I kind of agree, but how would you teach 'the good' in a world where there is no agreement on what the good is or if it is anything more than perspectival. — Tom Storm

Conscientious teachers do try - if informally, as part of the normal classroom procedure - to instill a sense of fairness and tolerance. In a diverse society, these are the most important values. And this is exactly what privileged education does not do.

Education would seem to be lot easier in a culture where pluralism and diversity don't exist. — Tom Storm

There are not many such societies anymore. Perhaps none.

All power to them. — NOS4A2

That's the point: they have no power! They do not "absolve themselves"; most low-income people do the best they can in their limited circumstances. In the states with the largest proportion of poor people, they also have less access to family planning and a lot more suppression of their votes.

But you absolve parents from the responsibility of rearing their own children, institutionalizing them, leading to the very conditions you fear. Not to mention it is immoral to take and raise another’s child without their permission. — NOS4A2

Some parents have the leisure to home-school their children - usually in order to indoctrinate them into a religion of fear, prejudice and punishment. But most people have to make a living, and they are not given the choice of working hours, during which the children would be unsupervised. The parents themselves are often uneducated, and don't know how to teach; nor have they the materials and, books and information resources that schools have.
Most people can't afford a nanny or private tutors; those who can send their children to private schools to make the necessary social contacts and the way into 'good' universities.
In some communities, it would be feasible to set up a learning program conducted by whichever adults have specific knowledge and time to devote. There are initiatives in that general direction https://www.crps.ca/about-us/community-education-network

Home-schooled children may be more comfortable in their relationship to adults, but they are isolated from their peers, and grow up with no experience of getting along with people different from themselves. They don't get much opportunity for independent self-expression... and many are routinely abused. Not all parents are good at parenting, and very few are good at educating.

Moooo!

That points up the overweening role of money in education. Why are there good and bad schools? The resources are allocated not just unevenly, but destructively. The fact that poor children can only go to poorly performing schools, hate it and quit early inhibits aspiration, wastes talent and hinders any attempt at social improvement. Very few young people are able to overcome that imposed handicap.

I suspect the biggest problem with American foreign policy is that there isn't one. They don't seem committed to any long-term vision or plan; each administration just prods and pokes, pushes and pulls, tries to put out the fires left by the previous administration - sometimes by pouring gasoline on it, sometimes by throwing dollar bills on it, always wheedling and rattling their big rusty sword at the same time.

Seems to me that history, politics and critical thinking remain important. How to teach those in an environment of tribalism would be challenging. — Tom Storm

Tribal societies tend to be strong on the teaching of their own history and social values, though they have little need of politics. Critical thinking, however, is essential in a small community where each individual's contribution is vital to the whole, and especially in marginal economies, where resources are scarce. A big, hierarchical society can afford to waste a portion of its human resources in order to keep the population under control; it can waive the benefits of each member reaching his or her potential in favour of a few gaining more power and wealth.

Those have been mentioned, among other solutions.

I'm not familiar with the current state of education in the US - or anywhere, really; it's a long time since I had any contact with the system.
I can say generally about public schools in North America:
They teach the basic skills necessary for education: literacy, numeracy, a rudimentary understanding of science and history. They don't all do it equally well, but the basics are covered. That's a necessity.
They try to instill some national and human values in the students: good citizenship, ethical behaviour and respect for their peers. This is also necessary.
Beyond that, there are usually classes in hygiene, nutrition, reproduction and money management. These are useful things to learn.
Most importantly, students are introduced to subjects, ideas and areas of interest that they would not be exposed to at home, giving them a far broader view of the world and of the scope of knowledge they might wish to pursue later.

However, I have some reservations about the way in which schools are conducted. The curriculum is tailored to the average, which means that unless they have a particularly gifted and dedicated teacher, the brightest are bored and the dullest are left behind.
I'm not crazy about kids sitting for hours at a desk, either. In some schools (expensive ones) they get to move around and participate in different interesting activities during the day.
I don't think there is much point in trying to teach pubescent humans in a formal school setting. Their bones are growing; their brains are reconfiguring; their endocrine system is in overdrive. They're questioning adult verity and values (Let's face it, we do a lot of lying to children; they're bound to catch on sometime! Usually between 10 and 12, they start questioning, doubting, pulling away. )
In puberty, they're restless and impatient, can't concentrate for long periods or remember complex information. They need to sleep more, have more physical activity and less regimentation. 12-16 is a period when they would get more out of practical learning than academic learning.
Also: school is too easy. We underestimate children and overprotect them. They don't have enough challenges.

