow the government intervention: because that is precisely how the bureaucracy views students.
Playing the Game. In “Drop Errors and the Trouble with Peer Review” I said that peer reviewers are gatekeepers that prevent or delay the acceptance of innovative ideas. One reader wrote that entrepreneurs are getting around the gatekeepers by establishing online journals.
True. Technological innovation, such as the Internet, has made it easier for writers to get into print without having to jump through the usual hoops and there has been a proliferation of academic journals, many of them online. Much of the proliferation, however, is driven by the publish-or-perish atmosphere of academic life, which is expanding beyond research universities to what used to be called teaching schools. Accreditation requirements for “academic qualification,” usually defined as a certain number of peer-reviewed journal articles—books don't count or, at most, count only as equivalent to one article—have created the need for more outlets to accommodate this increased “original research.”
University administrators have become bean counters and professors plan strategies for getting around the peer-review gatekeepers. Hallway discussion among faculty is about how to play the game.
Is Unauthorized Copying Theft? In “The Market Function of Piracy” I said that pirated goods may function as a free sample in accelerating the acceptance of new products. The question arises, am I defending theft? No, I’m trying to recast the intellectual property debate; I addressed the issue to some extent in a comment I made to my post on the Mises blog. See comment below.
As Siva Vaidnyanathan said in Copyrights and Copywrongs, “You cannot argue for theft” (p. 253). Neither Vaidnyanathan nor Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture are against intellectual property but both are attempting to rein in the lunacy of recent trends, such as the war against peer-to-peer file sharing and the push for perpetuity in copyrights. Their focus is on reforming intellectual property law to foster creativity, not stifle it. Roll it back, perhaps, to fourteen or twenty-eight years for copyrights.
The problem I have with their discussions, and others, is that interest-group and collectivist terminology dominate. Beginning with the Constitution, the aim of patents and copyrights is “to promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts.” Why not promote business in general? The aim of intellectual property legislation, they say, is to balance the needs of society with the rights of creators and the public good should dictate when property should go into the public domain. Etc.
When some advocates of intellectual property rights, on the other hand, make a case for the perpetuity, they have the collectivist and utilitarian defenders in a bind. Rights do not expire, they say. Why should my patent or copyright expire? Time limits are arbitrary, justified only on grounds of the public good. It is the failure to answer this argument, I think, that today is causing the continued lengthening of copyright, and to a lesser extent, patent terms.
The fundamental question to be answered in intellectual property debates is, where does your property end and my rights begin? How is it that you can come into my house and tell me that I cannot copy something I already paid you for? Or, to put it in historical context, is intellectual property really property or is it an instance of monopoly power and privilege? Historically, until the mid-nineteenth century, patents and copyrights were considered monopolies granted by the government; that’s why time limits were put on them. And many economists in the nineteenth century considered patents just another form of protectionism.
My knowledge of marketing theory adds an additional perspective to this debate. There are actions creators can take—mainly the relentless search for customers—to market their innovations without resort to patents and copyrights. Clothing designs, for example, are largely unprotected, but some designers, despite the rapid availability of knock-offs, do quite well. By initiating lawsuits, especially the kind that occur today, creators’ actions begin to look like monopoly protectionism cloaked in the self-righteous guise of property rights. Add to this the mind/body dichotomy—namely that creators do not like, and some even despise, having to aggressively market their wares—and you have a case for concluding that patents and copyrights are more about monopoly and less about property.
Property or monopoly. That is the issue. I’m not 100% certain that patents and copyrights are monopolies, but I’m no longer convinced that intellectual property is property. More research on my part must be done. I will have more to say about this topic at some other time.
Follow the Government Intervention. In “The Market Gives Privilege to No One” I stated that certain groups of professionals do not usually work weekends and that the computer industry’s “24/7” indicates the ultimate in free-market service. “But I work weekends,” protested one doctor and one professor and shock was expressed that I was asking them to work around the clock!
Concerning the latter, no one person that I know of in the computer industry works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The designation “24/7” means that customers can get service whenever they need it; the 24/7 company covers the entire week, around the clock, with service workers. Educational services on Saturdays and Sundays are scarce. Medical services are nonexistent, unless you are willing to subject yourself to waiting six hours or more in a socialized hospital emergency room. Government intervention, especially restriction of the supply of doctors and hospitals in the medical market, creates these service distortions and gives the professors and doctors a privileged life. On the medical market, see "100 Years of Medical Robbery" and "Real Medical Freedom" by Dale Steinreich.
One professor recited a common view that some academics hold: students are not customers, but products to be sold to businesses, that is, students are “work in progress” that become “finished goods” upon graduation. At best, this description of students is metaphor, at worst it is profound insult. The product of education is the knowledge the professor is supposed to be conveying to students and knowledge is what students are buying with their tuition payments. If professors view students as products in a production line, is it any wonder that students feel like numbers on a roster? Why do professors view them this way? Follow the government intervention: because that is precisely how the bureaucracy views students.
Playing the Game. In “Drop Errors and the Trouble with Peer Review” I said that peer reviewers are gatekeepers that prevent or delay the acceptance of innovative ideas. One reader wrote that entrepreneurs are getting around the gatekeepers by establishing online journals.
True. Technological innovation, such as the Internet, has made it easier for writers to get into print without having to jump through the usual hoops and there has been a proliferation of academic journals, many of them online. Much of the proliferation, however, is driven by the publish-or-perish atmosphere of academic life, which is expanding beyond research universities to what used to be called teaching schools. Accreditation requirements for “academic qualification,” usually defined as a certain number of peer-reviewed journal articles—books don't count or, at most, count only as equivalent to one article—have created the need for more outlets to accommodate this increased “original research.”
University administrators have become bean counters and professors plan strategies for getting around the peer-review gatekeepers. Hallway discussion among faculty is about how to play the game.
Is Unauthorized Copying Theft? In “The Market Function of Piracy” I said that pirated goods may function as a free sample in accelerating the acceptance of new products. The question arises, am I defending theft? No, I’m trying to recast the intellectual property debate; I addressed the issue to some extent in a comment I made to my post on the Mises blog. See comment below.
As Siva Vaidnyanathan said in Copyrights and Copywrongs, “You cannot argue for theft” (p. 253). Neither Vaidnyanathan nor Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture are against intellectual property but both are attempting to rein in the lunacy of recent trends, such as the war against peer-to-peer file sharing and the push for perpetuity in copyrights. Their focus is on reforming intellectual property law to foster creativity, not stifle it. Roll it back, perhaps, to fourteen or twenty-eight years for copyrights.
The problem I have with their discussions, and others, is that interest-group and collectivist terminology dominate. Beginning with the Constitution, the aim of patents and copyrights is “to promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts.” Why not promote business in general? The aim of intellectual property legislation, they say, is to balance the needs of society with the rights of creators and the public good should dictate when property should go into the public domain. Etc.
