| Extremely good essay. Here's the thing. A left tackle ( using "The Blind Side" here ) has a particular set of physical properties. If suddenly, for nutritional or environmental reasons, there are 10x of the number of people who can qualify physically as a left tackle, then the locus of competition will move elsewhere. This, IMO, is what we see now. Paul's not advocating it ( again, IMO ) he's commenting on it. We are without the massive corporations of the 1950s to absorb people of "ordinary" ability[1]. Then again, I get stories of how those jobs slowly killed people. [1]Yes, I hate that sentence but that's how the story goes... Investing in inner city kids is a great idea, but it's hard to do. Using yet another sports film as a source, "The Street Stops Here" talks about Bob Hurley. You don't find a Bob Hurley every day. Bob Hurley is a retired parole officer. It's clear from the film that he'd do nearly anything to keep kids out of prison. This is his white whale; he doesn't play fair and he doesn't care who objects to it. Money will not help with that. Finding what can be done is a profoundly difficult problem. |