RadixJournal - Seven Years of College . . . Down The Drain

00:00:00.000 It's Friday, December 11th, 2020, and welcome back to The McSpencer Group, an unrehearsed, hastily assembled program about meta-politics.

00:00:10.500 Joining me is Edward Dutton. His ascots have medical-grade PPE ratings.

00:00:16.560 Main topic, seven years of college down the drain.

00:00:21.000 Forgiving a trillion dollars in student loans is now on the table.

00:00:24.440 The Democrats are already winning over the debt-ridden, over-educated millennial baristas. 1.00

00:00:30.240 And now are ready to seal the deal.

00:00:32.800 And while we're not against giving these kiddos a break, the fact is, American higher education is so horribly screwed up that debt forgiveness amounts to a Band-Aid on cancer.

00:00:43.920 Ed and I uncover the real problem.

00:00:46.180 The concept of higher ed as a gateway to the middle class.

00:00:49.500 And we offer real solutions.

00:00:51.600 The dramatic shrinking of the ivory tower and a new paternalism towards the left half of the bell curve.

00:00:58.120 Good morning for me. Good evening for you. How are you?

00:01:01.340 Good morning. Well, good evening. Yes, I'm okay. Yes. Yes. How are you doing?

00:01:07.580 I'm doing well. I have a few visitors. So, yes, I sometimes am a bit alone out here. The only people I talk to are children.

00:01:19.140 Oh. Are they intelligent, intellect-stimulating sort of?

00:01:24.520 They're highly intelligent people, yes. They're people I've had on the podcast and so on.

00:01:29.320 We're kind of having a powwow.

00:01:31.420 So, about, you know, what we're going to, how we're going to move forward in the future.

00:01:36.640 So, it's very productive and fun as well.

00:01:40.960 So, anyway, let's jump into the topic for today.

00:01:47.920 And that is, at least at the beginning, student loan debt and a likely student loan crisis.

00:01:56.640 But I wanted to talk more broadly about the problems of meritocracy and overstuffed elite and then also how we could conceivably reform education in a serious way.

00:02:16.140 And that, you know, could be, you know, what we would like to see if we were king of the world, sure, but also what we can do right now that would be pragmatic for a lot of people.

00:02:28.340 Because I think this is one of those areas where everyone acknowledges that we're in a massive crisis.

00:02:35.440 And we don't see that.

00:02:37.240 No one, during the 1990s and the dot-com bubble, no one or very few people acknowledge that we're in a crisis.

00:02:44.540 Everyone actually acknowledged that we're in the opposite of a crisis.

00:02:47.660 This is amazing.

00:02:48.640 During the mortgage subprime loan bubble, no one acknowledged that that was a crisis.

00:02:53.780 Very few people pointed it out.

00:02:55.740 And most people thought it was actually a wonderful thing.

00:02:58.500 We're in a different situation now than in the sense that there is a creeping recognition that we are in a massive student loan problem.

00:03:07.360 Um, I'll talk a little bit just about my personal experience through this, um, which is relevant in the sense that, A, I'm in my early 40s.

00:03:17.440 So I, I actually have a lot of, I have about two decades of thinking about the college idea and so on.

00:03:24.580 And, uh, and then also, um, uh, I went to a prep school.

00:03:29.320 So I, I went somewhere where it was about getting you into college and in fact, getting you into a good one.

00:03:35.680 And I, I, I know what it feels like to be in that pipeline.

00:03:39.800 Uh, I didn't quite go to Exeter or Lawrenceville or whatever.

00:03:42.660 I went to St. Mark's.

00:03:43.440 That was our, uh, Texas LARPing version of East Coast prep school.

00:03:47.660 We still wore uniforms and went to Episcopalian services twice a week and so on, but, uh, it was a little bit different, but, um, so in my experience, um, and again, I had a prep education, um, the thought of someone in the late nineties saying, I am not going to go to college.

00:04:09.260 That was almost the same thing as saying, I'm going to join a biker gang, uh, or so on.

00:04:16.020 It was almost unthinkable.

00:04:18.540 And if you said that, uh, that was outrageous.

00:04:21.640 Now college was clearly expensive, uh, during this point of the nineties.

00:04:27.720 Um, I, if I'm correct, I believe that, um, when, when I went to the university of Virginia,

00:04:33.800 um, uh, my parents were paying $15,000 a year as an out of state university of Virginia student

00:04:41.440 as an undergrad.

00:04:42.220 Um, but, uh, there were colleges that were more expensive than that.

00:04:46.200 I think there were some that hit on that $30,000 a year for a small liberal arts college or an Ivy league school or something.

00:04:53.040 Um, by the time I went to graduate school, I was getting paid to go to school.

00:04:58.980 So I, I did not pay anything to go to the university of Chicago.

00:05:02.240 And actually I was being paid to go to Duke university as a doctoral student.

00:05:07.820 Um, I was paid a stipend of $15,000 a year.

00:05:11.680 You know, I, I, it was like a thousand or 1100 a month or something like that.

00:05:16.920 Um, which is not a lot of money, but it was what it was.

00:05:21.420 But while I was there in the mid two thousands, um, I remember undergraduate education at Duke was 40.

00:05:27.960 From what I've heard, tuitions are climbing into the sixties per year, uh, at elite schools.

00:05:35.600 So these are radically surpassing numbers of inflation.

00:05:40.100 I mean, and if you look at what's the price of gold or what's the price of a, uh, Mercedes Benz or what's the price of a new suit, um, these things have gone up of course, but the, the education cost is outstripping them without, without even looking back.

00:05:56.800 Uh, so in the United States, it is becoming extremely difficult to go to college.

00:06:01.360 Now, no one is really paying for these things.

00:06:04.160 And I don't know quite when we, we crossed that Rubicon where most people expected to pay for college.

00:06:12.020 You would either save or get a job or your parents would give the money to you or so on.

00:06:16.680 Uh, but we crossed a Rubicon at some point in the nineties and two thousands, where the vast majority of people were taking out loans.

00:06:25.220 So college just became this financed thing.

00:06:29.120 You got a mortgage effectively without a house.

00:06:32.520 And, uh, again, the promise was, this was even better than a house because you're going to go get a great job or something like that.

