I don’t disagree with this article, but I also don’t blame those who don’t send their kids to dysfunctional schools. When my kids were very young my wife walked by our local grade school and heard two grade school girls screaming about how they’d beat each other up and told me our kids would never, ever go there. What is the argument for having my kids deal with that vs sending them to a school where they can get away with 20+ person class sizes because the kids are well behaved enough to make it work?
I wonder if being kinda hypocritical on a societal scale is a good thing. I think peoples values are so different (and many quite immoral) that if everyone was 100% principled it would be like the purge. "In praise of folly' is one the money here.
One thing I miss from the Matt of 20 years ago, that comes across a bit in this piece, is the view that he is in fact more left wing than many of his critics, because they are not in fact taking into account the actual interests of the people who need public services, or who are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, etc.
The person whose support for reduction of CO2 emissions takes the form of opposing the XL pipeline or "pausing" LNG exports in not not taking account of anyone's interests.
It's class realignment. The core agenda setters of the Democratic party are now upper middle class degree holders. Much more multiracial and female but all relatively 'privileged' as much as I have come to hate that word and its pejorative connotations. When MY first started writing in the W years the Republicans were still winning people with college degrees, albeit by smaller and smaller margins.
??? That's true but being privaleged does not prevent you from supporting policies that promote faster growth: lower deficits (unless achieved exclusivily by reducing social insurance), freer trade, incresed immigration of people with high potential, not deporting workers on account of past immigration violations, more efficient public schools and control of crime and disorder, land use regulations and buildng codes that allow property owners and developers to build more housing and commercial space, taxing the emissions of CO2, etc.
One thing I've noted - and it showed up in the NHJ piece also - is that a lot of schools in challenging neighborhoods are fairly impervious to parents. (For at least partly good reasons.) How do you effectively advocate in that kind of environment?
(As someone who lives in a poor city, uses the parks and the busses regularly, but has so far avoided the schools.)
Since this is a repeat article, I'll just repeat my top level comment from the original article. Since then, I have joined Matt in getting an induction stove, even if I was already Doing My Part by having that appliance electrified, and I love it.
"If Boise had functional mass transit, I'd use it for the proper occasion. In absence of that, I targeted a neighborhood close to downtown and to retail,that makes bicycling and walking more feasible. If I had kids, no question they'd go to public school, which In Boise is the opposite of the transit, it's highly functional. They'd also avoid travel sports (thanks to Matt for setting that straight!)
I also made sure to target a neighborhood with no HOA. My personal complaints about them are well known, but collectively I'm not going to retreat to private parks or clubhouses, I want to contribute to our public equivalents.
On Matt's point about different values with regard to taxation and public spending, I am fortunate to know and work with quite a few country club style Republicans who are very generous with their time and money toward good charitable private sector causes. I take a hybrid approach there in that while it's good to have a public base, having supplemental private options helps to be freer from political forces that can provide some services in a better but complementary way.
Finally, one tip on the furnace, Matt: don't be afraid to be a little proactive there. When mine suddenly went on the fritz in the winter, I couldn't wait around to get an electric option, and so I'm locked in with gas for the foreseeable future."
Google was doing too good of a job in that when I did a search for [site:slowboring.com "live your values"], it was only showing this article. I had to dig into the 2025 sitemap to find it. Thanks for linking.
It's interesting to read this piece after Nikole Hannah-Jones got so much heat for putting her child in a poor public school. I like the two-way framing. You should live in accordance with your values, but your values should also be in accordance with living.
I think NHJ deserves a lot of grace for her piece. She basically admits her project didn't work, that it might have hurt her kid, and that she is now taking action to promote the interests of her kid in ways that don't fit neatly into her ideologies.
In today's totally flattened discourse that's a very brave thing to put into the world, and even though she never walks away from her ideological diagnosis, she deserves credit for doing it. We're all imperfect, and to be vulnerably imperfect in the last great paper of record is worthy of admiration.
Beat me to it. When I reread the sentence "I’m not asking anyone to sacrifice their kid’s welfare for the sake of the collective good.", I was going to snarkily respond with "Oh, if only a certain someone out there in the takes business was able to read this a decade ago...".
It's not clear that Hanna-Jones knew that her daughter would suffer from her school choice when she first made it or that she would have suffered if she and a few other parents had advocate for different management of that school.
I think she got so much heat not so much for the initial "put kid in [poor] public school" but the really perverse ideological pursuit on her goal and even by her own account turning a painfully evident blind eye to the problems.... Ideology over kids own interest.
I feel similarly. To me (among the many) significant issues with 'woke'-cum-public policy or just setting of social/cultural norms is the attempt to create too many legal and/or social fictions about the world that don't align with facts and common sense. In a way I give credit to NKH for having the courage of her convictions but they are nevertheless really stupid convictions.
I don’t disagree with this article, but I also don’t blame those who don’t send their kids to dysfunctional schools. When my kids were very young my wife walked by our local grade school and heard two grade school girls screaming about how they’d beat each other up and told me our kids would never, ever go there. What is the argument for having my kids deal with that vs sending them to a school where they can get away with 20+ person class sizes because the kids are well behaved enough to make it work?