When some advocates of intellectual property rights, on the other hand, make a case for the perpetuity, they have the collectivist and utilitarian defenders in a bind. Rights do not expire, they say. Why should my patent or copyright expire? Time limits are arbitrary, justified only on grounds of the public good. It is the failure to answer this argument, I think, that today is causing the continued lengthening of copyright, and to a lesser extent, patent terms.
The fundamental question to be answered in intellectual property debates is, where does your property end and my rights begin? How is it that you can come into my house and tell me that I cannot copy something I already paid you for? Or, to put it in historical context, is intellectual property really property or is it an instance of monopoly power and privilege? Historically, until the mid-nineteenth century, patents and copyrights were considered monopolies granted by the government; that’s why time limits were put on them. And many economists in the nineteenth century considered patents just another form of protectionism.
My knowledge of marketing theory adds an additional perspective to this debate. There are actions creators can take—mainly the relentless search for customers—to market their innovations without resort to patents and copyrights. Clothing designs, for example, are largely unprotected, but some designers, despite the rapid availability of knock-offs, do quite well. By initiating lawsuits, especially the kind that occur today, creators’ actions begin to look like monopoly protectionism cloaked in the self-righteous guise of property rights. Add to this the mind/body dichotomy—namely that creators do not like, and some even despise, having to aggressively market their wares—and you have a case for concluding that patents and copyrights are more about monopoly and less about property.
Property or monopoly. That is the issue. I’m not 100% certain that patents and copyrights are monopolies, but I’m no longer convinced that intellectual property is property. More research on my part must be done. I will have more to say about this topic at some other time.
Monday, May 21, 2007
The Market Function of Piracy
In marketing the most effective way to introduce new products is the free sample. In 1978 Lever Brothers spent $15 million ($47.55 million in today’s currency) delivering a free sample of Signal Mouthwash to two-thirds of all US households. The strategy was a success and the product remained on the market well into the 1990s.
The significance of the free sample is product trial; it gets the product into consumers’ hands. If consumers use the sample and like it, they may go on to buy the product and buy it again and again, that is, become repeat purchasers; they may even spread the good word to others. When repeat purchasing and favorable word of mouth kick in, the product’s sales will experience a shift from slow to rapid growth and management will consider the product a success.
Free sampling is the best method of introducing new products, but it is also the most expensive. Not surprisingly, then, Forbes ASAP magazine (April 5, 1999, p. 54) reports this alternative way to practice free sampling:
Imitation is a universal trait of human behavior, ranging from the use of phrases and mannerisms of admired others to the reuse of hummable themes in music, recognizable images in paintings and well-known plots in literature and Disney movies. Imitation is a normal part of the competitive process in growth markets. As the sales of an innovative new product takes off, competitors enter the market with their own, often cheaper, versions.
If the innovative product is patented, competitors make minor design or functional changes to secure their own patents. Knock-offs are unauthorized, usually cheaper copies. And, of course, the innovative marketer often produces its own cheap version, sometimes called a fighting brand, to fend off the competition. Over time real prices in the product category decline and quality improves.
Knock-offs are pirated products. Because they are usually cheaper than the original, knock-offs tend to appeal to a more price-conscious segment of the market; that is, the buyers of pirated products are probably not legitimate prospects for the innovative new product, either because they cannot afford, or do not want to pay, the higher price. Message to the innovative marketer? Either drop the price of the new product or produce a cheaper version—or be the first to exploit a new technology, something the movie and recording industries chose not to do.* Many, including these two industries, would rather sue than practice good marketing.
One study found that users of pirated software sufficiently influenced—by word-of-mouth communication—eighty percent of the software’s prospects to buy the legal product and another described several scenarios in which piracy can help increase the sales of legal products.** The pirated product functions as a free sample that the innovator does not have to fund.
So what about free copies? How do you compete with free, to state the battle cry of the new Luddites who fear digital technology? It’s done all the time. One of the most dramatic recent instances of this was the strategy of science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, over the course of three years, gave away 700,000 electronic copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Sales of the hard copy went through six printings and surpassed his publisher’s expectations. Many of the downloaders, Doctorow said, did not buy the hard copy and probably would not have regardless, but the giveaway created considerable buzz and a significant minority did buy the hard copy. Compare the experience of the Mises Institute with Omnipotent Government.
Free—no matter where it comes from—can help sell.
* See Ray Beckerman’s "How the RIAA Litigation Process Works" to read how the Recording Industry Association of America uses questionable legal tactics to sue teenagers and grandmothers instead of designing creative money-making uses of P2P file sharing.
**Moshe Givon, Vijay Mahajan, and Eitan Muller, “Software Piracy: Estimation of Lost Sales and the Impact on Software Diffusion,” Journal of Marketing, 59:1 (January 1995), 29-37; Julio O. de Castro, David B. Balkin, and Dean A. Shepherd, “Knock-Off or Knockout?,” Business Strategy Review, Spring 2007, 28-32. Thanks to Gil Guillory on the Mises Scholars List for alerting me to the former study.
Cross posted on the Mises blog.
The significance of the free sample is product trial; it gets the product into consumers’ hands. If consumers use the sample and like it, they may go on to buy the product and buy it again and again, that is, become repeat purchasers; they may even spread the good word to others. When repeat purchasing and favorable word of mouth kick in, the product’s sales will experience a shift from slow to rapid growth and management will consider the product a success.
Free sampling is the best method of introducing new products, but it is also the most expensive. Not surprisingly, then, Forbes ASAP magazine (April 5, 1999, p. 54) reports this alternative way to practice free sampling:
One security manager for a major manufacturer, who asked not to be identified, says she is sure some companies actually view being counterfeited as a boon to their efforts to build brand awareness. After all, she says, if some companies give away merchandise to expand market share, what's not to like about having someone else take on the expense of manufacturing and distributing the goods, as long as they’re high-quality copies?
Imitation is a universal trait of human behavior, ranging from the use of phrases and mannerisms of admired others to the reuse of hummable themes in music, recognizable images in paintings and well-known plots in literature and Disney movies. Imitation is a normal part of the competitive process in growth markets. As the sales of an innovative new product takes off, competitors enter the market with their own, often cheaper, versions.
If the innovative product is patented, competitors make minor design or functional changes to secure their own patents. Knock-offs are unauthorized, usually cheaper copies. And, of course, the innovative marketer often produces its own cheap version, sometimes called a fighting brand, to fend off the competition. Over time real prices in the product category decline and quality improves.
Knock-offs are pirated products. Because they are usually cheaper than the original, knock-offs tend to appeal to a more price-conscious segment of the market; that is, the buyers of pirated products are probably not legitimate prospects for the innovative new product, either because they cannot afford, or do not want to pay, the higher price. Message to the innovative marketer? Either drop the price of the new product or produce a cheaper version—or be the first to exploit a new technology, something the movie and recording industries chose not to do.* Many, including these two industries, would rather sue than practice good marketing.
