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Sunday Morning Reflection
October 14, 2012 Methodology

This is a Sunday post for a reason. Plus I simply don’t have the energy anymore to talk about it:

The question of “would the money spent on these projects be put to better use elsewhere for student well-being” is really a matter of opinion.

Yes, a matter of opinion. Of course. It’s just that some opinions appear to be “triumphs” and others not. I don’t know why I bother to teach. I am reminded of the environmental record of the Soviet Union by all of this. Despite having the “toughest” environmental laws on the books of any industrialized country in the 1970s and 1980s the USSR turned out of course to be an ecological disaster. It was so bad, I have read, that life expectancy in the USSR actually fell from the 1970s through the 1980s – I think this is the only industrialized country for which that happened.

And the Soviet response to this revelation?

They stopped publishing mortality statistics.

"3" Comments
  1. I do not remember telling this story to WC, but here it is.

    In the late 70’s or early 80’s — it does not matter — Italian postal workers did a strike before Christmas, resulting in a huge backlog of undelivered mail.

    To an Operating Specialist such as I, such a situation would represent a big sales opportunity, to sell a project to help them run their business more effectively with existing resources. Who knows what might have happened to their backlog?

    The Italian post office did come up with a solution that may have been inspired by the Russians: They burnt it.

    They don’t teach this stuff at Wharton.

  2. “The question of “would the money spent on these projects be put to better use elsewhere for student well-being” is really a matter of opinion.”

    I’m always amazed that an organization constantly responding with statements like this continues asking me to donate money.

  3. While I share your sentiment, to be fair, life expectancy in the USSR decreased for a large numbers of reasons; environmental pollution was probably negligible compared to things like malnutrition and alcoholism . It reached it’s peak in 1964 actually (70); it still has not recovered today.

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