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> get youth to first complete high school [...] But is it? Yes, but it will never happen. I've seen this playbook in 3 countries now (one of which South Africa

> get youth to first complete high school [...] But is it? Yes, but it will never happen. I've seen this playbook in 3 countries now (one of which South Africa): attack education so that people aren't educated enough to understand why they need to vote you out. If you speak to the people who keep voting for the regime, it's "I hate the ANC, but we must vote for them." In terms of destroying education to stay in power, that's a slam dunk. Education is the Achilles Heel of democracy.

barry-cotter 5y ago
> > get youth to first complete high school [...] But is it? > Yes, but it will never happen. This implies a model of the world in which education causes prosperity. The fate of large parts of Central Asia, the Caucasus and Mongolia after the end of the subsidies from Russia suggests this doesn’t work that well. Broad based high levels of education weren’t great for Ireland either last century. There were at most three decades 1900-2000 when Ireland didn’t export its people. By contrast China got rich explosively fast once with a population that mostly hadn’t finished primary school starting in the 1980s. The evidence that education causes prosperity is at best weak. People like to buy education once they have money for similar reasons to west they like to buy nicer houses or travel, intrinsic enjoyment and conspicuous consumption.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > Broad based high levels of education weren’t great for Ireland either last century Can you clarify this remark? Ireland didn't provide free secondary school education until the late 60's (my Dad was sent to secondary school for three years as he was the smart one), so I'm having trouble understanding what you mean here.
- oblio 5y ago
  The Asian Tigers rose precisely through masive investment in education. Edit: you don't have to believe me, read any half decent economic study about them.
- zamalek 5y ago
  > This implies a model of the world in which education causes prosperity. That implication assumes that prosperity is correlated to democracy. There's also a vast difference between a democracy and a functioning democracy (which has arguably never existed). The value of democracy is drilled into citizens of democracies, however, when you look at it objectively it's a bitter failure; just like all its alternatives. The implication is: if you want to control where the votes go, you want an uneducated populace that is more likely to believe emotional/populist arguments. Nothing more, nothing less.
big_curses 5y ago
Do they attack education through funding or through rhetoric? I imagine funding is where they would have more power. I already believed that education should be outside of the purview of the government, but this even more reason to keep them separate. A government whose sole purpose is to protect individual rights (properly defined) would have no ability to gut the education of it's populace.
- jonathanlydall 5y ago
  Also see my sibling comment, but I think it's neither, they don't attack education, they're just apathetic, incompetent and more focussed on stealing from the tax coffers.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>If you speak to the people who keep voting for the regime, it's "I hate the ANC, but we must vote for them." In terms of destroying education to stay in power, that's a slam dunk. Even an educated populace won't fight back against exploitative government if it's all they know. I live in a highly educated US state, one of the most educated, at least on paper. People say the same damn thing but with bigger words and then vote for the ruling party. The stuff the government routinely gets away with here would have the involved parties quickly out of power in some of the adjacent states. But when the .gov is caught misbehaving people just grumble and act as though the way things are here is the only way things could ever be and no other status quo could exist let alone be stable. I wish I never lived elsewhere. Ignorance is bliss.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I do not think you can come this conclusion in a two party government with first past the post elections. Your choice is always the lesser of two evils. Ranked choice (or star) voting would provide more insight, but I do not know of a large government that has a long history of using it, but it would be interesting to see that data if it existed.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    I don't think the voting system matters that much except as a final refinement on top of an already working system. Some competition is worlds better than no competition. My state is effectively a one party state. Voting for the lesser of the evils is also voting for the better of the evils. At least with a viable 2nd party there is pressure on the first party to suck less. When people blindly vote for one party they are free to misbehave. Let them get away with that for a generation or and it becomes the new normal.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > Voting for the lesser of the evils is also voting for the better of the evils. What is the significance of this distinction? > At least with a viable 2nd party there is pressure on the first party to suck less. Hence the problem of first past the post voting. With ranked choice or star, you have viable 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, whatever party. I can more accurately relay my priorities via my votes as opposed to solely using my vote to prevent the worst party from winning.
kspacewalk2 5y ago
I don't really buy this line of reasoning. Educated countries make baffling, crazy choices at the ballot box all the time. Plenty enthusiastically elect "one person, one vote, one time" types of parties, or something close to it. For example, Russia is fairly educated if one believes university graduation numbers. Poland and Hungary are more "educated" than Austria or Czechia. And all of them are so much more educated at every level than Portugal, which has had a string of competent and non-authoritarian governments. Handy coloured maps[0][1] offer little in terms of "ah, I see how the ones who send their young'uns to uni and spend the most on education are the most competently governed". There's probably some correlation between education quality/amount in very specific areas, like civics and basic economics, and "quality" of elected governments. But I intuitively believe (admittedly without searching for evidence) that these are easily swamped by more important factors, like economic/political crises du jour, history, culture, neighbourhood, etc. (regarding neighbourhood, I think this is often underappreciated. E.g. maybe if Portugal was surrounded by third-world tinpot dictatorships, it would also join that club, but it's influenced far more by countries like Spain and France; and it's very difficult for an almost-out-of-the-abyss country like Ghana to break out and join the club of reasonably-governed middle-income countries given its neighbourhood). [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-expenditure-education https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-expenditure-ed... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-completed-tertiary-education https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w...
- zamalek 5y ago
  > Educated countries make baffling, crazy choices at the ballot box all the time. That's a false dilemma. There are an array of reasons why a populace might make poor political choices. I'm suggesting that education is one of those reasons, and that it's the easiest to exploit.
jonathanlydall 5y ago
Speaking as a South African, I would say that the expression of "never attribute to malice that which can be reasonably explained by incompetence" is particularly apt here. I'm very doubtful that anyone in government is actually trying in any form to keep the population uneducated, instead the poor delivery of education is a result of general apathy and incompetence. It is further exacerbated by the largely unchecked corruption, whereby too many people in government are more focussed on stealing from the tax coffers than doing the job they're paid to do. Finally, this is all made worse by the fact that the people keep voting in the ANC (the party in power since 1994) despite their terrible track record of poor service delivery and corruption. I agree that the lack of education is contributing to the problem of voters not recognizing their options and ability to enact change. My hope is that eventually as the older "blind devotees" to the ANC pass away, that the younger disenfranchised generation's voices become enough to vote them out. Disturbingly though, a lot of the votes moving away from the ANC are instead going to a somewhat extremist party which promotes wealth re-distribution and their members tend to proudly walk around with berets and (albeit simple) uniforms. (A side rant is that I wish their party leader would get banned from Twitter for inciting violence, but it seems that the US based company doesn't care to look at the case as carefully as they do for US elected leaders.)
inglor_cz 5y ago
Looking at the atrocity that is academic politics, I am not sure if more education translates to better outcomes. Germany at the end of the 1920s was one of the best educated nations in the world and its universities were chock-full of pro-Nazi student groups.

