A lot of that advocacy also comes from young up and coming Randian Libertarians as well. I knew quite a few of this type at Rutgers who were my own (the) age of 19 something. Like the group you mentioned, they tended to feel insulated from the consequences of what they were fond of proposing.
Um, while that's true, this has been pretty bipartisan for a long time.
2008: Obama's Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling
Man, I sure can kill a thread.
Education should be a right!
For communist revolution!
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From a capitalist, efficiency viewpoint, free education is a good thing.
Markets are going to be at their most efficient when they exist as a meritocracy, not as an oligarchy. If you start from the point where everyone is equal, the person with the best idea will be the most successful. This creates an inherent inequality. The problem is when that inequality acts as resistance against the people who don't have resources, preventing them from fully realizing their good ideas.
I don't think we should strive for perfect equality, for multiple reasons and we don't need to debate that point. Rather, I think we should put in place forces that do push us towards perfect equality. The point isn't that they achieve that goal, but rather they counteract the other forces that create inequality. Free education would be one of those forces.
It means that just because you're the son/daughter of a factory worker, you will still be matched to a job/career that suits your talents and level of commitment, not automatically sent to the factory (and left in the cold when it shuts down). Or that just because you're the child of a doctor that you automatically get sent to college. Each has to earn their own way forward and meet the requirements for entering the school they desire.
For all their flaws, NCLB and CC have merits. I don't think they have enough merits to warrant their implementation, but there have been so many problems in the school system for so long, I really do appreciate the fact that SOMETHING has been done. NCLB is exceptionally flawed, but it did introduce the idea that we can monitor and measure our schools for success. The problem is that it was too narrowly focused and done in a way that put all attention entirely on it's measurement system.
There was a similar aspect to this that happened with insurance companies and doctors in the 80's and 90's. When insurance companies changed their models to the PPO and HMO insurance, they started to look at the statistics of health care. In California initially they actually reduced medical care costs because they found inefficiencies in the system, for example showing that outpatient outcomes were better for some procedures than inpatient outcomes. The insurance company looked at the data and determined what was likely to be the optimal choice. The downside of that is that the "likely optimal" choice is not necessarily the correct one for each person, so the doctors input has to be necessary in determining the correct choice for each patient.
We do have inefficiencies in our school system. The problem with the charter school system is that it's a further fracturing of that system, when instead it needs to become more centralized in it's over arching structure. Here in Minneapolis we've had problems charter schools and non-profits trying to help students that have failed horribly. One had it's funding cut off because they couldn't show evidence that they even had students.
For me ideally, it's a centralized structure with rules in place for individuals to make decisions necessary to account for the real differences that happen all the time. In health care, that's the doctor or nurse. In education, that's the teacher. The central structure is there to provide the tools and information necessary for the teacher to do their job and do it well. That does mean that the teacher needs to show good results and is not immune to consequences of bad performance. We need a better system for both evaluating teachers and for providing them with resources to do their job well, right now we fail at both.
I do think that as our world becomes more complicated and specialized more education is going to be required. 150 years ago an 8th grade education was sufficient for most people to conduct their lives. Even specialists were often done with their entire formal education by the age of 18 or 20 (a great-great uncle of mine graduated from university at 18 for example in the 1890's, not because he was gifted, he finished the normal course of education at that time). Now specialists often don't finish university until age 25 or later (the average age of PhD completion is 32.2). I don't know how far that trend can continue, but it is part of our reality today. Graduating high school does not give you the skills necessary for most jobs. It does set you up to enter most training programs though and recognizing that fact about our world today is important.
In 1852 Massachusetts was the first state to institute compulsory education. From ages 8-14, you were required to attend 12 weeks of school per year. Roughly 72 days per year, or 432 days in total. Now most states require 180 days per year, which comes to 2160 for grades 1-12 (2340 if you include kindergarten). Some states let you leave early, but regardless, the term of completion is much higher than it was 150 years ago.
Vive le Galt
Free education for the masses
This is an internet forum. It is a place for talking.
