Great observations Mr Carter! We're pretty much at a crossroads in the future of our country, but I believe, with all my heart, in the inherant nature of the people in America! We're not gonna take this BS anymore! It's snapping back on the entrenched bureaucrats and it's gonna snap back hard! I'm talking to you Liberal Dems and go along get along Republicans! It's gonna be a generational fight but if you've raised your children well they will continue the fight. Pray for the country. God Bless America and God Bless Us Everyone.
The USA is a victim of its own success. The issue as I see it in a lot of the issues you raised is one of an upper middle class protection racket. That's a far larger group than the true 'elite'. The USA has a lot of really smart people and has to find something to do with them. Not a lot of them are entrepreneurs. So they make and serve in administrative rolls. Since they're of above average intelligence, a lot of games get played. Nobody of the group wants to risk their $1.5m 5,000 sq. ft. home in a nice suburb. What would the country do with a lot of unemployed lawyers, bankers, and consultants, venture capitalists?
So sclerosis ensues. And the self-cleansing aspects of the market are not allowed to function. It's the enshittification of everything. I don't agree with some of this article, but the identification of the issues is pretty good. https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
The people that lost jobs would figure out new ones. A job isn't a birthright, otherwise I'd still be trading on a trading floor. I remember the cabbie companies complaining about Uber to the city saying they had bought these medallions and "oh Christ what can we do it's so unfair"-meanwhile, computers were disintermediating the trading floor and a lot of us had paid half a million or more for our memberships. At least cabbies could still get a fare.
I don't disagree that there is a protection racket, but that doesn't make it right. Solana's article is spot on when it comes to corporations.
I agree. But can you imagine one of those UofC MBAs moving from banking to something actually productive? It's totally possible. It's just a very big leap and maybe not in a large city. And because of the sclerosis the pathways are not obvious.
Of course. The same can be said of lawyers and consultants too. The issue is the overproduction of those people. The marginal one is not adding much if any value.
You're on a roll, Bill. And your points parallel what many of us say about the income depressing aspect of open borders. If MSNBC anchors or liberal lawyer chicks were competing against Salvadorans for their job, they'd be far less on the migrant train. In fact, there's a few scholars who believe that white collar, college grads lean left not because of brainwashing academics but because they view the Democrats as the protectionist party, when it comes to preserving the corporate status quo.
Yep. I’d say the “upper middle class protection racket” is Charles Murray’s “cognitive elite,” the top decile of IQ. Bureaucratic complexity benefits them and burdens some large portion of the other ⁹⁄₁₀. See also Chris Arnade’s front row/back row paradigm.
I agree with you but capitalism will not save our people. I forget the philosopher that said it but his quote was, "America is great because America is good." This is no longer the case. We are a spoiled people. We got fat dumb and happy and when it all came apart we were not willing to do what was necessary. It's the age old story of empire. Ours and we have gone bad. Now we have at least 200k young Chinese men loose among us along with more than a few million fighting age barbarians and the chaos they are ready to unleash will crash this civilization. Maybe we can sell our lives dearly in the conflagration.
On tax policy, Ryan did very well, working with Trump to craft an excellent tax bill. Much simplified and brought in bigger revenues with lower rates. He screwed up on immigration. Did not have the straightforward commitment to enforce the law, rather than appease the worst people in society, those who want the benefits of social democracy, as long as someone else is paying for it.
The gatekeepers are evil. They believe they are entitled to play god in the lives of others. And to use force (the violent threat of government) to rule over us.
"There is little difference between a free market capitalistic classical economics-believing insurgent that fights for decentralization and a tattooed nose-ringed communist ANTIFA person when looked upon by political gatekeepers."
