03-17-2019, 02:01 PM
Any comments on the admissions scandal at some highly-renowned universities?
A culture of corruption often breaks down in a 4T because it can no longer sustain itself. Legacy admissions were bad enough, capable of pushing someone of at-best middling talent (Dubya, Trump) ahead of people of genuine merit. Meanwhile the winners of the system find ways to shut out the less-favored once the 'legacy' graduates get control of access (or keep control of access) to the levers of economic and bureaucratic power. As vertically-integrated monopolies supplant a competitive economy, alternatives disappear.
The rest of us are expected to expect no more than the elites offer in their concept of generosity -- as little as possible -- in return for toil extracted under fear. The tax system is reshaped to favor those who have already Made It at the expense of people who might start new businesses.
We end up with the bureaucratic bloat of Soviet-style communism, the sense of entitlement of elites under feudalism, and the insatiable greed of elites that one saw among the Gilded-Age plutocrats.
I don't know if we need a revolution, let alone what sort. One thing is certain: we need to redo what has gone very wrong. We have institutions built for small shopkeepers and yeoman farmers. The plutocrats and bureaucrats rule, as is the norm in every society that has ever soured.
A culture of corruption often breaks down in a 4T because it can no longer sustain itself. Legacy admissions were bad enough, capable of pushing someone of at-best middling talent (Dubya, Trump) ahead of people of genuine merit. Meanwhile the winners of the system find ways to shut out the less-favored once the 'legacy' graduates get control of access (or keep control of access) to the levers of economic and bureaucratic power. As vertically-integrated monopolies supplant a competitive economy, alternatives disappear.
The rest of us are expected to expect no more than the elites offer in their concept of generosity -- as little as possible -- in return for toil extracted under fear. The tax system is reshaped to favor those who have already Made It at the expense of people who might start new businesses.
We end up with the bureaucratic bloat of Soviet-style communism, the sense of entitlement of elites under feudalism, and the insatiable greed of elites that one saw among the Gilded-Age plutocrats.
I don't know if we need a revolution, let alone what sort. One thing is certain: we need to redo what has gone very wrong. We have institutions built for small shopkeepers and yeoman farmers. The plutocrats and bureaucrats rule, as is the norm in every society that has ever soured.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.