I do things in the real world. I come here to talk. If you don't want to talk about things, it's very strange that you're here.
Great! And what do you do? And by that I mean, what do you actually do? And by "you do", I mean you and me and whoever; I mean what have we done or should we do.Talking is a start but now that we've done that, how do I actually make a difference on the lack of equal education opportunity issue?
We can make damn sure our congresscritters know exactly how we want them to vote, and if they don't vote that way we can vote for somebody who will next time an election comes round. That's how the system is supposed to work, after all (not that I wouldn't give my right arm for a new system with single transferable vote, nonpartisan redistricting, and no electoral college).
Talking with Putin is a start but all that blather doesn't seem to be doing much for non-Russians in Crimea or eastern Ukraine. Do we keep talking until eastern Ukraine becomes western Russia like Crimea is now southern Russia?
Talking is always necessary in these situations. Now, I agree with you that talking alone isn't enough, and that current sanctions are not enough (The ruble is fragile enough that we could knock Russia into a full depression if we tightened the screws, but we have this odd obsession with "non-punitive" sanctions. If we aren't going to punish them, what's the point?), but talking is still necessary.
Don't answer the Russia/Ukraine questions. Just drawing an analogy here. But on the education topic, now that we've talked, answer with actions I can take to help resolve the inequality in education.
I felt like answering anyone, and what you can do is write your representatives, then make sure you vote in every election.
This is an internet forum. It is a place for talking.
I do things in the real world. I come here to talk. If you don't want to talk about things, it's very strange that you're here.
Great! And what do you do? And by that I mean, what do you actually do? And by "you do", I mean you and me and whoever; I mean what have we done or should we do.
Talking is a start but now that we've done that, how do I actually make a difference on the lack of equal education opportunity issue?
If our talking doesn't lead to action, what have we done?
Made ourselves feel better?
Talking with Putin is a start but all that blather doesn't seem to be doing much for non-Russians in Crimea or eastern Ukraine. Do we keep talking until eastern Ukraine becomes western Russia like Crimea is now southern Russia?
Don't answer the Russia/Ukraine questions. Just drawing an analogy here. But on the education topic, now that we've talked, answer with actions I can take to help resolve the inequality in education.
Wallowing around in lamentation about unequal education is a sure method to situational stagnation.
Two problems with your point here:
1) Just because someone is not directly involved with action involving something does not automatically discredit their words on the subject. Using your example: Putin. Just because I'm not in the State department, and not a fighting on one side of the Ukraine conflict or the other, does not mean that my words are automatically incorrect. You keep making this assertion, but it's wrong. It is categorically wrong.
2) This is an internet forum about roleplaying games. I don't come here to plan action about things outside of roleplaying games. I like talk about other things here, because these are people who share a similar interest, and even though we disagree about other issues, we still have a common bond of roleplaying (even though we probably disagree about some facet of that too).
I don't come here to organize my politics. I go to other places for that. I'm not here to answer your demands about my personal life. I sometimes choose to share aspects of my life, but that is for me to choose to do. I don't care how many times you demand to know what I'm doing or not doing, that my only response will ever be to remind you that demanding to know is not proof of anything (in fact, it is decidedly lack of proof, because you don't know).
If you feel that the discussion is over, you aren't required to return here. If you want to keep discussing, feel free, but your demands for action are pointless and counterproductive. I could care less if you think that my silence on my actions is proof of something, since you're clearly wrong, because you don't actually know.
Your current point is has all of the following qualities:
1) dismissive of others
2) disrespectful of others
3) not true
You keep trying to reword it and couch it in something to make it sound like you're searching for something noble. And you might indeed be trying to get to something, but this isn't the place for that and you're using it as a cudgel in an attempt to silence others.
Feel free to argue the ideals you want to argue for, but just because you're done talking does not give you the right or authority to tell others that their words are meaningless.
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Black Lives Matter: Northern New England-style!
Yes, the "Black Power" banner was carried by three white dudes.
For black liberation through socialist revolution!
