05-10-2020, 12:21 PM
(05-09-2020, 03:11 PM)David Horn Wrote: There is some truth here, I admit. The 20-20 tunnel vision is really terrible at the moment. A lot of this is due to the inordinate focus on STEM and a nearly total disregard for the liberal arts -- the one undertaking designed to look broadly. I'll disagree about the epidemiologists, though. I've heard many interviewed by a broad range of interviewers, and they tend to argue for focus on the health issues because the economy can't heal if the workforce and customers are disease vectors. They also cite the big winners in the liberal democracies. South Korea seems to get perhaps more attention than it's due, but Australia and New Zealand have both succeeded with governments that are virtual opposites. All focused on the disease.
Actually, that's a perfect illustration of the epidemiologists' ignorance of economics. The truth is, the economy could do just fine with the workforce and customers being disease vectors. There would be some absences due to sickness, but those are always there; there would be negligible deaths among most working age people. There would be a few deaths among preretirees in their 50s and 60s - enough to be noticeable - but opening up senior employment slots for younger people would not necessarily be a bad thing from an economic standpoint.
There would be 1-2 million deaths in the US amongst retirees, yes. From an economic standpoint, though, that would be a good thing, not a bad thing: the economy would have to support fewer unproductive retirees, permitting more resources to be directed to workers.
The problem is that the epidemiologists assume that the first priority has to be minimization of disease deaths, so they don't even consider tradeoffs that might permit a few more deaths from the disease even if the benefits to the economy are great - or even if deaths other than because of the disease are enough to offset the extra deaths from disease.
The economists, of course, are the reverse: they want to reopen the economy and if the epidemiologists can still keep the deaths low, that's great, but if 2 million old people die, that's the price of keeping the economy alive. And because medical science is so focused on treatment rather than prevention, there aren't any experts pushing face masks, which could actually give both the epidemiologists and the economists 90% of what each want.
I do agree that part of the problem is the dearth of competent liberal arts students. Returning to the 1950s when the intelligent people all went into liberal arts and there were few intelligent engineers might not be any better, though - and to get competent liberal artists, they need to be numerate as well as literate. What we need is paths for the top students in both the liberal arts and in engineering, and perhaps a recognition that college alone won't suffice for poor students. Colleges are good at educating intelligent people, but they're terrible at turning unintelligent people into intelligent people.