00:06:41.080 Um, where we are right now is that, um, student loan debt, and I, I can share this on the screen.

00:06:49.960 Um, student loan debt is, um, radically surpassing, um, basically mortgage debt, um, and other kinds of things.

00:07:03.060 Let me get an actual number on this.

00:07:05.320 So student loan debt is climbing rapidly, um, into the trillions.

00:07:13.800 Um, it is an incredible thing, uh, what is happening.

00:07:18.440 And the problem with this is that there is in, in, in kind of an increasing.

00:07:25.200 Uh, uh, cynicism on what you can actually do with your degree.

00:07:32.580 Uh, so a lot of conservatives have complained about people getting useless degrees and, in women's studies or multiculturalism or something.

00:07:40.200 Um, and they were kind of, you know, wagging their finger at millennials, but I think it's now a different situation.

00:07:47.520 Millennials, particularly with COVID are rapidly moving back in with their parents.

00:07:51.480 Uh, the job market is extremely tight.

00:07:55.320 Um, millennials are not disagreeing with you.

00:07:57.740 When you say this is a worthless degree, you have people with undergraduates degrees, maybe even master's degrees working as baristas and coffee shops.

00:08:05.980 Uh, and having really kind of unfathomable amounts of debt, a middle-class person with a good job would, uh, you know, cringe at the idea of having a hundred thousand dollars of debt, even if he was earning good money.

00:08:20.700 Um, now that is normal for a young woman. 0.94

00:08:23.580 I discovered, uh, recently, well, I didn't know about this because I've been out of the loop of British higher education for such a long time.

00:08:30.580 It was these leftists having a chat on, on Twitter, you know, who were, who were post-graduates.

00:08:35.960 And they were talking about their PhD loan, their PhD loan.

00:08:41.860 Now, which fees and living expenses of doing a doctorate so that they can go on to be an academic on a low salary.

00:08:49.700 Right.

00:08:50.000 Well, in my day, you did a PhD if you had funding to do a PhD.

00:08:55.300 Right.

00:08:55.900 Um, from, uh, the British Academy or whatever that's funded me.

00:09:00.240 That was my experience as well.

00:09:01.440 I would not have, I would not have taken out a loan to get a PhD.

00:09:04.220 I was a doctoral student and I dropped out.

00:09:06.060 I would not have.

00:09:06.920 In Britain, but in the, um, up until 1998 or up until the late eighties, it might've been even, or early nineties.

00:09:15.220 Uh, if you went to university, then there were no tuition fees and the government paid you a small grant to live off.

00:09:21.800 It was a means tested grant.

00:09:23.680 So your parent, there was an amount your parents would have to contribute.

00:09:26.740 They won't know how much your father earned.

00:09:28.260 Um, but, but you, but you, you, you would have a grant of which to live and, and you'd know tuition fees, obviously.

00:09:35.520 And that meant you kind of like at school, uh, it was like being at school.

00:09:40.060 It was school for the very, very clever people.

00:09:42.460 And it was a tiny majority of people that did it.

00:09:44.720 When I, uh, when I, my, my parents went to university, it was, uh, in the early seventies, it was less than 10%.

00:09:50.020 Um, and it was only growing because more and more things which had previously been separate from the university system and didn't involve degrees,

00:09:56.360 like teacher training colleges and nursing and whatever were coming under the university rubric.

00:10:01.560 Um, and that's why it was expanding.

00:10:03.540 Uh, but even so that was all paid for by the state, no tuition fees and grant to live off.

00:10:07.620 And the attitude was that we, the best people, and only those people will do the degrees and the government will pay for that to be the case.

00:10:14.520 And, um, that's still going on in Finland, where I live now, no, no, no tuition fees, grant to live off.

00:10:21.120 And it's highly competitive to get into these universities.

00:10:24.180 And the vast majority of people that try to go to university are rejected.

00:10:27.720 Um, I think the, the big change I think was philosophical.

00:10:32.280 You could say more than anything, because the, the, the, the conception of the academy shifted.

00:10:39.660 And I think you could look at, I mean, again, in the American context,

00:10:42.720 you can see this in terms of the GI bill and so on for returning soldiers after the second world war and, and other, and subsequent wars, uh, of, you know, you went out, you risk your life, you earn this.

00:10:55.160 Now we're going to bring you into the middle class.

00:10:57.000 And if you hear a justification for academic work, it is overwhelmingly, this is your ticket to the middle class. 0.61

00:11:04.160 And so it becomes a kind of cargo cult where you, you think that there's some mysterious magic involved with the university that makes you a middle class person.

00:11:15.760 So you're really putting the cart before the horse.

00:11:18.300 And the, the fact is the, you know, the origins of these universities is, uh, I, you could say monasticism or a religious institution.

00:11:28.060 It is going into a place and contemplating the spheres for better and for worse, maybe mostly for worse, but it is never, we're only now in the past 60 to 75 years thinking that this is your ticket into the middle class.

00:11:44.300 That was a very different path.

00:11:46.520 There was a degree, which even before that, it was your ticket to the middle class, but the number of been, the number of people that would go, would be able to uptake, take up that ticket was extremely limited.

00:11:55.660 Right.

00:11:56.620 And, and there was, there was a very limited number of places.

00:12:00.140 There was in England, for example, until 1830, until the, 1890, three universities.

00:12:07.680 Um, and so there's a tiny number of universities, tiny number of places.

00:12:11.340 And so, yes, you would occasionally get people that were born into working class families that would do well at school, uh, and would, would get funded, would get scholarships.

00:12:18.860 It was because there was tuition fees in those days and they'd have to get scholarships to go to Oxford or Cambridge or Durham or somewhere like that.

00:12:24.540 And, and they'd go and they'd have a degree.

00:12:26.260 And for those people, it was a ticket into the middle class.

00:12:28.740 But once you have a huge expansion of the number of universities, uh, which is what we've seen, and then a huge expansion of the number of courses to include the Mickey Mouse non-academic nonsense courses, um, it's, it's, it ceases being a ticket into the, well, what would traditionally have been the upper middle class.

00:12:44.140 It becomes maybe a ticket into the middle, you know, the lower middle class, um, and, and who didn't need a degree.

00:12:51.280 And why should they need a degree?

