You and I just have very different views of human beings in general. You seem to view them as individually unique in their own right. I am suggesting while that yes there is definitely uniqueness to each person, if given the right education, diet, and living in a society which is safe and contains opportunity for them, they will be dramatically different, and for the better. I am suggesting that given certain environmental parameters, you can reliably predict outcomes for that child. Take the quote, "Give me a child until the age of 7, and I will tell you what kind of adult they will become." (I probably butchered that, lol)

On the short run, outcomes look arbitrary and heavily influenced by the environment. On the long run, however, there is probably a real pattern to it. The common denominator is probably yourself.

I just do not agree with this. The single biggest predictor of someone's life outcomes is the economic situation of their parents. This suggests a feedback system, in which the inputs determine, maybe not absolutely, the outcomes. I do not think the outcome ever look arbitrary, I think they almost always point to a description of the starting trajectory.

You will not be able to change anything to that phenomenon. Even if you change the hierarchy, the same crowd is going to sink to the bottom, and the same crowd is going to rise to the top. The wealthy datsha bureaucracy of the Soviet Union were obviously the former factory owners, while the factory workers themselves became even worse off than before.

This is just false, and this was the logic used by Aristotle and Plato to argue for slavery, and the same logic used by proponents of the apartheid south in the US. Basically, suggesting that some humans are naturally going to rise to the top or sink to the bottom, is to suggest they have these ineffable qualities. This is just patently false.

If that is your view (btw it should be “In my opinion,” and effect, not “affect”) it is rather blinkered. It would make sense to dig deeper as there are people here who will and have, delved far deeper.

It is almost like you’re saying the way humans behave isn’t human ... which is nonsense. I don’t see how hierarchies come about based purely on “violence” and “exploitation” - unless you’re another type who likes to twist such word’s meaning to counter any possible refutation. That is not to say I am naive and assume exploitations and violence are not part of social interactions anymore than I am naive enough to think eating food won’t produce feces.

There is thread where some folks here are trying to discuss Social Contract theory - most of what is being said there is gibberish, but the actual thrust of the theory/theories in that area grapples with what you’ve mentioned here.

My point was about people having a sense of ‘worth’ as an extremely important and overlooked issue. This surpasses status, as we seek out meaning in many different ways.

When I see the term ‘economics’ I think of the actual meaning of the word. That is the management of resources - of which our emotional and moral disposition is constituted.

If I have a limp I don’t cut my leg off. I live with the limp and focus on dealing with the problem rather than assuming I can eradicate it. There is a naive proclivity - especially among the youth - to believe they can simple expunge any human problem cleanly and without disruption. A more mature understanding of this is to hold this sense of hope but understand that it is better for everyone and ourselves to cope with a problem rather than annihilate it. This is because life is complex and removing an intrinsic problem means we’ll inevitably end up removing a benefit too (we’re just generally not astute enough to see at the time the potential fallout).

In simple terms you cannot have your cake and eat it - if you do then the problem will be shifted and exacerbated.

Anyway GL :) I’m just passing through.

I am suggesting while that yes there is definitely uniqueness to each person, if given the right education, diet, and living in a society which is safe and contains opportunity for them, they will be dramatically different, and for the better. — rlclauer

Well, a few blocks away from own place, they rent out dwellings at $60/month. Furthermore, people who eat for less than $1/day tend to be much healthier than myself. Not eating meat more often than a few times per month is a good thing, and fasting once in a while for a week or so, is even better. So, a complete family can survive here for less than $100/month.

I do not say that one should necessarily strive to be poor, but people seriously exaggerate their problems.

Concerning opportunity, I made all my money from doing things on the internet.

So, if you want to replicate that, you need to learn basic reading/writing skills, preferably at a young age, and figure out how to Google search as to browse for things, and then you can make things snowball from there. By the way, you are not going to be better at programming than a shantytown kid who learned it from playing with his $150 mobile phone and $5/month internet connection. Even the poorest kid over here, is playing with a mobile phone before he can even walk.

So, if it is that easy, why don't they do it?

Taxi and tuktuk drivers stubbornly and systematically refused to learn how to use Google Maps, no matter how many times customers may have pointed out the issue to them, until the Grab ride-sharing network started operating here. Suddenly, all of them can now use it. Seriously, each one of them. No exceptions. You do not even need to ask them to use it. They are already using it just to find you in order to pick you up. So, the Google Maps war is finally over now. I lost every Google Maps battle in the last ten years, but apparently I still won the war.

