stakeholder statism

public health + public schools = metastasized societal cancer

May 3

much of human history is just slapping a new coat of paint over the same rust spots or finding a way to market the failed old thing as the new new thing. “stakeholder capitalism” sounds a a lot hipper and nicer than “coercive statism to demand unearned rights and privileges by force.” but that’s what it is. it’s fascism and socialism with a branding facelift.

if this were really capitalism, stakeholders would be bound by market discipline and consumer sovereignty. real preferences would emerge from the price mechanism and we would know what people actually value. the descriptor of stakeholder capitalism is either redundant or intended to deceive.

if it’s self organizing and voluntary, then stakeholders are already included. if it’s not, then this is pretext for coercive force. you have the state dictating what you MUST do and would-be “stakeholders” squabble over who gets to dictate the rules and who may claim a right to a stake in what.

they’re not giving you choices; they’re giving you orders.

when this becomes too prevalent, too organized, and too unified, it becomes the societal equivalent of metastasizing cancer. at that point, things take on a new urgency. at that point, the trouble takes on a new depth.

when teacher’s unions start lobbying for and writing the actual text of position statements on epidemiology for the CDC, that’s what this sort of deep trouble looks like in action. this is not a stake you want these people to hold. this is the point at which to seek extremely aggressive treatment modalities or accept that it’s time to “get your affairs in order.” there is no third option.

welcome to late-stage institutional and regulatory capture. welcome to stakeholder statism.

buckle up. this gets bumpy.

what happened here is shameful. this has been studied for a century and there has never been evidence that school closures mitigate pandemics. we have stack of research from this year alone showing this to be true. the SWEDEN vs FINLAND study was out by summer. (note that swedish kids were unmasked and pretty much un-distanced. this was real, normal school not some contrived hamster ball cosplay school. arguments about “kid compliance with NPI’s” are moot and this has been known for coming up on a year.)

there is no evidence that GOING REMOTE, distancing, cohorting, or MASKING KIDS makes any difference in outcomes for students, school staff, or communities. the whole notion is purely presumptive. there was never any there there.

dr hoeg, so justly outraged above, was an author on a STUDY using schools in wisconsin. it concluded that covid spread in schools (students and staff) was near zero and infection rates were 37% below the average in their communities as a whole and only 3.7% of cases in the population came from school.

schools were having no effect on covid spread. they never have.

“the COVID-19 incidence among students and staff members was lower than in the county overall (3,453 versus 5,466 per 100,000). Among 191 cases identified in students and staff members, only seven (3.7%) cases, all among students, were linked to in-school spread. “

one can safely presume that the CDC knew about this study and accepted its accuracy and rigor. they did, after all, publish it on their own website.

even legendary political water carrier and lockdown legend anthony “move the goalposts” fauci got behind the CDC guidance to re-open schools. this was from jan 28th of this year:

Eli Klein @TheEliKlein

Fauci backs CDC recommendations that schools should open NOW

so the CDC and the NIH were on board, the data looked sound, and the risks looked all but non-existent. they were getting ready to publish this guidance and then (cue ominous music) the american federation of teachers (AFT) rode into town and “data, ka-schmata” no way were they planning to go back to work.

this is the gang who pays the piper. this is the gang the current administration desperately needs to support them in the mid-terms. and she who pays the piper calls the tune.

so on the beat, the music changed and the AFT became the CDC and randi weingarten shoved emily oster and tracy hoeg to the sidelines because rochelle “the weathervane” walensky, the new head of CDC knows which way the wind is blowing and it was blowing due “play ball if you value your shiny new political career.”

smash cut to a fawning kamela harris, already counting the filthy lucre of union donations and dreaming of more marxist curriculums.

but FOIA, she is a cruel mistress. you think you have all your political ducks in a row and the fix is in, and then sure as andy cuomo has no real friends when the going gets tough, the truth, it finds a way to sneak out into the light.

the emails are like a kabuki dance of nepotism.

and they pivot right to the “variant” grift that has been DEBUNKED so many times.

