The Trump Problem (the real one)

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
Campitor
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Campitor »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jul 15, 2017 10:59 am
The problem is that great teachers are not enough. Teacher to Student ratio is extremely important. Even the size of the classroom itself makes a difference.
Don't forget the problem students - Even a great teacher will do a poor job if she has a 2 or 3 sociopaths in her classroom. One on one teaching would be ideal but there isn't enough money in the system for it. And sociopath children or those with psychological issues/trauma require 3 to 1 ratios unless you're going to hire educators who are trained psychologist with MMA skills. http://www.apa.org/education/k12/teache ... ation.aspx

BRUTE
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by BRUTE »

the idea of a school itself is sociopathic and inherently broken. segregating young humans by age, enforcing arbitrary authority, removing their rights "for the greater good", every class teaching humans to shut the fuck up and obey orders, it's all the evils of statism in a microcosm.

school cannot be reformed. it is the problem, not the solution.

Chad
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Chad »

This guy is way more right than wrong, and it's very Henry Ford esque.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... ism-215347

BRUTE
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by BRUTE »

not going to happen. higher wages would mean higher prices for consumers, which they won't accept after 3 decades of cheapo stuff, or lower capital gains for investors, which they won't accept either.
The real threat to our republic is an alarming breakdown in social cohesion, and the cause of this breakdown is obvious: radical, rising economic inequality, and the anger and anxiety it engenders.
brute would completely agree with the social cohesion part, but he thinks "radical, rising economic inequality" is only one part of it, and not necessarily the biggest. plenty of societies have maintained social cohesion much stronger than the US ever had outside of wartime, yet have much bigger economic inequality or are much poorer in general.

it is that the economic American Dream is pretty much the only thing that ever resembled any kind of social cohesion. American humans would be wise to find some kind of other thing to rally around than money, because putting all their cohesive eggs in one basket is not very anti-fragile.

one tried and true method for creating social cohesion is starting wars, but it comes at economic and moral expense, so brute doesn't recommend it. also the US is currently involved in plenty of wars already, so maybe American humans are experiencing the equivalent of QE-burnout where those measures stop working after prolonged use.

brute thinks the sectarian identity politics are as much grounds for eroding social cohesion, as is coastal elitism, which is probably a symptom of the information economy. not making as much money as urban professionals is one thing, but being derided as stupid hicks adds insult to injury. humans don't like insults.

Dragline
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Dragline »

BRUTE wrote:
Sat Jul 15, 2017 4:15 pm
the idea of a school itself is sociopathic and inherently broken. segregating young humans by age, enforcing arbitrary authority, removing their rights "for the greater good", every class teaching humans to shut the fuck up and obey orders, it's all the evils of statism in a microcosm.

school cannot be reformed. it is the problem, not the solution.
I think a society's schools are more a reflection of the society than the other way around. The causal arrow points from society to school. This is why schools with a lot of active parent participation are usually pretty good schools.

Most people have this weird idea that you can "fix" something wrong in society just by altering the school system, leading to the societal fixation with "what is going on in the schools" and lots of hand-wringing about it. Yet at the same time, if you ask people who are most convinced that the schools dictate society whether they were brainwashed by their own educational experience, most of them would say "no", because its only "all those other wrong-thinkers" who were brainwashed in the schools. This line of reasoning makes no sense when you think about it.

Schools are just a convenient scapegoat for other problems/issues, often used to "explain" what are just differences in opinion or perception. The media is used as a scapegoat in a similar way.

BRUTE
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by BRUTE »

brute isn't even saying school is bad because it makes for a bad society. school is just bad on its own.

black_son_of_gray
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by black_son_of_gray »

BRUTE wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 11:37 pm
school is just bad on its own.
What is your prefered alternative?

BRUTE
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by BRUTE »

brute has not raised any children and so can not say he's explored all the alternatives long term, but he thought that unschooling/homeschooling sounded pretty good. he also likes the apprenticeship model a lot. there is a lot of tacit knowledge that human children don't learn in school that they can learn from adults day to day, subconsciously.

Chad
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Chad »


Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

Since the income inequality theme came up here, I thought I would post this here:

http://xhxhxhx.tumblr.com/post/16319456 ... -rebellion
Amartya Sen, in the introduction to On Economic Inequality (1973), wrote that “the relation between inequality and rebellion is indeed a close one,” and who could disagree with that?
It would be the easiest thing to test: We know how to measure inequality. We know how to measure conflict. We have strong theories of causation. If the relationship was that strong, the findings should have been clear, consistent, strong, and positive.
They weren’t.
This comes up fairly often, the intuitive leap from income inequality to political instability.
If you want to prevent civil war, you need to increase incomes and growth rates, limit political instability, expand your armed forces, and ensure your neighbors are peaceable democracies. Reducing inequality would not do much good.
Inequality doesn’t seem to matter.
Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say it doesn't matter, rather that it isn't likely to lead to political instability.

