[ExI] Protected Elites

[painlord2k at libero.it]

Il 15/05/2009 15.26, Stefano Vaj ha scritto:


> Yet, most of the time people are complaining about the fact that we
> would be living under the "law of the jungle" where the fittest
> would crash without pity the less lucky, or in a "socialist" society
> where competition and the action of the "invisibile hand" would be
> hindered by state regulation and/or by masses oppressing the
> geniuses.

> I submit that both scenarios are largely imaginary from a
> sociological point of view, and that our social system is instead
> largely aimed at protecting interests which are largely parasitic in
> their nature from a social point of view, and accordingly very wary
> of any kind of major techno-economical change.

1) Social mobility is good in so far the less productive and useful
people move down and the more productive and useful move up. The
opposite would be a bad thing if not an evil thing.

2) The market based approach, banning violence, prevent or at least
reduce the possibility to obtain wealth and power without producing
something useful for others. And reward the people producing thing and
service useful to others as the others show by paying for the goods and
the services.

3) The interests protected by our social system are the interests of
who? We have groups of people that aim to further their self interests.
These are specific groups of people and they use specific ways to
protect their interests. One of this is direct violence, but it is
rarely used today; the second is government mediated violence, by laws
or by management of the public services.

For example, mismanagement of public schooling and misguided policies
help the ruling class to stay on top, as they are anyway able to pay for
good schools and their children are more intelligent (on average).
For example, affirmative actions help to keep many whites in charge or
humanities as many blacks enrolled are not fitted and fail and the East
Asian are mainly keep out. Now, it become much more easy to select the
"right" people.

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/ERD/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.aspx
> Comparing surveys of children born in the 1950s and the 1970s, the
> researchers went on to examine the reason for Britain's low, and
> declining, mobility. They found that it is in part due to the strong
> and increasing relationship between family income and educational
> attainment.
>
> For these children, additional opportunities to stay in education at
> age 16 and age 18 disproportionately benefited those from better off
> backgrounds. For a more recent cohort born in the early 1980s the gap
> between those staying on in education at age 16 narrowed, but
> inequality of access to higher education has widened further: while
> the proportion of people from the poorest fifth of families obtaining
> a degree has increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent, the graduation
> rates for the richest fifth have risen from 20 per cent to 47 per
> cent.

They dumbed down the degree to "help" the poor, so the degree value 
fallen near the value of the paper it is written upon. This helped 3% of 
the poorest and 27% of the richest.
The degree, as a way to differentiate the groups become irrelevant. So 
the richest advance into higher education for status and to learn more.
The richest have more resources to endure a longer period of education, 
anyway. So whatever job would need longer education will be precluded to 
the poorest, anyway.
Or, in the other side, many people were induced to follow higher 
educations in humanities than would be able to profit. So, many higher 
education courses were dumbed down to help the people to complete them. 
So, many people wasted years in colleges, obtained a degree in pottery 
arts or lesbian studies and then went to take a job as waitress or taxi 
driver.




Mirco




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