Perhaps I'm giving more credit to political gatekeepers than they deserve, but I think they, or at least the majority of them, do have enough sense to recognize that the former is fighting to create something positive and productive, versus the latter being a usually foulmouthed and potentially violent anarchist hellbent on destruction, without a plan with any basis in fact or reality for succession, i.e just destruction. Nonetheless, many of the gatekeepers fear the unknown and for many of them, change in fundamental structure is an unknown. It needs to be repeated to them that without change in fundamental structure many of their companies would not exist or in the case of politicians, without major changes in social policy, they not have been elected.
The other key thing that has always separated the United States of America from any other Nation on Earth is our willingness to veer fairly far in one direction before coming back toward center or going in the other direction. It is a rare occurrence than an absolute will take place here and may not be necessary but if we can get more than 80% and preferably 90% to buy in, then it undoubtedly will take place.
The positive results of so many charter schools in so many locations around the country is undeniable, and has provided so many students from socioeconomically impoverished communities the opportunities to better themselves and live a life that could have only dreamed of just a few years earlier. The elimination of DEI and other things you mentioned has already begun because people have seen the absurdity of it and how it is hurt much more than it has helped. The Civil Rights Acts passed in the 1960s were wonderful things that accomplished a lot and were sorely needed(much like the benefits of having unions decades earlier, but that have often worn out their welcome since then, not to mention their effectiveness) because of the predominant mindset of acceptance of bigotry in our nation at that time, but so much of that has changed and while of course it still exists to a certain degree, only a complete idiot would think it's even half as bad as it was, because it quite simply is not.
This and one of your recent previous posts contain the gist that we are hopefully going into an era in which qualifications and attitudes are far more important than pedigrees and race and alma mater.
Reading the story of Gmail, reminds me of the feature set of the product when it first started. My company had worked on a notification system on and off for years, which used SMS messaging to let customers know a news story or stock price change. We did it as sort of workaround, as in those days you could attach an email address to a mobile phone number and get free messaging.
It worked, but when it was humming along, would saturate the SMS Service Centers at the carriers. So they told us to turn it off, or they would block us.
Flash forward a couple years, Google comes up with the same idea of notifications via SMS for all sorts of things, including chats. But the carriers are still generally blocking high volume SMS messaging via email, and also blocking direct SMS messaging from a PC to a mobile.
Some brilliant intern person at Google decides to hook up a mobile phone, I think it was a Nokia 6110 (which was a good phone), to the back of a server, via a serial port. They then send millions of text messages via a typical phone (I think it was multiple phones when they got it really rolling) to their entire customer base. It all worked, except for the fact that they were just using a regular cell phone billing plan on a corporate account....
In those days, it was something like a dime to send a text message. So someone at Google accounting got a phone bill for $10 million or so for this system.
They (Google) turned it off, but have since replaced it with another system, though it is not nearly as easy to use as just having one guys cellphone servicing the entire world with text messaging.
Three thoughts. As a preface, despite these observations, I'm largely in agreement with your post.
1. "The middle road keeps the crap alive. Before you know it, we are talking about reparations again."
Vested interests are the jobs, the ready constituency for supporting the status quo, that keep inflicting "reform" that arrives at the middle road. Making the drastic, permanent change that you recommend triggers the fear, chaos, and instability that everyone affected will rally against. Poker is about the only game you can bluff your way to winning the pot. Everything else, generally, requires something substantial in order come out on top.
2. "Is it any different in New York? Illinois? Texas? Vermont? California? Washington? Can anyone name a US public school system that graduates competent people in overwhelmingly large volumes?"
Presumably, you meant, "Can anyone name a large urban public school system that graduates...?" There are plenty of suburban school districts "that graduate competent people in overwhelmingly large volumes." As to the question of state-wide, presumably there are large volumes graduated. This is not a defense of public schools, but I'd proffer the target is narrower than you've described it.
3. "People are not hardwired to be centralized and herded."
