"Over time, we're going to see what works and what doesn't and things will generally settle down"
Illusion and fantasy...total confabulation.

A government is a simple creation really, it uses force to achieve the end goal which is control, not unlike a rapist or a thief-The antithesis of liberty in the example of say, the American government works because force is used by an immoral core of liars and thieves to achieve goals that benefit the few rather than the whole of society. Examples of just how fucked things are at face value VooDooV, why bother to cite the examples that are glaringly obvious to anyone who at their core, is a moral and free individual...pointless and insulting to anyone who can think.

Mind you, infrastructure and social safety nets enhance freedom, but what should the end-goal be? To enhance the moral framework of a society, which has surely not been done so far with the American form of government, on the contrary, we see the fabric of what makes a society prosper and maintain a fairness for all being eroded to serve the interests of a few, through force and control...through civil liberties being chipped-away at through surveillance and more prisons, more laws, more fines and punishments for more people, etc. Deficit spending pays debt forward to further enslave the recipients of services like roads and social welfare programs, higher education, etc. The freedom to make poor choices at a micro and macro level is what the current government is all about, getting worse every year.

Urban sprawl will continue as folks with pipe-dreams tout more green, less energy usage, cleaner burning cars and factories, etc. One 'problem' is addressed by creating one for another somewhere else.

Ever listen to Buckminster Fuller's idea of a 'green' or 'energy efficient society'? It doesn't use ANY of the current models of societal structure, it pretty much SCRAPS them all for a trans-formative way of moving forward. The old models are shit if they accomplish them through force and control of human activity. YOU don't live in a democratic system, in case you have been asleep for your entire life, democracy is only a fucking word, a concept not unlike any 'ism' created by humans in the past 3000-7000 years.

The financial structure of the United States is inherently evil. It can not be made fair and moral for everyone, it wasn't designed to. It is designed to serve the few at the top, with enforcers and regulators at the bottom-tier of their system. The government is NOT inherently evil but it has been hijacked by cunts.

Just because you think you know how politicians should perform, does not make it happen that way. Sane health care system? Nope. Maybe for the privileged classes-What they hand the masses is complete shit. National debt? Foreign policy? How would YOU do it? Then that's probably saner than the way it's being run, innit? Government is not needed for ANY of these aspects of a civil and moral society to function. All it takes is moral and sane judgement and agreement at solutions and for folks to voluntarily subscribe to these actions, without force, without police, without armies, etc.

Many more examples too many to pontificate upon, many variables of systems, all of which could function to afford everyone freedom and liberty, WITHOUT a government. The government is a construct just like everything else man creates-It takes willing humans to make them either function efficiently, or to scrap them for something new and improved.

I'm no libertarian, no anarchist, just a practical human being.
There are more reasons for scrapping the world system of government than there are for maintaining them, you simply refuse to see any other way THAN systems of government.

Mankind can self-govern if it does so with a formidable and sound moral compass...Is mankind doing that? It can also make the entire planet it's playground if it chooses to do so...Is mankind doing this??
FUCK NO!

higher education is not training for a job.

@VoodooV
dont be too harsh on our boy @blankfist at least he has us talking about some pretty important issues.

if we do not discuss the hard issues and deal with truths and only hold onto our own biased ideology,then nothing gets accomplished.

i do not subscribe to blankies capitalistic unrestricted free market position.
i have been learning much about the free market and it does have some substantial strengths in many regards.

the problems arise,in my opinion,in regards to societal responsibility.
unrestricted capitalism makes everything a commodity.
and some things should NEVER be considered a commodity.

so i am against the privatization of schools and commodifying children.
and for those of you who wish to berate me for my position allow me to point to our current prison system:prisoners=commodity

now by me saying this does NOT automatically mean i am in support of our current education system.
i am not.

the system we have now is a bloated and stagnating beast which does little to educate and everything to indocrinate and create obedient workers.

and who is blamed for all this?
the teachers!
of course!
bind their hands,gag their mouths,stifle their creativity and crush their imagination.

and THEN turn around and say "there...theres your problem.the teachers".

so @ blankfist is not entirely off the mark when he infers or implies that it is government that is at fault.

because they are.

the real question is why?
now i am wading into postulation waters here but this is what i suspect.
1.the american government nor corporations wish to have a truly educated and informed citizenry with critical thinking skills and the ability to consume data and form rational conclusions.
people with those abilities will always challenge power.

they would rather have a docile and submissive public that does not question authority.
best get em while they are young.