One study found that users of pirated software sufficiently influenced—by word-of-mouth communication—eighty percent of the software’s prospects to buy the legal product and another described several scenarios in which piracy can help increase the sales of legal products.** The pirated product functions as a free sample that the innovator does not have to fund.
So what about free copies? How do you compete with free, to state the battle cry of the new Luddites who fear digital technology? It’s done all the time. One of the most dramatic recent instances of this was the strategy of science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, over the course of three years, gave away 700,000 electronic copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Sales of the hard copy went through six printings and surpassed his publisher’s expectations. Many of the downloaders, Doctorow said, did not buy the hard copy and probably would not have regardless, but the giveaway created considerable buzz and a significant minority did buy the hard copy. Compare the experience of the Mises Institute with Omnipotent Government.
Free—no matter where it comes from—can help sell.
* See Ray Beckerman’s "How the RIAA Litigation Process Works" to read how the Recording Industry Association of America uses questionable legal tactics to sue teenagers and grandmothers instead of designing creative money-making uses of P2P file sharing.
**Moshe Givon, Vijay Mahajan, and Eitan Muller, “Software Piracy: Estimation of Lost Sales and the Impact on Software Diffusion,” Journal of Marketing, 59:1 (January 1995), 29-37; Julio O. de Castro, David B. Balkin, and Dean A. Shepherd, “Knock-Off or Knockout?,” Business Strategy Review, Spring 2007, 28-32. Thanks to Gil Guillory on the Mises Scholars List for alerting me to the former study.
Cross posted on the Mises blog.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Describe, Don't Evaluate
“Superlatives belong to the marketplace,” says David Ogilvy, founder of the Ogilvy and Mather advertising agency, not in “serious advertisement; they lead readers to discount the realism of every claim.” The same could be said about praise given to others: superlatives should come from the recipient of the compliment.
What Ogilvy means is that describing what a product can do for the customer, that is, explaining its benefits, is the essential requirement of good advertising copy. Hyping a product with evaluative “s-t” words—best, greatest, most wonderful thing since sliced bread—is seller’s puff and is devoid of the information prospects need to help them make a purchase decision. (Puffery is extravagant praise, a combination of exaggeration and evaluation.) If a “we” is included in the copy—we are the best, most wonderful, etc.—the advertising is called “brag and boast.” Evaluation, preferably of the positive superlative type, should come from the customer after product use.
This principle—describe, don’t evaluate—has broad application and includes relationships not just of sellers to customers, but also of parents to children, teachers to students, and employers to employees, among others. The principle is recommended as a replacement for negative criticism: “The milk spilled!” (describe) as opposed to “I don’t believe you did it again! How could you!” (evaluate). Name-calling, sarcasm, threats, berating, and the like, undercut self-esteem and cause defensiveness by attacking the other person’s character or personality.
Factually describing the incident helps the other person (child or student or employee) avoid drawing negative conclusions about him- or herself. The recipient of the criticism is then allowed to regroup and correct the situation. “Constructive criticism,” child psychologist Haim Ginott in Between Parent and Child says, “confines itself to pointing out what has to be done, entirely omitting negative remarks about the personality of the child” (or, by extension, student or employee).
Ginott goes on to apply this principle to the extravagant praise that is often heaped on children, such as the ubiquitous “Good job” or “We’re so proud of you.” Says Ginott, “Direct praise of personality, like direct sunlight, is uncomfortable and blinding. It is embarrassing for a person to be told that he is wonderful, angelic, generous, and humble. He feels called upon to deny at least part of the praise. . . . [and he] may have some second thoughts about those who have praised him: ‘If they find me so great, they cannot be so smart.’”
The same applies to the puffery heaped on students and employees. The Wall Street Journal* said as much recently when it chronicled the current praise-inflated culture of schools and employers. One such employer, said the article, dishes out praise every twenty seconds. Concerning the praise mania, the article quotes education critic John Holt**, who asks, “Is not most praise of children a kind of self-praise?” Certainly the schools that issue bumper stickers saying “My child is an honor student at XYZ school” are bragging and boasting about themselves.
So what is the proper way to express compliments to another person? For Ginott the principle remains: describe effort, accomplishment, or effect on you; let the other person draw the evaluative conclusion. “Thank you for washing the car, it looks new again.” is one of Ginott’s examples of what he calls helpful praise; “I did a good job; my work is appreciated” is the child’s possible conclusion. “You’re an angel,” says Ginott, is not helpful. Note that it is the child who concludes “good job,” not the adult who says it.
The phrase “effect on you” must be qualified and used carefully. “We’re so proud of you,” for example, can be an appropriate emotional response to a child’s accomplishments, but it often is heard as an evaluation, meaning “You are worthy of us.” To a child this is worse than direct sunlight, because the implication is that sometimes the child is not worthy. Properly described accomplishments should produce pride in the recipient.
“Thank you” is an appropriate expression of effect, when used in moderation. Some companies in today’s age of excess apparently overdose on thank you notes, according to the Wall Street Journal article mentioned above. Unfortunately, the WSJ confusingly lumped accolades and thank yous together. The bitter irony of the praise culture is that strokes are supposed to promote self-esteem, but disbelief and the perception of being manipulated, as well as a defensive need for more praise, are often the result.
Now the praise culture of superlatives poured on a product is not quite the same as extravagant praise gushed on a person, but those “s-t” words have the same effect on the prospect, as does praise on a child, student, or employee. Superlatives produce a big “why?” in the mind of the prospect. “Why do you say that? Why should I believe you? The sunlight is so blinding,” to use Ginott’s analogy, “that I can’t see the product or its features in order properly to evaluate it.”
Just as prospects need the space to pronounce for themselves that a product is “the best, greatest, most wonderful thing since sliced bread,” children, students, and employees must be given the freedom to judge themselves as someone who is doing good work and as someone who is good.
*Jeffrey Zaslow, "The Most Praised Generation Goes to Work" (p. W1) and "The Art of Constructive Compliments" (p. W7), April 20, 2007, eastern edition.
**John Holt is author of many books, including How Children Learn, How Children Fail, and The Underachieving School. The WSJ article did not provide the source of Holt’s quote.
What Ogilvy means is that describing what a product can do for the customer, that is, explaining its benefits, is the essential requirement of good advertising copy. Hyping a product with evaluative “s-t” words—best, greatest, most wonderful thing since sliced bread—is seller’s puff and is devoid of the information prospects need to help them make a purchase decision. (Puffery is extravagant praise, a combination of exaggeration and evaluation.) If a “we” is included in the copy—we are the best, most wonderful, etc.—the advertising is called “brag and boast.” Evaluation, preferably of the positive superlative type, should come from the customer after product use.