An injury to one is an injury to all!
Reinstate the School Bus 5!
Minneapolis: SOLIDARITY APPEAL: 15 Now Leader Fired by Delta For Speaking out Against Low Pay
Which doesn't have any actions listed, but I'm pretty far away and am sure there's stuff going on, I just don't know where.
Get involved! Get organized!
Reinstate Kip Hedges!
For communism!
Vive le Galt - the musical interlude
I'm growing my hair out so I can do a version of that cowardly lion costume for halloween next year.
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[Car ownership and...] So the Great Depression interrupted the trend of cheap/nearly free oil?Yes, as BigTDBone's stats show, my opinion stands. Car ownership in the 1920's from 8.5% to 22%. Slow creep to 24.5% by WWII. Decline back to the roaring 20's level by the end of the war.
Furthermore, the Great Depression put half of the automakers out of business. Had the 1920's trend continued, 1940 would've looked like the early 1960's. For another measure of what happened you can look at house construction.But here, let me digress a moment and quote myself from the post you responded to.
Oil may have been cheap before but cars weren't till after the war.As you can see I did not argue that oil wasn't cheap before the war and it is clear, even from the webpage you link to, that cars were still largely a luxury at 22% ownership.
As for your Google-stats on "average" household income over time compared to cars. Here's what you need to compare. Median household income and base model car prices for cars like the Ford Escort. Citing stats that, in part, account for luxury auto purchases is hardly useful to the discussion.
...No, you're right, I argued that because oil has been cheap since before the war (and much earlier), you'd have to look beyond cheap energy from oil if you want to explain postwar changes.
In fact, let's review.
Q "The change in the last 60-70 years is mostly due to cheap energy from oil"
(no data provided)
C "I think you'd have to look way beyond cheap oil, oil has been both cheap and common for a lot longer."
(provides some examples)
Q "No, I'm right, because oil may have been cheap, but ROADs were bad, and CARS weren't cheap till after the war."
(no data provided)
C (while thinking, ??? wouldn't that be looking beyond oil, then???) "Actually, cars were plenty cheap before the war, too."
(provides citations of the Depression expansion in discount cars and of average prices)
Q "No, I'm right, because you need to look at [different statistic that you don't provide], because [no reason provided].
(no data provided)
And actually, [data point found by someone else and already discussed] forget whether they were cheap or not, 22% ownership, cars were clearly not widespread enough to be more than a luxury!
Yeah, you're still not doing well at the history thing, or the debate thing really. Reminds me when I was asking you to cite the sources that led you to believe that most doctors were 125+ IQ rather than 105+ IQ, and you responded by launching into some discourse on the nature of IQ testing while providing no such sources.
But hey, I like posting at 5AM as much as the next guy, let's humor you and try to find some examples of just the cheapest prices. I'm sure that if you'd done so before posting, you would have said, but it should be easy and only take a few minutes.
We've already learned that Chevy was a big discount brand back then. The cheapest 1930s Chevy on that same page I was using before is a Chevy 1935 Standard that went from $465 (average income $1970). Close competitor is the Chevy 6 1932, which is closer in time to our income data point, from $475. If you want to go even lower, there's the Willys 1936 from $395, although that's furthest from our 1930 income data point, closer to 1940's $1725.
That site's car page for the 1950s is sadly lacking in prices, but this one quotes 1950 model Chevies from $1329, while this one claims the low end of Ford pricing was $1339 (average income $3210)
If you want to compare those to median household income rather than average income, feel free to find some data yourself for once. I look positively on the practice of doing research on a topic before making assertions about it, but late is better than never.
As for your new claim, that 22% ownership represents cars being still largely a luxury and not typical, we're drifting again from the previous one, that cars were not cheap till after the war. But as I already noted, looking further into it suggests that it actually represents one car per household being typical (~22% per capita, ~75% per household). What percentage of people living in America do you think had a family car in the driveway, but weren't head of household and didn't have it in their name?
