Communists.

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

I agree with the sentiments. A free market would let us have a more diverse educational system. We were all in a class where at least 5 or more out of the 30 had no place being there. Had the parents a choice they would have sent them to a school with a completely different focus.

But if we leave the markets, an institution of capitalism, to self-manage, then we end up with each commodity, of which education is now an example, being manufactured and sold in a way which maximises the propagation, continuation and growth of the overall system.

This is precisely the mechanism he talks about when he mentions the development of public education coinciding exactly with the necessity within the system to cultivate workers so that the industrial revolution may continue. Under a free market system you wont get much and varied sorts of schooling/classes, you will probably lose even more of the arts, most especially stuff like dance and drama, which have next to no commercial value in comparison to, say, maths or languages.

How could you fail to see that in what your man was saying?


Heres another one of those TED talks things, I read this guys book ages ago, pretty lightweight but v interesting and really easy to read:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA&feature=channel

(It is relevant to the thread BTW, talks about how unlimited choice is bad)

and another one talking about very similar issues. Id like to hear free-marketers respond to these claims, ye cant just dismiss them anyway, ye either need to incorporate this knowledge into yer conceptions of the way society should be organised or change yer views...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM&feature=channel

turgon

Joycey wrote: »

Under a free market system you wont get much and varied sorts of schooling/classes, you will probably lose even more of the arts, most especially stuff like dance and drama, which have next to no commercial value in comparison to, say, maths or languages.

Why not? If parents want their kids to do dance they will pay for it, as many people do now. This creates a commercial value on the teaching of dance.

silverharp

turgon wrote: »

Why not? If parents want their kids to do dance they will pay for it, as many people do now. This creates a commercial value on the teaching of dance.

Indeed, my kids will be going to a fee paying school in Dublin which teaches a contintental language in primary from junior infants. I know another family that would like to send their kids there but cant afford the fees (which translates as they cant afford the fees on top of the taxes they pay) so choice is restricted.
To assume that all families want their kids to end up in Uni. is just false. If left to the market there would be more sports centred schools, more technical schools, there would be schools that focus on a classical education.

Joycey

turgon

Because people within a given system only have the options open to them that the system provides. In one of those talks i linked to just above one of them gives an example of two fish in a fishbowl. One of them says something like "We can do everything" or something like that, but really they are just in the bowl, and their options are exceptionally limited.

Now while society in this day and age has limits which extend far larger then a fishbowl, there is an equivalent lack of choice which is the result of our not having institutions (or on an individual level, funds) which provide whatever it is that we may have been able to do.

The capitalist system can be understood as a gigantic meme, or collection of memes (in Dawkin's terms). A meme is (from wikipedia):

"A meme is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for "something imitated".)[2] Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures."

Now im not sure whether id go as far as to buy in to Dawkin's conception, and I certainly wouldnt attempt to reduce the entirety of human social interaction to memetics, but there is most definitely some value to the idea.

Each individual actor which you claim would be entirely "free" (whatever that means) under an entirely free-market, capitalist system, is in fact nothing more then an agent which serves the purpose of propagating whatever memes happen to be exerting influence through our beliefs, practises etc. The capitalist system itself is what is being benefited, what is acting in its own self-interest, not you or me.

You have to recognise that dance classes are not an institution which (currently) are useful for the continued propagation and growth of the capitalist system. Nothing can be produced en masse (one word?) through the capacity of dance, except entertainment, but then it is only a minority of people who are necessary for the creation of entertainment which can be sold.

What that guy is talking about is being done for the benefit of the children, so they can grow and enhance every aspect of themselves, not simply be harvested for their relative brain capacity by the capitalist system which only needs them to be active in one sphere, so that it may propagate and they may be relegated to the role of the machine in the assemply line. Under this system, the kids who do not excell in the sphere which is currently needed at the time are discarded, and left to serve as the fodder for the entirely unskilled, meaningless jobs at the bottom, while the best or the ones whos parents can actually afford to pay for whatever non-academic skill the child excells at, end up in the upper echelons of the system where the same cycle will be perpetuated, at the expence of all within the society for the sake of the overall system.

turgon

You fail to understand the capitalist approach. There is demand for dance classes (including from members of my own family). You say there may be no teachers. What then is stopping a dancer from forming their own school and raking in money? If someone sees something missing they can form it.

And I dont know what you are trying to say about the capitalist system benefiting the system and not ourselves. If one wants to benefit from the system one simply has to have ambition and work hard. Which is the opposite to socialist policy, which rewards people who do nothing.

And if children are to "grow and enhance every aspect of themselves," that is surely the responsibility of the parent, and not the state? Its is the parents duty to encourage their kids and get them interested in things and to get them involved. What you want is the state breathing down everyone's neck making sure they are doing exactly what you want them to do.

asdasd

Under this system, the kids who do not excell in the sphere which is currently needed at the time are discarded, and left to serve as the fodder for the entirely unskilled, meaningless jobs at the bottom, while the best or the ones whos parents can actually afford to pay for whatever non-academic skill the child excells at, end up in the upper echelons of the system where the same cycle will be perpetuated, at the expence of all within the society for the sake of the overall system.

