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I find that throw-away comment is a revelation to me. The American education system teaches its bright students to game the system. Then they go to work for En

I find that throw-away comment is a revelation to me. The American education system teaches its bright students to game the system. Then they go to work for Enron or Goldman-Sachs, and game the system. I've lived my life viewing the world through a peculiarly British narrative. Upper class twits preside over a broken system with perverse incentives. Why doesn't it fail? Partly because of the plucky grammar school boy who grows up to occupy a key technocrat role and who heroically resists the lure of perverse incentives and does the right thing. Partly because of the inherent decency and solidarity of the working class, who will not shaft each other even if the system pays them to. So the American experience, in which mainstream people are always looking for an angle and a way to game the system, seems quite alien to me. Duh! It is the way they have been brought up.

hnhg 16y ago
> Partly because of the inherent decency and solidarity of the working class, who will not shaft each other even if the system pays them to. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Why are you romanticising the working class? Personally speaking, the breadth of my family oddly encompasses the upper and lower classes, and after being close to all of them over the years I can tell you there is nothing inherently wrong or right about a specific class. Some of the most admirable people I have met you would label as "upper class twits," and likewise there are others from more humble backgrounds that you would point to as evidence of an exclusive core of decency within the lower classes. In summary, good and bad people exist in the same proportions in every arbitrary class we would wish to create.
swombat 16y ago
Partly because of the inherent decency and solidarity of the working class, who will not shaft each other even if the system pays them to. Well, the average working class person doesn't have the means to gain from the system in that way. So when they decide to cheat, they do so in more basic ways, like becoming burglars, thieves, dodgy tradesmen, and other kinds of low-level career criminals. I don't buy your romantic view of "the decency and solidarity of the working class". People in all walks of life are decent - with, always, a small percentage who are not so decent. That's as true of the "working class" as of other classes, if you want to make that split. With the possible exception of lawyers and politicians of course.

hnhg 16y ago

> Partly because of the inherent decency and solidarity of the working class, who will not shaft each other even if the system pays them to. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Why are you romanticising the working class? Personally speaking, the breadth of my family oddly encompasses the upper and lower classes, and after being close to all of them over the years I can tell you there is nothing inherently wrong or right about a specific class. Some of the most admirable people I have met you would label as "upper class twits," and likewise there are others from more humble backgrounds that you would point to as evidence of an exclusive core of decency within the lower classes. In summary, good and bad people exist in the same proportions in every arbitrary class we would wish to create.

swombat 16y ago

Partly because of the inherent decency and solidarity of the working class, who will not shaft each other even if the system pays them to. Well, the average working class person doesn't have the means to gain from the system in that way. So when they decide to cheat, they do so in more basic ways, like becoming burglars, thieves, dodgy tradesmen, and other kinds of low-level career criminals. I don't buy your romantic view of "the decency and solidarity of the working class". People in all walks of life are decent - with, always, a small percentage who are not so decent. That's as true of the "working class" as of other classes, if you want to make that split. With the possible exception of lawyers and politicians of course.