Lately, like since the election, I have noticed serious radicalization on both wings of the political spectrum, and this has been... alarming. So I have gone back to a hobby of mine, trying to figure out how we started a civil war 157 years ago. It seems irrelevant, but in a world where quilters can't get along with quilters http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-40278684?SThisFB this strife is enough to make me want to go build a bunker. Even here, on ERE, where we have been civilly (and occasionally less civilly) disagreeing for years, we have had multiple threads locked. This is not my attempt to add to that list.

So, I posted the income inequality link to discuss this.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Riggerjack: Hear you on the bunker. The situation is really getting out of hand in my neck of the woods. I find it worrisome that I am still having difficulty with maintaining friendships on both sides of the divide this many months past the election. I actually hear people saying things like "We know where they live, and if we have to, we will burn them down." I don't know if many people comprehend how difficult it would be to do something like call in the National Guard to reinstate order in a rural as opposed to an urban location. There are vast expanses of the United States in which the only officials representing larger government are some poor young state trooper cruising up and down miles of highway when not sipping coffee and flirting with the waitress in a small town diner and a harried middle-aged social worker dealing with welfare payment disputes. There are also many urban neighborhoods which have a high level of greater government presence during the day, but they all drive home to the safe suburbs at night.

That said, I really don't have a clear notion of what could actually happen, beyond "something bad."

BRUTE
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by BRUTE »

If you want to prevent civil war, you need to increase incomes and growth rates, limit political instability, expand your armed forces, and ensure your neighbors are peaceable democracies. Reducing inequality would not do much good.
Inequality doesn’t seem to matter.
brute's somewhat limited travel experience confirms this. in some of the poorest and most unequal societies he's seen in Asia, he'd walk around openly as a clear foreigner at 4am with a laptop out. random strangers would approach, offer free food, and give him directions. similarly poor and unequal areas in Latin America seem almost like war zones in comparison.

brute isn't sure what it is, maybe the culture.

that said, brute believes the single biggest thing any human could do for peace and civility on the north american continent is legalize all drugs. this would instantly ruin the cartels.

Tyler9000
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Tyler9000 »

Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Aug 30, 2017 8:41 pm
Lately, like since the election, I have noticed serious radicalization on both wings of the political spectrum, and this has been... alarming. So I have gone back to a hobby of mine, trying to figure out how we started a civil war 157 years ago. It seems irrelevant, but in a world where quilters can't get along with quilters http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-40278684?SThisFB this strife is enough to make me want to go build a bunker.
I hear you on the desire to build a physical bunker. Unfortunately, I think the phenomenon of intellectual bunkering on all points along the political spectrum is a huge contributor to the current toxic environment we find ourselves in. We really need people to come out of their holes, not retreat to deeper ones.

jacob
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by jacob »

A high school vocational tech teacher in central Ohio — who asked not to be named, to speak freely — told me: “Most of our students will not give the slightest thought to relocating should they not be able to find good employment here. They cite all the [usual reasons], but a big one is just plain fear of the unknown. My students think Columbus is a big, scary city. Many have never even been out of the county.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... ust-leave/

I highlighted the last sentence to give an absolute reference level for what is likely 3+ Wheaton levels away from the experience of most people on this forum.

On a side-note, it might also explain the animosity towards immigrants since they represent a value and risk-tolerance set that's far removed from the "folks" described in the quote?

jacob
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by jacob »

I must admit that the observation that many have never left their county(*) (by age ~<20) blew my mind. It makes me regret being rather dismissive about the value of "travel" which in retrospect looks somewhat guided by my bottoming out on the hype cycle during my early thirties [just after having recently traveled a lot :roll: ].

(*) My brain keeps reading this as country ... but we're talking county ... so practically over the next hill ala 18th century mobility levels.

I now think that "going elsewhere" for a while during one's formative years is an absolutely great idea. Whether that's college in another state (that's not too similar to one's own), military (meet new people and shoot them), or even backpacking in Yurop or Asia is worthwhile. I also think "working outside of one's natural/target field for a while" is a good idea.

Other than incentive, another crimping factor is ... the lack of life skills for dealing with living outside of the "valley". It's not that it's hard, but to anyone who's never seen/experienced it, it seems overwhelming/unpossible to deal with.

The counter point to all this: Why the insistence that everybody be middle-class 9-5 employed. Maybe the current situation is acceptable as it is ... and maybe we should just respect that rather than trying to change a culture that thinks itself okay.

Tyler9000
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Tyler9000 »

@Jacob -- The county thing is indeed pretty amazing, although I'm not sure that's isolated to poor areas nor to immigration attitudes.

I remember being a bit taken aback by the stories of some of the young people I met who grew up in the Bay Area and had never really experienced anywhere more than a few miles off the coast except from what they saw on TV. Several had crazy ideas of non-Bay life, like asking with a straight face whether I rode a horse to school in Texas. One in particular went to Palo Alto high, where she explained that the suicide rate was insanely high for kids who "didn't get into Stanford and would have to go to Berkeley".