There are hundreds of spheres you can be succesful in Capitalist socieites and that includes dance. The thing is you need to be a rare talent to be good at dance, for everyone else it is a hobby. Something that is also useful in a capitalist society.

at the expence of all within the society for the sake of the overall system

Ah, the system. Firstly I dont think that capitalism should control the schooling of kids, and nor does it at the moment. History is useless for any job, except a teacher of history, and a historian ( i.e book writer). It is taught, however, as a general knowledge. And long may that continue.

In fact there are very few subjects in Ireland primarily geared towards business, except the obvious business studies, accountancy etc. Maths is pure maths, it can be used to produce an algorithm for a financial business, or for pure mathematics for it's own sake in later life. Irish is clearly not all that useful, but it is cultural. And let people do dance if they need to. ( In fact drama, and art and dance are often taught in school).

In whatever society you create the best will come to the top. Teach dance all you want but it is unlikely that most people will benefit from it, but then they dont benefit ( in terms of career) from Irish, or history.

so I dont agree with a free market schooling system, nor that the system is lead by capitalism anyway,

asdasd

If left to the market there would be more sports centred schools, more technical schools, there would be schools that focus on a classical education.

True. In fact I wish I did woodwork etc. at school. I may be a handier man than I am now.

( Or I may have worked out just how crap I am with stuff).

silverharp

asdasd wrote: »

Ah, the system. Firstly I dont think that capitalism should control the schooling of kids, and nor does it at the moment. History is useless for any job, except a teacher of history, and a historian ( i.e book writer). It is taught, however, as a general knowledge. And long may that continue.

I think you are distorting the term, its not education controlled by microsoft and mcDonalds. Its that choice is given to parents to vote with their feet. Sure some people would want a leson st education from the age of 4, but what majority of people wouldnt want history as part of an education syllibus. If I had a kid that I didnt think wasnt going to be in the top half of his class , I'd want to steer him in another direction asap.

Joycey

Rational choice theory?

Clearly not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdsTizSxSI&feature=channel

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

Rational choice theory?

Clearly not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdsTizSxSI&feature=channel

I'd like to but it takes 5 min to load a minute of it, where is the server, on the Aran Islands? main points please?

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

I'd like to but it takes 5 min to load a minute of it, where is the server, on the Aran Islands? main points please?

Em, watched it last night after a couple, and there was one point about 15 mins or so in where I thought "im gonna post this on boards", but I cant remember exactly what it was.

Generally your man gives loads of examples of experiments hes done in his work which shows that the way people tend to make choices (and hes especially focused on economic questions). He shows that variations in setting when making the choice (among other things), which you would think are entirely arbitrary and do not affect the calculator in our heads which works out self-interest vs risk etc, actually influence our decisions in a pretty extreme manner. Just another piece of evidence that the notion of humans being capable of "rational" choice (understood in terms of choosing in one's own self-interest as is necessary for the theories of free-marketeers) is badly mistaken.

turgon

Joycey wrote: »

Just another piece of evidence that the notion of humans being capable of "rational" choice (understood in terms of choosing in one's own self-interest as is necessary for the theories of free-marketeers) is badly mistaken.

So your solution to this proposed hypothesis is that the state must hold everyone's hand?

asdasd

Joycey, you are in the wrong thread here. I am a fan of the Swedish model ( a large State) but I hate communism ( the ownership of production by the State, or Communes, and a moneyless society - although how they define it is up for grabs).

The fact that my house is leaky does not mean I get an architect to build a new one whose theories and practices have been shown to be disastrous. So the thread is not about finding flaws with capitalism, but the extreme unworkable solution - communism.

Why not start a new thread on your interesting subjects?

turgon

Well you see asdasd it appears that most (if not all) of the realistic arguments by communists are not actually for communism but rather against capitalism. It shows the underlying weakness of their "theory".

asdasd

True.

AFAIk, Joycey is not a communist.

turgon

Yeah, hes just anti-capitalism. Gives him the great position of being able to criticise without offering any better alternative.

asdasd

I think that the idea that we are not raional decision makers is correct, though.

turgon

The average man isnt, for sure. But I think it falls within our own level of personal responsibility to make as rational a choice as we can.

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

Em, watched it last night after a couple, and there was one point about 15 mins or so in where I thought "im gonna post this on boards", but I cant remember exactly what it was.

Generally your man gives loads of examples of experiments hes done in his work which shows that the way people tend to make choices (and hes especially focused on economic questions). He shows that variations in setting when making the choice (among other things), which you would think are entirely arbitrary and do not affect the calculator in our heads which works out self-interest vs risk etc, actually influence our decisions in a pretty extreme manner. Just another piece of evidence that the notion of humans being capable of "rational" choice (understood in terms of choosing in one's own self-interest as is necessary for the theories of free-marketeers) is badly mistaken.

I watched it now, It was interesting , I'm not sure what it proves either way. It would certainly argue against any sort of institutional monoplies because the "irrationality" as described gets magnified and becomes policy.
I think it is fairly self evident that people will not always respond to "logical" financial incentives as simple economic models would postulate.