barry-cotter 5y ago

> > get youth to first complete high school [...] But is it? > Yes, but it will never happen. This implies a model of the world in which education causes prosperity. The fate of large parts of Central Asia, the Caucasus and Mongolia after the end of the subsidies from Russia suggests this doesn’t work that well. Broad based high levels of education weren’t great for Ireland either last century. There were at most three decades 1900-2000 when Ireland didn’t export its people. By contrast China got rich explosively fast once with a population that mostly hadn’t finished primary school starting in the 1980s. The evidence that education causes prosperity is at best weak. People like to buy education once they have money for similar reasons to west they like to buy nicer houses or travel, intrinsic enjoyment and conspicuous consumption.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
> Broad based high levels of education weren’t great for Ireland either last century Can you clarify this remark? Ireland didn't provide free secondary school education until the late 60's (my Dad was sent to secondary school for three years as he was the smart one), so I'm having trouble understanding what you mean here.
oblio 5y ago
The Asian Tigers rose precisely through masive investment in education. Edit: you don't have to believe me, read any half decent economic study about them.
zamalek 5y ago
> This implies a model of the world in which education causes prosperity. That implication assumes that prosperity is correlated to democracy. There's also a vast difference between a democracy and a functioning democracy (which has arguably never existed). The value of democracy is drilled into citizens of democracies, however, when you look at it objectively it's a bitter failure; just like all its alternatives. The implication is: if you want to control where the votes go, you want an uneducated populace that is more likely to believe emotional/populist arguments. Nothing more, nothing less.

big_curses 5y ago

Do they attack education through funding or through rhetoric? I imagine funding is where they would have more power. I already believed that education should be outside of the purview of the government, but this even more reason to keep them separate. A government whose sole purpose is to protect individual rights (properly defined) would have no ability to gut the education of it's populace.