The locals here consider me to be some kind of magician. What I do, in their eyes, only works because it is me doing it. If they tried it, it would not work. That is the gist of their opinion. I don't have a problem with that, because I don't feel the need to interfere with what other people do. I do my thing and they do theirs. Furthermore, I should carry a magic wand around, because they will probably think that I know the secret of how to turn people into frogs.

I am not really sure what exactly you are referring to, but the overall condescending tone of your comment is very off putting. I do not really see a point in engaging with you because you will probably just dismiss me as some juvenile ignorant person, so it's probably better to just leave it alone.

You frame your recommendations for the people in your community who are not utilizing technology as sort of "failing to take advantage of opportunities available to them." I have a fundamentally different view of human behavior. I view humans as acting out their behavior which was determined since childhood, which is why I emphasized education as a means to assist people in realizing their potential. So we just have a fundamentally different view, and I don't think there is too much to engage with. You view humans in a sort of existentialist frame, that is to say, through mental activity leading to physical exertion they can change their environment. I view it in just the revers, a type of economic and behavioral determinism, that is to say, their environment, especially from early childhood ultimately will decide which trajectory they are on.

I view humans as acting out their behavior which was determined since childhood, which is why I emphasized education as a means to assist people in realizing their potential. — rlclauer

Well, it is certainly not the State-controlled education system that would teach them how to use Google maps. In fact, if you look at it, trillions of dollars later, what exactly have their students/customers learned? You see, these State-controlled schools were designed halfway the 19th century and haven't changed since. Do you know of anything else that managed to avoid changing for over a century? With every year that passes, the gap and the disconnect become even worse. They are sending their graduates straight to the unemployment queue.

I increasingly see the State-controlled education system as detrimental to society. It has become a tool to destroy people's potential.

They put boys and girls together in the same class. To cut a long story short, it turns the boys into idiots and the girls into sluts. By making them unsuitable for any kind of long-term relationships, the State-controlled education system is single-handedly destroying sexual reproduction across society, with marriage and birth rates collapsing. They indoctrinate the boys to be like girls, and the girls to be like boys. The effects are disastrous. They are turning the next generation into very, very unhappy people.

Well I know Andrew Carnegie funded and led the charge of public education in the US, with the objective of creating workers. Modern colleges are really just vocational schools, where students attend in order to "get a good paying job," and they really do not care about the love of learning in and of itself, and being a well-rounded citizen. So I would probably agree with your criticisms of the education system. However, we would disagree on the cause of this. I would point to capital, and the drive of the wealthy to increase their share of capital, on the backs of workers. It is indeed the state which mediates the relationship of workers to owners, however, I was pointing to "education" loosely, divorced from the context of what is called "education" in our current system. (often equated falsely with intelligence)

My point here is, that if you have a condition which is beneficial to the child, they generally have better outcomes in their life. For the sake of argument, just focus on this one point. I understand you are critical of the state and the type of education on offer at the moment, but do you agree with this one point? To put it even simpler: good conditions generally improve outcomes and vice versa. In my opinion that is not controversial. In fact there is a mountain of evidence to support that claim.

I would point to capital, and the drive of the wealthy to increase their share of capital, on the backs of workers. — rlclauer

In my opinion, we are long past that 19th-century, early 20th-century conflict between capital and labour. Factory work has either been automated or shipped off to China and the like.

I understand you are critical of the state and the type of education on offer at the moment, but do you agree with this one point? To put it even simpler: good conditions generally improve outcomes and vice versa. In my opinion that is not controversial. In fact there is a mountain of evidence to support that claim. — rlclauer

The middle class eagerly adopted "the system", and being born in the middle class made you likely to do relatively well in life, in a sense that you would probably end up middle class too. Still, that would have been the case also without "the system". Rich people play golf. So, playing golf will make you rich ... not really.

To an important extent, the middle class is gone now anyway. So, why waste time on something that is dead already?

Nowadays, if your dad is a plumber, and he takes you with him as an apprentice, you will almost surely do better than if you went to college. By the way, that is how it used to work, before they introduced "the system". For the vast majority of people, it would work better if they just reintroduced it. Furthermore, the need to put children in large holding pens and other large-scale nurseries, because the parents could not take them with them to the factory, is also mostly gone anyway.

