Someone tell me what these two are talking about , please. Vocational school is not mentioned at all in this essay; is that what these college-educated authors are implying as an alternative to "college for all"? why tiptoe around that notion? And the entire section on conflating managerialism with unconstrained "enlightenment" individualism is so discombobulated that it begs for a return to Thomas Sowell, who makes more sense of constrained/unconstrained dichotomies in much less verbose fashion. Managerial class people are tyrants by and large- exemplified by the 'head girl/ bossgirl' type we see especially in the European Union- or for that matter in certain state governors in the USA( eg Whitmer/Healey/Hochul clones). The whole Idea of managerialism and unconstrained enlightenment individualism being two sides of the same coin is BS. It makes no sense.
CONSIDER THIS: If college/university isn't the end-goal of K-12, why have high school (9-12) at all?
....Or why not just end high school a full 2 years early for those who want to pursue a vocation that doesn't need a BA/BS? Hmmmm? I've looked back at high school in particular. I always thought my last two years in high school were a COMPLETE waste of time for what I ended up doing with my life.
Somehow, knowledge work or creative work — think consultancy, finance, marketing, law, punditry — became synonymous with dignified work: popular culture harbors tenacious but unfounded associations between being a knowledge worker, being intelligent, being comfortable with abstractions, having a university or grad school credential, and performing the most socially valuable work.
This is all wrong, of course. (Which is not to say that students of the trades should be denied access to the liberal arts; learning to take pleasure in the liberal arts is for everyone.) So one question is how to break these associations in the cultural imagination, because the picture of education decried in this post is nourished by these mistaken associations.
Can we reform education without reorienting our collective evaluation of knowledge work?
This an essay that has aged well because it is intellectually sure footed and introduces the relevant contrasting viewpoints accurately.
I would add that it is not until the industrial revolution that the ruling class cared in the slightest about the means of production.
The 20th century was about the ruling class attempting to seize control of the process of production from the working class, who since the beginning of civilization had been responsible for it.
The Artificial Intelligence surge represents an attempt to complete the liberal paradigm of controlling production. A number of critics have observed how detrimental to the human capacity to think the AI revolution could prove to be.
With it exception of the very specific subset of engineering-based closed system ecosystems or the areas which act as direct inputs or outputs of these ecosystems, it is largely a fiction that corporations are more efficient when one takes away the advantage of lower cost regulatory arbitrage, tax advantages, political influence, cheap access to capital and barriers to entry. Most corporations remain unable or unwilling to descale the massive internal bureaucratic bloat which comes from managerialism with its monomaniacal urge to standardise processes.
Government isn't succeeding in its takeover of the market because it is any better at running economic activity. Even in China, with the SOE sector, the evidence shows it is considerably worse, far less productive. Government is succeeding in a market takeover because it either inadvertently or deliberately created a mirror of itself in the private sector. Corporations are simultaneously the strawman which gives government the excuse to gain greater control over large sectors of the economy, and the reason why the West increasingly finds itself in a state of managed decline.
Most people don't realise that money creation began far earlier than generally assumed. Money created though banking and finance was used for investments which created value in excess of loans and any interest generated. Managerialism is incapable of creating ex ante value greater than the sum of the loan plus interest. Managerialism means administrative standardisation becomes an end in itself, with every problem and its solution generating another layer of administration, and organisational bloat becoming recursive and self-reinforcing. It's why large segments of the corporate landscape feed themselves through value capture rather than value creation. Managerialism outside of physical production is incapable of paying for itself.
It's also why the West cannot build large infrastructure anymore. Analyses of nuclear plants shows that hard costs go down when building a second plant, but soft costs explode and grow at a cancerous rate. In many cases, the managerialism doesn't wait for a second infrastructure project- it moves in and parasitises taxpayer resources as soon as the green light is given.
Ironically, managerialism is also making us miserable. Levels of happiness for employees in the SME sector are insanely better by comparison to the happiness of those who work for large corporations, beset by the twin perils of responsibility without authority, and drowning in the inertia of internal processes. This in turn accelerates the process. Large segments of population are incapable of diagnosing the terminal nature of their spiritual malaise. Education trains them to want junior managerial roles after college. They vote for parties which argue for even more bureaucracy and state intervention. Peter Turchin's elite overproduction shows that it's a system designed to create managerial aspirants.
Government is the disease of which it pretends to be the cure.
