H/T Andrew G.

I think his point is that if people aren’t sure why they like us, they will continue liking us. If they can easily rate us on our likable qualities, we are likely to be eventually overshadowed. Note this is different than the claim that we prefer to be ignorant about why people like us.

At first I thought this couldn’t be true. I want people to like me for who I am, and not be ignorant about why they like me.

But then I thought about it the other way. I want someone to like me, and not like me for certain reasons. If someone spends a lot of time with me and doesn’t know why they like me, they will probably find it hard to find other people they will like more and replace me.

Think about who you like, and why you like them. I’m willing to bet the people you like the most you like, “just because.”

I’m writing these words in the early-morning serenity of my home, two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks. All appears peaceful, fine, and as it was before September 11. My son, Thomas, is upstairs sleeping the sweet sleep of a child too young to comprehend what is happening. The world that he understands is that of Clifford the Big Red Dog cartoons, toy trains, and laughing with his mommy and daddy.

His child’s world was always destined to change into an adult’s world, with more worries, more pressing expectations, greater responsibilities. But by historical standards, even an adult’s world in modern America is wonderful.

The pressures ordinary American adults confront today are not those of most of our ancestors. We don’t regularly watch, helpless, as many of our loved ones die of famine. When our incomes fall, we don’t perish. And we’ve conquered legions of the diseases that killed our ancestors with brutal regularity. Most of what we today regard as hardships are trivial nothings compared to the cruel hardships of just a few generations past.

But will it continue to be so?

Until September 11, I was confident that Thomas would grow up in a world even better than the wonderful world his mother and I grew up in. I was confident that his future would offer him an array of choices richer even than the smorgasbord available to those of us born during the mid-twentieth century. And I was confident that the most precious possession he could have liberty would grow.

My confidence in this future has plummeted. Even the great and wise optimist Julian Simon warned that warfare legitimate and illegitimate spells trouble. Improvement in the quality of our lives depends on free minds and free markets. Indeed, civilization itself must be nourished by a never-ending stream of thoughts and plans and actions that are creative and diverse. Genuine diversity of thoughts, plans, and actions genuine creativity genuine experimentation genuine freedom to challenge existing dogmas, deities, and demagogues all these requirements for a free society are at the very least severely cramped during wartime.

I don’t venture here any opinion on just what steps the U.S. government today should take to punish those responsible for the September 11 attacks. But I do offer some questions that I hope people ask and demand be answered reasonably.

The good news is the world is becoming more capitalist over the years. It’s completely possible in a few generations to make drastic economic progress. A 6 percent annual increase in GDP results in a doubling per capita income every twelve years. This is the track that “growth-miracle” South Korea is currently on. If these South Korean growth rates continue, the average citizen of South Korea will be twenty times richer than his grandparents. This is an amazing feat of economic progress.

Dear Friend,

For the first time in California’s history, our state government spent more money on prisons than higher education.

My name is Alberto Torrico, and I know we need to reform prisons and recognize that education is the key to our future and public safety.

Education is the best way to shut the revolving door of our prison system – where 70 percent of released inmates return after three years. I’m fighting to reform the prisons by requiring inmates to rehabilitate themselves through work, study or treatment before they are released.

Education creates strong communities. That’s why I’m working to expand preschool in every neighborhood so kids start school ready to learn. And I’m leading the fight to lower college tuition by taking on Big Oil with an extraction fee that can’t be passed on to consumers.

I’m the child of Latino and Asian immigrants who worked as janitors so I could be the first in my family to attend college. I went on to teach college courses to new citizens. I know the true spirit of California opportunity and optimism is nurtured in great schools, not failed prisons.

My campaign for Attorney General has earned the overwhelming support of law enforcement because they know that with 60 percent of prisoners functionally illiterate – education is the best strategy to prevent crime and rehabilitate criminals.

I hope you will join the California Federation of Teachers, the California Professional Firefighters, scores of local labor organizations and over 60,000 cops and deputy sheriffs who have endorsed me because they agree that the best way to protect public safety is to invest in education.

You can read a pro side here, at “Occupy CA.”

Today in the DeCal, we talked about school choice and American education. The free-market solution to the problems of our failing public school system is competition, whether it be vouchers or government entirely leaving the field. The federal solution is to incentive schools to set the bar high.

Two proposals on how to fix schools

Free-market:  competition
Government run: standards

Competition not only creates accountability feedback mechanisms like I talked about last time, but fits people’s preferences better. The wants and expected schooling outcomes of individuals in an urban school are far different than those in the countryside. There is no way that an idea that works in one circumstance is automatically appropriate for the other. The students, teachers, and context are completely different. Students from Butte and Oakland both take the California High School Exit Exam to attain their diploma. It’s quite a shame that we have this test, and that people fail.

I don’t care if the questions are as simple as 2 + 1 = ? There are no standards that need to be set from the top. If it’s a good idea, people will do it anyways. People who care about their education take it seriously. People who don’t care shouldn’t be shoved through the sausage factory we call public schooling. Parents and their children know what’s best for the children, and that usually but not always includes formal schooling.

Compulsory education crushes the soul. Consider the opportunity cost accrued by some people because they are stuck in a wretched school. It could be their unrealized work experience, leisure, income, better schooling, or safety. It’s cruel and callous to force a child to attend a school in most urban districts.

Governments also use compulsory education laws to regulate private schools. Government will regulate whatever it can get its hands on. Someone thinks he has the right answers, and will force it upon others.

Everywhere I choose to spend my money satisfies me or I don’t go back. Schooling is no different. Standards from above squash local individuals wants, and replace them with central planner wants.

The best way to test an idea is to subject it to the competitive market. Good ideas float to the top (cross-docking) and poor ideas fizzle away. Someone thinks every idea is a good one. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and the rotten ones decompose.

• Thinking clearly about health-care reform.
• Book review of Albert Jay Nock’s Memoir’s of a Superfluous Man.
• My experience as it relates to Bryan Caplan’s microecomic interpretation of Thomas Szasz’s theory of mental illness. Do preferences and constraints represent two distinct categories or are the lines impossibly blurred? The answer portends a radically different way of thinking about ethics on both a small and a large scale.
• Examination of the obsession with income inequality over other forms of inequality which cannot be remedied by changes in government policy.

Stay tuned, won’t ye?