This principle—describe, don’t evaluate—has broad application and includes relationships not just of sellers to customers, but also of parents to children, teachers to students, and employers to employees, among others. The principle is recommended as a replacement for negative criticism: “The milk spilled!” (describe) as opposed to “I don’t believe you did it again! How could you!” (evaluate). Name-calling, sarcasm, threats, berating, and the like, undercut self-esteem and cause defensiveness by attacking the other person’s character or personality.
Factually describing the incident helps the other person (child or student or employee) avoid drawing negative conclusions about him- or herself. The recipient of the criticism is then allowed to regroup and correct the situation. “Constructive criticism,” child psychologist Haim Ginott in Between Parent and Child says, “confines itself to pointing out what has to be done, entirely omitting negative remarks about the personality of the child” (or, by extension, student or employee).
Ginott goes on to apply this principle to the extravagant praise that is often heaped on children, such as the ubiquitous “Good job” or “We’re so proud of you.” Says Ginott, “Direct praise of personality, like direct sunlight, is uncomfortable and blinding. It is embarrassing for a person to be told that he is wonderful, angelic, generous, and humble. He feels called upon to deny at least part of the praise. . . . [and he] may have some second thoughts about those who have praised him: ‘If they find me so great, they cannot be so smart.’”
The same applies to the puffery heaped on students and employees. The Wall Street Journal* said as much recently when it chronicled the current praise-inflated culture of schools and employers. One such employer, said the article, dishes out praise every twenty seconds. Concerning the praise mania, the article quotes education critic John Holt**, who asks, “Is not most praise of children a kind of self-praise?” Certainly the schools that issue bumper stickers saying “My child is an honor student at XYZ school” are bragging and boasting about themselves.
So what is the proper way to express compliments to another person? For Ginott the principle remains: describe effort, accomplishment, or effect on you; let the other person draw the evaluative conclusion. “Thank you for washing the car, it looks new again.” is one of Ginott’s examples of what he calls helpful praise; “I did a good job; my work is appreciated” is the child’s possible conclusion. “You’re an angel,” says Ginott, is not helpful. Note that it is the child who concludes “good job,” not the adult who says it.
The phrase “effect on you” must be qualified and used carefully. “We’re so proud of you,” for example, can be an appropriate emotional response to a child’s accomplishments, but it often is heard as an evaluation, meaning “You are worthy of us.” To a child this is worse than direct sunlight, because the implication is that sometimes the child is not worthy. Properly described accomplishments should produce pride in the recipient.
“Thank you” is an appropriate expression of effect, when used in moderation. Some companies in today’s age of excess apparently overdose on thank you notes, according to the Wall Street Journal article mentioned above. Unfortunately, the WSJ confusingly lumped accolades and thank yous together. The bitter irony of the praise culture is that strokes are supposed to promote self-esteem, but disbelief and the perception of being manipulated, as well as a defensive need for more praise, are often the result.
Now the praise culture of superlatives poured on a product is not quite the same as extravagant praise gushed on a person, but those “s-t” words have the same effect on the prospect, as does praise on a child, student, or employee. Superlatives produce a big “why?” in the mind of the prospect. “Why do you say that? Why should I believe you? The sunlight is so blinding,” to use Ginott’s analogy, “that I can’t see the product or its features in order properly to evaluate it.”
Just as prospects need the space to pronounce for themselves that a product is “the best, greatest, most wonderful thing since sliced bread,” children, students, and employees must be given the freedom to judge themselves as someone who is doing good work and as someone who is good.
*Jeffrey Zaslow, "The Most Praised Generation Goes to Work" (p. W1) and "The Art of Constructive Compliments" (p. W7), April 20, 2007, eastern edition.
**John Holt is author of many books, including How Children Learn, How Children Fail, and The Underachieving School. The WSJ article did not provide the source of Holt’s quote.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Drop Errors and the Trouble with Peer Review
In product development there are two kinds of errors. A “go” error occurs when the green light is given to a product that eventually fails. The Edsel, a $250 million write-off by the Ford Motor Company in 1959, is one example. The “drop” error occurs when an idea that could have been highly profitable is eliminated from further consideration. How do we know that the idea could have been profitable? In a free market dropped ideas have the habit of being picked up by someone else. Chester Carlson’s invention was dropped by such notables as General Electric, 3M, Kodak, RCA, and IBM, but picked up by the small Haloid Company. In 1961 Haloid changed its name to Xerox. Even go errors in a free market often get corrected; just a few years after the Edsel fiasco, Ford rolled out a better idea called the Mustang.
Peer review is the process by which millions of dollars of government money are handed out to researchers in medicine and the physical sciences; the process by which recognition, promotion, and tenure are determined for professors, especially those in the “softer” sciences who do not need or use grants for their research; and one of the criteria—numbers of peer-reviewed journal articles, for example—used to determine accreditation for universities.
Peer review, a “blind” process in which the names of author and evaluator are concealed from each other, requires two or three so-called peers to read a paper or proposal to judge the quality of actual or proposed research before acceptance. As such, peer review is a product development process that protects only against go errors. It is at best quality control that insures accuracy and reliability of research done. At worst it holds back innovation through drop errors. Since there is no free market in scholarly research—today’s government-university-science complex is a severely hampered market—dropped ideas either never get a hearing or take many more years than they otherwise should to surface.
Medical researcher and long-time critic of peer review, David Horrobin, argued that the peer-review process, which developed in its current form largely as a screening device after World War II, has perhaps improved the accuracy and reliability of conventional research published in medicine, but it has done so at the price of innovation. Prior to World War II, unknown researchers could submit papers to journals only with the endorsement of a published author. The editor would then decide whether or not to publish. Peer review was ad hoc and not common. It was the growth of government involvement in education and, especially, the government’s lavishing of money on research that called for the blind-review screening process.
In a paper titled “The Philosophical Basis of Peer Review and the Suppression of Innovation” Horrobin urged that more unconventional and innovative research be encouraged by journal editors. When a reviewer questioned the need for such a statement, Horrobin produced eighteen incidences of medical innovations rejected by the peer-review process. In 1995 Horrobin’s paper was cited by the US Supreme Court as support for the argument that some “well-grounded but innovative theories” may not be published in peer-reviewed outlets.
Horrobin’s solution to divvying up grant money was to give funds equally to all researchers and let each work on whatever his or her interests indicated. Prior to 1960, said Horrobin, this interest-as-guide process was essentially how funding was distributed in the UK and more innovation in medicine resulted in those years than in the years since 1960. Horrobin approved of government involvement in and funding of research, but the analogy to free markets in his solution—bottom-up, self-interested choice by researchers—versus central planning—top-down, “expert” direction by peer reviewers—cannot be escaped.