00:12:52.400 Why on earth do they need to go to university to just do basic admin work or whatever it is, you know, bookkeeping, that kind of thing.

00:12:58.540 Which they never, and that's what you're going to end up doing with a lot of these jobs, with a lot of these degrees, those kinds of jobs, which in the eighties, nobody had a degree.

00:13:05.820 Nobody, the kind of people that would, uh, well, my, my grandfather was the manager of a greenhouse making company.

00:13:10.660 Nobody had a degree.

00:13:11.680 He didn't have a degree.

00:13:12.420 Nobody had a degree now, the kind of people that are going to do jobs like that are all going to have degrees from rubbish universities.

00:13:19.520 Yeah.

00:13:19.860 And the masters in the United States, the master's degree has really replaced the undergraduate degree, because again, it's just a simple inflation, uh, in the sense of you create more of these degrees and they become worse, less, less, less.

00:13:34.260 It's just, I think I'd say it's the PA in the sense that you used to be impressed by a degree.

00:13:39.280 You used to go, so he's got a degree, has he really?

00:13:40.920 Right.

00:13:41.240 Well, it's a PhD that, that renders that reaction.

00:13:44.740 Right.

00:13:45.160 Well, you're just saying that because you, you, you.

00:13:47.660 Well, no, no, no, it's 3%, isn't it?

00:13:48.900 It's in the, in the 1930s, 3% of people.

00:13:50.840 I agree.

00:13:51.400 I agree with you.

00:13:52.200 I agree.

00:13:52.780 And people always agree.

00:13:54.200 Yeah.

00:13:54.600 And so the PhD is the, what, what, what, when does that react?

00:13:58.120 Now a master's just isn't much of anything.

00:14:00.760 And, and, and, but, but it's, it's become like the undergraduate degree in the sense that you need that to do advanced, you know, information administration work.

00:14:10.260 And you're expected to have that.

00:14:12.680 And an undergraduate degree has been inflated out of oblivion.

00:14:17.000 It is not worth that much.

00:14:18.800 But again, you're paying more and more every year.

00:14:21.800 You are paying more and more for a degree that's becoming less and less valuable.

00:14:25.080 It's only worth, it's only worth.

00:14:26.460 And it's entirely financed.

00:14:27.740 It's only worth something.

00:14:28.700 And it's worth much less than it used to be.

00:14:30.140 But it's only worth something if it's from a really good university.

00:14:33.100 So I would say like a BA from Oxford or Cambridge or whatever, out trumps a PhD from the University of Sheffield or something like that.

00:14:40.680 Oh, yeah.

00:14:41.520 But, but, but, but yeah, basically.

00:14:43.060 And so you had that, returning to what I was saying, though, you had this issue whereby it was basically an extension of school.

00:14:48.720 And gradually they got rid of the grant and there was no grant.

00:14:51.360 And so you had to be funded by your mummy and daddy.

00:14:53.440 And that's what most people were funded by.

00:14:55.120 And then they brought in a very small tuition fee of a thousand pounds a year, which is what I was there 20 years ago.

00:15:01.620 And people's parents just paid that.

00:15:03.660 So there was an extent to which you, you, you were like a child at a school and you were there to learn.

00:15:09.600 And you could be told, look, if, if you're new, this new knowledge, you receive a fancy.

00:15:13.520 So what?

00:15:14.240 Good.

00:15:14.760 You're, you're, you're, you're here to learn.

00:15:16.680 And this is a good thing.

00:15:17.700 Yeah.

00:15:18.040 What we were told when we were there, there was a sense of humility.

00:15:21.920 Most of the children, like 40% of the kids.

00:15:25.720 My university had been to private schools and up until that time, up until the year 2000, there was corporal punishment, legal, all private schools in Britain.

00:15:34.840 And it was practically at the public schools.

00:15:36.860 And so these people were using humility and to, to, to, you know, obedience and whatever.

00:15:42.040 And, and, and that was the, that was the system.

00:15:44.220 And then they brought, then they increased the tuition piece to 3000.

00:15:47.200 And even then a lot of people's parents could pay that and would.

00:15:50.980 When it became 9,000, it was too much for the most, you know, sort of middle-class parents in the British sector, teachers, people like that.

00:15:59.020 And so therefore you've got to get a loan.

00:16:00.340 And therefore the students are now paying for it themselves.

00:16:02.380 And that's when it starts to break down because suddenly the students, in a way that had never, ever been the case before, ever.

00:16:08.800 Yeah.

00:16:09.060 The students are customers.

00:16:11.100 Yes.

00:16:11.280 And that had never been the case.

00:16:12.480 Because when it was in, before the, the Labour government brought in free education in the 40s, it was very rich people.

00:16:19.640 I mean, daddy's paid the fees or it was poor people who were on scholarships and that was who went to university and that was it.

00:16:27.060 And, and, and nobody was paying for it themselves personally.

00:16:31.640 And once you're paying for yourself personally, then you're a customer.

00:16:35.580 And that brings in a fundamental role.

00:16:37.480 Excellent way of articulating it because you become a customer as opposed to being a child.

00:16:42.100 Even if you are in your 20s or even, even early 30s, you're still depicted as someone who is there to be schooled.

00:16:48.820 And you should have a humility in order to be, be bequeathed this knowledge and experience.

00:16:55.100 And that is actually the proper role of a student, even if you are an advanced one.

00:16:59.700 And there's an anomaly whereby now in England, you're legally at 18.

00:17:06.860 But until the late 60s, you were legally an adult at 21 and the college, and you normally graduate at 21, about 21.

00:17:13.780 And the colleges hadn't updated that.

00:17:15.740 So there'd be punishments.

00:17:17.440 I remember my friend, Ollie, streaked, his friend, streaked naked through the hall of, through the dining hall of St. John's College Durham for a bet.

00:17:26.180 And therefore they were sent to the mistress, the woman actually, the master of the college.

00:17:31.080 And as a punishment, they had to like pick up litter and things like this around the college.

00:17:36.860 I thought you were about to say he was sent to the mistress's office and she was spanked. 0.61

00:17:41.480 And I was like, punishments.

00:17:43.620 No, I was once at Collingwood College Durham, I was once rude to a porter.

00:17:49.200 This porter, people, they normally were ex-minors.

