Archive for Daniel Hager

Freedom and the Hotel: The Lessons of the St. Nicholas and Statler

Imagine you were a commercial traveler of a century ago. Life would consist of endless hardships, wouldn’t it? Primitive transportation, primitive lodgings, primitive food service. A grungy daily grind, to be sure. But that picture is inaccurate. The hotel industry was in the midst of a transformation whose legacy is still evident today. This progress [...]

1Mar2006 | Daniel Hager | 0 comments | Continued

Ambrose Bierce on Socialism

Daniel Hager (fris@michcom.net) is a writer and consultant in Lansing, Michigan. Ambrose Bierce packed a pistol when he walked the streets of San Francisco. As a long-time editor and writer there, he made many enemies through the pungency of his pen. So he wisely carried a revolver in case of retaliation. He backed up that [...]

1Dec2004 | Daniel Hager | 3 comments | Continued

The Lessons of Another Tolstoy

Daniel Hager is a writer and consultant in Lansing, Michigan. This is the tale of another Tolstoy—not Leo, the nineteenth-century Russian count, novelist, and social reformer. This Russian came later, in the twentieth century, and was not of the nobility. His first name is obscure. His good friend Vladimir V. Tchernavin, who recounted his story, [...]

1Jan2004 | Daniel Hager | 4 comments | Continued

School and State: A Neat Solution to the Neatby Dispute

Daniel Hager is a writer and consultant in Lansing, Michigan. Before there was Rudolf Flesch there was Hilda Neatby. In 1955 Flesch published Why Johnny Can’t Read, a bestseller that charged the U.S. educational system with malfeasance for not correctly teaching young students how to read. Two years earlier Hilda Neatby (1904–75), a University of [...]

1Dec2003 | Daniel Hager | 0 comments | Continued

Utopia Versus Eutopia

Utopianism has a long-running history that includes turning the 1900s into the bloodiest century in human experience. Typically utopian schemes are founded on the premise that individual self-interest must be subjugated for the purported greater public good. As such, utopianism is fit for only a utopia: the term derives from the Greek words ou (“not”) [...]

1Mar2003 | Daniel Hager | 1 comment | Continued

Capitalism and the Weak

One allegation about capitalism is that it enables the strong to crush the weak. Some critics contend it models the ruthlessness of biological Darwinism’s extermination of the weak through natural selection. In the Marxist view the entire proletarian class is enchained by the power of capitalists and must seize for itself the ownership of the [...]

1May2002 | Daniel Hager | 2 comments | Continued

True Ecology

Daniel Hager is a writer in Lansing, Michigan. Ecology is generally considered to be a branch of biology. It does not belong there. An examination of the subject indicates a better home for it. Ecology is defined as the study of organisms in relation to their animate and inanimate surroundings. It focuses on the connections [...]

1May2001 | Daniel Hager | 1 comment | Continued

The Central Fallacy of Public Schooling

Daniel Hager is a writer in Lansing, Michigan. When World War II ended, Congress authorized a tax cut to take effect January 1, 1946. Young America, a publication distributed through public schools, ran an article in its December 13, 1945, issue discussing the measure and presenting a brief history of American taxation. The article concluded [...]

1Sep1999 | Daniel Hager | 14 comments | Continued

Educational Savior?

Daniel Hager is a freelance writer in Lansing, Michigan. George S. Counts is not a widely recognized figure in twentieth-century American education, but he was extremely influential. Twenty-five years after his death, the damage caused by this one-time president of the American Federation of Teachers lives on. The first step in counteracting his effects is [...]

1Jun1999 | Daniel Hager | 1 comment | Continued

James F. Lincoln: Industrial Peacemaker

Daniel Hager is a freelance writer in Lansing, Michigan. The dichotomy between labor and management does not actually exist. Enlightened self-interest eliminates contentious factionalism in employment relations. Unfortunately, government has intervened in the workplace to convert it into a battleground and to institutionalize coercive conduct that is akin to warfare. The victims are consumers and [...]

1Apr1999 | Daniel Hager | 1 comment | Continued

Wrecking: The Ominous Rationale for Attacks on the Tobacco Industry

Daniel Hager is a senior research associate with Patrick Henry Associates in East Lansing, Michigan. The state of Minnesota’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry has ended in a multibillion-dollar settlement. Litigation by other states is expected to yield them lucrative windfalls as well, and Congress has had its own eye on forcing the industry to [...]

1Nov1998 | Daniel Hager | 0 comments | Continued

Educational Decarceration

Daniel Hager is a senior research associate with Patrick Henry Associates in East Lansing, Michigan. When I was a teacher I reached a conclusion that put me at odds with the mystique that surrounds government schooling: the most beneficial times during the school year for many of my students were snow days. These kids were [...]

1Jul1998 | Daniel Hager | 2 comments | Continued

Makers and Takers: How Wealth and Progress Are Made and How They Are Taken Away or Prevented

Daniel Hager is senior research associate with Patrick Henry Associates in East Lansing, Michigan. Man is distinguished from the lower orders of animals because of the frontal and prefrontal lobes in his brain that foster thinking ahead and planning. Man becomes a maker, rejecting momentary gains for the adoption of long-range goals, while the lower [...]

1Jun1998 | Daniel Hager | 0 comments | Continued

Competition in Education: The Case of Reading

Mr. Hager is a senior research associate with Patrick Henry Associates, a consulting firm. An earlier report on H.O.P.E. Academy appeared in the June 1992 issue of The Freeman. The nature of accountability in the public and private sectors is fundamentally different. Perhaps nowhere is the contrast more vivid than in education, particularly the teaching [...]

1Apr1997 | Daniel Hager | 2 comments | Continued

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