So, you believe that the only possible social, political and economic organization is the one we currently have.

Pottery Throwdown, Best in Miniature, Baking Show - both British and Canadian - and Race Against the Tide. We like contests of skill. I also watch construction, repair shop and home renovation programs. No recent Escape to the Chateau episodes, unfortunately.

Busted. I console myself that at least my co-sarcaster got away with it.

And it's a credit to the Spanish, and later the Monroe-driven US policy, that no Mexican citizens are sacrificed today. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels

I don't claim that the US actually controlled any Middle Eastern state; that might have had a better outcome. Their (and Britain's) bungling interference, strong support of despotic rulers, and their failure to apprehend the local conditions, resulted in the present mess.

I don't think he was nearly as certain of anything as he made out. Remember, there was a powerful Catholic church to watch out for; you had to be pretty careful what opinions you expressed, not to end up like Bruno. He spent a lot of time in the more liberal Protestant Netherlands, but returned to Paris and wanted to be safe there.

In 1641 Descartes published the Meditations on First Philosophy, in Which Is Proved the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul. Written in Latin and dedicated to the Jesuit professors at the Sorbonne in Paris, the work includes critical responses by several eminent thinkershttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes/Meditations

To a large extent, that is exactly what it is.

It's not a two tiered system. There are workers, managers and owners. — LuckyR

Yes, I think that's been covered.

And share holders, and board members, and founders, and outsourced workers and companies, and interns, and... — Lionino

Indeed. Lots and lots of slots in the ramp, kissing up, kicking down.

They don't own much, do share their scarce material resources, don't make war unless they're attacked, know far too much about the inhospitable land on which they subsist, and are too willing to share that knowledge. Savages!

I guess you won't.

That's a good solution — Patterner

It is for an increasing number of modern people. Intentional communities were mentioned earlier in this thread and some religious group function on an approximation of tribal organization, significantly the Amish/Mennonite and Seventh Day Adventist, and Quaker communities.

As far as I know you are one. — Lionino

Where do you get that idea? In fact, I'm firmly in the "settler" category. We are slowly learning to coexist in some semblance of amity.

I would leave the second half out of it. — Lionino

Yah, that would make better PR, but has never been true.

Vivisection was a very common form of experimentation and demonstration in medical colleges of the time - and in various forms, up to the present. Whether Descates himself conducted any such lectures using dogs has been the subject of debate, but he was a practicing physician, so he must have at least attended those lectures. He certainly didn't invent or initiate them, but he was famous, and his apologetics did help to legitimize vivisection as sound scientific practice.

Descartes famously thought that animals were merely ‘mechanisms’ or ‘automata’ – basically, complex physical machines without experiences – and that as a result, they were the same type of thing as less complex machines like cuckoo clocks or watches. He believed this because he thought that thoughts and minds are properties of an immaterial soul; thus, humans have subjective experience only because they have immaterial souls inhering in their physical bodies. However animals, reasoned Descartes, show no signs of being inhabited by rational souls: they don’t speak or philosophise, and so (as far as we can tell) they lack souls, and minds.

He bent some little way to accord animals sensation and emotion, but still considered it legitimate for humans to use them like objects.

Hard to imagine sufficient fat and fiber packed into a pill one could swallow.

Today there are pills to provide the vitamins we need, which leaves just the pesky issue of caloric intake. An adult typically needs about 2000 calories per day, and even the most concentrated source (pure fat) can't make that many calories fit into a single pill.

Another down-side: employers would cut lunch hour to 2 minutes a day.

If we are talking about tribes like the Amazonian and Congolese tribes before contact with Europeans, and San tribes today, yes, they are not civilised by any metric. — Lionino

What if we were talking about North American natives? They had something to say about European civilization.
I generally use 'civilization' to mean urbanized society arranged in a pyramidal caste system, with power and wealth at the top, drudgery and poverty at the bottom. I don't think much of it. But others have used the word to mean any organized group of people with a distinct social system and culture. In the latter sense, Amerindians, indigenous Australians, African nations were all civilizations before a climate change or bigger empire destroyed them.
The online dictionary says:

a human society that has highly developed material and spiritual resources and a complex cultural, political, and legal organization;

but fails to explain what it considers highly developed, complex or spiritual, nor why it considers complexity a prerequisite.
OTOH, individuals are generally said to be civilized if they have self-control and good manners - which the North American First Nations certainly had.