00:17:52.200 And once they were told to be minors, they'd get jobs as porters at the college, like beedles at the college.

00:17:56.200 And he came in and said, we wanted to leave.

00:17:59.640 Anyone that wasn't part of the college had to go because it was exam time.

00:18:02.580 We were making noise.

00:18:03.560 And I said to him something like, I'm trying to argue with him.

00:18:06.240 No, you've got to go.

00:18:06.840 You can't stay here.

00:18:07.820 You've got to go. 1.00

00:18:08.440 And I said, you're being incredibly ignorant. 1.00

00:18:10.260 And he reported me for saying that. 0.99

00:18:12.900 And then I was reported to the woman.

00:18:18.380 Again, it was a woman who was the mistress of Collingwood College.

00:18:21.120 I had to like go and see her, like go and see the mistress. 0.81

00:18:24.740 And she said to me how, Mr. Dutton, you must understand that a lot of my porters were down the pit at 14.

00:18:30.840 And they're working here at this university with people like yourselves, you know, with the great and the good. 0.61

00:18:36.360 And in that regard, I would have thought a word like ignorant was perhaps unwise.

00:18:41.620 What do you think? 0.78

00:18:42.420 Yeah.

00:18:42.880 And once I admitted it, once I abased myself, then she just changed the subject.

00:18:47.120 So I understand you're going to go next year and do a doctorate.

00:18:49.440 What are you studying?

00:18:50.140 Oh, really?

00:18:50.600 I did theology as well.

00:18:51.780 So we would like children.

00:18:53.500 And that's important.

00:18:54.960 And that has changed.

00:18:57.260 And that's a serious problem in terms of.

00:19:00.280 And when they become it, I don't know if it's this egregious in Britain,

00:19:04.020 but the issue with American college, or not the issue,

00:19:07.760 but one of the major changes with American colleges,

00:19:10.800 and I saw this going to being an undergraduate in the late 90s and early 2000s,

00:19:16.040 and then into my graduate school experience.

00:19:21.040 But as you are a customer, they treat you like a customer.

00:19:25.780 And so the development of these gems, you know, which is good.

00:19:30.500 I think there should be a gymnasium for students to go if they, you know,

00:19:35.140 to exercise and work out and so on.

00:19:37.760 But they have turned this into health clubs.

00:19:41.720 The kind of investment they put into student centers and so on.

00:19:47.440 The having refrigerators in your dorm room, which is, you know,

00:19:50.600 that happened about 20 years ago.

00:19:51.800 But just this creation of a kind of lifestyle as opposed to a monastic experience

00:19:58.800 where you don't have a lot of money, but no one has a lot of money.

00:20:02.500 So there's not a big status problem.

00:20:04.360 That was the thing.

00:20:04.980 When I was a postgrad and I was at the University of Leiden in Holland,

00:20:08.440 and because I was international, there were all these Americans there as well.

00:20:13.560 Yeah.

00:20:13.860 And of course, they were paying American tuition fees,

00:20:16.020 even though they were at Leiden for a term.

00:20:17.960 And they couldn't believe it.

00:20:21.060 They're like, what is this?

00:20:22.400 If they were comparing it to what they got at their university,

00:20:24.480 at their university, at Leiden,

00:20:26.520 tuition fees students were paying like something token,

00:20:28.760 like 300 euros a year.

00:20:31.100 Right.

00:20:31.380 And, you know, they were confronted with a situation

00:20:34.540 where everything was closed on Sunday.

00:20:36.860 They literally had no internet access on Sundays.

00:20:40.120 Where, this is 2003, no internet access on Sundays

00:20:43.420 unless they went to an internet cafe and paid for it.

00:20:45.100 They had absolutely no internet or anything like that in their rooms.

00:20:49.160 Wow.

00:20:50.060 Certainly no fridges in their rooms, not even on sweet loo,

00:20:52.460 nothing like that.

00:20:53.900 The libraries were open at inconvenient, you know,

00:20:57.900 the library's shut at 5 o'clock.

00:20:59.500 5 o'clock.

00:20:59.980 Open at 9 o'clock at 5 o'clock.

00:21:01.600 Whereas they were used for 24-hour access to the library.

00:21:04.140 Yes.

00:21:04.780 And they just couldn't believe it.

00:21:06.800 And the library just became a student center.

00:21:09.160 The library was just a place to go get on the internet

00:21:11.620 and hang out and talk to people or whatever.

00:21:14.100 You know, that's what it was when I was there.

00:21:16.460 And I had 24-hour access as well.

00:21:18.320 But yeah, I mean, it's become an experience,

00:21:20.740 a lifestyle experience.

00:21:22.960 And again, but you can trick people

00:21:27.040 into paying you $50,000 to $70,000 a year for that

00:21:32.120 just for a little bit.

00:21:33.640 But when particularly, you know, these days

00:21:36.080 when you're going home and you have to live with mom and dad

00:21:38.820 and your job prospects are very small,

00:21:44.620 it's just not going to be worth it.

00:21:47.620 And it's devalued.

00:21:48.820 It's not a ticket to the middle class.

00:21:51.180 No.

00:21:51.320 And if you buy into this Ponzi, this pyramid scheme,

00:21:54.820 whereby you believe it is a ticket to the middle class,

00:21:57.320 which a lot of them I'm afraid do,

00:21:58.720 then you will be extremely disappointed

00:22:02.980 and bitter and angry that you have kind of been had.

00:22:07.340 And you will be, at the same time,

00:22:09.120 because you've spent so much money on it,

00:22:11.000 then the theories of Leon Festinger and people like that

00:22:13.100 will predict that you have to find some way

00:22:15.100 to think that it wasn't a mistake.

00:22:17.000 You can't admit it's a mistake.

00:22:18.940 So you'll ironically want fervently and rabidly

00:22:22.800 want to prop up the very system that has screwed you over

00:22:26.160 by insisting that, oh, people have to have qualifications

00:22:29.520 and you shouldn't be able to discuss anything

00:22:31.240 if you don't have a specific qualification.

00:22:33.220 You'll kind of become a credentialist

00:22:34.840 because you've invested so much in that very credential.

00:22:38.700 And so you'll promote the system of university

00:22:40.800 and say that it's worth doing and that it's important,

00:22:43.220 even though it's the system that screwed you over.