Never mind that Socrates and Galileo were badly treated by their peer reviewers or that frauds and hoaxes sometimes dodge the quality controllers or, further, that you may want to cite Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises but can’t figure out how to get past your peer-review gatekeepers, the real problem of peer review is the severely hampered market in scholarly research. What would a truly free market in scholarly research be like?
First, publishers of journals and scholarly books would have to earn a profit from their buyers and not live off the donations of their authors or other benefactors. Some university presses, for example, are now publishing what are called “supported books,” which means someone, usually the author’s department, must contribute one or two thousand dollars to the publication of the author’s book. And at least one commercial press requires authors to do their own copy edit and provide camera-ready typeset text; this can add up to two thousand dollars or more that authors must fund. Twenty-five dollars per page, charged to authors or their departments, has long been the going rate for published papers in some fields. (In some quarters today this method of getting into print would be called subsidy or vanity publishing.)
In addition, the so-called nonprofits, which finance a portion of today’s research and journals, are in fact creatures of the tax system and must, despite their descriptive name, show an excess of donations over expenses lest their organization become some philanthropist’s very expensive hobby. Under laissez-faire, in the absence of tax write-offs and the guilt and ignorance of economics that wealthy business people tend to exhibit, there probably would be far fewer such organizations than exist today.
Second, there would be no government money to dangle in front of researchers and no government-owned or -regulated universities filled with bureaucratized product lines (curricula designed by committee), bureaucratized sales reps (the professors), or bureaucratized performance evaluations (those mounds of paper, which include lists of published research, that must be produced for promotion, tenure, and most every other consideration). All of this distorts the market and probably encourages the overabundance of pretentious minutia that fills today’s overabundance of academic journals.
Under laissez-faire, only the market would decide who produces what and who gets what in scholarly output. Indeed, the market for this research might not differ much from the product development market in automobiles. Private, profit-making firms, both traditional businesses and universities, would finance the work and effectively and efficiently produce market-satisfying results. Portions of the results might be published in profit-making journals and books, much of it perhaps not.
Yes, there might be some Edsels created by this free-market development process and there might still be some delayed acceptances of Xeroxes, but there also might be a lot more Mustangs! Absent the government-encouraged gatekeepers and other hurdles that must be jumped in order to get into the market, researchers who cannot find an outlet will be free to start their own journals, publishing companies, businesses, or even universities. The hampered market today, which includes the “golden handcuffs” of tenure, makes this quite difficult.
See related posts on the Mises blog: 1, 2.
Peer review is the process by which millions of dollars of government money are handed out to researchers in medicine and the physical sciences; the process by which recognition, promotion, and tenure are determined for professors, especially those in the “softer” sciences who do not need or use grants for their research; and one of the criteria—numbers of peer-reviewed journal articles, for example—used to determine accreditation for universities.
Peer review, a “blind” process in which the names of author and evaluator are concealed from each other, requires two or three so-called peers to read a paper or proposal to judge the quality of actual or proposed research before acceptance. As such, peer review is a product development process that protects only against go errors. It is at best quality control that insures accuracy and reliability of research done. At worst it holds back innovation through drop errors. Since there is no free market in scholarly research—today’s government-university-science complex is a severely hampered market—dropped ideas either never get a hearing or take many more years than they otherwise should to surface.
Medical researcher and long-time critic of peer review, David Horrobin, argued that the peer-review process, which developed in its current form largely as a screening device after World War II, has perhaps improved the accuracy and reliability of conventional research published in medicine, but it has done so at the price of innovation. Prior to World War II, unknown researchers could submit papers to journals only with the endorsement of a published author. The editor would then decide whether or not to publish. Peer review was ad hoc and not common. It was the growth of government involvement in education and, especially, the government’s lavishing of money on research that called for the blind-review screening process.
In a paper titled “The Philosophical Basis of Peer Review and the Suppression of Innovation” Horrobin urged that more unconventional and innovative research be encouraged by journal editors. When a reviewer questioned the need for such a statement, Horrobin produced eighteen incidences of medical innovations rejected by the peer-review process. In 1995 Horrobin’s paper was cited by the US Supreme Court as support for the argument that some “well-grounded but innovative theories” may not be published in peer-reviewed outlets.
Horrobin’s solution to divvying up grant money was to give funds equally to all researchers and let each work on whatever his or her interests indicated. Prior to 1960, said Horrobin, this interest-as-guide process was essentially how funding was distributed in the UK and more innovation in medicine resulted in those years than in the years since 1960. Horrobin approved of government involvement in and funding of research, but the analogy to free markets in his solution—bottom-up, self-interested choice by researchers—versus central planning—top-down, “expert” direction by peer reviewers—cannot be escaped.
Never mind that Socrates and Galileo were badly treated by their peer reviewers or that frauds and hoaxes sometimes dodge the quality controllers or, further, that you may want to cite Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises but can’t figure out how to get past your peer-review gatekeepers, the real problem of peer review is the severely hampered market in scholarly research. What would a truly free market in scholarly research be like?
First, publishers of journals and scholarly books would have to earn a profit from their buyers and not live off the donations of their authors or other benefactors. Some university presses, for example, are now publishing what are called “supported books,” which means someone, usually the author’s department, must contribute one or two thousand dollars to the publication of the author’s book. And at least one commercial press requires authors to do their own copy edit and provide camera-ready typeset text; this can add up to two thousand dollars or more that authors must fund. Twenty-five dollars per page, charged to authors or their departments, has long been the going rate for published papers in some fields. (In some quarters today this method of getting into print would be called subsidy or vanity publishing.)
In addition, the so-called nonprofits, which finance a portion of today’s research and journals, are in fact creatures of the tax system and must, despite their descriptive name, show an excess of donations over expenses lest their organization become some philanthropist’s very expensive hobby. Under laissez-faire, in the absence of tax write-offs and the guilt and ignorance of economics that wealthy business people tend to exhibit, there probably would be far fewer such organizations than exist today.
Second, there would be no government money to dangle in front of researchers and no government-owned or -regulated universities filled with bureaucratized product lines (curricula designed by committee), bureaucratized sales reps (the professors), or bureaucratized performance evaluations (those mounds of paper, which include lists of published research, that must be produced for promotion, tenure, and most every other consideration). All of this distorts the market and probably encourages the overabundance of pretentious minutia that fills today’s overabundance of academic journals.
Under laissez-faire, only the market would decide who produces what and who gets what in scholarly output. Indeed, the market for this research might not differ much from the product development market in automobiles. Private, profit-making firms, both traditional businesses and universities, would finance the work and effectively and efficiently produce market-satisfying results. Portions of the results might be published in profit-making journals and books, much of it perhaps not.
