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'This is simply insane': Questions raised about vetting of J.D. Vance amid new blow-up
(www.rawstory.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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politics
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That power imbalance did not arise from nothing though, it's not a necessary state of being in a democratic society. A cognitive imbalance is a necessary pre-requisite for it to form within our structure.
Not half a century ago we didn't have unlimited money running our politics for instance. How it arose merits examination.
We had a more fractured and localized fund raising system. But politicians still routinely came from the wealthiest families - the Bushs, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers - and cash on hand has always been a measure of a campaign's strength.
So long as education is privatized to some degree, imbalances will persist. But even the most crunchy of liberals don't want to abolish Harvard.
I think you're conflating elitism, wealth and political power. They are three independent factors that certainly can but do not have to co-exist. Any one of them makes the others easier, but is not fundamentally necessary. While you can certainly cherry pick examples where all three are present, this is a far cry from a proper statistical analysis of how often that is actually the case. We wouldn't want simple confirmation bias mucking up our perceptions, and making us forget all the politicians that did not have great wealth, after all. That would be a gross error in thinking.
I disagree that imbalances will persist so long as some private education exists. Basic critical thinking skills can be taught public or private.
Two people with the same critical capacity and different moral compasses or economic circumstances will reach radically different conclusions on a given subject. The executive manager and the line cook can receive the same education, but reach very different conclusions about - say - a reasonable starting salary or the appropriate amount of sick leave.
Aligning the ideals of the cook with the crook means establishing certain long term social expectations and assumed rewards. "Oh, one guy has an MBA from Wharton. They must just be better than the other so that's why they get more stuff" fits within a rigorous critical analysis wherein elitism is considered a function of meritocracy and certain human lives have more value than others. The executive can go to the grave thinking they deserve the surplus profit extracted from all the base-pay line cooks under their thumb. The mere capacity for critical thinking doesn't change that.
Perhaps. My issue is not solving economic injustice, however, it's getting to a functioning democracy. For that we do not need a perfectly equitable distribution of wealth, but an understanding of sound information and decision-making processes so that individuals are capable of making voting decisions that align better with their interests over just voting for the salesman. This just takes some critical thinking skills.
I don't believe that every person needs to have their interests "aligned", people should be allowed to decide for themselves what their own interests are, even if that be the pursuit of blatantly destructive ends. The system can be made robust in spite of them. It needs to be able to handle that, not necessarily preclude the possibility altogether.
And no, that does not fit with a rigorous critical analysis whatsoever. What if the MBA guy cheated through most of his schoolwork to get his MBA? That would not necessarily be merit anymore. When I say rigorous, I do mean rigorous, and sound critical thinking should uncover these possibilities and take them into account.
Very hard to function as a democracy when a single wealthy patrician can command the economic future of millions of registered voters.
Deciding what to do matters little without the means to accomplish it. It means even less when you're deprived of the education and opportunity to know what your options even are. That goes beyond simple critical thinking. You need a real vibrant economic community, one in which "freedom" means the ability to pursue a career and a station irrespective of ethnicity or gender or religious affiliation.
At some point, you get what you measure for and the degree becomes the definition of merit. But I'm less worried about a guy who cheats on a midterm than I am about the capable student who is never admitted in the first place, on the grounds that they aren't of the correct pedigree.
Again, perhaps, but I think you're again grossly exaggerating the problem in order to justify some kind of dramatic change. Not that significant change is not necessary, but I do not see economic reform fixing our country if basic critical thinking is not addressed first.
There's going to be no revolts seizing the means of production any time soon, which means we require voting for politicians that an American will find amenable. Nobody can perform any positive economic reform if we cannot get our facts straight first. Nor would we be effectively coordinating very much civil action.
Sure. I was just pointing out that when you said the following it was utter hogwash:
It doesn't actually work that way, and nor should it. A degree is not a guarantee of merit, it cannot be and thinking it is one is foolish. You cannot engineer a system reliably enough to genuinely make that consistently true. There will always be far too many independent variables that cannot be accounted for. Additionally, there are logical, self-serving reasons to engage in more pro-social behaviors that sufficient critical thinking training can help you arrive at.
We've had a unionist revival threatening the foundations of dozens of industries.
I don't know about the foundations, but yes, I have been glad to see the strengthening position of labor in recent years.