00:22:45.440 But at the same time,

00:22:46.560 you won't have got into the middle class as you desired.

00:22:48.720 You'll be bitter and unhappy.

00:22:50.380 And you'll therefore need to find ways

00:22:52.440 of getting into that middle class.

00:22:54.900 For example, you won't be able to get a job

00:22:56.460 as a university lecturer

00:22:57.400 because there are literally more people doing doctorates

00:22:59.700 in one theology department,

00:23:02.440 in one American university,

00:23:04.080 than theology jobs come up in one year.

00:23:06.860 Oh, yeah. I know. I know.

00:23:08.400 So you won't be able to do that.

00:23:10.580 And so therefore you have to come up with...

00:23:12.040 This does two things, of course.

00:23:13.980 It destabilizes the middle class 0.92

00:23:15.780 because you get these conflicts within the elite,

00:23:18.220 this intra-elite competition,

00:23:19.900 fighting each other.

00:23:20.920 And you have to come up with some way

00:23:22.680 to get into the middle class,

00:23:24.820 often by attacking those that are in the formal elite,

00:23:29.280 those that have managed it,

00:23:30.360 either from the right or from the left,

00:23:32.520 but particularly from the left,

00:23:34.160 with this whole Black Lives Matter thing 0.99

00:23:35.780 and virtue signaling and whatever,

00:23:37.340 and saying, oh, there needs to be diversity officers

00:23:39.300 and there needs to be all this new bureaucracy.

00:23:41.920 And that's the way of getting into the middle class. 0.99

00:23:43.460 If they don't get into the middle class, 0.97

00:23:45.000 then they end up just doing some job

00:23:46.240 they're unhappy with

00:23:46.920 and they're bitter and unhappy

00:23:49.080 and they're therefore fodder for extremist movements.

00:23:53.580 And that's what over-educated,

00:23:55.700 both ends of the political spectrum,

00:23:57.220 but particularly at the left,

00:23:58.200 because they've been inculcated with leftist values

00:24:00.660 and leftist ideas and whatever.

00:24:02.240 And so the way that you try to play for status

00:24:04.420 in that context is by being more left-wing.

00:24:07.400 And that's what I think white BLM people is about. 0.93

00:24:09.740 So it destabilizes the elite

00:24:11.640 and it leads to this conflict and polar...

00:24:14.080 Well, it's one factor of many,

00:24:15.440 but it leads to this conflict and polarization

00:24:17.460 that we see, or it contributes to it.

00:24:20.040 And that's a serious problem.

00:24:21.500 We need to reduce the number of people that do degrees. 1.00

00:24:24.900 But unfortunately, what that means

00:24:26.600 is a lot of people will have to accept

00:24:28.960 that their degree was worthless.

00:24:32.020 They were had.

00:24:33.460 And I would certainly say to my son,

00:24:35.180 when he gets older,

00:24:35.960 I'm not going to say to him,

00:24:36.860 oh, you know, go to university

00:24:37.760 and do a doctorate like dad did.

00:24:39.700 Get yourself a trade.

00:24:41.520 Yeah.

00:24:42.380 Considering that the direction of higher education

00:24:47.580 is something that I think people as well

00:24:49.520 are increasingly not respecting it.

00:24:51.160 They're reading in the tabloid newspapers in Britain

00:24:53.780 about the woke dominance of higher ed,

00:24:56.120 about all this nonsense that comes up with higher ed.

00:24:58.240 And it's not something they respect anymore so much.

00:25:00.700 So I think it probably will gradually burst.

00:25:04.800 And then a lot of people will have worthless things.

00:25:07.000 Yeah, I mean, I agree.

00:25:10.840 I think there is a major problem.

00:25:13.160 And I think a lot of the solutions

00:25:14.860 are not actually changing the paradigm.

00:25:17.900 They're trying to prop it up.

00:25:19.460 I do think it will burst at some point.

00:25:21.480 But before it,

00:25:22.200 I don't think it's going to burst right now.

00:25:23.780 And before it bursts,

00:25:24.600 I think it will get more intense.

00:25:26.080 So let me go into this.

00:25:27.700 So there was Joe Biden,

00:25:30.960 who is president-elect,

00:25:33.660 and he is floating.

00:25:36.080 Yeah, I know you're sad about that.

00:25:37.340 I'm not.

00:25:37.740 I voted for the man.

00:25:38.660 But he is floating the idea of student loan forgiveness.

00:25:44.600 And even though we learn more about his transition,

00:25:47.820 he is not bringing,

00:25:49.340 or at least as of now,

00:25:50.560 he's not bringing Bernie or Elizabeth Warren

00:25:52.600 into his cabinet.

00:25:53.480 He's kind of bringing in highly qualified liberals

00:25:57.080 who went to the Harvard Kennedy School of Business

00:25:59.780 or public administration or whatever of government.

00:26:04.380 And he's bringing in basically upper tier liberals.

00:26:08.260 This is a centrist regime, as I predicted.

00:26:12.260 But he does want to throw some bones.

00:26:15.660 And so they have floated the idea

00:26:17.600 through the media of debt relief for students.

00:26:21.100 This has been endorsed by Elizabeth Warren.

00:26:22.980 And what we've heard is a relief of $50,000

00:26:25.780 for people with student loans.

00:26:27.580 This created the knee-jerk reaction from conservatives

00:26:31.800 of I paid off my loan,

00:26:33.540 or I am paying off my loan.

00:26:35.460 So why should we give it to you?

00:26:36.760 This is a wealth transfer from plumbers

00:26:40.260 to over-educated baristas,

00:26:42.880 which is kind of true, but not true.

00:26:46.060 They're not literally taking money from plumbers

00:26:48.660 and giving it to people, baristas.

00:26:50.820 But you had the typical conservative reaction to this.

00:26:55.120 They're taxing the plumbers,

00:26:56.620 and they're using some of that money

00:26:58.560 that they've taxed from them to give it to the rest.

00:27:00.800 Yeah, but we need to figure out how they're doing this.

00:27:04.200 And that has not been articulated.

00:27:07.980 So the issue with student loan debt

00:27:11.920 is that it is not normal debt.

