What Does Nihil Sanctum Mean?
what does nihil sanctum mean?
Nihil Sanctum Estne? « William's Continued Adventures
May 14, 2009
Is nothing sacred?
In the Washington Post this morning, my former Latin teacher cites the cancellation of the AP Cicero and Catullus exam as evidence that our educational system has come under the fearful dominion of the College Board, who has the power to determine school curricula, a power which it uses, not to further educational goals or the public good, but rather for its own financial gain.
A fair complaint. This is a real-life example of what some people have called "the tyranny of the market," meaning that some goods which have economies of scale nevertheless have too-low demand for their production to be profitable, thus shutting out even those few who still demand obscure products.
The problem in overcoming the tyranny of the market is that it can only be accomplished by supplanting it with some other form of tyranny. Mrs. Brinley believes that the financial incentives the College Board faces ought to be replaced by some notion of "the public good."
The thing about "the public good" is that, for a person who uses the term, it tends to encompass more or less exactly what he or she believes is good. We all have this idea that if people would just be reasonable, they'd agree with our notion of the public good, so this wouldn't be a problem. Trust me, as a libertarian and sometimes-anarchist, I know what it feels like to know you are right and (nearly) everyone else is wrong about what what constitutes good government and good policy. But as a person who pays attention to the history of autocratic power, I know that it's people who think exactly like me who have been responsible for history's greatest tragedies, from the Inquisition to the French Revolution to Russian Communism.
While I do agree that market tyranny is a problem, I'm not at all convinced that there exists any better decision-making body or process that can be applied more generally to decisions about society's production and consumption.
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