Posts
Five years ago I started teaching myself economics, using an older edition of The Economic Way of Thinking by Paul Heyne.
[pause]
I suppose it will come as no surprise to anyone who's read Kitchen Table Math for a while to learn that I can no longer put my hands on my copy of the book.
sigh
Anyway, I started teaching myself economics, then had to drop that and start teaching myself math so I could reteach C.
Thus I've been reading the term "rent," "rents," and "rent-seeking" for years now, with only a vague idea of what it means.
So I would like to know, at long last, what it actually means, as opposed to what it vaguely means based in context.
Speaking of rents, or what I take to be rents, folks here have raised the possibility that our schools could receive money to build athletic fields from President Obama's stimulus package.
That doesn't sound too likely to me. I figure the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has got to be way ahead of us in line.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
From Wikipedia
"rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to make money by manipulating the economic and/or legal environment rather than by trade and production of wealth"
I've seen it applied to education. Since students and parents are beholden to the educational system (many times a monopoly or virtual monopoly) and don't have a lot of choices, schools are free to be rent-seekers. Thus they extract "rents" that they wouldn't be able to get in a truly competitive system.
Here are some example of these "rents":
- lack of choice/options
- complete disregard for user opinions (i.e., the numerous parent groups fighting to keep out new math)
Does that help?
That's very helpful!
I was thinking about disregard for user opinions this morning. My own district adopted a math program (Trailblazers) that math professionals in the parent community objected to; now they're adopting a writing program that published authors in the community object to.
From my perspective it seems nutty & not worth the effort -- why go through all the tsuris involved in imposing a program on a school that parents don't want?
The fact that administrators seem not even to think about the political ramifications of such actions is further evidence that users are disregarded. It's not user goals & expertise that is disregarded; user "politics" are disregarded, too.
Post a Comment