00:27:14.020 If you are 18 years old,

00:27:16.660 a credit card company might give you

00:27:18.840 like a credit line of $2,500 or something,

00:27:21.620 but they're not going to just give you 100 grand

00:27:24.340 to spend on something.

00:27:25.820 You are engaged in government-financed loans.

00:27:30.520 So these are the Stafford loans, et cetera,

00:27:33.180 where the government is ultimately backing up

00:27:36.680 those massive loans you're taking out.

00:27:38.600 And because they're doing this great favor to you,

00:27:43.080 you also have certain duties.

00:27:45.280 You cannot dissolve a student loan through bankruptcy.

00:27:49.120 And so this has actually led to people faking their deaths

00:27:51.540 or leaving the country due to student loan issues,

00:27:55.020 which is kind of understandable in a way,

00:27:57.800 although a horrible decision.

00:27:59.540 But you cannot get rid of a student loan,

00:28:02.280 much like you can't get rid of your taxes

00:28:03.940 or you can't get rid of a few other things.

00:28:06.960 You just simply, it is there for life.

00:28:10.080 And, but again, you are getting more access to capital

00:28:14.200 than you ever would at the age of 18

00:28:16.400 because the government is seeing this as a public good

00:28:19.420 that it needs to finance.

00:28:21.360 So people feel trapped.

00:28:23.380 They feel like debt slaves, understandably.

00:28:26.020 But the question is, what is this forgiveness?

00:28:30.060 What does that actually mean?

00:28:31.400 Is the government going to simply tell the banks,

00:28:35.160 you're going to have to eat this.

00:28:37.500 You're going to have to eat a trillion dollars in total.

00:28:39.680 You're going to have to eat $50,000

00:28:40.960 for all of these millennials who got student loans.

00:28:43.900 That's one thing.

00:28:44.940 And I would support that.

00:28:46.380 I've heard some conservatives say

00:28:47.880 the university should pay for it or whatever.

00:28:49.660 That's not going to happen. 0.96

00:28:50.680 That's just them being kind of knee jerk and resentful.

00:28:54.520 Is the government going to make these banks whole? 0.54

00:28:57.980 So is the government going to take out additional debt,

00:29:00.460 which or print money,

00:29:01.960 which you can just do ad infinitum basically,

00:29:04.820 and make whole these banks that have funded this disaster.

00:29:10.340 If they do that,

00:29:12.220 I mean, I can have sympathy for the people

00:29:15.340 who are getting debt relief,

00:29:17.800 who are young people without jobs,

00:29:19.260 who can't pay their loans.

00:29:20.660 I get it.

00:29:21.160 I have sympathy for them.

00:29:22.240 I think they should get that.

00:29:23.400 But let's just also be real about this.

00:29:25.420 Because the government is bailing out the banks

00:29:28.700 as much as they are bailing out the students.

00:29:31.300 And that would just reinforce the system.

00:29:34.840 I mean, we would not change the paradigm ever.

00:29:37.400 And there's actually been no...

00:29:38.840 I mean, they want to change the paradigm...

00:29:40.660 In terms of like the Elizabeth Warren,

00:29:42.520 Bernie Sanders liberals,

00:29:43.940 they want to change the paradigm,

00:29:45.460 but not really in a way that we are gesturing towards.

00:29:48.720 They want to make public colleges free again.

00:29:51.920 They actually used to be free up until I think the 80s perhaps or 70s.

00:29:58.120 You could go to Cal Berkeley if you're a California resident

00:30:01.620 effectively for free.

00:30:04.460 There is a long tradition of this.

00:30:06.780 Now Cal Berkeley is extremely competitive to get into,

00:30:10.080 and it is costly.

00:30:11.160 University of Virginia is extremely competitive and costly,

00:30:14.900 particularly if you're out of state.

00:30:17.000 So there's been this transformation.

00:30:18.960 Are they going to transfer these things back

00:30:20.940 to a point where the college education

00:30:24.260 is just this kind of public school?

00:30:26.500 I've also heard debt-free community college,

00:30:28.820 which I think is kind of a better idea.

00:30:30.800 I know out here where I live now in Montana,

00:30:34.220 they actually have a Flathead Valley community college

00:30:36.860 that is very pragmatic.

00:30:38.740 It is like a trade school from what I understand.

00:30:42.080 And that seems excellent.

00:30:43.440 Like they're training people to be major trades.

00:30:47.600 You can go and become a dental assistant.

00:30:49.780 You can do all this stuff.

00:30:50.500 Really pragmatic stuff.

00:30:52.540 You should be trained on the job to do.

00:30:54.560 I mean, traditionally, you were trained on the job.

00:30:55.600 I do agree with that.

00:30:56.720 That's apprenticeship.

00:30:58.460 Let alone waste three years of your life not working

00:31:02.160 when you could be working and earning.

00:31:05.600 Yeah.

00:31:06.120 And learning.

00:31:07.820 Yeah.

00:31:08.000 And it's just another level of pointless bureaucracy.

00:31:12.560 Bring back apprenticeships.

00:31:14.460 I agree with you.

00:31:16.020 I'm just saying it's better.

00:31:18.180 They're not.

00:31:18.600 One of the problems as well with this,

00:31:21.120 what you were saying about this ticket into the middle class,

00:31:23.160 is this idea,

00:31:24.060 it's a problem in America to a much greater extent

00:31:26.000 than it is in Britain, 0.99

00:31:26.760 that you are a failure, 0.99

00:31:29.380 basically,

00:31:29.800 if you are not a member of the middle class.

00:31:32.220 So this whole aspirational idea that it is,

00:31:35.940 you live in a meritocratic society in which everybody,

00:31:40.140 at least it is perceived,

00:31:42.680 that everybody gets roughly what they deserve.

00:31:45.600 And so if you don't manage to get into the middle class,

00:31:47.980 despite having the fact that you've had every opportunity to do so,

00:31:51.260 well, 1.00

00:31:51.520 then you're just garbage. 1.00

00:31:52.880 You're just trash. 1.00

00:31:54.940 You're not important. 1.00

00:31:56.680 And that's an appalling system.

00:31:58.780 Because if you don't have a meritocracy,

00:32:01.260 then if you end up poor,

00:32:03.100 then at least you can justify,

00:32:04.640 or not influential or whatever,

00:32:06.640 then at least you can sort of rationalise your situation and say,

00:32:09.780 oh,

00:32:09.860 I could have been someone,

00:32:11.320 but there's the system working against me and whatever.