However, too radical a change in economic structure would be catastrophic. Accidental catastrophe is bad enough, and no one wants to deliberately cause a catastrophe. — BC

So we wait till it's too late for gradual or controlled demolition of a failed system, until the structure collapses on our heads. The only way to get more radical or catastrophic than global economic collapse, is to nuke ourselves.

I knew that.
Of course we need to work in order to have what we need and want. We don't need a whole lot of the things that we make and the want of them is artificially created by people working at emotional manipulation while others are working - very well compensated - at moving money around in ways nobody understands. That's not necessary. Does the necessary work have to produce megprofits for the employers and bare subsistence for so many of the workers?

What we don't need is all the duplication and waste of the present arrangement. Is there any rational reason for shipping American oak planks to China and shipping wooden toilet seats back from China?
We could also benefit from more satisfaction in the work we do and a more sensible allocation of time to work, leisure and rest.

The present economic climate is already changing, much like the external one. And like the external climate, nobody seems to have any idea how direct or control the change. I think it's time to think about what comes next, rather than what's being lost.

Some people admire bullfighting as an art form, some serial killers include ritual mutilation of their victims and I've heard of the artistry of a very effective inquisitor. But having been forced to watch "the physicality" of hockey games so anticipated by their fans and boxing matches, I conclude that no matter how artfully violence is employed, I can't regard it as art.

yeah, the grey and black only look seems optional. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I particularly dislike it on small children. Actually, the young women I see usually wear cotton dresses in a floral print, with bonnets that hide their hair and shield their eyes from the sun. The men all have straw boaters.

The ones I am aware of are Christian communities, but I see no prima facie reason that such communities couldn't be grounded in some other sort of practice. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The religious ones are certainly the longest-lived, even if we don't count monastic orders. I suppose a shared faith and ritual practice has a stabilizing effect. However, that may also alienate some of the youth, so that they either need to over-procreate or recruit mature members in order to keep the community going. I suspect modern mainstream people would balk at being denied birth control, and very few women would voluntarily have six or seven kids.

I've been watching some videos and reading some articles about the recent trend toward eco-village or co-operative farm type of communities. Seems that some of these are thriving the world over.

I have observed that intentional communities follow a developmental pattern similar to that of small businesses: many more are imagined and planned than ever start. Of those that do start, about half collapse within two years, with perhaps half the remain-der collapsing before the end of five years. Most small businesses and intentional communities that make it to five years prosper indefinitely.

The whole paper is worth reading, though I skipped over the history part, having read it before in other articles.

I wanted to imply that you get all the negatives without getting the positives. — Lionino

The negatives are optional. We can choose a wholesome diet and eat in moderation, just as we can choose to imbibe alcoholic beverages in moderation. The positives include far more than physical nourishment. Our bodies are constructed to use food: I wonder what would happen to the digestive system if it were deprived of substantial material to process.

But the role of a contemporary employer/manager is less dictator, more team leader. Especially in fields of work where the employees are more educated or specialized. — jkop

The bad managers (five spring up from distant memory) I mentioned were all in IT. The manager specialized in management (MA) and had not a clue about hardware, programming or design. They would set impossible goals based on the requirements of the sales team or the VP and assign the wrong tasks to the wrong people, without adequate equipment or tech support, and then demand daily progress reports and call time-wasting meetings.

One might as well work as a consultant, self-employed, or join a company that works as an economic democracy. — jkop

I agree wholeheartedly! My SO was constantly frustrated as an employee. Contracting still meant having to deal with inept managers. When we set up an independent business, our household income dropped by 60% and our family wellbeing increased 200%.

The Amish, like our Mennonite communities, operate more like a tribe than urbanized modern societies. The Mennonites around here have a flexible system of governance: while sharing basic values, each separate community can determine its level of participation in the surrounding culture, its mode of dress and level of technology avoidance. Some are relatively modern, using trucks and cellphones for doing business with the outside, and some of the young men who contract for construction or other jobs use power tools. Several families regularly take a school bus (I assume they own it) to the nearest city and shop at the supermarkets and hardware stores. I often see women and children in the thrift stores I frequent.
They certainly look like healthy, robust people and of course the community is good at looking after its members and conserving its communal wealth. I don't have to agree with all of their values to recognize the advantages. In fact, I'm convinced that a similar arrangement would work equally well for a community of atheists with personal computers and colourful clothes.