so it doesnt matter if the schools are privatized or publicly funded.
they BOTH seek the same results and will BOTH be/are equally corrupt.

and most likely BOTH will blame the teachers for a perceived failure.

because BOTH will ignore,either knowingly or unknowingly,the systematic failure of HOW they teach children.

no longer is art taught.
nor civics (at least not where i live),
nor the humanities.
they are teaching these kids to be systems managers,not free-thinkers.

i believe that education all the way up and through to higher education should be a public responsibility.the investment will pay dividends greater than anything put IN to the system.
i am not going to list them all,just think about what a well educated citizen can bring to table.
see:finland

because at its heart,its essence,is not society a collective practice in community?
there are some things that should never be socialized.
education is not one of them.

money is not the problem.
teachers are not the problem.
its the SYSTEM and how it teaches,that is the problem.

remove the politicians and the special interest from the equation and allow the actual educators to do their jobs.

instead we have turned teachers into baby-sitters and schools into factories of the banal.

what a disgrace.

Though hyper edited, that was actually a very intelligent answer. Yes, defining someone as middle class is a little more complicated than merely taking your annual income. Higher education opportunities, which may be valued at tens or hundreds of thousands, also count.

He does have a point. As @braindonut said there isn't an exclusive relationship between having a degree and being educated.

Out of the graduates I've worked with most of their experiences are described in this video. Students follow the orders of the curriculum and end up burnt out and disinterested.

I think a lot of the problem is in school guidance and social attitudes towards what education actually is. Most see and communicate it as a necessary tool to gain employment opportunities. Because of this, students choose their higher education subjects based on job outcomes, so a hell of a lot of students aren't actually interested in their classes.

Then numbers led government set targets for education institutions. When measurements are made into goals they stop being measurements. This leads to curriculums that focus on test outcomes rather than knowledge and skill.

All of the people mentioned in this video that were successful had something else in common apart from the fact that they didn't complete higher education. They pursued their dreams despite their formal education, not because of it, and they all pursued their own education.

Jobs, Wozniak and Gates taught themselves everything about computers. They didn't wait around for anyone to plan out their education.

Beckham trained in football since he could walk.

Richard Branson didn't wait around for a degree, he started selling mail order records from his garage and started learning the business by doing rather than reading.

I could go on.

One thing I find very common with graduates is that when I ask them what projects they've worked on during their education; what projects they started themselves; what they've created and put out there out of their own passion for their industry... 95% have nothing.

I would hire someone who has done their own thing and does not have a degree rather than someone who has 5 masters to their name and has done diddly squat outside of the requirements of their education.

I've never heard of the Abbeville institute. Apparently it's a neo-confederate think tank with interest in secession according to wiki and the SPLC.

Abbeville Institute (wiki)

In 1998, Livingston was instrumental in the founding of the Abbeville Institute.[citation needed] According to its website, the Institute is "an association of scholars in higher education devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition". Its principal activities are a summer school for graduate students and an annual scholar's conference.[4] It focuses particularly on issues of secession which are kept out of mainstream academia.[5] The Institute is named for the South Carolina hometown of John Calhoun, and a pre-Civil War hotbed of secession.[6]

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/the-ideologues


As for the argument itself, I don't know what size has to do with democratic principles. Either you believe in them or you do not. As the world gets bigger, the need to work together is increased, not decreased, IMO.

North Carolina IS more beautiful than Texas...and the sand on the beaches is much better...and their accents are way more hickier...and sexy.

Texas politics be-damned, I gauge a state's appeal on much more fundamental aspects of humanity, not the robotic responses to world events prompted by indoctrination through higher education. That was sarcasm KnifeWielder and Texas be just as fucked as NC with regards to informed decision and perception of how the world REALLY works.

This is so pretentious. If your goal is to be Jesus, David Beckham or Oprah Winfrey, then higher education may or may not be helpful. If, on the other hand, you want to gain a lot of knowledge in a particular field in a short amount of time, then going to college is your best bet.

How many self taught doctors or engineers do you know?

Of the rich people he lists, most of them come from wealthy families. Most billionaires do go to college.

It's too bad that he slept through his classes and his mum didn't come to graduation, but it is hardly the fault of his school. If he felt he wasn't learning anything, he could have studied harder, changed classes, changed majors or even gone to another college.

There are many types of intelligences. College does not necessarily make you better or smarter. What you get out of higher education is directly proportional to what you put in.