Of course, many of the same young people struggled to save a dime despite having pretty cush tech jobs and complained at length about the impossibility of ever affording a home. But ask them why they don't simply move to a more affordable city (pretty much anywhere else in the United States) and live like a king and they look at you like you're crazy. Fear of the unknown created by bubbles is fairly universal, IMHO.
Last edited by Tyler9000 on Sat Jan 06, 2018 6:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Wendell Berry, questioning the wisdom of further population drift from rural to urban, notes that "until the farmers, ranchers, foresters, and miners have done their work, nothing else that we count as economic can happen. And unless the land users do their work well-which is to say without depleting the fertility of the earth's surface- nothing we count as economic can happen for very long."

He created a list of 6 questions to ask towards reviving local rural economies. I picked two most relevant to discussion.

1) After so long a history of diminishment and loss, what remains here, in the land and people of this place, that is valuable and worth keeping? Or: What that is here do the local people need for their own use and sustenance, and then, the local needs met, to market elsewhere?

5) What do our people need to know, or learn and keep in mind, in order to accomplish the necessary work? The STEM courses might help, might be indispensable, but what else is needed? We are talking of course about education for livelihood, but also for responsible membership, citizenship, and stewardship.

On "never leaving the county", when I attended college in the upper peninsula, I remember some of the guys made a joke about one of their friends who grew up on a very remote farm which was 'One Saturday night he was going to go to town, but then he didn't." However, same can be said for city and suburban kids. The last election was very disturbingly reminiscent of the time the burn-outs and the jocks had a riot/rumble at my high school.

jacob
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by jacob »

So if immobility is a universal feature of some humans (I can confirm the existence of at least a few former class mates, say 20%, with similar profiles from where I grew up) ... then how do we "fix" it to deal with an increasingly complex/mobile economy ... or should we acknowledge this as an inherent limiter and work with it in other ways?! Like establish preservation/reservations? :? :shock:

If we're pushing against innate limits with decreasing ROI for one-size-fits all ... what's the solution? Democratic solutions are a one-size-fits-all by definition. The current democratic solution seems to tilt towards welfare transfers but call it disability transfers out of respect for the cultural desire to be seen as self-reliant and "hard-working".

Of possible relevance ... as climate change swamps (literally, with rising water) native cultures (inuit, native american), who have historically been pushed onto marginal lands, there are attempts to move "everybody at once". This requires relocating the entire community thus building an entire new city complete with roads, schools, ... and everything. This is much more expensive that just buying individual houses in random places. Because there's an attempt to preserve the culture, the cost of the community is higher than the cost of the sum of the individual relocations. Question is who pays that ... if any ...

bryan
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by bryan »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jan 06, 2018 6:10 pm
Wendell Berry, questioning the wisdom of further population drift from rural to urban, notes that "until the farmers, ranchers, foresters, and miners have done their work, nothing else that we count as economic can happen.
Hence why we are making robots.
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jan 06, 2018 6:10 pm
And unless the land users do their work well-which is to say without depleting the fertility of the earth's surface- nothing we count as economic can happen for very long."
Oops. Time to count different things (VR) as economic, I guess.

> never left their county ... how do we "fix" it

Maybe a large network of boarding schools, paid for by the government?

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob:

Because one of the strategies I am using in my semi-retirement lifestyle is to lower my cost of living by "immigrating" to lower-cost 3rd World zones within my region of the U.S. , the interesting thing I have noted is that there are jobs for a person with my skill set/income needs in high unemployment zone blighted/flighted rural and urban counties. So, the kid with a real attachment to his hometown or the neighborhood he grew up in, can often, like Wendell Berry or Welcome Back Kotter, go off to the big city or liberal arts institution for just a few years, and then return and get or make a job for himself. However, most don't come back, so one complaint I frequently hear when I visit among the elderly in these regions is that they are stuck with immigrant doctors whose English they can't understand. Of course, I can well imagine that immigrant M.D. as being equally thrilled with his current assignment :lol:

Also, since the internet is everywhere, there is no reason why most people employed in the "knowledge economy" could not work remotely from an inexpensive rural location in the U.S. For instance, I am considering the possibility of tutoring Chinese tots in English from the location of a relatively posh tourist town located in a county with over 8% unemployment. I might also try to figure out a way to market local huckleberries to yuppie scum. Of course, I will have to compete with bears for that niche, so....?

@bryan:

Giant robot tractors not so good. Technology appropriately scaled to reality of erosion might be alright. The development of VR is certainly an economic activity, but the point Berry was trying to make is that you need to mine some stuff to make the VR technology and you need to grow some stuff to feed the VR technology developers, marketers, investors, and consumers. Maybe I could sell you a virtual potato for .0000000001 BTC, but your tummy would still soon start to rumbling.

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