Well, here's some more Googling for you.
in the 1920s, Robert and Helen Lynch, in their classic study Middletown, found that the automobile had become "an accepted essential of normal living." It had become the primary focal point of urban family life, and had made leisure activity a customary aspect of everyday experience.
(One Atlanta drugstore owner, forced out of business in 1926, lamented, "The place where trade is, is where automobiles go . . . A central location is no longer a good one for my sort of business.")
Indeed, the Hoover Commission noted in 1933 that the old 'star' pattern of nineteenth century urban development (a star whose rays ran along streetcar tracks) had been transformed into a veritable "constellation" of interdependent centers within a single metropolitan region. And the National Resources Committee declared in 1937 that the whole east coast from New York to Philadelphia had become a single "conurbanized" band of metropolitan settlement.
The dispersion of manufacturing and residential settlement was based upon car travel.
The importance of the automobile varied, it is true, with the size of the city and the availability of public transportation. But even in cities with elaborate mass transit systems, like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, observers in the 1920s and 1930s noted that car travel was necessary for much of the business and recreation which took place in and around them. Moreover, the car's importance increased as streetcar service declined through mismanagement, over extension of services, and competition from jitneys and buses. Indeed, planners in these cities were deliberately reshaping the central city landscape by the late 1920s and 1930s in order to facilitate commutation by car. In these large cities. cars accounted for 20 to 32 percent of the daily traffic into the central business district (CBD) by 1930. Cars became more important earlier in smaller cities like Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Washington, D. C. There car travel during the 1920s accounted for 50 to 66 percent of the daily commutation into the CBD. By 1930, 222 cities with at least 10,000 residents were entirely dependent on motor transportation.
As many tenants as farmers owned cars: for example, 89 percent of the tenants and 93 percent of the farmers in Iowa in 1926 had automobiles. More important than ownership per se was their use of the car. Economic status affected these different households' consumption of ready-made goods, their use of recreational facilities like movie houses, and their participation in social activities like the Grange, women's clubs, and state fairs. Family activities outside the farm were also affected by the size of the village center and the kinds of services which it offered to the surrounding community. These factors affected farm households' reliance upon and uses of cars, and thus the degree to which they viewed it as another farm machine or as a pleasure vehicle.
Despite these variations, farm owners and tenants all used the automobile to commute from their farms to town. This relation distinguished them from the migrant labor family. A migrant family's car was not only a means of consumption, it was also the necessary basis for the migrant household's survival as a unit. As migrant labor reorganized around automobile movement, it became necessary to use a car to find work and reach that work as a family unit. The automobile thus dominated the lives of migrant families in a unique and deliberate way.
Sounds like cars weren't just a rare luxury prewar, doesn't it?
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2) To the extent that the problem is solvable, the next cycle of history* will wash back solutions the other way.
First off, you have demonstrated repeatedly that you lack the credibility to utilize the word 'history' in any context. You seem to make errors of assumption even given a recent slice of history such as 'the span of this thread'. At this point, one would likely have to Google or otherwise confirm even the most innocuous use of the term by you, such as 'I was enrolled in a history class'.
Second off, history has shown repetition and progress throughout its span. For you to claim that a cycle of history will undo any solution is, once again, ignoring history and its tales of solutions that have stuck, and which are around with us even today. We make use of breakthroughs that are over thousands and even tens of thousands of years old every day. They haven't been washed away yet. Would you care to offer some evidence that you can determine that which will remain and that which will fade?
You don't listen to or read what others say very well. Your general arguments are false, fallacious or rely on shifting goal posts. Often a combination of all three. In general, you've proven yourself to be an ineffective communicator of ideas. Your ability to persuade anyone of anything beyond the fact that you have poorly informed opinions has suffered as a result.
loads of stuff about cars from 1920 to 1950Always I'm amazed how citation of websites of unknown pedigree count as solid proof.
It doesn't. But given that you've not even managed to get to the "citing random websites" level of support for your own ideas,..... I don't think you want to start bibliography fights just yet.