With the boys incessantly beta-orbiting their unattainable targets, i.e. girls who are not interested in effeminate soy boys who are addicted to Ritalin -- since the age of six -- meant to cure their imaginary ADHD problem, we can also say goodbye to the nuclear family, I think.

Every day, the mess keeps growing worse. For example, for someone who is gender-confused, it is really hard to make headway on any nuclear-family ambitions. Is that person supposed to become the husband or the wife? If this person cannot answer that question, then what is the other side supposed to do?

well it looks like our world views are in stark contrast. let's just agree to disagree because I don't think anything can be gained through continuing to engage.

And now you also know where Ernest Hemingway got the title for his novel, "For Whom The Bell Tolls". — Bitter Crank

As I read the end, I was thinking "for whom the bell tolls" is one of the only phrases I find aesthetically pleasing. Now I know it wasn't invented by Metallica or Hemingway :grin:

O death where is thy sting?" — Bitter Crank

Another good one. While my patience for poetry is basically non-existent, I can say that I would imagine that John Dunne would have been a fun person to talk with...perfectly phrased jokes and all that.

Is John Gregory Dunne the right John Dunne? Looks like he wrote books and screenplays which I would expect I would enjoy a bit more than poetry.

Presumably they do, though I am not that familiar with the psychological machinations of insects and fish. Why wouldn't it count as desire? — Tzeentch

Interesting. When I said it, I thought it was obvious...upon reading your question, I immediately began to doubt it. Let's see if i can justify the claim:

Hmmm, well first, desire is an emotion (correct me if wrong). Do all living things have emotion? I don't know...it seems it depends on definitions, but I would lean toward needing a certain level of mental complexity before it seems like the same type of emotion we humans understand? Does a dog experience some emotions similar to humans...seems VERY likely. Fish don't demonstrate behaviors that make their emotions obvious, but I can imagine they exist. As I keep moving down the food chain toward less complex organisms, it seems I am less convinced of their emotional capacity.

Colloquially, I also feel that 'desire' STRONGLY implies "more than need". I get that by definition, we can desire the things we need...but we don't usually say things like "I desire to breath". In this sense, an ant and a fish would not (seemingly) have desires.

In the same way (to try to get back to thread topic, haha), I am not sure a human desires life. We live life. So I would struggle to follow that slave owners get their power from slaves desire to live? Their power comes from guns, germs and steel (so to speak) right?

The funny thing about our current system is when you consider what are called "externalities," if these were actually factored into a companies cost to do business, many of the companies that are currently profitable, (often through accounting voodoo) would no longer be profitable. — rlclauer

Indeed. Even worse is the new business idea that NO PROFIT IS REQUIRED. The plan is to just lose a few million every year but sell billions worth of stock. However, if capitalism has a strength it would the market ability to determine value/supply and demand. Once profits don't matter, that function is lost. And the whole system becomes just a matter of consumer confidence. Which means it has become a "complicated confidence scam". Maybe we should start calling the leaders con artists?

My John Donne never saw a film and never wrote a screenplay. He died in 1631, London; he was 59. He is considered one of the greatest love poets in English. He was a poet and a clergyman, Church of England. What my Donne and your Dunne have in common is that they are both dead.

Here is one of his characteristic poems - about how likely it is that a beautiful woman will remain both both beautiful and faithful. It's read by Richard Burton who had problems remaining faithful, as I recollect. So did his wife, Elizabeth Taylor.

Donne doesn't condemn the lady in the poem, however.

In The Flea, he contemplates the parasite that has just sucked blood from him and is now doing the same thing to the woman sitting near by. In his day, people had fleas. Fact of life.

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do. (two more stanzas)

The flea has mingled blood that is not going to get mixed in any other way -- certainly not by he and she having sex. The flea is luckier than he.

Writers like Shakespeare's and Donne's writing was loaded with memorable phrases that have taken an independent existence -- like "for whom the bell tolls" or "First thing we do is kill all the lawyers".

My John Donne never saw a film and never wrote a screenplay. He died in 1631, London; he was 59. He is considered one of the greatest love poets in English. He was a poet and a clergyman, Church of England. What my Donne and your Dunne have in common is that they are both dead. — Bitter Crank

That makes more sense. I was rather shocked that a poet had written that much non-poetry.

He is certainly funny and has a way with words, but he also has that Seinfeld ability to find comedy in everyday situations. To bad he wasn't born 350 years later, I would imagine his comedies would be very enjoyable (that flea poem almost feels like a monty python soliloquy).

