A friend of mine is a teacher, a very good one. So good, in fact, that if I could somehow transform into a young student and attend his class, I believe I would be richer for it. Personally, I enjoy teaching. I’ve done it a few times in my life. Never as my primary source of income; sometimes for pay, sometimes for free. Between the long chats I’ve had with my friend and my own experiences, I can certainly say there’s value in teaching. Does our society respect that value by adequately compensating teachers? Continue reading Teacher Pay →

Last week on Wednesday, April 2, the Supreme Court made a ruling on the McCutcheon v. FEC case, which resulted in the striking down of limits on overall federal campaign donations set since the 70s. It was a 5-to-4 decision to drop the limit on the total money a single person is allowed to contribute to a spectrum of candidates. Whereas before the decision, you were allowed to contribute only a few thousand dollars in total per year, now you’re permitted to contribute as much as you’d like so long as no single political recipient receives more than a few thousand.

There has been some rather tremendous wailing and gnashing of teeth about this decision, which was a bit puzzling to me at first. Prior to the ruling, if you were crazy-rich and you wanted to buy an election, all you had to do was fund a super-PAC. Now, you’re still limited in what you can contribute to any single campaign directly, you just aren’t limited in how many campaigns to which you can contribute at any given time.

So why all the angst? Because it’s a well-accepted axiom of politics that he or she who wields the most money statistically over time will win more elections. Why? Because of three problems with humans. Continue reading Restrict the Vote →

A couple months ago, I returned from a cross-country trip during which I met with business and education leaders in Raleigh, New York, and Chicago. It was a busy but useful trip. After returning home, my mind was of course flooded with ideas to sort out and investigate, but I found myself distracted by the memories of what I’m calling “human assumption behavior” I observed.

We humans think of ourselves as advanced, typically right, intelligent, and capable of observing our surroundings. And yet so often when we’re not paying close attention we find ourselves doing some pretty dumb things. We make assumptions; we skip thinking through what consequences will come of our actions (or inactions) because we assume we’re smart, that we’re making wise decisions. We do things that if we saw others doing similar we’d point and laugh. So I’m going to point and laugh (and pretend that I have never, ever done anything similar, which of course is foolishness and an example of human assumption behavior). Continue reading Human Assumption Behavior →