Stay in school: http://soc101.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/education-pays-income-by-education-level-2011-update/

Missing his point VoodooV- Weath (comfortable, social and political environment=stable) as opposed to Poverty (constant struggle, unstable living conditions and government, etc).
Wealth provides access to information, education, and comfort in our temporarily-fucked paradigm. Unfortunately, knowledge and the leisure to pursue a higher path of consciousness is not something "endowed to all men by their creator" but something to be kept in a museum or private collection....or maybe even an entire city in ROME??? ..hint,hint??

Religions are wealthy because they have duped humans that they have a handle on their spirituality, or are a direct conduit to God herself. How do you think they got wealthy??
Oh and YES, it does take a higher education than that of a base, instinctual, meatbot (not talking about "University" per-se, either), because in order to HAVE have the questioning nature to reject religion you must first understand what it is about an institution's take on God, that you have a problem with....Harder to do that when you are poor and stupid BY DESIGN!

Religion has lasted as long as it has because people are herded, worked like cattle, and fed a continual stream of partial or outright disinformation. The average person may not have the information to make an informed decision, or even access to it.

There's a reason for the adage, "Knowledge is Power"
Control the dissemination of information and you can control a shitload of human bean!!

Oh, and a hearty down vote for Stink Uraguay's continual, smugly-smugstein rant(z). ...(everything he offers up is a rant right, and never are they either witty, or eloquent. MEH

you do know that many of most wealthiest people and organizations in the world are religious?

wealth does not equate to, or lead to education. It doesn't take a higher education to have the questioning nature to reject religion.

@rottenseed
you make some good points buckaroo but your post is ignoring the giant pink elephant in the room.
@Sagemind 's most excellent post gave that elephant a nod but i think it prudent to point directly at that giant hulking pustulent piece of pink elephant flesh.

shall we?
1.corporate america is NOT based on true capitalism (actual free market) but rather state-run capitalism.this translates to lower or non-existent tax revenue,government subsidies and outright bailouts.
in other words=socialism.

2.you state that a corporation has a "duty" to maximize profits.i would agree if you changed "duty" to "legal obligation".

3.this legal obligation to maximize profits has led to all kinds of inventive and clever ways to defraud the public and local municipalities,from having them pay for infrastructure to waste clean-up.the amount of money spent by public,tax-payer funds is staggering which of course=socialism.

4.corporate america has a literal army of 35,000 lobbyists in washington whose sole purpose is to manipulate legislatures to pass favorable laws (de-regulation).85% of ALL laws passed are actually written by corporate lobbyists.

5.since the abomination ruling of citizens united (fuck you alito) corporate america now has the unlimited access to our lawmakers.walmart spent tens of millions on the last election cycle,how much did you give? and who do you think those legislators are going to be listening to?
money=speech in this country.

6.a corporation is considered a person but this person has no empathy,remorse nor feelings of solidarity with fellow humans due to its very nature written into law.
otherwise known as a sociopath.

seewhatimsaying?
the corporate charter needs to be re-examined and/or re-written because what we have now is corporate welfare/socialism with all the benefits going to the top while the working class foots the bill.

vote with your wallet? sure.that would work to a point but many people are limited concerning options and walmart is the only place these folks can afford.
sometimes this economic situation is due to bad choices but more often it is just life kicking these people in the balls.

buck up and go grab some higher education?
sure...and that works how often?
im not kidding.go check the statistics.they are pathetic.
i bartend part time and there are 4 masters degrees and 8 bachelors where i work,all in different fields.ask them how their "higher education" paid off for them.
$100,000 in student debt loans all to be able to ask "would you like some cracked pepper sir"?

now lets punch that pink elephant straight in the balls shall we?
the suggestion that somehow if labor becomes organized and demands..and receives..a more viable living wage with some humane and decent benefits will somehow automatically translate into higher priced goods and eventual job loss is just corporate propaganda which originates from the reagan years.

this is absolute and utter bullshit all fed to us by the very corporations seeking to dominate and oppress its work force.

remember,it is the legal obligation of the corporate board of directors to "maximize profit" not "shoot itself in the foot".
the suggestion that somehow paying its employees a living wage translates to the destruction of the company is apocalyptic propaganda.

what has been done to the american worker is perverse.over the past thirty years we have seen the creation of either wage-slaves or debt slaves..or both.
any way you wish to look at it.we are slaves in one form or another.

i mean..just go check the numbers.
worker pay has stagnated for the past thirty years,while corporate profits have continually broken records.
do you seriously think that a unionized labor force will kill walmart?
not a chance and to suggest otherwise just indicates that the corporate propaganda has been quite effective.

walmart could pay a living wage AND offer affordable benefits and STILL would have cheap goods.
and every step of the way they would be "maximizing profits".

welcome to the united states of corporate america!
will that be cash or credit?