and so we wind up with the AFT writing text for the CDC to add in baseless escape hatches and pointless school closures. they are not even pretending to do their jobs anymore. not when it counts. what’s next? this?

this was never about data.

so what was it about?

there is, alas one simple variable that predicts most of school openness as an outcome and certain internet felines were talking about it months ago. 89% of schools in states with weak teacher’s unions were open. 46% of schools with strong ones were. this is not a coincidence.

this is about one thing: using political power.

and teacher’s unions have LOTS of political power. they are massive political donors, especially at state and local levels.

it’s all about the unions

there are many great teachers out there. i had some. maybe you did too. this is not about them.

this is about the unions who represent them, often against the teachers’ will, as such representation and membership is frequently mandatory.

any bureaucracy, especially one whose existence is mandated and protected by regulation and law, rapidly becomes its own key constituency.

this is a well known tenet of public choice theory and the political sciences. but what has happened to teacher’s unions has really taken this to the next level. granted, they were never supposed to be about helping the children, but did the folks writing the laws that granted such unions perpetual and absolute control over school staffing and forced membership really intend for this? pay for seniority, not results? functional unfireability? near total unaccountability? ever larger cost and administrative bloat while test scores drop? a steadfast refusal to come in to work at all?

teacher’s unions have become self-serving, rapacious, and machiavellian to the point where even the more diabolical of the borgia clan would pause to mutter “wow, that’s a bit much isn’t it?”

they are the reason so many kids are not in school. not covid. not science. it’s the teacher’s unions. period. the correlation is there and the smoking guns are all over the place and have been long before this most recent cache of conspicuously used musketry surfaced.

i mean, was this not a pretty good hint? “we’d like no cops, free healthcare, and a ban on competition and we’ll hold the education of your children hostage until we get it!”

hey, what’s a little extortion among friends? come on, it’s for the kids! marxists? no! not us! what would give you that idea?

if memory serves, many were also demanding an end to standardized testing. can’t have those pesky “objective results” showing up and letting people get a good look at your job performance…

these demands and the current vogue for critical race theory, colonial theory, gender theory, and whatever that set of bizarre woke absurdities currently masquerading as “math” is called have nothing to do with the welfare of your children, this is about shoring up a power base by using your kids as a weapon.

this was never about getting them an education; it was about insuring their indoctrination.

“stakeholder capitalism” and all the nonsensical tropes it drags along behind it has come into vogue. it’s silly, stupid, pernicious stuff and it’s never going to stick because competition will not let it. you just have too much choice in the world today about who to buy a shirt or a car or a vacation from. “go woke, go broke.”

but public sectors are different. as you just saw, you do not get to shop for public health policy makers (at least without moving and even then only to a limited degree). this is how leviathan likes it.

most do not get to shop for education. private school is expensive and the public schools are take or pay. hell, they’re pay even if you’re childless. and the teachers want even less choice. they’ve been trying to strangle charter schools in their crib since the day they were born. vouchers too. the strong unions are the most anti-kid and the most anti-choice.

you get locked into “stakeholder statism” in a way that stakeholder capitalism cannot and does not match. it, not the markets it seeks to malign, represents the real threat and if the biden porkulus-maximus bill manages to tie state aid to the removal of right to work laws (among many other new power grants) in the PRO ACT then this self serving stakeholder state will be dug in like ticks and ready for blood.

we’ve spent 30 years letting our schools get taken over by unions run along marxist lines and increasingly teaching doctrine grounded in marxist thought that places resentment over achievement. these are the old-school, muscular power politics totalitarian/authoritarian kinds of unions. soviet unions. they make the UAW and the teamsters look like a 2nd grade school play. did you seriously think they were going to pick your side? really?

these folks are stalinists and they have been playing a long game.

they made you think they were nice. but look at what they are doing. look at what they are asking. look at how they are playing against your kids to serve their own ends.

everyone sounds friendly when they are powerless. it is only when you give them some real power that you’ll get a look at their real character.

how do you like them now?