03-17-2019, 10:45 PM
(03-17-2019, 04:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-17-2019, 02:01 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 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.
I doubt this is a unique case. Our hyper-competitive culture encourages everyone to cheat, if they can. Elites have an easier time of it. Helicopter parenting was bad enough. Snowplow parenting is not just worse, but socially destructive. To those of you in the game: sorry, but your highly protected children are not going to be the new overlords, because they are and will continue to be totally unequipped to suffer any the slings and arrows life dishes out. That will lead to something unpleasant, but it's hard to know who gains from it. We know your precious coddled many are not likely to be among them, unless you, mommy and daddy, have resources to burn and connections to keep it quiet. Of course, mommy and daddy will eventually leave the scene, and Buffy and Junior will be clueless what to do then.
This could be a changing of the guard … if we're lucky.
Honest systems are far more adept at selecting leaders on merit instead of on having the right connections through birth, cronyism, and social advantage. Honest systems do not have to pay untalented people adept largely at keeping competent people down.
A dishonest system gives advantages having no relationship to competence and ability. Maybe parents can give their children some pointers for staying in the family 'business' if such is a skilled trade or a learned profession -- but such does not work with those who lack the basic aptitude. Bureaucracies are good at hiding incompetence until someone makes a huge, and possibly catastrophic blunder.
Children should not be preparing to be 'overlords' just like Mommy or Daddy. Those who cannot get ahead honestly might as well cut their expectations. If one is cut out to be a vehicle mechanic, then Daddy the software engineer or Mommy the physician might as well live with the reality. One of the most distressing jobs available is being the engineer of a commuter train between San Jose and San Francisco. The problem? Kids who get a couple of bad grades run onto the track to commit suicide by getting struck by the train, thinking that in the hyper-competitive world for a few well-paying jobs and no mercy toward those who fall short, that their lives are ruined. So they end up doing blue-collar work in Indiana because they are priced out of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Maybe we were a better country when America was more a country of small businesses whose owners were obliged to meet the needs of customers in a narrow market instead of manipulating the market, buying lobbyists to protect a monopolistic advantage, and relying upon advertising instead of salesmanship. A social order is better off with lots of sort-of-prosperous farmers than corporate or plantation-style farmers and millions of peons.
What now develops fosters two trends dangerous to the preservation of the social order: incompetence at the top, and injustice permeating the system. Incompetence by leaders in charge of unjust systems are more the cause of violent, destructive revolutions than the radicals who take advantage of the opportunity.
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.