The Houseman Report

cthia wrote:

Duckk wrote:Pretty much. Yes, HotQ mentioned he had a good reputation as an economist, but only as an academic. He never had to enact actual policy until the the disastrous High Ridge government. Everyone outside the Liberals hated him - even Edward Janacek, who was hardly a bastion of moral and intellectual prowess.

I was under the impression that Houseman received his "political merit" through horse trading.

NOT his "academic and professional merit" -- which he earned. It is because he earned it, academically, which gave the horse traders some ammo.

Even a horse trader can't trade a horse with bad knees, bad eyesight and basically nothing to work with.

Jonathan_S wrote:The full relivant quote from HotQ is

Honor of the Queen wrote:Houseman had a reputation as a brilliant economist and, given Grayson’s backward economy, sending him made sense, but he was also an ivory-tower intellectual who’d been plucked from a tenured position in Mannheim University’s College of Economics for government service. Mannheim wasn’t called “Socialist U” for nothing, and Houseman’s prominent family was a vocal supporter of the Liberal Party.

I, at least, am left with the impression that he went from graduation (possibly also from Mannheim University) directly into academia - and then branched out into working with the Foreign Office's diplomatic service (before so publicly wrecking himself over his myopic facile analysis of the Grayson Masada economic and military situation -- among other things he failed to noticed the public record, part of the briefing materials the delegation was given before leaving Manticore, that Masada appropriated 30% of its system domestic product to its military).

But boy, while doing a text search to see if I could find where he'd graduated from it seems nobody in the books has a good thing to say about him. I especially liked the bit from HAE about Hauptman's opinion of him

Honor Among Enemies wrote:In his own way, Reginald Houseman shared that prejudice against the nouveau riche—and by Houseman standards, even the Hauptman fortune was very nouveau indeed—but he was widely acknowledged as one of the half-dozen top economists of the Star Kingdom.
He was not, however, so recognized by Klaus Hauptman, who regarded him with virtually unmitigated contempt. Despite Houseman's innumerable academic credentials, Hauptman considered him a dilettante who personified the ancient cliché that "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach," and Houseman's sublime self-importance was immensely irritating to a man who'd proven his own competence in the one way no one could question: by succeeding

I wouldn't count on that Jonathan. Read between the lines more attentively. I suppose I understand the collegiate world much more than the average person. Now, it is possible that after Houseman received tenure, he coasted. Which is one of the problems of tenure track professors.

Houseman was plucked from a tenured position. I dated a professor who was seeking a tenured position and got it. Tenured positions are hard to come by. The applicant must be published, have funded research grants, involved in current research, etc., etc., etc. And a plethora of more etcetera. ONE DOES NOT RECEIVE TENURE UNLESS TEACHING FOR YEARS! And the university normally requires teaching experience at at least one other university.

Many professors who have tenure track are involved in outside business. For instance, my Theoretical Physics professor also worked for NASA. Of course, he was tenured. How many movies have you seen where the government, just as in this case, seeks the help of the most knowledgeable person in the field? It is a reality!

Remember the smartest guy on the planet? LOL

My bet would be that Houseman made a mark for himself long before teaching. And that his teaching was as a result of his being scouted and courted -- probably as a result of his many publishings and extracurricular outside work. These elite universities don't offer tenure track, then tenure, to the average professor. Why should they, when they would have to buy out his/her contract if the marriage goes south.

I'm more inclined to believe that Hauptman was speaking from personal prejudices. He also had a very low opinion of one Honor Harrington.

IIRC Houseman being on the negotiating team was because that was the condition Liberal Party had for their support of the Grayson mission. It would be a safe bet that he was the go to guy for economics for the party as his writings and lectures matched their views. He got into trouble when he was no longer preaching to the choir.

It is very common in politics for a party to have its pet experts whose theories on a subject match the party line.

Bear in mind that certain factions in Manticoran politics were opposed to naval expansion, forming alliances and so forth. The Liberals in particular probably saw the Grayson mission as a needless provocation of Haven.

Houseman might intentionally have been pushed onto the Grayson mission as an act of sabotage. It doesn't matter if the mission failed due to Houseman's lack of diplomatic skills - the opposition would happily blame Cromarty, Courvosier and the Navy for it.

munroburton wrote:Bear in mind that certain factions in Manticoran politics were opposed to naval expansion, forming alliances and so forth. The Liberals in particular probably saw the Grayson mission as a needless provocation of Haven.

Houseman might intentionally have been pushed onto the Grayson mission as an act of sabotage. It doesn't matter if the mission failed due to Houseman's lack of diplomatic skills - the opposition would happily blame Cromarty, Courvosier and the Navy for it.