I wonder if being kinda hypocritical on a societal scale is a good thing. I think peoples values are so different (and many quite immoral) that if everyone was 100% principled it would be like the purge. "In praise of folly' is one the money here.
One thing I miss from the Matt of 20 years ago, that comes across a bit in this piece, is the view that he is in fact more left wing than many of his critics, because they are not in fact taking into account the actual interests of the people who need public services, or who are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, etc.
The person whose support for reduction of CO2 emissions takes the form of opposing the XL pipeline or "pausing" LNG exports in not not taking account of anyone's interests.
It's class realignment. The core agenda setters of the Democratic party are now upper middle class degree holders. Much more multiracial and female but all relatively 'privileged' as much as I have come to hate that word and its pejorative connotations. When MY first started writing in the W years the Republicans were still winning people with college degrees, albeit by smaller and smaller margins.
??? That's true but being privaleged does not prevent you from supporting policies that promote faster growth: lower deficits (unless achieved exclusivily by reducing social insurance), freer trade, incresed immigration of people with high potential, not deporting workers on account of past immigration violations, more efficient public schools and control of crime and disorder, land use regulations and buildng codes that allow property owners and developers to build more housing and commercial space, taxing the emissions of CO2, etc.
One thing I've noted - and it showed up in the NHJ piece also - is that a lot of schools in challenging neighborhoods are fairly impervious to parents. (For at least partly good reasons.) How do you effectively advocate in that kind of environment?
(As someone who lives in a poor city, uses the parks and the busses regularly, but has so far avoided the schools.)
Since this is a repeat article, I'll just repeat my top level comment from the original article. Since then, I have joined Matt in getting an induction stove, even if I was already Doing My Part by having that appliance electrified, and I love it.
I'll also reup Phil Ochs's Love Me I'm A Liberal as a proper music interlude for this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdqQ2BdgOA
https://www.slowboring.com/p/live-your-values/comment/161782668
"If Boise had functional mass transit, I'd use it for the proper occasion. In absence of that, I targeted a neighborhood close to downtown and to retail,that makes bicycling and walking more feasible. If I had kids, no question they'd go to public school, which In Boise is the opposite of the transit, it's highly functional. They'd also avoid travel sports (thanks to Matt for setting that straight!)
I also made sure to target a neighborhood with no HOA. My personal complaints about them are well known, but collectively I'm not going to retreat to private parks or clubhouses, I want to contribute to our public equivalents.
On Matt's point about different values with regard to taxation and public spending, I am fortunate to know and work with quite a few country club style Republicans who are very generous with their time and money toward good charitable private sector causes. I take a hybrid approach there in that while it's good to have a public base, having supplemental private options helps to be freer from political forces that can provide some services in a better but complementary way.
Finally, one tip on the furnace, Matt: don't be afraid to be a little proactive there. When mine suddenly went on the fritz in the winter, I couldn't wait around to get an electric option, and so I'm locked in with gas for the foreseeable future."
A link to the comment section of the original piece: https://www.slowboring.com/p/live-your-values/comments
Google was doing too good of a job in that when I did a search for [site:slowboring.com "live your values"], it was only showing this article. I had to dig into the 2025 sitemap to find it. Thanks for linking.
As Albert Hirschman said, voice is a good alternative to exit.
It's interesting to read this piece after Nikole Hannah-Jones got so much heat for putting her child in a poor public school. I like the two-way framing. You should live in accordance with your values, but your values should also be in accordance with living.
I think NHJ deserves a lot of grace for her piece. She basically admits her project didn't work, that it might have hurt her kid, and that she is now taking action to promote the interests of her kid in ways that don't fit neatly into her ideologies.
In today's totally flattened discourse that's a very brave thing to put into the world, and even though she never walks away from her ideological diagnosis, she deserves credit for doing it. We're all imperfect, and to be vulnerably imperfect in the last great paper of record is worthy of admiration.
Beat me to it. When I reread the sentence "I’m not asking anyone to sacrifice their kid’s welfare for the sake of the collective good.", I was going to snarkily respond with "Oh, if only a certain someone out there in the takes business was able to read this a decade ago...".
It's not clear that Hanna-Jones knew that her daughter would suffer from her school choice when she first made it or that she would have suffered if she and a few other parents had advocate for different management of that school.
I think she got so much heat not so much for the initial "put kid in [poor] public school" but the really perverse ideological pursuit on her goal and even by her own account turning a painfully evident blind eye to the problems.... Ideology over kids own interest.
I feel similarly. To me (among the many) significant issues with 'woke'-cum-public policy or just setting of social/cultural norms is the attempt to create too many legal and/or social fictions about the world that don't align with facts and common sense. In a way I give credit to NKH for having the courage of her convictions but they are nevertheless really stupid convictions.
The mark of an actually wealthy country, not just a country with some rich people, is whether the top 1% takes public transit.
If you go to Zurich or Singapore, you can take their tram/MRT systems and there will be some very rich people sitting on those trains.
These people will also have luxury cars, but those are used to drive up to the mountains or to Malaysia, not for just getting around the city.