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Tuesday, July 25, 2017
About 21st Century Sweatshops
As I was catching up on emails, I found this article in my inbox: Smug College Kid Shut Down After Professor Hits Him With a Truth Cruise Missile. A portion of the video below was embedded in the article. Please watch and, if you can recover from noting the cocky attitude of the students (Exeter University), offer your thoughts about what Yaron Brook said:
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The professor did a good job raising the shades so that the students could see, but let’s be fair. Secondary education is a bastion of liberal hogwash. At such a young age, lacking first-hand worldly experience, students only know what they are told and they are encouraged to regurgitate the poison of their pink on the outside, red on the inside teachers. I’m surprised how many 30-somethings are so accepting of the fact that their high school teachers intentionally lied to them, embedding consistently wrong, skewed, or incomplete information —for treating them as if they are incapable of independent thought or common sense. Well, but it is all about the agenda, isn’t it?
ReplyDeleteMustang,
DeleteWhy are 30-somethings so accepting?
It can't be that they respect authority figures, because, for the most part, 30-somethings do not. Furthermore, 30-somethings do not find tradition a touchstone; for example, they don't want the family pictures, the family heirlooms, and other family treasures. For this reason, mounds of such items end up in storage units of one type or another.
Is the 30-somethings' acceptance of lies foisted on them rooted in the inability to think independently? I think so, but only to a limited extent. Those in this age group are stunningly apathetic. Have you noticed that? I certainly have.
I don't think 30 somethings are the only ones who are so accepting. It is a potential problem for all ages.
DeleteHere we have an executive of the Ayn Rand Institute in a clip without much context.
Is he there arguing against government intervention in the economy?
Should the Chinese government stay out of curbing the pollution problem and leave that to the "free market".
Should it stop trying to manage the property bubble and just let the "free market" handle it as it did in America (only the implications in China may be worse)?
Are Chinese youth any less apathetic than millenials? Or is that a by product of consumerism that everyone but the Randoids have been warning us about for 50 years?
Why are conservatives so accepting?
"Free Market?" What's that?
DeleteNo living person in the US or Europe has ever experienced one.
$25 dollars per hour minimum wage!
DeleteGuaranteed Basis Income for all!
Free College Tuition for ALL!
Make the rich pay their FAIR SHARE!
Single Payer Health Care for ALL!
This would be a righteous nation if congress had the heart to pass this legislation
This is so boring. Could somebody please change the channel...
ReplyDelete;)
FJ,
DeleteI love Fargo!
What does my fondness for Fargo say about me?
DeleteThat I hope you never buy a wood chipper! ;)
DeleteThe real problem with today's capitalism is that corporate globalism creates a "Salaried Bourgeoise" instead of an "Ownership Bourdeoise". Like communism, it makes everyone a worker, and pays a few executives at the top "surplus" salaries to keep the system functioning. The "profits" all eventually accrue to a very elite few.
ReplyDeleteIt's time for Republicans to wake up to the realities of The New Capitalism. It ain't your mother's capitalism. It no longer needs Democratic governments. The Chicoms have proven that.
DeleteFJ,
DeleteI cannot disagree with your comment of 9:34:00 AM EDT.
So, are we all headed globally to an equalization over the next 20-50 years?
Yes.
DeleteAnd unfortunately for Americans, it's a down-leveling, followed by total world economic collapse (once members of the former American-Middle completes their moral moves to Fishtown from Belmont).
...because corporate globalism is the impetus BEHIND the move.
DeleteI'm taking out the trash. :^)
ReplyDeleteSorry for making so much of it.
DeleteJoe,
DeleteNo worries!
I assume I missed a deletion.
DeleteA few! :)
DeleteI listened to the whole thing but didn't hear the 'cocky' students....??
ReplyDeleteWow, a true New Yawker talking anti-socialism!? :-)
This reminds me of S Africa...Everyone considers Mandela such a hero ...I've never thought communists were heroes and S Africa's suffering badly since everyone thought freeing people would make them rich immediately...no training, no schooling, just FREE THE PEOPLE! (I suppose, before I go on, I should make sure to include here that I was against apartheid and don't believe in slavery of any kind) BUT... I know S Africans who had a farm where Blacks had grown up with them...and their ancestors had grown up with their ancestors..like family. They begged Isabel and Graham to please let them stay ON the farm. They could not. Since Mandela was released from prison and started freeing people, S Africa's been a mess...friends in Johannesberg said they couldn't walk the streets at night anymore...poverty, crime...