I spent 8.5 years of my life and nearly 1/4 million dollars (much of which I borrowed and just recently paid off the loans after 15 years) so that I didn't have to be in this video. It's called higher education, folks. Anyone can do it.


Yeah, I built that.

That's a nice theory and all about tuition is high only because of government involvement. Let's ignore the fact that it takes two. It takes government grants to assist those in need, and it takes the colleges to say "well fuck it then, let's just keep raising prices then if government is going to help out"

Schiff seems to forget that a lot since he made the same argument about wall street. Wall street keeps doing bad things, but it's the government's fault for not stopping them. Maybe if wall street stopped doing bad things, the government wouldn't need to stop them.

It takes two. But one organization is trying to help, the other organization is just trying to get away with having more money. So you tell me which one is worse. If a criminal has a gun to your head and says he will shoot you if you don't do X. If you refuse to do X and the criminal shoots you, who's fault is it? Yeah it's the fault of the fucking criminal with the gun to your head!!

The idea of removing government grants to education would have the effect of lowering tuition costs actually is something I might support. It's a sound idea. Problem is, what do you do in the meantime while you're waiting for the effects of supply and demand to kick in. Government pulls its money from higher education, and supposedly colleges will be forced to lower prices since much fewer people will be able to attend. Stuff like that doesn't happen over night, you're going to have a large gap where a ton of people will not be able to go to college for a significant period of time. What do you do about that?

I quite honestly don't think it will work. Colleges originally never had government support and did they lower prices to let the peasants in back then? Nope. Colleges were the home to the rich and the affluent. If you like the idea of only the rich getting an education, then proceed. If you like the idea that wealth shouldn't be a factor in education, then we need a better answer.

>> ^dag:

Pretty cool technology, but like it or not - paper books are on their way out. Sometimes, you think that an industry is in its twilight - and it's really not. A good example would be movie theatres.
Something about sitting in a big dark room with lots of strangers while munching over-priced popcorn - it's an experience we don't want to lose. Prognosticators have been trumpeting the doom of cinemas since the VCR - but it turns out, it's not going to happen.
Similarly, those same sages are now telling us that the end is nigh for bookstores. In this case, I'd agree. Bookstores and paper books don't offer enough of a distinction or an improvement over buying a Kindle copy. You're buying something to read at home anyway - not to consume in a bookstore, so so much better to just download it with a single click. Verily, I say - bookstore, the bell tones for thee.


Well put but I disagree. Most avid readers I've spoken to still prefer the tactile feel of a paper book to the electronic versions and until there is digital format standardization across marketing platforms, adoption will be slower. Also there is the question of longevity that people quickly ignore with digital formats.

If I buy a book its possible for generations of my family to read it or own it. Like all other digital based technologies, there is no certainty of being able to keep a kindle book or ibook forever. If the format changes, the technology evolves, or formats are just not supported it will be more noticeable with books than it has been with movies and music.

With movies and music new media and formats have meant improved quality and functionality, so people are willing to repurchase for improved experiences. It is unlikely that books will have this added benefit as things progress and so convincing people to repurchase would be hard. This is where format standardization becomes key because you cant have an open standard or solution to longevity in a fractured market.

E-books are where music was when almost all digital music was in Real player format (or smaller competitors), it didn't fully explode until the open ended formats (mp3) became the standard. Once one of the more open e-book formats takes hold and e-readers become accessible to the vast majority of demographics...then maybe you can start to gauge if books will survive.

PS I'm curious if this machine or things like it would be embraced by higher education, for the purpose of printed materials they use now and perhaps to replace the scam that is college text book purchasing.

As Richard Dawkins once put it:
“Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.”

As prof. Cox touched on, we don't just need people at college/university, but we need a public that understands the scientific method and thinking. I mean forget higher education for a bit, what we need, is middle school and hell, kindergardens, that teach kids HOW to think, not what to think. You dont need everyone to know the mass of the Higgs or what the Golgi apparatus does, what you need is for everyone to understand what kind of thinking that led to discover such facts, we need humans trained in the art of critical thinking, people with stimulates the brain. If kids have learned nothing else in school by the age of 15, at least they should have learned critical thinking.