Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey

[Mikko Särelä]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Eric Cordian wrote:
> In the real world, a society can not consist 100% of chip designers.  It
> also requires cooks, toilet and floor scrubbers, and people who lug
> concrete in wheelbarrows up stairs.

Sure, those are still needed. Though I wouldn't be so sure that toilet and
floor scrubbers will be needed anymore 20 years from now.

> Some countries, like the US and Japan, have as a part of their political
> doctrine that everyone has the opportunity to be wealthy and successful,
> so they can't openly have a class system.  Of course, they still need
> one to determine who gets the shit-hauling jobs, and the usual method of
> doing this is to hide the class system in the education system.  Now you
> don't get the shit-hauling job because you are an untouchable.  You get
> it because you "didn't do well"  in school, or you "dropped out, and
> "you could have been successful if you had just tried harder."

This is just bull shit. You don't have to do well in school to do well in
the job market. You just need to have the right kind of skills to do well
in the job market; and if the companies not hiring you are stupid and only
looking at your (school) credentials and not what you know, you can always
put up your own company and succeed that way.

Truly that mentality of school worship, which you talk about, makes me
sick. It's a myth that you need to do well in school in order to make it
out there.

> Of course, it's a zero sum game.  The bottom X% will always be
> shit-haulers, and the school is just making the proles fight with each
> other over who those shit-haulers will be.  The fact is that the society
> can't make everyone successful, and the success of the few is at the
> expense of the failure of the many, determined by the uncompensated rat
> race and endless toil on the wheel of public education.

Oh, but it is not a zero sum game. Of course the bottom X% will always be
shit-haulers, sure. But here's the catch. If the bottom X% are people who
could do some complicated work that would earn them $100 000 a year, then
the shit haulers will have to be paid more than that amount a year. Or no
one will apply for those shitty jobs. The basics of economics: If there's
a shortage of something, markets tend to rise up the value until the
demand and supply meet. Exactly same does go for unregulated job market.

> The US is an excellent example of this.  The AFT and NEA together are the
> biggest labor organization in the country.  THe school system functions
> not to educate, but as a tool of inculcation in collectivist thinking, and
> a awarder of certificates which give one the right to work.

Hell yeah. Public school system should be abolished right now. Hmm, I'm
not quite as fanatical on these things as Tim is (who probably would want
to shoot all those teachers and administrators), but I do find public
schools to be something quite horrible.

> Schools don't educate, but merely serve as a filter for employers to
> locate those individuals who aren't going to make trouble at the factory.

No, no, no. Public schools don't educate. Their purpose is to teach
obedience and understanding that a single person cannot do without the
government. Thus the nooks in Washington can get to keep their power.

> Now in a world where most jobs are not skilled people individually
> producing something in demand, but are the very lowest form of
> commoditized labor, the opportunity to screw such dissenters probably
> exceeds their ability to avoid being sent made to the back of the line.

You really think there is this big conspiracy that covers all the
companies working in the US, which keeps these black lists and exists just
to screw those who don't like the system?

How about just saying that if one is lazy and does not do his work well,
he might be screwed - and that is frankly a problem of his own making. You
take up on a contract, you keep it.

> Nonetheless, I think we do such people a disservice when we attribute
> their dislike of the education business to some sort of culturally
> ingrained sloth, and characterize them as looking to live on handouts of
> other peoples tax money.

Nonetheless, I think we do such people a great disservice if we do not
show that their culture has a very bad bias against learning and
understanding. Such a bias, if it exists, should not be hidden, or shunted
upon; it should be brought to broad day light and shown in all its
stupidity.

-- 
Mikko Sdreld
	Emperor Bonaparte: "Where does God fit into your system?"
	Pihrre Simon Laplace: "Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis."