The Myth of the Math and Science Shortage

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:56:28 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Lew Rockwell at The Ludwig von Mises Institute - we don't need no steenking central planning for math and science education. The market will take care of it. Besides, there isn't really a shortage. Maybe the gummint simply wants new mathematicians and scientists to work for them, helping them with their nefarious plans to control us. [lew]

The reason the whole math and science racket bamboozles us again and again has to do with our own limitations and our perceptions of foreign countries. We think: heck I know nothing of these subjects, so I can believe that there is a shortage! And surely math and science are the keys to just about everything. And look at those Japanese kids in school that we see on television. They can run circles around the tattooed bums that populate American public schools. We are surely "falling behind!"

In the first place, it wouldn't actually matter if it were true. The whole point of the international division of labor is that we benefit from the skills of everyone around the world. If there were one country in the world where everyone knew math and science -- call it Nerdistan -- and one other country in the world where everyone specialized in art and literature -- call it Poetistan -- both countries would enjoy the benefits of both talents provided they were engaged in trade. The Nerds could enjoy poetry and the Poets would have lots of hand-held contraptions. And since the professions in both countries were presumably chosen by market means and voluntary choice, that configuration of talent yields the best of all possible worlds.

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