If you peruse my posting history here you'll find I'm constructive and respectful where it's warranted.

Here's the exact quote I was responding to:

"That doesn't seem to apply here at all. If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish."

There's so many things wrong with this it was hard to know where to begin; to actually address this one just on the facts is like trying to refute the assertion "colorless dreams sleep furiously", but I'll do what I can.

Part 1: the "teachers raising money from VCs" scenario.

First, let's understand what I think he's saying. I think he's saying this:

- step 1: "assume good education can raise someone's lifetime earning potential"

Hidden Assumptions in Step 1: none relevant.

- step 2: "assuming good education raises someone's lifetime earning potential, a good teacher or teachers could get raise funds from investors and then educate people free-of-charge NOW in exchange for a sizable cut of the students' future lifetime earnings."

Hidden Assumptions in Step 2: when he says "would be able to raise money from VCs" I assume he means "it'd be a net-profitable endeavor to educate people NOW in exchange for a large cut of their future earnings, and thus investors would be willing to fund it." I edited "VCs" to "investors" to be generous, and I'm assuming the investors want to see a profit (investors could do this out of charity -- let's call that a "scholarship" -- but for sake of argument let's stick to profit-seeking investors).

- step 3: "if they didn't behave that way, then...". By this, I'm going to assume he is saying "clearly, people aren't investing in people's education in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings".

I assume he is saying these kinds of investments aren't happening for the following reason: the rest of his "argument" depends on it not being the case that people are currently investing in schemes like the one we're sketching here.

Where does this get us? About how I summarized the "rhetorical point" last time:

"If education substantially improved people's future earning potential, it'd be a profitable investment to fund people's education NOW in exchange for a percentage of their future income, but you don't see that happening, which I choose to take as evidence in favor of my world view (which appears to be that there are many people who can't be educated)."

There's more ways than I have time for to make a mockery of that, but let's pick three of the easier one.

Firstly: there's an enormous industry dedicated to loaning people money to get an education. You can characterize this behavior as: "paying for someone's education NOW in exchange for a portion of their future income". It's not 100% isomorphic to his proposal, but it's quite close, don't you think? Most of the larger loans -- like for medical school or law school -- only make economic sense under the assumption the education received in law school or medical school leads to substantially increased earning ability once the education is finished.

Sure, student loans are debt and not equity, but they're quite cheap as a % of lifetime earnings (you'll find census figures for average lifetime earnings of college grads in the $2.1 million range versus average net indebtedness at graduation from a 4-year program in the $20k range if you search around; even assuming punitive interest leading to paying back a total of $40k you're talking < 2% of your lifetime earnings to pay for an undergraduate education; you'll find, if you crunch #s for law school or medical school, that the %s are quite clear).

The reason student loans are regarded as painful is because they're expected to be paid back immediately after graduating, which is exactly when you're typically at your very lowest earning potential; as a % of lifetime earnings they're quite reasonable.

It might be possible to salvage the argument, but the existence of the student loan industry makes it a lot harder to claim flat-out that people aren't investing in students' education-boosted future income; investors are investing, just not quite in the way this guy sketched out.

Secondly: using exactly the same logic as he's using you can make more ridiculous claims. Here's how you do it:

- If medical school / ivy league / law school / pro football really increased your earnings potential, you'd see investors willing to fund people's medical school / ivy league / law school / football training for no upfront cost in exchange for a large cut of the student's future earnings. But, you don't see that, so I take this as evidence in support of my worldview.

Take your pick of "sure-thing" -- the arrangement he's sketching is extremely rare, and arguing that its absence in a particular field implies anything about that field is more than a little dubious.

Thirdly: you could handwave about the various pragmatic reasons why such an arrangement is unlikely -- imperfect information, various transaction and friction costs -- or point to the arrangement's relative rarity across most fields and assume there's something intrinsically unrealistic about it that has limited its adoption. Not a whiz-bang refutation, sure, but about as robust as that argument was, and thus equally convincing.

OK

I've gone through part one, the "teachers raising VC" scenario, and explained why the whole thing is worthy of derision:

- contrary to his claims, it's happening all the time, just as debt and not equity investment

- using the same logic you can show that eg medical school can't possibly raise someone's lifetime earnings

- you can also point to the "equity" version of the arrangement appearing to be rarely used in practice, hinting at its unworkability with at least as much rigor as his "argument" had

Part 2: the argumentative fallacy

I'm going to reproduce the quote, but split into parts with short commentary.

Section A: "If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay."

NB: we're talking about a hypothetical scenario (if X then Y). Leaving aside the issues already arranged, remember this: he's talking about something that might happen, not something that is happening, or did happen but failed. Pure conjecture.

Section B: "If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that..." -- still in the hypothetical mode (if X then Y), not the definite mode "because X happened a conclusion of Y is implied"

Section C: "since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish"

NB: here's where stuff gets dirty. You see how he slid from speaking in a hypothetical mode in Section A and Section B to speaking about stuff that actually happened (money we spent, results we didn't get)?

You also see how the qualifiers and signs of uncertainty start to disappear: "if education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs...If they didn't behave that way you might have to suspect...

Go look for qualifiers or signs of uncertainty in Section C; you won't find any.

It's possible it's entirely accidental, but it has the look of dishonest writing commonly employed in eg direct mail campaigns soliciting donations for politicians or advocacy groups: you start with careful hypotheticals and finish with a conclusion.

It's no different than "If asteroid mining was profitable, astronauts would be able to raise funds from VCS to go mind asteroids. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that, since spending billions of dollars on improving our space program hasn't brought us much space-metal, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, it's with what we think we can accomplish." If that sounds a little off to you, it should, but it's the same "logical" "argument" at work, just with sections A and B chosen to draw out the incongruity of section C.

Part Three: the "improving" fallacy

Thankfully this one is short. Let's go back to section C:

Section C: "since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish"

This is sneaky writing, too.

Facts:

Fact A: billions have been spent on the schools

Fact B: those billions haven't had any significant effect on their ability to learn

I'd argue fact B slightly: compared to, say, the kids of coal miners or sharecroppers or appalachian mountain folks, I'd be shocked if the schools -- as bad as they often are -- aren't having a significant effect on the kids' ability to learn. Whether the cost of the schools is too high for the benefit is separate; claiming outright "no significant effect on their ability to learn" seems unwarranted. You'd also have to explain the Flynn effect.

Where do those get you? Not as far as they're taken in Section C.

You could say "we've spent billions in schemes we hoped might improve outcomes, but they didn't work the way we hoped they would." That'd be honest, but it'd also weaken the argument that's being attempted here, which is essentially "proof by exhaustion" (there's only one possible plan that might "improve" the schools' outcomes, we tried it, it didn't work).

Hence the omission of the qualifiers (instead of "the stuff we tried didn't work" it's like "we improved it and it was still crap"), as it makes the intended conclusion flow more naturally.

I gotta jet, it's been a long day and it's nice to have something to do to procrastinate; I hate intellectual dishonesty and so coming back to see that post after burying one of my dogs pretty much put me into conniption.

This kind of stuff seems out of place here so after this I quit; I submit as a parting shot in my defense that the post I replied to was every bit as flawed as I claimed it was.