Thanks for making the utter bankruptcy of Baudrillard's ethics so plain for all to see. Usually it's hiding under much more jargon. > More kids are in school?

Thanks for making the utter bankruptcy of Baudrillard's ethics so plain for all to see. Usually it's hiding under much more jargon. > More kids are in school? For what? To be a white collar slave? To be a white collar slavemaster (entrepreneur)? Death in menial labor, while undesirable, at least prevents one from fattening the elites' wallets with their brains. I'm a strong critic of schooling as its typically done, because it is indeed a conformity machine. But here's the thing: it's still better than sending all the kids to a salt mine, because that's a precondition for us to even be having this discussion. The kids who got sent to salt mines don't get to read Baudrillard and comment on HN. > Where are the African and Asian artists? On those continents, respectively. Racist much? > scientists... philosophers... virtually unheard of This has always been the human condition. I guarantee you the fraction of people who appreciated Aristotle during his life was a vanishingly small fraction of the human race. > Similarly, low child mortality just currently means the commodification of children and childhood. This is pretty hilarious, because high-mortality societies are the ones that have large families specifically because children are valued as sources of labor. Some societies didn't even name their infants until they got old enough to be out of the highest morality risk -- they were treated as fungible commodities before then. > I'd also say literacy could have resulted in more healthy attitudes It could have resulted in spontaneous world peace, too. But that kind of navel gazing is not relevant to the question of whether literacy is still better than nothing. It's clearly a precondition if you want those great scientists and philosophers to ever have a shot. > people who think everything is great and there cannot possibly be any systemic problems This is a giant straw man. Please find me a single person who thinks the world has no systemic problems. The presence of problems is a necessary precondition for someone like me to argue that things are getting better. "No problems" implies stasis, not improvement.