They hadn't TAUGHT THE PEOPLE TO WORK...to LEARN A TRADE. I think that's a good example of what this teacher's lecturing on.
Loved this lecture and I HOPE more kids hear this prof.
Z,
DeleteI listened to the whole thing but didn't hear the 'cocky' students
The attitude was apparent in the facial expressions and body language.
Thanks for watching the entire video. It's longer than I typically post, but this was too much of a gem to ignore.
Z,
DeleteThanks for bringing up the disaster wrought upon South Africa in the zeal of ending apartheid.
no training, no schooling, just FREE THE PEOPLE!
A recipe for disaster.
The situation was somewhat the same after the American Civil War with so many uneducated freed slaves who couldn't really make it in the post-bellum economy. We still see some of the consequences today. I hasten to say that, even so, the poor in America live so much better than the poor in many other countries.
It's called capitalism.
ReplyDeleteWhile studying Anthropology, we came upon the Concept of "Limited Good"
ReplyDeleteRedistribution of accumulated wealth may be necessary to keep the peace in tribal and feudal villages. However, the social stigma against accumulation of wealth can be detrimental to economic development when a society is capable of increasing the level of per capita production. Unfortunately, the Theory of Limited Good continues to be a very powerful myth in modernizing societies, and is often the prevailing paradigm in countries just beginning the development process.
The chart from The Economist and shows a “population-weighted history of the past two millennia” based on “economic output” and “years lived.” According to The Economist:
Over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010.”
It also looks like more economic output was produced in the 20th century than in the previous 19 centuries combined
A wonderful piece on “limited good” fromThe Logical Middle. The full post is long, but is well worth the time. He goes on to explain why we had the economic explosion in the last centuries and I agree on most points.
http://thelogicalmiddle.blogspot.com/2009/07/theory-of-limited-good.html
The Origin of Economic Development
DeleteBeginning about 1650 something very strange began to happen in England. People in towns began to manufacture goods that peasant farmers found desirable, and cheap enough to purchase. These goods, mostly textiles, were cheap because more efficient spinning and weaving machines were invented and water power and later steam power (by burning coal) was substituted for labor. It turned out that when urban people produced things peasant farmers wanted, the farmers were more than willing to increase production of food and transport that surplus to the market for sale.
----
"If man wants to progress, he must create new forms of energy of greater and greater densities." --Lazare Carnot
Windmills and Solar Farms ain't gonna cut it. Go nuclear, or go home! ;)
...add a little artificial intelligence to a distribution of labor (to nuclear powered machines) and you break the "Labor Theory of Value" and all "classical" Economics.
DeletePrior to about 1650 in England, the concept of economic development (increasing per capita incomes) did not exist. People over the past several hundred thousand years hoped to survive and reproduce, but there could have been no thought that they or their progeny would somehow achieve or inherit a more productive lifestyle.
DeleteXenophon's "Oeconomicus" and Plato's "Hipparchus" give lie to that statement.
Way to legitimize the exploitation of the poor.
ReplyDeleteIf stupid were against the law, This One jackwagon would be in for life.
DeleteImagine the anguish of these snowflakes hearing truth.
ReplyDeleteThe person in the class that they kept cutting to. Female or Male ? I dunno. Was there not an attractive female there that they could have focused on instead?....
We long ago reolaced SWEATshops with SWEET shops, and now we have a nation full of obese, enfeebled diabetics who have no clue what it is like to put in an honest day's work –– and we've had the colossal gall to regard this as "PROGRESS!"
ReplyDeleteYE GODS and LITTLE FISHES!
We've becme a nation of JACKASSES.
FT,
DeleteWe long ago reolaced SWEATshops with SWEET shops.
And, at the same time, we have come to denigrate manual labor.
This is exactly the story of our nation, too. That's why so many came.
ReplyDeleteBaysider,
DeleteI wondered if someone here would make that point! Thank you.
The setting of this video is Exeter University in the UK. I highly doubt that students there have sufficient appreciation for the story of our nation.