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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

In my father's later years he was head of the business dept at a college. He taught classes in business and finance.

He'd often have students come up to him and say they had no idea there was even a case for free markets. All they'd ever heard in school was how awful they were. They'd thank him for opening their eyes.

At one time, the other staff (all socialists) invited him to participate in a debate about free markets in front of the students, and warned my father that they were going to take him apart. He happily agreed.

They wound up rather sorry they'd done that. My father was an experienced debater, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of economics and history. He shredded them :-) and some had the class to come up later and thank him for opening their eyes as well, as they hadn't believed there was a case for free markets either.

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My father was an experienced debater

That would actually support the case that "education is a system of indoctrination", academic inquiry and critical appraisal of research is very much a different thing from competitive debating.

An expert debater could win either side of the argument. But in this case my father chose the side he believed in.

This says nothing about being on the 'right' side of the argument.

About 15 years ago, when there was a big push to get creationism into textbooks, academics at universities were warned not to publically debate creationists. No matter what their background was, they would lose against a trained debater and then feel extremely ashamed after. There is no reason to think that creationists do not believe in creationism.

What I'm saying is, we can't accept positions that are based on nothing more than heartfelt belief, and debate is not the way to find out what the correct path forward is. Socrates powerfully demonstrated both statements.

You can flip the instances of socialism and free marketeerism mutatis mutandis and this comment means exactly as much as it currently does.

Was that your intent? To point out that whether it's Your Father's U or U of Chicago the importance of hearing the dissenting opinion remains the same?

Flipping it reverses the situation from reflecting reality to reflecting a hypothetical: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-disa...

My intent was straightforward. There is a case for the free market, but the current school system does not expose the students to it. My father's students had never heard it, and I'd never heard it from the schools I went to, either.

It's a little sad, being as we live in a free market system.

"we live in a free market system."

That's debatable.

> but the current school system does not expose the students to it

That's not at all my experience, where the case for it is the core of both high school and introductory college economics, as well as frequently being touched on in the history and civics curricula.

> It's a little sad, being as we live in a free market system.

No, we don't.

And then everybody clapped.

Sure is gonna be embarrassing if the Efficient Market Hypothesis ends up being false, huh?

Your story, juxtaposed against the grandparent complaint, suggests that your father was somehow challenging an ambient air of socialist ideology amongst academics. However, your father was head of the department, making the point somewhat incoherent. He just as easily could have been policing his juniors to try to suppress any views which he did not approve, and embarrassing them in front of their students as a power play.

You could be right, but I'll point out that the college treated him well, and the business/finance department thrived under his management (as in it grew and attracted a lot more students). If he was a tyrant, I'd expect the college would try to get rid of him and students would avoid his department.

What kind of free markets are we talking about? Free as in corporations get to run amok, or free as in no corporations because the state doesn't have the authority to grant incorporation papers?

Carroll Quigley wrote frequently on how the modern concept of a corporation is one of an "immortal"--unlimited in both lifetime and scope of operations--and that bestowing such power on a group of individuals can only end badly.

Of course, tell that to people who mostly work at and/or invest in corporations, and points will be burned.

Thank you for your service.

No worries. Points don't matter; getting more doesn't make my johnson bigger, nor does losing them diminish me. I still have six inches either way, and that's enough.

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