I don't know if I can add much.

I think liberal academics depends a lot on what they teach. Engineering isn't a hot-bed of liberals, maybe. I've always heard that Sociology profs are the most liberal profession and farmers the most conservative. I'd guess that a person's basic outlook might be influenced in that a farmer can't go changing lots of variables, because like a long science project, it takes so long to assess what works, and you'd wind up not knowing what you're doing. A sociology professor would probably be looking for his or her work to yield new and perhaps therefore liberal insights into culture and society.

I don't know about the disconnect--producing among faculty often is in the form of publishing and achieving in their field. And everywhere I ever went likes to collect bragging rights on their grad's later accomplishments. Productivity itself seems to become the product of education. I think most of the worst things that exist in the world are born of this general feeling that one must produce something. The problem with the productivity driven market is that even a culture-shift "back to basics" results in a bunch of overpriced crap, and as Thoreau neatly put it, people starve for want of luxuries.

What I mean by calling the free-market disposition a game is that no matter how you devise it or construe it, it's still just plain wrong that in a land of excess people are hungry. Nothing really controverts that, for me, no amount of blaming the poor or admiring the wealthy. A family in a poorer country may live on $200 dollars a year, but they can live, because they can spend it on what they need, not on costs to cover an accompanying ad campain, stockholder perks, and whatnot.

   Next year God is introducing a new line of raspberries which will be more "berrilicious". You'll want to call them "razzle-dazzle-berries"!

   The inventor's reward is another of those myths that has so little basis in fact that it makes it's adherents dangerous to themselves. Hardly any inventions by independent inventors ever make it on to market, much less turn a profit. Yet the belief is so strong that invention scam companies often don't even need to make false contracts, they can tell people they'll get scammed in writing, and people still sign, believing verbal promises. They want to believe. (Narcissistic Fantasy?)I could argue that a conservative disposition is more often than not the natural enemy of the inventor, but it's a lot of generalising to get into. Anyway, patent law doesn't actually protect anybody, unless they can afford patent litigators, which favors big, really really big business. (If you are a certain Mr. Kearns maybe you can afford to undertake it yourself, but at risk of your sanity.) So it's not just law and ethics and morals, it's enforcement of law and ethics and morals, which favors the wealthy to an absurd degree. Non-violent crimes have violent consequences, I think.

   Last but not least, the idea personal freedom and responsibility is undermined by the legal structure of the corporation. I understand why people need to incorporate, and may myself at some point, but there's something wrong with this notion that a company is a living entity apart from the personal responsibilities of it's decision makers. Lee Iococca was personally responsible for a car that burned people alive (the courts figured $10,000 for pain and suffering in the cost-benefit analysis) and conservatives formed the idea he'd make a good president shortly after. That's the kind of thing I don't get.

I'm a social liberal, an inventor--and an artist by the way, John, what's your work I wonder? Glad to hear it's going well, I paint portraits of kids--and I work at ups--I've always had a pretty good idea what the products of my jobs have been, it's important to me to think it through, keep it simple. I find the teamster union thing gets in the way of my being rewarded for my efforts, but on the other hand, without it, I doubt I'd get health insurance for part-time work, and that's the only reason I show up. I still can't figure out how not to be a liberal.

By the way, I used to do some art fairs, and it seemed to me that people who made and sold their stuff were the happiest and nicest people I knew. But I became suspicious maybe you just have to act that way at the fairs, because a morose, depressed crafter would be too comical, if you imagine it. Maybe it's just a good way to live, I don't know.