Case in point:
let's push the boom from oil unequivocally back to 1920 from 1945. My point still stands - namely our largess is largely a result of the oil boom.
Neither of those statements have any justification at all. Why not push "the oil boom" back to 1910, or 1900, or 1880? If you look at the history of the use of oil in transportation, cars were actually pretty latecomers on the scene (look at trains and ships for earlier adopters). And why are we attributing the boom to oil instead of to coal?
Basically, it's patently obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. Your "solutions" are bosh because you have literally no idea what the actual problems are, because you don't even have the knowledge to correctly describe the actual state of the world.
Could I actually say anything to persuade you?
Probably not. There are definitely things that could be said to persuade me, but I doubt you're capable of correctly identifying what they are. But I'm not going to take physics advice from Time Cube, and I'm unlikely to take political advice from you.
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I think a lot of the pie to divvy up came from structural improvements and rationalizations of industry in the postwar era. Not all, sure. But the shipping and long distance/international trade industry, just to throw a dart at the board, that postwar revolution is a revolution of structure and organization, not an energy revolution. Rationalization in the labor market too. There are a fair few examples here. The mass standardization and economies of scale deployed in the war inspired a lot of postwar innovations in the civilian economy.
Some also came from energy improvements. Some from stabler postwar national and international organization of finance, so that payments from strangers in a different place were more reliable. I tend to think some came from government interventions to promote the middle class, and indeed union ones too. And so on.
I think it's a mistake to focus myopically on one factor such as oil as a sine qua non and declare that that makes it the chief factor. If you take away all the fuel in the ships, you won't see the same postwar shipping boom, sure (Although plenty were coal-fired). But if you take away containerization and mass rationalization of routes and schedules, you won't see the same postwar shipping boom either.
And in a lot of cases, the cheap oil or the mechanization or whatever isn't the biggest thing, or sometimes even a significant thing, that changed about the postwar situation, it is the organization, or the social intervention, or the financial structure, or etc. etc. There was cheap oil in the ships prewar, but they were moving weird shaped nonstandardized packages that therefore had to be hand-loaded at slow paces, and the routes and timing were often ad-hoc. That's what changed.
I wish I could pay university tuition with cheap oil.
If only there was some kind of programme proposal to help with tuition, maybe it would merit discussion.
Could I actually say anything to persuade you? Be honest now when you answer that question for yourself.
Reminding me to be honest suggests that there is a choice there that I would find objectionable to the point of preferring to lie about making it. This isn't your high school, where popularity or peer pressure is somehow going to try and make me feel bad about expressing myself. You ask as though you expect that I will have to answer 'yes', or sound as though I possess a closed mind.
You have spent the entirety of our interaction together degrading the initial amount of credibility I ascribe to a person on the internet that I do not know.
Not only have you shown yourself to be the type of person who is quick to assert things without evidence or research, but you have also demonstrated that when you are confronted with evidence to the contrary, you simply ignore it, pretend it said what you said, or claim to be arguing something else.
As a result, there is nothing you could say right now to persuade me of anything. I wouldn't take your word on the subject of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
That doesn't mean you couldn't alter that opinion. There are people on these very boards who I held an opinion about who have changed it. They didn't change it to suit me, either, they changed it by demonstrating qualities, on their own, that they had not previously demonstrated. That isn't inherently good or bad, either, one can adjust a poor or positive impression. That is because I adjust my own opinions based on new evidence that I am confronted with.
There's the honest answer you requested. Do with it what you will.
Well, having just completed an upper level university course on international trade, I can tell you that the invention and use of the standardized shipping container made a larger difference than the discovery of petrolium for the shipping boom.
But I'm not sure what that has to do with free college?
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I love how both of these threads have had so little to do with college while, at the same time, proving the need for more education.
I love how both of these threads have had so little to do with college while, at the same time, proving the need for more education.
