Planning and more planning
Over at The Gates of Vienna, an intriguing blog, I found much to like and learn. But I also found a comment that exemplifies some of the problems with the post-Katrina commentary.
Dymphna argues for more planning as the solution to the problem of unpreparedness.
Specifically, she thinks the problem is that "We are not training enough people in maintaining anything. Maintenance jobs are considered “low status” and kids who shouldn’t be there are pushed into college."
Well, no. There may be problems with the set of incentives and institutions with which the states and federal government manage education but the problem is not a lack of planning. The problem is that the states and federal government are interfering in the marketplace. The problem is not that maintenance jobs are low status, whatever that means, but that maintenance jobs are actually getting harder because technology is getting tougher to maintain. Ask a car mechanic. I had to learn something about the development of engine controllers for heavy duty diesel engines for a paper I wrote (Regulation by Litigation: EPA’s Regulation of Heavy-Duty Diesel Engines, 56 Administrative Law Review 403-518 (2004) (with Bruce Yandle and Andrew Dorchak) for the curious - email me and I'll mail you a reprint). Between 1970 and 2000, engine controllers in all forms of internal combustion engines got very sophisticated, partly in response to clean air regulation but partly because technology got a lot cheaper. As a result, maintaining an engine got a lot more complicated along with the engines - but the jobs divided. Some "maintenance" on engines now is plugging them into a computer, which tells you how to fix them. Other maintenance is swapping out a chip or upgrading software.
The main point is that more central planning is not the solution to social programs. If anything, we've got too much planning of things like education.
Dymphna argues for more planning as the solution to the problem of unpreparedness.
Specifically, she thinks the problem is that "We are not training enough people in maintaining anything. Maintenance jobs are considered “low status” and kids who shouldn’t be there are pushed into college."
Well, no. There may be problems with the set of incentives and institutions with which the states and federal government manage education but the problem is not a lack of planning. The problem is that the states and federal government are interfering in the marketplace. The problem is not that maintenance jobs are low status, whatever that means, but that maintenance jobs are actually getting harder because technology is getting tougher to maintain. Ask a car mechanic. I had to learn something about the development of engine controllers for heavy duty diesel engines for a paper I wrote (Regulation by Litigation: EPA’s Regulation of Heavy-Duty Diesel Engines, 56 Administrative Law Review 403-518 (2004) (with Bruce Yandle and Andrew Dorchak) for the curious - email me and I'll mail you a reprint). Between 1970 and 2000, engine controllers in all forms of internal combustion engines got very sophisticated, partly in response to clean air regulation but partly because technology got a lot cheaper. As a result, maintaining an engine got a lot more complicated along with the engines - but the jobs divided. Some "maintenance" on engines now is plugging them into a computer, which tells you how to fix them. Other maintenance is swapping out a chip or upgrading software.
The main point is that more central planning is not the solution to social programs. If anything, we've got too much planning of things like education.
Posted by Andy Morriss on
Wednesday September 14, 2005 at 6:01am
I would like to abolish the Department of Education. Simply take it down. Fat chance. Bureaucracies will be with us forever, even down to the last fiery moment.
I got my ideas about the lack of training for maintenance of the infrastructure from listening to a man who is making it his life's work -- now that he has retired from maintaining machinery of some sort -- to make our state (VA) wake up to the fact that young people aren't being trained for vital jobs. His passion re the subject got me interested.
Here's an email I rec'd about the situation in vocational education:
Dymphna,
...Regarding your post entitled "The Heart of the Matter" was interesting for me, especially since I've been a machinist these thirty plus odd years and have noticed that we aren't getting very many young men (and, be sure, it really is a man's job, at least in the job shops and heavy machining shops) coming in as apprentices or trainees. Those new comers we do get are usually immigrants, legal and illegal, from Latin America. But, to be honest, many of them are looking for jobs, not skills.
The problem I see with attracting young people to trades and skills is that trades and skills involve sweat and getting dirty. A lot of young people, having been brought up in the age of computerization, seem to think they have a right to be able to pull in the big money sitting in front of computers while wearing shorts and tee shirts instead of breaking a sweat by cranking a wrench, threading a pipe or putting airplanes together.
I grew up in the Los Angeles area. I can remember, when I was a child, men who were proud of their jobs at Firestone Tire, Beth Steel, North American or Douglas working either on the lines or in the shops. They came home from work sweaty, dirty, often bandaged; but they made good livings and honest livings. They put forth labor and knowledge to make artifacts. Engineers built castles in the sky. Those men built those castles down on earth.
But building stuff on earth means getting dirty, so why not let illegal immigrants, China, India or Pakistan do it? The information media, the environmentalists and the entertainment industry have demonized labor by portraying it as the realm of the ignorant, the polluting or the jackass. So one can't blame a young person for not wanting to serve a four year apprenticeship to become a machinist, a plumber or a skilled welder when the media show the uneducated and ignorant to be successful as rappers, basketball players or thugs.
_____
In addition to what he says, I would add:
Regarding work we've lost two things in the last few generations:
1. the notion of vocation and all that it implies, and
2.the practice of apprenticeship in a wide variety of jobs. Now it's more about accreditation at some master's degree level. Keeps the colleges -- pardon me, the universities -- in business. Meanwhile it's the two year schools which are turning out people fit for work. Look at the govt data on jobs in my original post.