jonathanlydall 5y ago
Also see my sibling comment, but I think it's neither, they don't attack education, they're just apathetic, incompetent and more focussed on stealing from the tax coffers.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>If you speak to the people who keep voting for the regime, it's "I hate the ANC, but we must vote for them." In terms of destroying education to stay in power, that's a slam dunk. Even an educated populace won't fight back against exploitative government if it's all they know. I live in a highly educated US state, one of the most educated, at least on paper. People say the same damn thing but with bigger words and then vote for the ruling party. The stuff the government routinely gets away with here would have the involved parties quickly out of power in some of the adjacent states. But when the .gov is caught misbehaving people just grumble and act as though the way things are here is the only way things could ever be and no other status quo could exist let alone be stable. I wish I never lived elsewhere. Ignorance is bliss.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I do not think you can come this conclusion in a two party government with first past the post elections. Your choice is always the lesser of two evils. Ranked choice (or star) voting would provide more insight, but I do not know of a large government that has a long history of using it, but it would be interesting to see that data if it existed.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  I don't think the voting system matters that much except as a final refinement on top of an already working system. Some competition is worlds better than no competition. My state is effectively a one party state. Voting for the lesser of the evils is also voting for the better of the evils. At least with a viable 2nd party there is pressure on the first party to suck less. When people blindly vote for one party they are free to misbehave. Let them get away with that for a generation or and it becomes the new normal.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > Voting for the lesser of the evils is also voting for the better of the evils. What is the significance of this distinction? > At least with a viable 2nd party there is pressure on the first party to suck less. Hence the problem of first past the post voting. With ranked choice or star, you have viable 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, whatever party. I can more accurately relay my priorities via my votes as opposed to solely using my vote to prevent the worst party from winning.

kspacewalk2 5y ago

I don't really buy this line of reasoning. Educated countries make baffling, crazy choices at the ballot box all the time. Plenty enthusiastically elect "one person, one vote, one time" types of parties, or something close to it. For example, Russia is fairly educated if one believes university graduation numbers. Poland and Hungary are more "educated" than Austria or Czechia. And all of them are so much more educated at every level than Portugal, which has had a string of competent and non-authoritarian governments. Handy coloured maps[0][1] offer little in terms of "ah, I see how the ones who send their young'uns to uni and spend the most on education are the most competently governed". There's probably some correlation between education quality/amount in very specific areas, like civics and basic economics, and "quality" of elected governments. But I intuitively believe (admittedly without searching for evidence) that these are easily swamped by more important factors, like economic/political crises du jour, history, culture, neighbourhood, etc. (regarding neighbourhood, I think this is often underappreciated. E.g. maybe if Portugal was surrounded by third-world tinpot dictatorships, it would also join that club, but it's influenced far more by countries like Spain and France; and it's very difficult for an almost-out-of-the-abyss country like Ghana to break out and join the club of reasonably-governed middle-income countries given its neighbourhood). [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-expenditure-education https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-expenditure-ed... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-completed-tertiary-education https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w...

zamalek 5y ago
> Educated countries make baffling, crazy choices at the ballot box all the time. That's a false dilemma. There are an array of reasons why a populace might make poor political choices. I'm suggesting that education is one of those reasons, and that it's the easiest to exploit.

jonathanlydall 5y ago

Speaking as a South African, I would say that the expression of "never attribute to malice that which can be reasonably explained by incompetence" is particularly apt here. I'm very doubtful that anyone in government is actually trying in any form to keep the population uneducated, instead the poor delivery of education is a result of general apathy and incompetence. It is further exacerbated by the largely unchecked corruption, whereby too many people in government are more focussed on stealing from the tax coffers than doing the job they're paid to do. Finally, this is all made worse by the fact that the people keep voting in the ANC (the party in power since 1994) despite their terrible track record of poor service delivery and corruption. I agree that the lack of education is contributing to the problem of voters not recognizing their options and ability to enact change. My hope is that eventually as the older "blind devotees" to the ANC pass away, that the younger disenfranchised generation's voices become enough to vote them out. Disturbingly though, a lot of the votes moving away from the ANC are instead going to a somewhat extremist party which promotes wealth re-distribution and their members tend to proudly walk around with berets and (albeit simple) uniforms. (A side rant is that I wish their party leader would get banned from Twitter for inciting violence, but it seems that the US based company doesn't care to look at the case as carefully as they do for US elected leaders.)

inglor_cz 5y ago

Looking at the atrocity that is academic politics, I am not sure if more education translates to better outcomes. Germany at the end of the 1920s was one of the best educated nations in the world and its universities were chock-full of pro-Nazi student groups.