Oh the Liberals would have a plan to throw him under wheels of the bus if he messed up in a way they could not spin as anyone else fault but his.

A question is what would have happened if Honor had not slapped Houseman but simply ignored him?

cthia wrote:
I'm more inclined to believe that Hauptman was speaking from personal prejudices. He also had a very low opinion of one Honor Harrington.

Aye, there's that.

Most pointy headed, propeller beanie wearing, ivory tower "intellectuals" have a tendency to regard anyone who wears a military or police uniform as a knuckle-dragging, club swinging Neanderthal. Unfortunately my own dear baby sister is one of those. She and Houseman would get along very nicely.

munroburton wrote:Bear in mind that certain factions in Manticoran politics were opposed to naval expansion, forming alliances and so forth. The Liberals in particular probably saw the Grayson mission as a needless provocation of Haven.

Houseman might intentionally have been pushed onto the Grayson mission as an act of sabotage. It doesn't matter if the mission failed due to Houseman's lack of diplomatic skills - the opposition would happily blame Cromarty, Courvosier and the Navy for it.

Or as a calming measure to the bloodthirsty navy. Which is also sabotage, now that I think of it. It does make one wonder if there were any covert orders from the Opposition—who were inept at grasping the need for war—and that those orders were responsible for Houseman's disposition.

robert132 wrote:

cthia wrote:
I'm more inclined to believe that Hauptman was speaking from personal prejudices. He also had a very low opinion of one Honor Harrington.

Aye, there's that.

Most pointy headed, propeller beanie wearing, ivory tower "intellectuals" have a tendency to regard anyone who wears a military or police uniform as a knuckle-dragging, club swinging Neanderthal. Unfortunately my own dear baby sister is one of those. She and Houseman would get along very nicely.

Yep and the coneheads can run into real trouble. I know one case were a retired BGEN applied to teach at a state university and they said he didn't have the credentials to teach. The general in question had 3 PhD's 3 MA and 4 BA's in history and had taught at USMA (West Point) and USAFA.

Aye, there's that.

Most pointy headed, propeller beanie wearing, ivory tower "intellectuals" have a tendency to regard anyone who wears a military or police uniform as a knuckle-dragging, club swinging Neanderthal. Unfortunately my own dear baby sister is one of those. She and Houseman would get along very nicely.[/quote]


Yep and the coneheads can run into real trouble. I know one case were a retired BGEN applied to teach at a state university and they said he didn't have the credentials to teach. The general in question had 3 PhD's 3 MA and 4 BA's in history and had taught at USMA (West Point) and USAFA.[/quote]

There's a lot of protectionism in many fields. IT has been pointed out that those licensed always fight to keep others out. In Florida, someone needs 300 of hours of training to be a "nails technician." Same as for a teacher.

When I worked in the Bronx as a school administrator, one high school had a student whose father was a former New York Yankee. There was a sudden vacancy for the coach of the team due to health and the former player volunteered. The teachers union protested and forced someone who had never played to take a special first aid course so he could coach.

The team lost all but one of its games the next year. The former player pulled his son out as they moved out of town. He said that he had been so offended by the union action that he prefereed his son go elsewhere.

The purpose of the teachers union is, in order, to enrich the leadership, increase the number of members, protect the members from consequences of their actions, elect more democrats, decrease the number of hours that teachers work without extra pay, increase the pay of members, and lastly teach the kins when that doesn't interfere with any of the more important objectives and the members don't have anything more important to do.

kzt wrote:The purpose of the teachers union is, in order, to enrich the leadership, increase the number of members, protect the members from consequences of their actions, elect more democrats, decrease the number of hours that teachers work without extra pay, increase the pay of members, and lastly teach the kins when that doesn't interfere with any of the more important objectives and the members don't have anything more important to do.

As a member of the retired branch of the union I both resent and resemble the remark. This was not the original goal of the unions. Until 50 years ago they were almost the opposite. Yes, they argued for better pay, etc., but that was it.

However, then came the wars against them. In NYC, Mayor John Lindsay staged a battle over a $750 a year raise (about $15 a week), called teachers "racists" The exact line was "White Jewish teachers go on strike against black children."

That led to a reorganization that supported communities just tossing out white teachers without due process. The American Civil Liberties union supported that which led to a split and the creation of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Albert Shanker, the leader of the union, was vilified, for the strike. The left wing excoriated him, Woody Allen talked about the destruction of earth [in the movie Sleeper] when "someone named Albert Shanker got a hold of a nuclear weapon."

The New York City Teachers Union became militant then and fought hard to every teacher, even the idiots (as administrators, both my wife and I had to deal with a few real crazies) and Shanker went on to head the national union.

However, this best gets back to the Honorverse by noting that Houseman was far better known for his connections than his ability. There's a lot of that going around today.