Monte Python is up there with the greats, in my humble opinion, and I have laughed a lot in some Seinfeld episodes.

well it looks like our world views are in stark contrast. let's just agree to disagree because I don't think anything can be gained through continuing to engage. — rlclauer

You are probably right, because from my rabbit hole here in SE Asia, it is even irrelevant to me what is crashing and burning elsewhere. The only thing that matters to me, is that they are NOT carrying out the same experiment here. I do not desire to get the job of hosing cold water on yet another Fukushima. Have you ever seen footage of how the naked nuclear cores keep glowing in the open air over there in tsunami land? What a bunch of idiots!

I do not desire to get the job of hosing cold water on yet another Fukushima. Have you ever seen footage of how the naked nuclear cores keep glowing in the open air over there in tsunami land? What a bunch of idiots! — alcontali

I couldn't find, despite going back through the discussion, the reason you brought up Fukishima, but since you did I must add the following: this was no Chernobyl. But that I mean, some accident the responsibility for which one can fob off on communism. Apart from Japan being utterly first world and capitalist, the reactors were US corporation made. And the engineers who built, installed, helped with maintenance and so on, had to have known before, during and after installation, the location of the site, the seismic history of Japan, including tsunamis and how that might relate to future accidents. I have not heard any come forward and say they warned the Japanese government or how their security and safety protocols included concern for tsumanis and why they are not also culpable. IOW while it happened 'over there' for the 'West' it is also a Western accident to the core, puns intended.

One can only wonder what global-level accidents are coming around AI, nano-tech and gm products. And while you are in SE asia, this does not mean you are safe from whatevery games the US, China and Russia play with us all.

Apart from Japan being utterly first world and capitalist, the reactors were US corporation made. And the engineers who built, installed, helped with maintenance and so on, had to have known before, during and after installation, the location of the site, the seismic history of Japan, including tsunamis and how that might relate to future accidents. I have not heard any come forward and say they warned the Japanese government or how their security and safety protocols included concern for tsumanis and why they are not also culpable. — Coben

On 5 July 2012, the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) found that the causes of the accident had been foreseeable, and that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had failed to meet basic safety requirements such as risk assessment, preparing for containing collateral damage, and developing evacuation plans. At a meeting in Vienna three months after the disaster, the International Atomic Energy Agency faulted lax oversight by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, saying the ministry faced an inherent conflict of interest as the government agency in charge of both regulating and promoting the nuclear power industry.[21] On 12 October 2012, TEPCO admitted for the first time that it had failed to take necessary measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants.[22][23][24][25]

The largest tsunami wave was 13-14 meters (43-46 feet) high and hit approximately 50 minutes after the initial earthquake, overwhelming the plant's seawall, which was 10 m (33 ft) high.[9]

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist – a saying that became reinterpreted to teach a different lesson after black swans were discovered in the wild.

Black swan events were discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book "Fooled By Randomness", which concerned financial events. His 2007 book "The Black Swan. Impact of the highly improbable" extended the metaphor to events outside of financial markets.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb against Gaussian Curve. Bell curves used in extreme events may cause a lot of disaster. Measures of uncertainty that are based on Bell curve disregard the impact the sharp jumps and inequalities and using them is like getting grass (grass disaster) and missing out the trees (Big Black Swans). [...] Randomness if Gaussian is tameable and is not altered by a single addition or removal. Casino people make such calculation and sleep well in night, no single gambler with a big hit will not change it and you will never see one gambler getting 1 Billion.

Mediocre events get fine or acceptable with Gaussian Distribution because big trees are not present in such events. I say that one should not use Gaussian in extreme events. But once you get Bell curve in head it's hard to avoid. [...] So, while weight, height and calorie consumption are Gaussian, wealth is not. Nor are income, market returns, size of hedge funds, returns in the financial markets, number of deaths in wars or casualties in terrorist attacks. Almost all man-made variables are wild or carry massive randomness(Black Swans).

Seven states of randomness. Mandelbrot and Taleb pointed out that although one can assume that the odds of finding a person who is several miles tall are extremely low, similar excessive observations can not be excluded in other areas of application. They argued that while traditional bell curves may provide a satisfactory representation of height and weight in the population, they do not provide a suitable modeling mechanism for market risks or returns, where just ten trading days represent 63 per cent of the returns of the past 50 years.