Ah, people are primed for obedience and conformity. Whether this precisely meets the definition of "hardwired" I'll leave to others to hash out. Behavioral psychology studies have proved out the relative ease of engendering compliance and obedience in others, e.g. studies by Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram. The Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo demonstrated more of the same, despite present day questions of the ethics of the tasks deployed in the experiment. I would suggest the entire experience of Covid would demonstrate "centralized and herded" worked fairly effectively. Many who resisted had their lives wrecked--while no lives of those centralizing and herding have been similarly affected.
These are small nits, and don't greatly affect the overall thrust of your post, of which I'm sympathetic and largely in agreement with.
I might disagree on the suburban part. My friend Beth Feely leads New Trier Neighbors. They might graduate kids that can read/write/do math, but they indoctrinate them into communism.
It's likely the indoctrination with trendy pedagogy has a larger negative impact on urban students, than suburban, as their socio-economic circumstances are likely part of the poor academic outcomes issue. But yeah, non-urban schools districts don't escape the tragedies of poor learning outcomes merely due to their location. Cheers.
Yeah but.....the kids don't actually believe the manure that the DEI people teach at New Trier. They go along with it because it scores points for them. It just makes them despise the authority figures at NTHS all the more, which is a good thing.
On the negative side, they also see that since beclowning themselves to feality toward DEI scores points, they continue to do it. Not that anyone believes it, which is sort of Ferguson's point. No one really believes in Global Warming, DEI, etc but we have gone Soviet with making stupid loyalty oaths to obvious falsehoods.
Checklists can be very important--I wouldn't want to fly with any pilot that didn't use one, especially with an aircraft of any kind of complexity. But it strikes me that in organizations, elaborate checklists, phase gates, product reviews, etc are very effective at slowing things down, but maybe not so effective in preventing disasters. The organizational culture of Boeing has surely been a factor in slowing down their space efforts...but it did not prevent the 737 Max MCAS debcle.
Great observations Mr Carter! We're pretty much at a crossroads in the future of our country, but I believe, with all my heart, in the inherant nature of the people in America! We're not gonna take this BS anymore! It's snapping back on the entrenched bureaucrats and it's gonna snap back hard! I'm talking to you Liberal Dems and go along get along Republicans! It's gonna be a generational fight but if you've raised your children well they will continue the fight. Pray for the country. God Bless America and God Bless Us Everyone.
The USA is a victim of its own success. The issue as I see it in a lot of the issues you raised is one of an upper middle class protection racket. That's a far larger group than the true 'elite'. The USA has a lot of really smart people and has to find something to do with them. Not a lot of them are entrepreneurs. So they make and serve in administrative rolls. Since they're of above average intelligence, a lot of games get played. Nobody of the group wants to risk their $1.5m 5,000 sq. ft. home in a nice suburb. What would the country do with a lot of unemployed lawyers, bankers, and consultants, venture capitalists?
So sclerosis ensues. And the self-cleansing aspects of the market are not allowed to function. It's the enshittification of everything. I don't agree with some of this article, but the identification of the issues is pretty good. https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
The people that lost jobs would figure out new ones. A job isn't a birthright, otherwise I'd still be trading on a trading floor. I remember the cabbie companies complaining about Uber to the city saying they had bought these medallions and "oh Christ what can we do it's so unfair"-meanwhile, computers were disintermediating the trading floor and a lot of us had paid half a million or more for our memberships. At least cabbies could still get a fare.
I don't disagree that there is a protection racket, but that doesn't make it right. Solana's article is spot on when it comes to corporations.
I agree. But can you imagine one of those UofC MBAs moving from banking to something actually productive? It's totally possible. It's just a very big leap and maybe not in a large city. And because of the sclerosis the pathways are not obvious.
banking can be productive....a great banker can be worth a lot of money to a business....problem, not enough great bankers...ask @JLM
Of course. The same can be said of lawyers and consultants too. The issue is the overproduction of those people. The marginal one is not adding much if any value.
You're on a roll, Bill. And your points parallel what many of us say about the income depressing aspect of open borders. If MSNBC anchors or liberal lawyer chicks were competing against Salvadorans for their job, they'd be far less on the migrant train. In fact, there's a few scholars who believe that white collar, college grads lean left not because of brainwashing academics but because they view the Democrats as the protectionist party, when it comes to preserving the corporate status quo.
