"Adminstrative Costs are the problem."

Well, no, they're not. They're a SYMPTOM of the problem, that is causing many people to confuse cause and effect.

It's not "Rising administrative costs cause universities to charge more."

It's "Increased demand, propelled by government subsidization of costs (i.e., cheap loans), allows universities to raise prices to the point where they can afford to spend lavishly."

lllll AJ

Yeah, pretty much exactly what I was going to say. His comments are mostly spot on. But, the government is ALWAYS harmful? Even the most hard-core libertarians don't believe THAT.

lllll AJ

Ah -- the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!

This is exactly what classical, supply-and-demand economics would predict.

Most of us understand why the government can't just print more money. The price of everything would just go up.

This is exactly the same scenario. The only difference is that in this case, the government is printing a special kind of money -- money that can only be used for one thing. It is no surprise when then price of that thing just goes up accordingly.

Subsidies (i.e., cheap loans) increase demand. Increased demand causes the price to rise.

Consider:

* The US massively subsidizes education. The price of education rises far beyond the rate of inflation.

* The US massively subsidizes housing. The price of housing rises far beyond the rate of education.

* The US massively subsidizes health care. The price of health care rises far beyond the rate of inflation. (Except, of course, the kinds of health care -- like cosmetic surgery -- that do not typically get subsidized. Costs in these areas have plummeted.)

I don't pretend to have an answer to this dilemma. The only really clear thing is that the laws of supply and demand aren't *statutory* laws, that can just be altered with a pen and a lot of hand-waving. They are fundamental natural laws, and well-intentioned attempts to manipulate markets (from student loans to price-control regimes) almost always trigger equal and opposite consequences.

The real shame is that important issues like these are so easily demagogued. Even though the system is clearly broken, no politician in his right mind would ever propose changing it. "Look!" people would scream. "He hates education! And poor people!"

Rates have never been lower, and congress has never bee more corruptible.

I'm not disagreeing with you -- mostly I agree with you -- but I think you skipped the most important thing. Government has never been more powerful, which means lobbying has never been so worthwhile -- indeed, necessary. Centralizing power and decision-making makes it obvious where wealthy parties should be making their investments: at the center. That's why of America's 10 wealthiest counties, six of them surround Washington DC.

Also -- I thought it odd that every single thing you presented in your second paragraph as a hypothetical is in fact already happening all around us (carbon sequestration and other Solyndra-type debacles, higher-priced fuel formulations, huge research grants, etc.).

lllll Alaska Jack

Grishnakh -- HEAR HEAR HEAR!!

Exactly the same reaction. WTF? Has this guy ever actually lived anywhere else, or is he just spewing out what he knows surely MUST be true?

I've been all around the United States. It is possible that places like the ones he describe exist? Sure, I guess. Is it the norm, or even common?

No. No it's not.

lllll aj

If my understanding is correct -- and I don't pretend to be an expert on this -- the summary is pretty misleading. It's not that China is a white knight crusading for green energy. It's that China is doing EVERYTHING: Green, nuclear, coal, you name it.

Googling around ("china coal plants") suggest that China is opening a new coal plant at a rate of one per WEEK. They built as many coal plants as exist in the entirety of Texas + Ohio **in 2011 alone**.

(Also, let me state the obvious. In China, the government has great power. It can use this power to accomplish big things. Some of these things are good. Many are bad. Use state media and censorship to give the population one side of story? Check. Decide you need a big dam, so just evict 1.3 million people and ravage the local environment? Say no more -- done. Artificially surpress the standard of living of a billion people to subsidize trade? Hey, to make an omelette you gotta crack a few eggs.)

lllll aj

Drooling Dog --

I don't necessarily concede your point -- I don't know if House Republicans have in fact been trying to slash climate research funding.

But in the bigger picture, it hardly matters. Climate research around the world is funded to the tune of billions every year. I mean, seriously -- of all scientific fields, climate research, of all things, is hardly lacking for funding. It's a huge, highly visible area of massive public interest. Does that mean every researcher gets every grant they want? I assume not. But let's be realistic here. Every large university in the world is pumping out climate research.

lllll AJ

Good lord -- I thought the mods were retarded today BEFORE I saw this post.

"When things get too out of balance"?!?! Allow me to mentally wander back to the old techno-libertarian days of Slashdot, when goofy claptrap like this would have been MERCILESSLY MOCKED, not modded "interesting."

The Chicxulub impact -- did the asteroid somehow sense that things down on Earth were "too out of balance"? Did it think: "Hmm... I'll take care of this!"

lllll AJ

What, is Sunday "idiots-upmodding-mindless-drivel they-agree-with day?"

(1) You put this in quotes:

"this is probably just nature at work, and we haven't directly observed nature scientifically for a long enough period to know if this is a temporary condition".

Except... it's not a quote. BlueStrat didn't say "this is probably just nature at work." Those are YOUR words. They are not the words MightyMartian was commenting on. If you want to paraphrase/make up words and start debating them with yourself, be my guest. But don't drag me into it.

(2) There is nothing rational about saying we just do nothing about a bad situation because we haven't observed in the past how those situations play out.

Of course there is. Doing nothing IS sometimes the most rational response. History is replete with instances where everyone would have been much better off if authorities had simply done nothing. I can think of a dozen instances just off the top of my head. Does that mean THIS is one of those cases? I don't know -- and neither do you. We only know about those things in hindsight. But history makes it sand-poundingly obvious that, yes, sometimes doing nothing is much better than a badly misguided attempt to address a problem affecting a complex system we don't understand very well, on the theory that, well, we must do SOMETHING!!

(3) and accusing someone of being "emotional" when they post a sarcastic comment etc etc etc

So pointing out an obvious fact (i.e., that MightyMartian's reaction was emotional and not rational) is an "accusation"?

Cunning? Oh for Pete's sake. Grow up.

lllll Alaska Jack

Translation: I don't like BlueStrat's perfectly calm, rational point, so I'm going to argue against it with emotion, wave my hands around, and come up with some meaningless term that sneers at his point without SOUNDING too sneery. oh, I know -- "meme." Yeah, that'll work.

So, I have a question for you. Do you consider yourself scientifically minded and skeptical? Do you think it's the OTHER guys who post on emotion, looking for anything that confirms their pre-existing notions? Because -- surprise! -- that's exactly what you just did. Kind of humbling, isn't it? BlueStrat made a perfectly scientific point -- this observation, in and of itself, doesn't mean much, because our data set is so small. We've only been making these observations since (I think) 1978 -- an eyeblink in geologic time.

If you actually have something meaningful to say, and you want to show all of us you're actually NOT an idiot, well -- what's stopping you?

lllll Alaska Jack