More doesnt seem to be the issue
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When you can mine raw material in Chili, ship it raw across the Pacific to China, process it, make something out of it, ship the product across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, up the Atlantic, up the St. Lawrence, and sell it in Chicago for less money than mining in the Upper Peninsula of Minnesota and-moving/processing/making/moving/selling the similar end product in Chicago, I think something other than JIT delivery and standard shipping containers is at work facilitating this.
Of course. The usual answer is differential costs. For example, the Minnesota miners are probably unionized (you yourself were singing the praises of unions a few minutes ago) and therefore earning a living wage, while the Chilean ones are not. Similarly, the Chinese refiners are almost certainly not unionized and may in fact be convict labor, working for nothing.
JIT delivery and standard shipping containers are some factors (among many) that mean that shipping costs are almost irrelevant. As an example, it costs roughly $10.00 per tonne to materials via container ship from Brazil to the United States East Coast, or from Brazil to Rotterdam, or, for that matter, from the US to Rotterdam. To put it in perspective, this means that it's cheaper to move goods from Brazil to Newark than it is to move them inland by truck from Newark to Allentown, PA. When shipping costs are that low, it's very easy for other factors, like labor costs, to dominate.
For all intents and purposes, transoceanic shipping is free, so you get the work done where the work itself is cheapest. The Economist talks about shipping US-grown cedar wood to China to be made into be cedar balls, and then returned to the US for sale in Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
But this doesn't have much to do with oil. Well before the age of oil (mid 1800s), laundry was shipped from San Francisco to Hawai'i and China (by sailing ship, no less) because it was commercially viable to have it done there and shipped back.
Now can we get back on topic?
Paul Krugman has an interesting take on the college discussion:
[W]hat I keep seeing is people insisting that educational failings are at the root of still-weak job creation, stagnating wages and rising inequality. This sounds serious and thoughtful. But it’s actually a view very much at odds with the evidence, not to mention a way to hide from the real, unavoidably partisan debate.
School sucks!
Would the standardized shipping container be at all useful without all the rest of the oil powered infrastructure? With sailing ships (or even coal powered steamers)? Without cranes and other loading and unloading equipment?Well, having just completed an upper level university course on international trade, I can tell you that the invention and use of the standardized shipping container made a larger difference than the discovery of petrolium for the shipping boom.
But I'm not sure what that has to do with free college?
Absolutely. Nonetheless you have to realize this isn't a binary thing where you can in any way separate the two issues, all you can do is statistical regression on shipping data from years before and after the advent of these advances (petroleum and shipping containers respectively) to determine what you're asking.
But if one makes the other possible, the growth following the second is still dependent on the first, even if the later spike is larger.Absolutely. Nonetheless you have to realize this isn't a binary thing where you can in any way separate the two issues, all you can do is statistical regression on shipping data from years before and after the advent of these advances (petroleum and shipping containers respectively) to determine what you're asking.Would the standardized shipping container be at all useful without all the rest of the oil powered infrastructure? With sailing ships (or even coal powered steamers)? Without cranes and other loading and unloading equipment?Well, having just completed an upper level university course on international trade, I can tell you that the invention and use of the standardized shipping container made a larger difference than the discovery of petrolium for the shipping boom.
But I'm not sure what that has to do with free college?
Oil makes it possible.
Containers make it useful.Think of it this way, gasoline being cheap means nothing to you if you:
1) don't have a car
2) don't need a car
Modern logistics make the oil useful in shipping. Without those standards, like the shipping container, cranes, railroads, etc, the oil would be a cheap source of energy without a use. The point being that oil is not the sole factor when analyzing why shipping things multiple times around the world is possible. It depends on all the factors involved, not just one.
Quark, how long would something have to be in effect before it would prove your hypothesis wrong?
But if one makes the other possible, the growth following the second is still dependent on the first, even if the later spike is larger.
I don't see any reason to believe that "standardized shipping containers" are dependent upon oil or that oil somehow makes it possible to ship different goods in the same size and shaped containers.
Our modern economy is based on the available energy from oil. Not coal. Not natural gas. Not solar. Not hydro. Not wind.