A fat-tailed distribution is a probability distribution that exhibits a large skewness or kurtosis, relative to that of either a normal distribution or an exponential distribution. [...] As a consequence, when data arise from an underlying fat-tailed distribution, shoehorning in the "normal distribution" model of risk—and estimating sigma based (necessarily) on a finite sample size—would severely understate the true degree of predictive difficulty (and of risk).

-------

To cut a long story short, the likelihood of black swans is dramatically underestimated pretty much everywhere in security calculations, through the abuse of the Gaussian probability distribution which is simply not applicable to the likelihood of black-swan events. Therefore, nuclear installations are always several orders of magnitude more dangerous than typically calculated. Once in a million years usually rather means once every fifty years. Note that these wildly optimistic probability calculations were done in the 1950ies and 1960ies for installations typically built in the 1970ies, such as Fukushima.

To cut a long story short, the likelihood of black swans is dramatically underestimated pretty much everywhere in security calculations, through the abuse of the Gaussian probability distribution which is simply not applicable to the likelihood of black-swan events. — alcontali

I don't think they really care, often. I don't mean they necessarily consciously know and decide not to weigh the consequences, though I do think this is true in many individual cases. I mean, that they don't care and this affects safety issues in a wide range of fields, because this not caring skews, unconsciously or not, how they weigh threats, what they consider possible threats, how much they listen to dissenters and whisteblowers, what they will consider as causal and so on. IOW for egotistical reasons they end up very far away from the precautionary principle with regularity. And now this is no longer a local issue. They will play fast and loose with the planet as a whole. Even Fukushima is local - though less local than many realize - compared to the 'matches' these children are playing with now.

I don't think they really care, often. I don't mean they necessarily consciously know and decide not to weigh the consequences, though I do think this. — Coben

They are no longer allowed to build these nuclear plants based on the overly optimistic views from the 1950ies and 1960ies. Nowadays, the problem is that they are actually too costly to build, using the new security calculations:

The Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant is located at Flamanville, Manche, France on the Cotentin Peninsula. A third reactor at the site, an EPR unit, began construction in 2007 with its commercial introduction scheduled for 2012. As of 2019 the project three times over budget and years behind schedule. Various safety problems have been raised, including weakness in the steel used in the reactor.[1] In July 2019, further delays were announced, pushing back the commercial date to beyond 2022.[2] [...] EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion. The latest cost estimate (July 2018) is at €10.9 billion.[5]

The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant (Finnish: Olkiluodon ydinvoimalaitos) is on Olkiluoto Island, which is on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, in the municipality of Eurajoki in western Finland. Unit 3 is an EPR reactor and has been under construction since 2005. In December 2012, the French multi-national building contractor, Areva, estimated that the full cost of building the reactor will be about €8.5 billion, or almost three times the delivery price of €3 billion.

The financial losses, including €2 billion in 2015, reinforced moves for EDF to take over Areva. Areva said: “Half of this loss of €2 billion is due to additional provisions for Olkiluoto 3 and half to provisions for restructuring and impairment related to market conditions."

The largest hidden bill is that serious accidents in the existing installed base (designed in the 50ies and 60ies and mostly built in the 70ies) cannot be excluded, before they get retired, which was planned to already have happened more than a decade ago. They just keep operating them, but with a few exceptions, all of these plants are expired goods. Furthermore, the budget for decommissioning is gigantic, and probably also still underestimated by at least an order of magnitude.

John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, "In the long run, we are all dead." He said that in 1928 about 1975.

Furthermore, the budget for decommissioning is gigantic, and probably also still underestimated by at least an order of magnitude. — alcontali

And then we have to deal with the waste for thousands of years, and the security around that waste. Which means government and likely outsourced private security or monitoring passed on for generations or until some safe more complete technological solution is found. So, current profits paid for by random masses of future people. And that's all fi it goes well, where the measures work. If they don't, well, that also will have various kinds of costs.

I agree with everything you said, except I do not even think the price mechanism as a means of making distribution more efficient is a strength of capitalism. There are so many distortions in the market, what the price mechanism purports to accomplish is undermined.

I agree with everything you said, except I do not even think the price mechanism as a means of making distribution more efficient is a strength of capitalism. There are so many distortions in the market, what the price mechanism purports to accomplish is undermined. — rlclauer

Hahaha, fair enough. Have we found a better way of deciding how much 'x' and 'y' we should produce? Pure capitalism is a nonsense fantasy (or a dystopian nightmare), and I certainly think the American model needs some heavy socialization. But I have not found a better distribution analysis than supply and demand. I have questioned this aspect of capitalism for years, as it is the only part I particularly agree with. So if there are any alternatives, please show me the way (even if they are vague or underdeveloped).

