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Because the monopolies have exerted pressure on public education, including universities, to churn out advocates for the corporations bottom line. With no basi
by sadfjhsdf66 9y ago
Because the monopolies have exerted pressure on public education, including universities, to churn out advocates for the corporations bottom line.
With no basis in reality, we've brainwashed people to believe the bottom lines of the elite are to be protected. That's the outcome sought of our educational system.
It fascinates me how, on the one hand, we complain about how lazy people are. How much inducement the proles need. "Oh they're just lazy. Push em harder."
If we need to push people that hard, perhaps "economy of effort" is built into the species. It's a weird cognitive dissonance.
"They want something for nothing! But I want to maintain my elite status built upon your efforts!"
But that challenges the basis of elite power. If we all quit producing for them, they lose. So we're "induced to produce" under the constraints they define: no food, shelter, healthcare.
- pm90 9y agoThis is unfortunately too close to the truth. One thing I would like to add though is that despite the fruits of labor accruing disproportionately to the elite, the system has managed to lift up everyone else as well, right? So the system does work, and I wonder what would happen if it was changed to be more egalitarian....
- dragonwriter 9y ago> the system has managed to lift up everyone else as well, right? By some measures, all of which fail to account for the fact that relative deprivation is a substantial source of experienced disutility.
- pm90 9y agoIts true, but I'm not sure whether I would choose to be born in a Cholera ridden mid 1850's London or the Ghettos of Inner-City Houston today. We've solved some problems and now face others of course, but my question is whether the earlier problems were of a different kind...
- danbruc 9y agoOne thing I would like to add though is that despite the fruits of labor accruing disproportionately to the elite, the system has managed to lift up everyone else as well, right? So the system does work [...] That really depends on the definition of »works«. If one is satisfied with the people doing the heavy lifting being a bit better off while a few overseeing everything are extremely better off, yes, then it works.
- sadfjhsdf66 9y agoSure, but that's not a unique byproduct to this system. In fact, I think an argument can be made that it's a designed byproduct. We could uplift many more, but we don't. A little bit of uplift, but not too much, or the wheels come off for the power brokers. There are a other systems that we have at least some historical evidence to show will produce even better outcomes for the majority. The problem is those are undermined almost as quickly as they are brought up. See post about brainwashing people to protect the bottom line. People point to places like Venezuela and USSR as examples of socialism not working, for example. While ignoring that both those states were not managed by the working class (as classical socialism typically calls for), but elite masters, their bank rollers, and external forces pushing them to abandon their ways for western capitalism (economic sanctions, cutting off access to necessary trade).
- tanderson92 9y ago> Because the monopolies have exerted pressure on public education, including universities, to churn out advocates for the corporations bottom line. Not only that, we fail to realize the continuing incentives for them to act in that way, even when acting as "researchers". Here is a highly relevant Propublica investigative piece on academic economists as consultants: https://www.propublica.org/article/these-professors-make-more-than-thousand-bucks-hour-peddling-mega-mergers https://www.propublica.org/article/these-professors-make-mor...