Yes, there might be some Edsels created by this free-market development process and there might still be some delayed acceptances of Xeroxes, but there also might be a lot more Mustangs! Absent the government-encouraged gatekeepers and other hurdles that must be jumped in order to get into the market, researchers who cannot find an outlet will be free to start their own journals, publishing companies, businesses, or even universities. The hampered market today, which includes the “golden handcuffs” of tenure, makes this quite difficult.
See related posts on the Mises blog: 1, 2.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The Market Gives Privilege to No One
“Bankers’ hours” is an old phrase that actually reflects monopolistic privilege. The 10AM to 3PM that banks formerly were open to serve customers was made possible by government regulation and the consequent lack of competition to force bankers to be more available when customers needed them. With modest deregulation (and the electronic bookkeeping that deregulation encouraged) banks today are open a little longer than the former hours and some are even open on Saturdays.
Doctors, dentists, lawyers, and professors, however—a distinguished group that enjoy government-granted privileges in the form of licensing and other regulatory protections—still do not usually work weekends. Free-market service firms must be open and available when their customers need them. Why should medical or educational services only be available Monday through Friday, 8AM to 5PM? The significantly unregulated computer industry’s “24/7” indicates the ultimate in service. The free market gives privilege to no one.
Privilege is a remnant of aristocratic life, special enjoyments granted due to birth or rank in society. Today, the rank stems directly from bureaucratic intrusions into the marketplace. Its key trait is that it is unearned, making the holder of the rank exempt from competition. Regulations restrict a portion of the market to the exclusive enjoyment of those protected at the expense of those who are not so protected. Sometimes, those enjoying this rank exhibit aristocratic arrogance, such as the professor who says to a student, during the professor’s posted office hours: “I can’t talk now. I have a meeting.” The meeting is with other professors and the message conveyed is that other professors are more important than paying customers.*
Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College, has coined a word that actually is broader than the monopolistic privileges I am talking about here. (And Fuller, who is a social liberal, would certainly not agree with my application of his term.) Fuller recognizes that there is legitimate rank that can be earned, so he coined the term “rankism” to mean “the abuse of rank.” Rankism, he says, describes a concept similar to, but broader than, racism, sexism, and bullying in general:
Fuller argues that equality means “equal dignity” and everyone has a right to it; equality does not mean equal wealth or equal rank. As a social liberal, he thinks the government, as in the case of race and gender inequities, must step in. My interpretation is that the government was a cause or magnifier of these particular inequities.
Despite his social liberalism, Fuller’s concept provides valuable insight into the psychological underpinnings of the abuse of rank by those in higher or privileged authority. Earned rank does exist naturally in society—parents hold rank over children, teachers over students, and employers over employees—and more earned rank would exist in a truly free-market economy because bureaucrats would have to get jobs in business and compete for their positions of authority.
From the standpoint of psychology, though, as Fuller demonstrates, “lording it over” one’s subordinates derives from defensive anxiety and the necessity of setting oneself up as special or superior to others. Sometimes this necessity is made manifest through regulatory privilege.
Rankism, says Fuller, is the last “vestige of aristocratic class” that must be eliminated from the home, school, workplace, and social order before we can achieve a just society based on equal dignity. The first step, in contrast to what Fuller would say, involves removing the last semblance of regulatory privilege by getting government out of our lives and economy.
Fuller’s web site is called Breaking Ranks.
*Oops! Did I say students were paying customers? I realize that many professors—a privileged group I know well—object strenuously to this characterization. Yet students in a state-financed university, such as mine, often work thirty or more hours per week to pay for their education. This means they are paying substantial taxes to pay for their professors’ meal tickets. And this doesn’t count the taxes the students’ parents have paid over the years. So, yes, I do believe it is correct to call my students paying customers.
Doctors, dentists, lawyers, and professors, however—a distinguished group that enjoy government-granted privileges in the form of licensing and other regulatory protections—still do not usually work weekends. Free-market service firms must be open and available when their customers need them. Why should medical or educational services only be available Monday through Friday, 8AM to 5PM? The significantly unregulated computer industry’s “24/7” indicates the ultimate in service. The free market gives privilege to no one.
Privilege is a remnant of aristocratic life, special enjoyments granted due to birth or rank in society. Today, the rank stems directly from bureaucratic intrusions into the marketplace. Its key trait is that it is unearned, making the holder of the rank exempt from competition. Regulations restrict a portion of the market to the exclusive enjoyment of those protected at the expense of those who are not so protected. Sometimes, those enjoying this rank exhibit aristocratic arrogance, such as the professor who says to a student, during the professor’s posted office hours: “I can’t talk now. I have a meeting.” The meeting is with other professors and the message conveyed is that other professors are more important than paying customers.*
Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College, has coined a word that actually is broader than the monopolistic privileges I am talking about here. (And Fuller, who is a social liberal, would certainly not agree with my application of his term.) Fuller recognizes that there is legitimate rank that can be earned, so he coined the term “rankism” to mean “the abuse of rank.” Rankism, he says, describes a concept similar to, but broader than, racism, sexism, and bullying in general:
Rankism insults the dignity of subordinates by treating them as invisible, as nobodies. Nobody is another n-word and, like the original, it is used to justify denigration and inequity (Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank, p. 5).
Fuller argues that equality means “equal dignity” and everyone has a right to it; equality does not mean equal wealth or equal rank. As a social liberal, he thinks the government, as in the case of race and gender inequities, must step in. My interpretation is that the government was a cause or magnifier of these particular inequities.
Despite his social liberalism, Fuller’s concept provides valuable insight into the psychological underpinnings of the abuse of rank by those in higher or privileged authority. Earned rank does exist naturally in society—parents hold rank over children, teachers over students, and employers over employees—and more earned rank would exist in a truly free-market economy because bureaucrats would have to get jobs in business and compete for their positions of authority.
From the standpoint of psychology, though, as Fuller demonstrates, “lording it over” one’s subordinates derives from defensive anxiety and the necessity of setting oneself up as special or superior to others. Sometimes this necessity is made manifest through regulatory privilege.
Rankism, says Fuller, is the last “vestige of aristocratic class” that must be eliminated from the home, school, workplace, and social order before we can achieve a just society based on equal dignity. The first step, in contrast to what Fuller would say, involves removing the last semblance of regulatory privilege by getting government out of our lives and economy.
Fuller’s web site is called Breaking Ranks.
*Oops! Did I say students were paying customers? I realize that many professors—a privileged group I know well—object strenuously to this characterization. Yet students in a state-financed university, such as mine, often work thirty or more hours per week to pay for their education. This means they are paying substantial taxes to pay for their professors’ meal tickets. And this doesn’t count the taxes the students’ parents have paid over the years. So, yes, I do believe it is correct to call my students paying customers.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Why Does Capitalism Need To Be Defended?
I admit that I have not heard this question in precisely that form. After the hardcover edition of my book In Defense of Advertising: Arguments from Reason, Ethical Egoism, and Laissez-Faire Capitalism was published, I did hear the question this way: Why does advertising need to be defended? As advertising is the point man and product of capitalism, the two questions are intimately related.
