Pun Salad

I liked the Amazon Product du Jour because it's so redundant. How about "For Cleanliness Reasons, Help Keep This Place Sanitary"? Or "Take That Yogurt Out Of The Fridge, It's Starting To Grow Fur"?

Amazon bills it as one of their bestselling "OSHA Notice Signs". I don't know if OSHA actually demands you post it anywhere.

I would not recommend it as a gift to anyone. They might think you're trying to imply something about something.

But it's rational, of course. However, that's also the root of a newish philosophy's self-label that Christine Rosen is simply having no truck with: The Evil of Rationalism.

Nate Silver also talked about Rationalism in his recent book On the Edge, part of his discussion of "effective altruism"; although I don't think he found it as problematic as Christine does. The relevant Wikipedia page does not make the connection to Mangione.

Also of note:

• If only it were that easy. Veronique de Rugy suggests we Invest in education—not the Department of Education.

  If an investment yields stagnant or negative returns despite increased funding, the rational thing to do is back off. This logic rarely applies in government, but we're in a unique moment. The U.S. Department of Education—which has long exemplified the sunk-cost fallacy with past investments motivating continued spending—faces possible closure as President Donald Trump's administration pushes to devolve education back to the states.

  First, let's be clear: The department traditionally funds only 8 percent to 10 percent of K-12 education, and new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon seems rightly concerned that not enough of that money goes toward actual instruction. The Trump administration first moved to cut half of the department's bureaucratic jobs and may now attempt to eliminate it altogether. Officials also pledge to maintain the "services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely" while key funding is brought "closer to states, localities, and more importantly, students."

  It makes sense, "investments in bad stocks" can be remedied by the "investments in good stocks" strategy.

  It remains problematic to assume that "fixing" tha American educational system is a matter of redirecting funds wisely. Do we know how to do that? I haven't seen any evidence that's so.

• Just Kill It. Daniel J. Mitchell describes How to (Really) Get Rid of the Department of Education. He says it's a good news/bad news situation, and you already know the good news: Trump wants to terminate the DoE. But:

  The bad news is that Trump and his Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, apparently have no intention of actually reducing federal government spending and intervention.

  McMahon suggested moving some functions to other government agencies, a decision experts say would also require congressional approval. …McMahon suggested moving some functions to other government agencies, a decision experts say would also require congressional approval. …The Education Department administers federal grant programs, including the $18.4 billion Title I program that provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools, as well as the $15.5 billion IDEA program that helps cover the cost of education for students with disabilities. And the department oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program… A senior administration official said Wednesday that these programs, which make up the bulk of the Education Department’s budget and work, “will NOT be touched.”

  In other words, even though the federal government is far too big, Washington will continue to drain money from the private sector, continue to fund an education bureaucracy (albeit placed in a different department), and continue to send money to politicians and bureaucrats at the state and local level.

  Dan calls this an example of his "Third Theorem of Government":

  How programs really work: Collect money at the local level, carry the funds in a leaky bucket to Washington, waste some of it on the D.C. bureaucracy, and then use the leaky bucket to bring money back to the local level. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  It's remarkably similar to what I've called …

  The DC Shuffle (a periodic observation): (1) take our tax $; (2) send some of it back; (3) act like they've done us a favor.

  — Paul Sand (@punsalad) October 21, 2024

  I've been reading Dan for a long time, though, so I can't claim credit for originality.

• The rot goes too deep. Megan McArdle has a Warning to conservatives: You won’t fix campus diversity like this.

  The academic DEI apparatus that grew up over the past decade seems to be collapsing even more abruptly than it arrived. Even the University of California system, a pioneer in using diversity statements to shape faculty hiring, just announced it will stop using them.

  The diversity statement’s demise is a reminder that though the Trumpian remedy may be excessive and destructive, it aims to cure a real problem: These statements were often political litmus tests, one of many ways academia delivered the message “no conservatives need apply.” The intellectual monoculture this promoted was prone to groupthink and a political liability for institutions that depend heavily on public support. No one should be sorry to see them go.

  But conservatives who are giddy about such victories should note that this is a very limited win. After all the diversity offices are renamed and the diversity statements withdrawn, academia will remain near-monolithically left. This is a problem for conservatives on campus and an even bigger problem for society, because it takes a lot of scholarly expertise to maintain a modern industrial economy. Scholarship that excludes half the available ideas isn’t up to the job — if only because such lopsided expertise can’t command the public trust.

  As Gallup notes, the US public's trust in higher education has been in a long-term decline. And that decline is richly deserved. Megan's right that simply getting rid of "diversity statement" requirements for employment will not be enough, but what else can they do with the current crop of faculty and administrators?.

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