Friday, April 27, 2012

Economics Question, from Mid-term Exams

The question is: "Why are strikes unacceptable in the public sector?" -and the woman next to me is busily typing away. It is finals week at Roosevelt U. in Chicago.

I only saw part of the question and part of her answer and what I saw was something like that the public sector has a kind of responsibility like the governmental responsibility to provide services to the citizens or to the country... and therefore, strikes would interrupt that public administration of goods and services.

Really she is just practicing her chops, her appropriate monkey-student skills by typing this way. We could even say reasoning this way. Why not? But is this learning?, or learning to follow certain predesignated lines of "reasoning"?, reasoning tropes you could say. ("tropes" -one of my preferred favorite words) I can see how the student would just end up being trained, trained like the parrot be... and trained to "reason" out all the views that her textbooks and instructors are, Um ----- training her in.

So? What is the real Jack Silverman answer? I would say that the whole economy has the responsibility for taking care of the citizens. Therefore strikes in the private sector are less disruptive, but only as a matter of degree, and, therefore, the distinction being drawn between providing services to citizens and providing services to "customers" is where the argument is not quite valid. Not exactly.
 

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