Yep. I’d say the “upper middle class protection racket” is Charles Murray’s “cognitive elite,” the top decile of IQ. Bureaucratic complexity benefits them and burdens some large portion of the other ⁹⁄₁₀. See also Chris Arnade’s front row/back row paradigm.
I agree with you but capitalism will not save our people. I forget the philosopher that said it but his quote was, "America is great because America is good." This is no longer the case. We are a spoiled people. We got fat dumb and happy and when it all came apart we were not willing to do what was necessary. It's the age old story of empire. Ours and we have gone bad. Now we have at least 200k young Chinese men loose among us along with more than a few million fighting age barbarians and the chaos they are ready to unleash will crash this civilization. Maybe we can sell our lives dearly in the conflagration.
Capitalism does save it because of what makes capitalism go.
On tax policy, Ryan did very well, working with Trump to craft an excellent tax bill. Much simplified and brought in bigger revenues with lower rates. He screwed up on immigration. Did not have the straightforward commitment to enforce the law, rather than appease the worst people in society, those who want the benefits of social democracy, as long as someone else is paying for it.
Ironically, a lot of the staffers from Ways and Means wanted FairTax.org, but both parties killed it
Maybe we'll get 2nd best. Tariffs are a consumption tax too. :)
hahahaha, uff da are they a bad idea though
The gatekeepers are evil. They believe they are entitled to play god in the lives of others. And to use force (the violent threat of government) to rule over us.
That's evil.
"There is little difference between a free market capitalistic classical economics-believing insurgent that fights for decentralization and a tattooed nose-ringed communist ANTIFA person when looked upon by political gatekeepers."
Perhaps I'm giving more credit to political gatekeepers than they deserve, but I think they, or at least the majority of them, do have enough sense to recognize that the former is fighting to create something positive and productive, versus the latter being a usually foulmouthed and potentially violent anarchist hellbent on destruction, without a plan with any basis in fact or reality for succession, i.e just destruction. Nonetheless, many of the gatekeepers fear the unknown and for many of them, change in fundamental structure is an unknown. It needs to be repeated to them that without change in fundamental structure many of their companies would not exist or in the case of politicians, without major changes in social policy, they not have been elected.
The other key thing that has always separated the United States of America from any other Nation on Earth is our willingness to veer fairly far in one direction before coming back toward center or going in the other direction. It is a rare occurrence than an absolute will take place here and may not be necessary but if we can get more than 80% and preferably 90% to buy in, then it undoubtedly will take place.
The positive results of so many charter schools in so many locations around the country is undeniable, and has provided so many students from socioeconomically impoverished communities the opportunities to better themselves and live a life that could have only dreamed of just a few years earlier. The elimination of DEI and other things you mentioned has already begun because people have seen the absurdity of it and how it is hurt much more than it has helped. The Civil Rights Acts passed in the 1960s were wonderful things that accomplished a lot and were sorely needed(much like the benefits of having unions decades earlier, but that have often worn out their welcome since then, not to mention their effectiveness) because of the predominant mindset of acceptance of bigotry in our nation at that time, but so much of that has changed and while of course it still exists to a certain degree, only a complete idiot would think it's even half as bad as it was, because it quite simply is not.
This and one of your recent previous posts contain the gist that we are hopefully going into an era in which qualifications and attitudes are far more important than pedigrees and race and alma mater.
Universities would rather wean themselves of students then get rid of research grants and the football team .
Reading the story of Gmail, reminds me of the feature set of the product when it first started. My company had worked on a notification system on and off for years, which used SMS messaging to let customers know a news story or stock price change. We did it as sort of workaround, as in those days you could attach an email address to a mobile phone number and get free messaging.