Actually a good deal of our modern economy is based on the manipulation of money and values itself.
The productivity of the average American worker has been shooting up like an Apollo rocket. What is happening in recent decades is that very little of that increase is being reflected in wages which have remained stagnant since the 70's when adjusted for inflation. Instead the bulk of that increase has been going to CEO salaries and stockholders.
All of this oil blather is really nothing but distraction from this root cause.
Oh, but all you need is hard work and grit and you're sure to be rich! The poor are just lazy and inept!
But if one makes the other possible, the growth following the second is still dependent on the first, even if the later spike is larger.I don't see any reason to believe that "standardized shipping containers" are dependent upon oil or that oil somehow makes it possible to ship different goods in the same size and shaped containers.Without the level of mechanization we've got, you're going to have to, at the very least use much smaller containers, since you'll have to maneuver them much more manually. Not much point in standard containers, if you're loading everything by hand, or manual windlasses.
Without oil to run your shipping, it's going to be slower, less reliable and on smaller ships.
It's going to be slower (actually not by that much) and on smaller ships THAN IT WOULD BE WITHOUT OIL. And you're more efficient with shipping containers THAN YOU WOULD BE WITHOUT THEM. However, the advent of standardized shipping containers (as well as other factors like communication/organization infrastructure) has had a larger magnitude of difference to efficiency than the change from pre to post petrolium.
And remember that we were using other kinds of oil, as well as other fossil fuels (natural gas, coal) before petroleum as well. In all likelihood, without the oil boom, technology would have simply made use of an alternate fuel source. Not as cheaply, for sure, but still.
But if one makes the other possible, the growth following the second is still dependent on the first, even if the later spike is larger.I don't see any reason to believe that "standardized shipping containers" are dependent upon oil or that oil somehow makes it possible to ship different goods in the same size and shaped containers.Without the level of mechanization we've got, you're going to have to, at the very least use much smaller containers, since you'll have to maneuver them much more manually. Not much point in standard containers, if you're loading everything by hand, or manual windlasses.
So use cranes, which were known to the ancient Egyptians. Using coal-fired steam power, if you like -- which was known in the 18th century.
Will a coal-fired crane and standard shipping containers be better than hand-lifting sacks of coffee beans out of the hold of a ship? Almost certainly.
Nothing about oil "makes possible" standardized shipping containers.
And remember that we were using other kinds of oil, as well as other fossil fuels (natural gas, coal) before petroleum as well. In all likelihood, without the oil boom, technology would have simply made use of an alternate fuel source. Not as cheaply, for sure, but still.
You mean, like coal-fired ships, the kind that dominated the oceans for nearly a century prior to the oil boom?
Hint, for those who think oil is necessary for large ships: How do you think the Titanic was powered? Or the Lusitania?
Note that Krugman does believe that education should be more available and affordable than it is now. He is correct in his statement that lack of education by itself is not the prime cause of inequality.I do think that education may be a prime tool in getting more Americans involved in how their country works, which is far from something that the elite wants to happen.
Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the reason that Obama proposed the "free community college" idea.
And remember that we were using other kinds of oil, as well as other fossil fuels (natural gas, coal) before petroleum as well. In all likelihood, without the oil boom, technology would have simply made use of an alternate fuel source. Not as cheaply, for sure, but still.You mean, like coal-fired ships, the kind that dominated the oceans for nearly a century prior to the oil boom?
Hint, for those who think oil is necessary for large ships: How do you think the Titanic was powered? Or the Lusitania?
You think those are large ships, that's cute.
Edit: on a serious note, diesel has almost twice the energy density of coal (45 MJ/Kg ; 24 MJ/Kg) which is actually closer to wood (18MJ/Kg).
Plus steam systems are WAY less efficient. AND coal requires WAY more energy to extract than oil so it is even less efficient from a cost standpoint.
And we finally get down to the end of the issue; peak coal. We simply couldn't produce the amount of coal required to replace oil in the energy market today. Hell, we can barley produce enough oil to to keep up with the demand on oil.