Welcome to another edition of the Mueller Report!
Well folks, you may have noticed that this edition is coming out a little later than normal. Let’s just say it follows the story of my life at the moment...Too many irons in the fire, constantly racing to catch up and get things done at (nearly literally) the eleventh hour.
Below are thoughts about: King’s summer program for high schoolers, criminality and terrorism as economic enterprises, and difficult questions around Covid mitigation policy and higher education.
Summer Academy
The King’s College has been running a week long summer program for high schoolers for 5+ years now called Summer Academy. It is an academic program carrying one college credit, but it is also geared towards experiencing the city, field trips, and social activities. I direct the academic side of things and have taught a track myself a few times.
This summer I am teaching a track on entrepreneurship that will tie together the intellectual theory of entrepreneurship with the practical side of how to be an entrepreneur. I am hoping to hold a couple guest events with friends of mine who are doing entrepreneurial things.
If you know any high schoolers who may be interested, please pass this information along!
Economics of violence
Here is a fascinating conversation about the economics of violence. Gary Shiffman got his PhD at my alma mater, George Mason University, and teaches at Georgetown University. His argument, in a nutshell, is that we shouldn’t treat terrorism and criminality as separate issues: Instead, “we should view terrorism, insurgency, and crime as being less about ideology and more about personal expression and entrepreneurship.”
Shiffman argues that we can model the leaders and the participants in these criminal/terrorist networks as entrepreneurs, firms, and workers. This is not to justify their activity or say it is morally neutral, but rather to say that their lives and their motives are complicated, and that they are also subject to market constraints and competition. He suggests that if we analyze crime and terrorist networks as businesses, we can have tremendous insight into how to combat them (perhaps through competition even).
Killing the leaders may not be as much of a deterrent as many people think. Just as killing a CEO will not usually end a company, so taking out the head of a criminal or terrorist organization just creates an opening for a new leader. Furthermore, the “workers” in these networks already know that they have a higher probability of dying in their line of work. They still participate for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones is that there is often potential to move up in status and wealth - especially if some of the folks ahead of them are being knocked out of the organization.
That’s a teaser rather than a full explanation. I know you probably have lots of questions and objections. Please don’t email me; listen to the talk!
Hard Covid Questions
James Rogers wrote a provocative piece recently called: “Shutdowns offered only costs, no benefits.” In this piece, Rogers did many back of the envelope calculations I’ve been thinking about doing but hadn’t gotten around to yet (and very well may never have).
I think everyone, on both “sides” of the debates around Covid and Covid mitigation have some difficult questions to think about:
Why has the spread and death rate from Covid-19 been so much higher in the U. S. than in many other parts of the world? Grouping countries based upon similar outcomes may be helpful. The U. S. appears to be far more similar to Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Brazil than to Germany or S. Korea.
On the other hand, Rogers argues that there doesn’t appear to be any significant variation in health outcomes between states with significant Covid-19 restrictions and states with much less restriction. But states that engaged in more and longer “lock-downs” do have significantly increased, and higher, unemployment rates than states that didn’t - with seemingly no gain in mitigating Covid. Riddle me that!
Why are some states implementing lockdowns with no discernible health benefit but with obviously high economic costs?
What could the U. S. possibly have done differently (let alone should have done differently)? We could make a laundry list of things here, large and small, that could have been better. But I am speaking about mitigation policy specifically. Mandating mask-wearing sooner or longer doesn’t appear to have had much effect at all on the overall numbers. The quarantines or lack of quarantines, the contract tracing or lack thereof, the bans on indoor dining or gatherings, none appear to have made a discernible difference on a macro scale. Since none of the U. S.-style restrictions have seemed to work, more of them or doing them more intensively or for longer seems like madness.
Obviously the findings here are preliminary, rough, and general. People will be studying this past year for many decades to come. I hope that the strong contrast in approaches between Florida and Texas relative to New York, California, and Washington will help us discern whether the extensive legal restrictions were even remotely justified (and could be justified in the future).
This is analogous, actually, to how deregulation of the airlines in the U. S. came about back in the 1970s. A few airlines operating only within California, and therefore not subject to federal regulation, demonstrated that most of the heavy-handed federal regulation was not only unnecessary, but counterproductive! You can read about one of the very few federal regulatory agencies (Civil Aeronautics Board) ever to be retired in the documentary Commanding Heights.
Laboratories of democracy have a lot to be said for them!
Hard Higher Education Questions
Higher education is in turmoil. Much of it is due to the pandemic, but much of it has been in the works for years. Small liberal arts colleges have been closing down for decades, especially in the northeast. But even some large state universities are having budget and enrollment problems now. They have received a significant lifeline from the seemingly endless spigot of money in the capitol, but that only kicks the can of reckoning down the road.
Parents are increasingly asking what they are getting for their dollars and they are being more aggressively targeted by low-cost education providers primarily offering online education.
Here is an unorganized list of things I have been wondering about regarding education recently:
Will online technology crowd out most higher education or complement it? Some in-person higher education will always be around, but I see its market share shrinking inevitably for the foreseeable future.
How are the desires, goals, and abilities of students changing? This can affect how they learn, what they study, and what they want out of college.
How is technology reshaping the education landscape? You can find all the content your heart could desire for free on the internet. Podcasts, videos, massive open online courses, blog posts, newsletters, etc. There is a ton of great material out there. What do colleges (and more specifically college professors) add that is valuable? My initial answer is: direction, accountability, quality control, and conversation.
Traditionally higher education has been very labor intensive. Professors give the same or similar lectures for class after class year after year. Now that I’ve recorded the lecture parts of my most commonly taught course, I find myself asking: “Why would I ever spend time giving that lecture again when they can watch it?” I would much rather assign the recorded lecture and then have a conversation about it - which is part of how I am radically restructuring my fall courses.
How much can education be tailored to specific people and communities?
What is the business model for delivering quality education to thousands or tens of thousands of people? What role does research play? Academic publishing? Conferences?
Universities have traditionally been structured around certain rites of passage. Existing faculty are doorkeepers to tenure and select their colleagues. They are institutions that have come to operate increasingly outside the realm of the market. Yet as political, economic, social, and technological dynamics shift, market pressure is coming back in unexpected ways and only those with huge advantages (like reputation and endowment) and those who are innovative, business-savvy, and customer focused will survive.
I could go on and on, but I’m already starting to ramble.
That concludes this week’s newsletter. I hope to have next week’s out before Good Friday. We shall see.