Robert Putnam comments on the latest census data:
“The large master trend here is that over the last hundred years, technology has privatized our leisure time,” said Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard and author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”
“The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”
Putnam’s pessimism is a nice splash of cold water that you’ll need after reading about Time’s Person of The Year (via Dan):
But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
A good article the use of experimental drugs for dying patients. A nice link for a public policy class.
Kristoff tells the same sad tale over and over. But I’m glad he’s doing it.
Great post by Elizabeth on the boringness of hip parents.
Must read Jane Galt’s jaw-dropping description of working for PIRG.
Apt. 11d 
Galt’s remarks were striking – PIRG has certainly done the loony left a great deal of harm by alienating her, since her voice is one of the most notable against it now.
Another great lefty fraud is the Southern Poverty Law Center (http://www.answers.com/topic/southern-poverty-law-center) with its enormous war chest and thuggish attitude towards anyone who doubts them. In both cases, some people have done very well by being seen as doing good.
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Is PIRG the group that is always flyering campuses, saying that you can earn beaucoup bucks working for progressive causes?
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So JGalt was so appalled by the hypocrisy of one organization that she went and joined the people who openly admit they’re out to exploit average folks? Color me unimpressed.
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Doug,
Let’s look at this one again. PIRG had JG out fleecing poor people–in the name of helping poor people. Is it so wrong that that experience might lead one to wonder, if this group is hurting poor people in the name of helping them, I wonder whether other groups and programs aren’t (inadvertantly and perhaps quite innocently) doing the same thing?
I suggest taking an hour to write out “People who disagree with my politics aren’t necessarily evil or stupid” on a blackboard 100 times.
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Amy P, that also applies to the right, as well. Given the GOP and large chunks of the religious right, us liberals have far better grounds for demonizing all right-wingers. As for Jane, she’s just a propagandist, no more, no less. She failed her way into a career where being right isn’t necessary; attitude is all. I predict success for her.
I remember seeing her post on the latest survey (in the Lancet) about deaths in Iraq. Her first reaction was a gut ‘BS!’; based on a gut which had no training or experience in the matter. Pretty bad, for somebody who allegedly had two years of training in one of the world’s top business schools.
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There’s an instructive discussion between Henry Farrell (Crooked Timber) and Megan McArdle (Jane Galt) in part here http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/21/up-to-a-point-lord-copper/ here http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/17/asymmetrical-information/ and here http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/16/ducking-under/.
In it, Galt defends an Economist article that discusses one company’s exploitation of illegal immigrants without ever mentioning that there had been a legal finding in a US court that the company did, in fact, exploit illegal immigrants.
So she’s very upset about the labor practices of PIRG and other aspects of its business practices. On the other hand, abuse and exploitation in meat-packing do not appear to move her at all. Color me still unimpressed.
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I’ve heard criticism of Jane’s politics in the blogosphere, but I’ve never heard anyone call her a liar. Her story was really interesting and, I think, damning of the PIRG operation. Does her story tell us anything about liberal groups in general? No. Do I take it as a personal affront to my leftie world-view? No. One group’s bad behavior doesn’t damn every other leftie organization. I’m pretty comfortable in my leftie-ness to read people like Jane Galt, think they make interesting observations, and then continue on my merry way supporting the expansion of the welfare state.
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So, how goes the struggle with the forces of special education?
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McArdle does not seem to have written the article that’s at the center of the CT/JG discussion, so let’s be generous and say she’s defending a colleague who wrote a questionable piece, the editors who let it go through and the institution she works for. Defending your employer in public forums being something that people generally tend to do.
I agree that her article doesn’t tell us anything about liberal groups in general. But how does she open the essay? “If you want to know why I am no longer a lefty, just read this series on MyDD about PIRG…” She certainly wants readers to think that her experiences at PIRG say something not just about liberal groups in general but about the whole business of being left-of-center.
To me, it looks like she has exchanged one fervent set of beliefs for another, nearly opposite, set.
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After reading her post, I felt better about failing miserably as a a CalPIRG canvasser back when I was 19. I don’t think they took advantage of me, though. I just wasn’t good at sales pitches.
Some of the commenters on that blog were a little scary, though.
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I thought this stuff about the PIRGs being horrible and exploitive was old news. I remember being warned away from them back when I was in college.
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My wife, who remains a proud leftist (albeit one who knows enough economics, and cares enough about the developing world, to be reluctantly pretty market-friendly across a significant range of policy issues), quit PIRG in disgust after three days and can still, 14 years later, get furious about the organization. To Jane’s stories she would add stories of pressure for fraud.
It may be old news, but every year the PIRGs milk more money out of college activity funds (the only national political organization to use their college chapters as revenue sources– real political organizaions *spend money on* their college chapters), convince thousands more college kids to go do the work, under terrible conditions, of convincing thousands more donors to waste their money.
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