The question about advertising initially surprised me. When the look on my face expressed a “Did you read the book?” reply, my questioners promptly continued, “Advertising in the U.S. is a $270 billion a year business. It doesn’t need to be defended!” Somehow, apparently, the amount of money spent by the industry was supposed to be its own justification. Similarly, I could imagine someone thinking or saying, “The United States is a $12 trillion a year economy. Capitalism doesn’t need to be defended!”
I soon came to realize where my advertising questioners were coming from: their question is motivated by the premises of what I call the critics’ world view. As I argue in my book, the social and economic criticisms of advertising—namely that advertising is coercive, offensive, and monopolistic—are based on false philosophic and economic ideas that at root are authoritarian.
The discussion with my questioners usually runs as follows. The questioners comment that advertising is a “big bucks” industry and, like any other big business, assume it eventually becomes immune to competition—and to criticism. “It’s just words,” they say, “like water falling off a duck’s back. The criticisms have no effect on advertisers who, after all, are so big and powerful that they can easily ignore the complaints. Therefore, advertising does not need to be defended.” QED. Subsequent discussion then brings out the premise that a little (or a lot) of legislation is needed to help cut these guys down to size. Why? Because advertising is so . . . well, coercive, offensive, and monopolistic. At that point, we are off to the litany of criticisms that ranges from alleged sexual orgies subliminally embedded in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant menu to the four-firm concentration ratio.
No doubt, anyone who has engaged the critics of capitalism has observed a similar pattern. It involves a move from surface appearances—advertising doesn’t need to be defended—to underlying causal principles that initially seem unconnected to the appearances—these big advertisers need to be brought down a few notches. It is a move from what is seen, to use Bastiat’s phrase, to what is not seen. Bastiat explained the seen and unseen in terms of economic events, but the more fundamental psychological issue here is that conscious perceptions (the seen) are shaped by the contents of one’s subconscious (the unseen). Defenders of advertising and capitalism must probe to those deeper levels and make the critics aware of, and answer, all of the buried fallacies that motivate their surface comments.
Contrary to what the critics of advertising—or capitalism—may think, their criticisms do have an effect. When left unanswered, the criticisms reinforce ignorance and misunderstandings about the nature of advertising and, by implication, capitalism. They reinforce and encourage hostility toward both. And they implicitly and explicitly provide a call for legislation to restrain what are perceived by the critics to be “abuses” of advertising and big business.
The question about advertising initially surprised me. When the look on my face expressed a “Did you read the book?” reply, my questioners promptly continued, “Advertising in the U.S. is a $270 billion a year business. It doesn’t need to be defended!” Somehow, apparently, the amount of money spent by the industry was supposed to be its own justification. Similarly, I could imagine someone thinking or saying, “The United States is a $12 trillion a year economy. Capitalism doesn’t need to be defended!”
I soon came to realize where my advertising questioners were coming from: their question is motivated by the premises of what I call the critics’ world view. As I argue in my book, the social and economic criticisms of advertising—namely that advertising is coercive, offensive, and monopolistic—are based on false philosophic and economic ideas that at root are authoritarian.
The discussion with my questioners usually runs as follows. The questioners comment that advertising is a “big bucks” industry and, like any other big business, assume it eventually becomes immune to competition—and to criticism. “It’s just words,” they say, “like water falling off a duck’s back. The criticisms have no effect on advertisers who, after all, are so big and powerful that they can easily ignore the complaints. Therefore, advertising does not need to be defended.” QED. Subsequent discussion then brings out the premise that a little (or a lot) of legislation is needed to help cut these guys down to size. Why? Because advertising is so . . . well, coercive, offensive, and monopolistic. At that point, we are off to the litany of criticisms that ranges from alleged sexual orgies subliminally embedded in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant menu to the four-firm concentration ratio.
No doubt, anyone who has engaged the critics of capitalism has observed a similar pattern. It involves a move from surface appearances—advertising doesn’t need to be defended—to underlying causal principles that initially seem unconnected to the appearances—these big advertisers need to be brought down a few notches. It is a move from what is seen, to use Bastiat’s phrase, to what is not seen. Bastiat explained the seen and unseen in terms of economic events, but the more fundamental psychological issue here is that conscious perceptions (the seen) are shaped by the contents of one’s subconscious (the unseen). Defenders of advertising and capitalism must probe to those deeper levels and make the critics aware of, and answer, all of the buried fallacies that motivate their surface comments.
Contrary to what the critics of advertising—or capitalism—may think, their criticisms do have an effect. When left unanswered, the criticisms reinforce ignorance and misunderstandings about the nature of advertising and, by implication, capitalism. They reinforce and encourage hostility toward both. And they implicitly and explicitly provide a call for legislation to restrain what are perceived by the critics to be “abuses” of advertising and big business.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Healthy and Unhealthy Competition
Education and social critic Alfie Kohn is an exhaustive researcher and engaging writer. I have not read all of his eleven original books, but I do highly recommend these two: Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes and Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. The titles and subtitles make clear his premises about human motivation and behavior. In his first book, however, No Contest: The Case against Competition, Kohn writes (p. 9), “The more closely I have examined the topic, the more firmly I have become convinced that competition is an inherently undesirable arrangement, that the phrase healthy competition is actually a contradiction in terms.” To this, I must take exception.
Kohn, a strong defender of intrinsic motivation, frames his critique of competition—an extrinsic motivator—as setting up an irreconcilable conflict between doing well and beating others, as focusing on competence and accomplishment vs. trying to do something better than someone else. But healthy competition, especially the economic type, requires strong focus on doing well; beating someone else in the process, if it is focused on at all, is consequence. Kohn’s understanding of economic competition, unfortunately, is laced with Marxist mythology, Galbraith’s dependence effect, and the doctrine of pure and perfect competition, so he sees competition as an unfair and arbitrary creator of desires. Even at the highest levels of athletic competition, winning is consequence of doing well. Winning for its own sake is indeed not an attractive character trait.
Other forms of competition, however, do tend to focus exclusively, or nearly so, on beating others. Competition in the animal kingdom is the extreme example where, because of the limited supply of food and territory, competition often becomes a fight-to-the-death encounter. Among humans living in a society of abundance, a different kind of fight-to-the-death desperation is sometimes seen—not physical desperation as animals might face, but psychological. Because of the anxiety that many people feel, “competitiveness,” or a desperate need to defeat others, becomes a defensive motivator. Doing well takes a back seat. Occasionally, a highly talented and accomplished person exhibits defense-driven competitiveness, but this does not detract from the point that the source of the competitiveness is psychology and the source of the accomplishment is ability.