I think managing is a skill itself, and like any skill it benefits from practice, and not everyone is good at it. — flannel jesus

That's why I suggested electing a member of the team who is recognized by the others as a good organizer. Such a team leader would have more respect and co-operation from the workers than one who is imposed on them by the bosses. Not all projects require the same skill-set or work experience: in addition to organizational ability, the manager should also be familiar with the tasks each worker needs to perform.

Many employees who have the talent to manage never get the chance because there is already a manager in place, with the paper to prove they went to manager school, who cannot be dislodged, no matter how badly they do. (I've seen a few very poor managers...)

We eat together 2 or 3 times a week. — Tom Storm

Would you still take the pill when you're together?
How about family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas, or social events, like weddings and charity fund-raisers? Or just plain dinner parties with friends and colleagues? So many human bonding rituals are centered on the sharing of food.
Many people would not want a pill, simply because they enjoy eating; some even enjoy cooking, baking and selecting ingredients, never mind the pleasure of growing vegetables and fruit.

What if management were a temporary position? Someone with specialized knowledge or experience is elected manager for the duration of a project. Once the project is completed, that manager goes back to his or her normal life as an independent operator.

I've just been reading about such arrangements in a Forbes article that I linked in my previous post. Sounds very sensible as far as a single enterprise goes, and might even give the participants greater confidence to tackle inequalities on the political front.

I think that if someone were to devise an optimal company, or even an optimal society, it would still have that division, there would still be managers and workers. — flannel jesus

Very possibly. But would the managers need to be an upper class over a lower worker class?

I see that I couched the question in too simplistic terms, inadequate to describe the structure of capitalist economy. I was specifically interested in the necessity of "jobs". This is considered central to social organization: every time there is a discussion of tax reform, environmental protection or trade regulation or technological innovation, somebody cries "But the economy! People would lose their jobs!" Every election, some candidate claims that they will improve the economy through tax cuts for the 'job-creators' and every mogul boasts about the number of jobs he 'provides'. We can clearly see that the worker is enriching the owner, yet continue to credit the owner class with 'giving' people work.

There are sole traders of course, self-employed individuals with no employees, but broadly you are right. — bert1

Yes, and - at least in Canada - they are no better off financially than employees. However, I have some anecdotal and personal indication that they are happier.

I would prefer that as the basic model for work: independent crafters, farmers, builders, cooks, healers, designers, etc. That doesn't mean that a large number of such people can't form up teams for large communal projects, but it would be a voluntary and temporary association.
Of course, in order for functional democracy to prevail, no occupation could be valued and or rewarded more than another.
To me, the CEO who is paid more than 300 times the salary of a productive worker in the same industry, plus bonuses and perks, is obscene.
One workable interim step might be employee ownership.

Calling the objective reality "God" is unpopular today, — Brendan Golledge

It's about time!

The preparation of food is sometimes rewarding; the cleaning up afterwards is a chore; the acquisition of ingredients is expensive and requires an effort, but not without its good moments.
The sharing of regular, scheduled meals is worth the effort; the pleasure of good food is a bonus. Of course, the pill could be tailored to specific dietary needs - but is it? Dining out on special occasions is something to anticipate and cherish; the odd spontaneous restaurant lunch or picnic outing is fun.
Medication is necessary, but I don't think we could make a daily occasion of taking a pill together.

Historians don't tend to get stuff right when it comes to things that are not events far into the past — Lionino

The events of the past have little to do with manipulating fractions, but the events of the far distant past did precede the events of the recent past, which preceded the events of the present, with no evident line of demarcation between sets of events.
One might even conclude that they constitute cause ----> effect.

Imperialism does not imply empire — Lionino

In that case, I need a Newspeak dictionary. Nobody promised that economic and military imperialism would never backfire. Ask the Islamophobic French nationalist political faction, and they'll say the present ethnic problem in their country was caused by the EU's magnanimity. Ask a historian, and you'd get a very different answer.