Someone tell me what these two are talking about , please. Vocational school is not mentioned at all in this essay; is that what these college-educated authors are implying as an alternative to "college for all"? why tiptoe around that notion? And the entire section on conflating managerialism with unconstrained "enlightenment" individualism is so discombobulated that it begs for a return to Thomas Sowell, who makes more sense of constrained/unconstrained dichotomies in much less verbose fashion. Managerial class people are tyrants by and large- exemplified by the 'head girl/ bossgirl' type we see especially in the European Union- or for that matter in certain state governors in the USA( eg Whitmer/Healey/Hochul clones). The whole Idea of managerialism and unconstrained enlightenment individualism being two sides of the same coin is BS. It makes no sense.
Great perspective. Not a ton of prospects for the non-college-bound. We need a more resilient development pipeline.
The other piece is for non-college employment to produce enough earning power to support a family.
CONSIDER THIS: If college/university isn't the end-goal of K-12, why have high school (9-12) at all?
....Or why not just end high school a full 2 years early for those who want to pursue a vocation that doesn't need a BA/BS? Hmmmm? I've looked back at high school in particular. I always thought my last two years in high school were a COMPLETE waste of time for what I ended up doing with my life.
Somehow, knowledge work or creative work — think consultancy, finance, marketing, law, punditry — became synonymous with dignified work: popular culture harbors tenacious but unfounded associations between being a knowledge worker, being intelligent, being comfortable with abstractions, having a university or grad school credential, and performing the most socially valuable work.
This is all wrong, of course. (Which is not to say that students of the trades should be denied access to the liberal arts; learning to take pleasure in the liberal arts is for everyone.) So one question is how to break these associations in the cultural imagination, because the picture of education decried in this post is nourished by these mistaken associations.
Can we reform education without reorienting our collective evaluation of knowledge work?
This an essay that has aged well because it is intellectually sure footed and introduces the relevant contrasting viewpoints accurately.
I would add that it is not until the industrial revolution that the ruling class cared in the slightest about the means of production.
The 20th century was about the ruling class attempting to seize control of the process of production from the working class, who since the beginning of civilization had been responsible for it.
The Artificial Intelligence surge represents an attempt to complete the liberal paradigm of controlling production. A number of critics have observed how detrimental to the human capacity to think the AI revolution could prove to be.
This is an essay that has aged well because it is intellectually sure footed and introduces the
With it exception of the very specific subset of engineering-based closed system ecosystems or the areas which act as direct inputs or outputs of these ecosystems, it is largely a fiction that corporations are more efficient when one takes away the advantage of lower cost regulatory arbitrage, tax advantages, political influence, cheap access to capital and barriers to entry. Most corporations remain unable or unwilling to descale the massive internal bureaucratic bloat which comes from managerialism with its monomaniacal urge to standardise processes.
Government isn't succeeding in its takeover of the market because it is any better at running economic activity. Even in China, with the SOE sector, the evidence shows it is considerably worse, far less productive. Government is succeeding in a market takeover because it either inadvertently or deliberately created a mirror of itself in the private sector. Corporations are simultaneously the strawman which gives government the excuse to gain greater control over large sectors of the economy, and the reason why the West increasingly finds itself in a state of managed decline.
Most people don't realise that money creation began far earlier than generally assumed. Money created though banking and finance was used for investments which created value in excess of loans and any interest generated. Managerialism is incapable of creating ex ante value greater than the sum of the loan plus interest. Managerialism means administrative standardisation becomes an end in itself, with every problem and its solution generating another layer of administration, and organisational bloat becoming recursive and self-reinforcing. It's why large segments of the corporate landscape feed themselves through value capture rather than value creation. Managerialism outside of physical production is incapable of paying for itself.
It's also why the West cannot build large infrastructure anymore. Analyses of nuclear plants shows that hard costs go down when building a second plant, but soft costs explode and grow at a cancerous rate. In many cases, the managerialism doesn't wait for a second infrastructure project- it moves in and parasitises taxpayer resources as soon as the green light is given.
Ironically, managerialism is also making us miserable. Levels of happiness for employees in the SME sector are insanely better by comparison to the happiness of those who work for large corporations, beset by the twin perils of responsibility without authority, and drowning in the inertia of internal processes. This in turn accelerates the process. Large segments of population are incapable of diagnosing the terminal nature of their spiritual malaise. Education trains them to want junior managerial roles after college. They vote for parties which argue for even more bureaucracy and state intervention. Peter Turchin's elite overproduction shows that it's a system designed to create managerial aspirants.
Government is the disease of which it pretends to be the cure.