The one form of competition that devalues doing well and encourages beating others is that caused by government intervention into the economy. Ludwig von Mises points out (chapter 15, section 5) that totalitarian states encourage people to “court the favor of those in power,” but this is true of any bureaucratic intrusion into the economy. Licensed professionals, because of the privileges extended to them by the government, will focus less on doing their jobs well and more on making sure the bureaucrats keep the unlicensed out of their market. Because of the restriction in supply brought about by the licensing monopoly, the consumers of that profession must now scramble—not too differently from what animals must do in their kingdom—to compete with each other, that is, to try to beat others, to obtain that limited supply. The beaten ones, as in the medical market, go without.
Kohn’s book is filled with examples of bureaucratic and defensive competition, two types that I would agree are unhealthy, but he does not always identify them as such. He, of course, confuses the two with healthy, economic competition. If read with an understanding of this confusion in mind, Kohn’s book can provide a detailed analysis of the less savory forms of competition that exist in our society.
Kohn, a strong defender of intrinsic motivation, frames his critique of competition—an extrinsic motivator—as setting up an irreconcilable conflict between doing well and beating others, as focusing on competence and accomplishment vs. trying to do something better than someone else. But healthy competition, especially the economic type, requires strong focus on doing well; beating someone else in the process, if it is focused on at all, is consequence. Kohn’s understanding of economic competition, unfortunately, is laced with Marxist mythology, Galbraith’s dependence effect, and the doctrine of pure and perfect competition, so he sees competition as an unfair and arbitrary creator of desires. Even at the highest levels of athletic competition, winning is consequence of doing well. Winning for its own sake is indeed not an attractive character trait.
Other forms of competition, however, do tend to focus exclusively, or nearly so, on beating others. Competition in the animal kingdom is the extreme example where, because of the limited supply of food and territory, competition often becomes a fight-to-the-death encounter. Among humans living in a society of abundance, a different kind of fight-to-the-death desperation is sometimes seen—not physical desperation as animals might face, but psychological. Because of the anxiety that many people feel, “competitiveness,” or a desperate need to defeat others, becomes a defensive motivator. Doing well takes a back seat. Occasionally, a highly talented and accomplished person exhibits defense-driven competitiveness, but this does not detract from the point that the source of the competitiveness is psychology and the source of the accomplishment is ability.
The one form of competition that devalues doing well and encourages beating others is that caused by government intervention into the economy. Ludwig von Mises points out (chapter 15, section 5) that totalitarian states encourage people to “court the favor of those in power,” but this is true of any bureaucratic intrusion into the economy. Licensed professionals, because of the privileges extended to them by the government, will focus less on doing their jobs well and more on making sure the bureaucrats keep the unlicensed out of their market. Because of the restriction in supply brought about by the licensing monopoly, the consumers of that profession must now scramble—not too differently from what animals must do in their kingdom—to compete with each other, that is, to try to beat others, to obtain that limited supply. The beaten ones, as in the medical market, go without.
Kohn’s book is filled with examples of bureaucratic and defensive competition, two types that I would agree are unhealthy, but he does not always identify them as such. He, of course, confuses the two with healthy, economic competition. If read with an understanding of this confusion in mind, Kohn’s book can provide a detailed analysis of the less savory forms of competition that exist in our society.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Does Subliminal Advertising Exist?
That’s the short answer. Some elaboration is required.
The term “subliminal” means beneath the threshold of perception. Many things are subliminal, such as the circulation of our blood, which we normally do not feel, experience, or perceive moving throughout our bodies. And it is possible to have our skin touched in such a way that we do not notice the touch. Subliminal advertising, however, is supposedly the power to motivate action based on something that no one can perceive, such as a message flashed on a movie or television screen at 1/3000th of a second or the word “sex” unrecognizably embedded in ice cubes in a liquor print ad. James Vicary and Wilson Bryan Key, respectively, are the two proponents of these claims. See this brief recap of their roles in the history of subliminal advertising. Marketing professor Stuart Rogers argues that Vicary’s movie theater “experiment” was a hoax. (A probably unauthorized copy of Prof. Rogers’ article is available here.)
The notion of subliminal perception is a self-contradiction because it is not possible to perceive something that is beneath one’s threshold of perception. Add to this the fact that advertisers exert great effort to make their messages blatantly explicit—innuendo, sexual or otherwise, is intended to be noticed—and you have no grounds for the subliminal advertising complaint. Critics are never satisfied, though, so they now talk about “semi-subliminal” advertising and “secondary imagery” that is often missed on an initial look. The latter is just a variation on the subliminal-embed theme of Wilson Key. The former is what Ayn Rand would call an “anti-concept.” Either something is above the threshold of perception or it is not; it cannot be half-way between. There are, of course, levels of perception, once above the threshold, but the lower the level, the less likely we are to be influenced by the message.
Repetitiveness is then thrown into the mix with the argument that we are manipulated by a constant repetition of ads that makes us change our desires without being aware of the process. Hmm. There are quite a few influencers in our lives who use repetition to get us to change our minds (or to reinforce a value or view we already hold): parents in relation to their children, teachers in relation to their students, journalists in relation to their audiences, and, oh yes, politicians—who have been known to use many different communication techniques to win votes—in relation to their constituencies. As I say in my book, when it comes to ethics and taste in communication, advertisers can hold their own against any of these four groups of influencers. Advertising just happens to be a convenient fall guy.
Then there is the flap last winter over Kentucky Fried Chicken’s alleged subliminal advertising (1, 2). A code word was inserted in one frame of a thirty-second commercial. When taken to KFC’s web site, the code word would produce a coupon for a Buffalo Snacker sandwich. ABC thought it was subliminal advertising and only ran the commercial minus the frame containing the code word—despite KFC’s wide publicizing of the stunt and their obvious desire for everyone to go looking for the code word. That the commercial had to be recorded and played slowly enough to view each individual frame speaks volumes about the people who still want to believe in subliminal advertising. Their motivation, as I demonstrate in my book, runs deep and is rooted in hostility toward capitalism, egoism, and, ultimately, reason.
Failure to understand the nature and causes of one’s emotions and, more generally, ignorance of the influence of the subconscious on one’s conscious perceptions are the sources of belief in subliminal communication. A commercial showing a sizzling T-bone steak, for example, at 5PM may trigger salivation in some, perhaps many. Why? Because of the viewers’ stored evaluations of steak as deliciously satisfying when hungry. A person who has just eaten, however, will not react that way. And a vegetarian may react with indifference or even indignation. The contents of our subconscious minds can indeed be triggered by conscious (not subliminal) perceptions, but the material in the subconscious is a conclusion that was drawn—an evaluation made—some time earlier. Hmm. All this hostility toward advertising, capitalism, egoism, and reason must be triggered by “subliminal” communication from the parents, teachers, journalists, and politicians who repetitiously harp about those institutions’ alleged flaws and evils!
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