00:32:13.880 And you can sort of persuade yourself that you're worth something using that.

00:32:19.660 And so if you have a meritocracy,

00:32:22.840 which says,

00:32:23.380 look,

00:32:23.660 you've got the chance and you've balled it up,

00:32:26.260 then you're nothing and you're bitter and so on.

00:32:29.860 And secondly,

00:32:30.540 why is it inherently good to be middle class?

00:32:32.820 It isn't.

00:32:33.420 We need people of different skill sets.

00:32:37.000 We need people who have brains,

00:32:38.960 but they only need to be a certain percentage of the population.

00:32:41.860 We also need people with other less cognitive skills.

00:32:45.600 Yes.

00:32:46.240 Those kinds of,

00:32:47.220 and so it shouldn't be,

00:32:48.260 there should be pride in being a working class American.

00:32:51.560 And there is none.

00:32:52.760 I mean,

00:32:52.940 perhaps among people that are very,

00:32:54.400 very religious,

00:32:55.060 there's a certain,

00:32:55.640 and a working class,

00:32:56.720 which isn't common.

00:32:58.280 Then you have that,

00:32:59.980 but not really.

00:33:01.440 I mean,

00:33:01.780 a good example,

00:33:03.120 sorry.

00:33:04.440 It's a problem of a post-industrial economy as well,

00:33:07.440 because I agree that it is healthier to own your situation,

00:33:12.820 to be proud of being working class,

00:33:15.960 and maybe having some resentment.

00:33:17.500 I mean,

00:33:18.080 yeah,

00:33:18.480 that's,

00:33:18.800 that's reasonable,

00:33:20.340 but to,

00:33:20.980 to,

00:33:21.200 to own it.

00:33:21.860 But the thing is,

00:33:22.800 we're also destroying the working class in the sense that we're removing the very prospect of a lot of those jobs.

00:33:29.900 Now you can be a plumber.

00:33:31.040 Obviously that's not going away.

00:33:32.100 You can work in construction.

00:33:33.880 There are a lot of things,

00:33:34.640 a Mason,

00:33:35.160 a lot of these things will never go away.

00:33:36.820 They can't be outsourced,

00:33:38.140 but a tremendous,

00:33:39.500 you know,

00:33:39.700 it's more difficult to be a steel worker.

00:33:41.740 It's more difficult to be an auto worker.

00:33:43.340 It's,

00:33:43.520 you know,

00:33:43.680 it's impossible to be a,

00:33:45.260 to build computers or something like that.

00:33:47.700 You know,

00:33:47.980 there used to be computer factories in Colorado 30 years ago.

00:33:53.160 That's kind of unthinkable now.

00:33:55.140 Those are in China.

00:33:55.760 So we've destroyed those jobs and we're saying,

00:33:59.120 you know,

00:33:59.560 get a degree.

00:34:00.520 You can enter the information economy and you can sit at a desk and earn a hundred thousand dollars a year or something.

00:34:06.360 But the fact is most of those people who would do a real labor are now doing retail or working at an Amazon factory or something like we,

00:34:18.080 we've,

00:34:18.380 we've just,

00:34:19.020 the,

00:34:19.180 the economy has transformed to a point where they,

00:34:22.520 they can't even own being working class if they wanted to. 0.99

00:34:26.440 And it's just a,

00:34:28.160 it's,

00:34:28.680 it's,

00:34:28.920 it's a terrible situation because either you are being overpaid doing useless stuff as a,

00:34:36.060 you know,

00:34:36.380 information administrator or you're being radically underpaid as a retail worker and you're not being respected.

00:34:44.180 People that do these guys,

00:34:44.940 that's the problem.

00:34:45.500 And it,

00:34:45.860 there's this churn and the people don't do the job for very long,

00:34:49.840 Donald's and whatever.

00:34:50.760 They need to,

00:34:51.200 they need to be unionized. 0.99

00:34:52.540 And there needs to be lefty coming out here. 0.75

00:34:57.280 And so there needs to be this value of people of different social classes and whether they work or whatever.

00:35:04.340 And that's what they're intellectually capable of doing.

00:35:06.560 It's no good to say,

00:35:07.240 oh,

00:35:07.460 go learn to code.

00:35:08.640 That is the most pernicious, 1.00

00:35:10.180 stupid argument. 1.00

00:35:11.240 Most people are simply not intellectually capable of doing that. 1.00

00:35:14.940 It is an extremely difficult thing.

00:35:17.120 Sorry,

00:35:19.300 just a bit.

00:35:20.040 Yes.

00:35:21.640 I'm sorry.

00:35:22.280 I'm,

00:35:22.440 I'm streaming.

00:35:23.100 I can't.

00:35:24.080 Yeah.

00:35:24.920 Okay.

00:35:25.540 So it's also bizarre to think that we're going to have a nation of computer programmers or something.

00:35:30.920 I mean,

00:35:31.100 it is a just completely fatuous notion.

00:35:35.840 But if you look at the,

00:35:36.720 if you look at the comedy,

00:35:38.060 that's what always hits me is the nature of these situation comedies over the years.

00:35:41.900 America has never really had much in the way of comedies about working class people or lower middle class people that are happy to be that. 0.67

00:35:49.440 And that's them.

00:35:50.160 And that's life that are representative of the American population.

00:35:54.060 It never has those.

00:35:55.220 They're always about upper middle class or rich people always.

00:36:00.440 And it's only even with the Hollywood films as well.

00:36:02.780 It's only occasionally,

00:36:03.940 very occasionally with these kind of,

00:36:05.540 you know,

00:36:06.040 sort of independent movies that will look at people that are janitors or whatever.

00:36:10.280 Yeah.

00:36:10.480 But,

00:36:10.680 but otherwise it's,

00:36:11.840 it's,

00:36:11.920 it's,

00:36:12.240 Britain did used to,

00:36:13.520 used to have a tradition of comedies that were just about working class life.

00:36:16.780 And that's what the life was for British people.

00:36:18.420 And that's kind of gone now as we have become much more of this aspirational culture where the idea is if you're working class,

00:36:24.800 you should move out of it.