It worked, but when it was humming along, would saturate the SMS Service Centers at the carriers. So they told us to turn it off, or they would block us.
Flash forward a couple years, Google comes up with the same idea of notifications via SMS for all sorts of things, including chats. But the carriers are still generally blocking high volume SMS messaging via email, and also blocking direct SMS messaging from a PC to a mobile.
Some brilliant intern person at Google decides to hook up a mobile phone, I think it was a Nokia 6110 (which was a good phone), to the back of a server, via a serial port. They then send millions of text messages via a typical phone (I think it was multiple phones when they got it really rolling) to their entire customer base. It all worked, except for the fact that they were just using a regular cell phone billing plan on a corporate account....
In those days, it was something like a dime to send a text message. So someone at Google accounting got a phone bill for $10 million or so for this system.
They (Google) turned it off, but have since replaced it with another system, though it is not nearly as easy to use as just having one guys cellphone servicing the entire world with text messaging.
Three thoughts. As a preface, despite these observations, I'm largely in agreement with your post.
1. "The middle road keeps the crap alive. Before you know it, we are talking about reparations again."
Vested interests are the jobs, the ready constituency for supporting the status quo, that keep inflicting "reform" that arrives at the middle road. Making the drastic, permanent change that you recommend triggers the fear, chaos, and instability that everyone affected will rally against. Poker is about the only game you can bluff your way to winning the pot. Everything else, generally, requires something substantial in order come out on top.
2. "Is it any different in New York? Illinois? Texas? Vermont? California? Washington? Can anyone name a US public school system that graduates competent people in overwhelmingly large volumes?"
Presumably, you meant, "Can anyone name a large urban public school system that graduates...?" There are plenty of suburban school districts "that graduate competent people in overwhelmingly large volumes." As to the question of state-wide, presumably there are large volumes graduated. This is not a defense of public schools, but I'd proffer the target is narrower than you've described it.
3. "People are not hardwired to be centralized and herded."
Ah, people are primed for obedience and conformity. Whether this precisely meets the definition of "hardwired" I'll leave to others to hash out. Behavioral psychology studies have proved out the relative ease of engendering compliance and obedience in others, e.g. studies by Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram. The Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo demonstrated more of the same, despite present day questions of the ethics of the tasks deployed in the experiment. I would suggest the entire experience of Covid would demonstrate "centralized and herded" worked fairly effectively. Many who resisted had their lives wrecked--while no lives of those centralizing and herding have been similarly affected.
These are small nits, and don't greatly affect the overall thrust of your post, of which I'm sympathetic and largely in agreement with.
Cheers.
I might disagree on the suburban part. My friend Beth Feely leads New Trier Neighbors. They might graduate kids that can read/write/do math, but they indoctrinate them into communism.
It's likely the indoctrination with trendy pedagogy has a larger negative impact on urban students, than suburban, as their socio-economic circumstances are likely part of the poor academic outcomes issue. But yeah, non-urban schools districts don't escape the tragedies of poor learning outcomes merely due to their location. Cheers.
Yeah but.....the kids don't actually believe the manure that the DEI people teach at New Trier. They go along with it because it scores points for them. It just makes them despise the authority figures at NTHS all the more, which is a good thing.
On the negative side, they also see that since beclowning themselves to feality toward DEI scores points, they continue to do it. Not that anyone believes it, which is sort of Ferguson's point. No one really believes in Global Warming, DEI, etc but we have gone Soviet with making stupid loyalty oaths to obvious falsehoods.
There is a very large set of Americans (TWANLOC) who are all in on the ruling class priorities.
Checklists can be very important--I wouldn't want to fly with any pilot that didn't use one, especially with an aircraft of any kind of complexity. But it strikes me that in organizations, elaborate checklists, phase gates, product reviews, etc are very effective at slowing things down, but maybe not so effective in preventing disasters. The organizational culture of Boeing has surely been a factor in slowing down their space efforts...but it did not prevent the 737 Max MCAS debcle.