Markets might be valuable in distribution, although, price mechanisms are not required. You could simply have an information mechanism, like the ink level on your ink cartridge. I am not necessarily suggesting we should make arbitrary centralized decisions. As you indicated, these are vague notions. Even Paul Mason, a leading thinker regarding "post capitalism economics," says it is difficult to imagine. I also think that as labor for income becomes less feasible with increased automation, price as a means of distribution allocation will no longer be sustainable. In that system, the government becomes the largest consumer in the economy (through financing UBI and the like), and price seems to become less meaningful. Kind of like how monopolies obtain unchecked control over setting their prices by being the only producer, when you have 1 consumer dominating, its like a consumption monopoly

Hmmm, well first, desire is an emotion (correct me if wrong). Do all living things have emotion? I don't know...it seems it depends on definitions, but I would lean toward needing a certain level of mental complexity before it seems like the same type of emotion we humans understand? Does a dog experience some emotions similar to humans...seems VERY likely. Fish don't demonstrate behaviors that make their emotions obvious, but I can imagine they exist. As I keep moving down the food chain toward less complex organisms, it seems I am less convinced of their emotional capacity. — ZhouBoTong

Human psychology is complicated and veiled enough as it is, so I don't see a point in involving animal psychology in this discussion, since we know even less about that. What I do know is, that most, if not all, living things show some form of desire to continue material existence, which is why they will avoid a fire rather than get burned by it.

Colloquially, I also feel that 'desire' STRONGLY implies "more than need". I get that by definition, we can desire the things we need...but we don't usually say things like "I desire to breath". In this sense, an ant and a fish would not (seemingly) have desires. — ZhouBoTong

This "more than need" would need some elaboration. How does the act of breathing not involve some desire to continue living? Breathing and similar processes, like pain reception, are cemented very thoroughly in our brain, but a person with no desire to breathe or feel pain can condition their brain to stop doing those things. So I would say, all these things are desire, however some are rooted deeper in our brains than others.

In the same way (to try to get back to thread topic, haha), I am not sure a human desires life. We live life. So I would struggle to follow that slave owners get their power from slaves desire to live? Their power comes from guns, germs and steel (so to speak) right? — ZhouBoTong

If a slave had no desire to continue living, what power would the slave owner have over him? He would run away, or resist; the slave owner may take his life but it has no value for him. When nothing of value can be given or taken away, power ceases to exist, thus even in this (extreme) example we can say the slave owner's power is based on the slave's preference of life over death.

I agree with you about economic conditions of parents can determing the outcome of a child’s ability to function and succeed in society. Originally, the function of colleges and universities was to prepare students for professional fields (physicians, engineers etc.) Although this level of education provided studies designed to teach students to think, you are also correct, this is no longer the case. To perform successfully in society, students need to have the ability to think at a higher level to make well informed decisions. Individuals can make positive changes as a collective group if they work with those who share their common beliefs ( which should be determined before they decide to work with a collective unit). To do justice to themselves, individuals should think about the collective unit they wish to join instead of “joining the group because everyone else is.” To abdicate their thinking to a group is merely giving up their freedom to make well thought out choices.

Why is this thread in the "About TPF" section?

Odd. Fixed.

Economic mobility has decreased since the middle class has begun to diminish, which is directly related to the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. This exploits working populations by expropriating would be benefits to them in the form of tax cuts for the rich. Exploitation, and this generates massive wealth at the top. — removedmembershiprc

I wonder why you called this movement "neoliberal". It's exactly the opposite to liberal ideals. You describe a movement of making the poor poorer and the rich richer -- in its most basic -- and that is not liberal, that is conservative, fascist. I really think you have such bias built into your outlook and it's a knee-jerk reaction by you to blame the liberals for all ills, even when an ill is in diametrical opposition to their movement.

I wonder why you called this movement "neoliberal". — god must be atheist

Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism[1] is the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and free market capitalism,[2]:7[3] which constituted a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus that had lasted from 1945 to 1980.[4][5]

When the term entered into common use in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, it quickly took on negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of Mont Pelerin Society economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[8][27] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[8] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and with the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[7] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing over the last few decades.[19][28]