00:36:26.480 It's a bad thing to be working class. 1.00

00:36:28.280 And that idea needs to go.

00:36:30.040 I blame the stature perhaps that idea.

00:36:32.140 That idea needs to go.

00:36:33.060 People who are working class should be able to be happy and content to be working class.

00:36:36.420 And the thing is though,

00:36:37.460 what they want,

00:36:38.040 they don't want change.

00:36:39.340 They want a place where they're from,

00:36:41.320 where their ancestors were from,

00:36:42.560 like a tribe where everyone's like them.

00:36:45.260 That's what they want.

00:36:46.020 And they're happy like that.

00:36:47.020 And if you,

00:36:47.740 once you start bringing in immigration or whatever,

00:36:49.660 that makes them deeply unhappy.

00:36:52.200 So that's a,

00:36:53.080 that's a,

00:36:53.480 that's a big problem.

00:36:54.500 And it's,

00:36:54.960 they need to be left alone.

00:36:56.560 And so I think,

00:36:57.960 but I think it's,

00:36:59.160 so the meritocracy then has potentially very bad downsides.

00:37:03.520 And the other downside,

00:37:04.660 which Charles Murray has of course looked at in his book coming apart,

00:37:07.740 is that as you create this meritocracy,

00:37:09.800 you get a situation where people end up dividing more easily to be with other people like themselves.

00:37:16.660 The clever person always moves out of the village and goes to the university and goes to the city.

00:37:22.460 And you end up with this,

00:37:23.440 these cultural divisions in society,

00:37:26.080 which again,

00:37:27.680 we are now seeing.

00:37:28.360 So there's definite downsides to merit,

00:37:30.160 to meritocracy,

00:37:31.300 I'm afraid.

00:37:31.740 Yes,

00:37:32.740 absolutely.

00:37:34.180 But again,

00:37:35.140 those,

00:37:36.020 there,

00:37:36.200 there isn't a stability and occupation like there used to be in the sense of,

00:37:41.300 I mean,

00:37:41.460 there,

00:37:41.640 there's your tribe in the sense of your extended family,

00:37:44.380 your ethnic,

00:37:45.020 ethnic group or regional group.

00:37:46.620 It's all part of a race or so on, 0.98

00:37:48.040 but there's also a tribe in the sense of your occupation and your status.

00:37:54.640 And I think as those get disrupted,

00:37:57.980 those that,

00:38:00.020 that it's impossible.

00:38:01.400 You can't be part of that tribe,

00:38:02.800 even if you wanted to.

00:38:05.320 No,

00:38:05.800 that's true.

00:38:06.320 A lot of,

00:38:06.940 a lot of professions used to be hereditary.

00:38:09.160 People would be,

00:38:09.920 there have been periods in the past though,

00:38:12.640 where certain professions die out and there are periods of radical change.

00:38:17.980 And then,

00:38:18.640 then things calm down and the radical change slows down.

00:38:21.860 So for example,

00:38:22.380 for the industrial revolution,

00:38:23.580 you had all these people that were hereditary weavers,

00:38:26.380 things like this.

00:38:27.400 And then the industrial revolution,

00:38:29.320 that was the end of that.

00:38:30.840 But what you did then get was hereditary coal miners, 0.78

00:38:34.880 you know,

00:38:36.060 whatever.

00:38:36.520 And I'm afraid the,

00:38:38.060 what do we call it?

00:38:38.680 The post-industrial revolution was the end of that.

00:38:41.600 So we're in this.

00:38:42.720 Are you going to have a hereditary Amazon worker or are you even going to have,

00:38:46.320 I mean,

00:38:46.840 like some union where people are actually proud of doing this.

00:38:50.640 It does seem to be something like you do temporarily,

00:38:53.340 you hate it.

00:38:54.200 You can't,

00:38:54.780 they're,

00:38:55.140 they're working you to,

00:38:56.260 well,

00:38:56.440 I mean,

00:38:57.040 I don't want to sound too exaggerated here,

00:39:00.040 but they're,

00:39:00.300 they're,

00:39:00.580 they're working these people to death.

00:39:02.120 I mean,

00:39:02.320 it's the lack of bathroom breaks and getting paid $15 an hour after Bernie got

00:39:08.060 involved.

00:39:08.460 I mean,

00:39:08.660 it sounds absolutely terrible.

00:39:11.560 They're utterly unethical.

00:39:12.780 I mean,

00:39:12.920 what kind of organization is run by a druid with an earring through his,

00:39:19.260 through his left nostril?

00:39:20.940 I mean,

00:39:21.760 it,

00:39:22.200 it,

00:39:22.440 it,

00:39:22.520 it,

00:39:22.580 it,

00:39:22.680 it,

00:39:22.700 it's obviously some sort of mutant.

00:39:23.760 I think that that's Twitter,

00:39:26.640 isn't it?

00:39:28.860 Bezos looks a little more like Lex Luthor.

00:39:33.100 I don't want to,

00:39:34.440 I don't want to buy my books from Waterstones or something,

00:39:37.080 because it's appalling what they do,

00:39:38.840 what they do,

00:39:39.200 where they let them work.

00:39:40.840 But no,

00:39:41.240 you're right.

00:39:41.680 It's,

00:39:41.840 it's,

00:39:42.040 it's,

00:39:42.300 it's like Victorian penury work.

00:39:46.340 It's like begging.

00:39:47.780 It's like,

00:39:48.020 it's not a,

00:39:48.580 it's not a,

00:39:49.120 it's not a proper job.

00:39:50.340 And that's the problem.

00:39:52.400 It kind of reminds me,

00:39:53.640 I mean,

00:39:53.960 in terms of solutions,

00:39:56.280 you know,

00:39:56.960 Guillaume Fay in,

00:39:58.560 in Archeo Futurism,

00:40:00.160 which was published in English about 10 or 15 years ago,

00:40:03.640 and it's been published in French for about 20 years.

00:40:06.960 He suggested that we might need to move to a kind of bifurcated society,

00:40:12.940 because he's not a,

00:40:14.580 a conservative reactionary who thinks that we can all,

00:40:18.080 you know,

00:40:18.980 we,

00:40:19.100 we should just all go back to the middle ages or something like that.

00:40:21.820 He he's,

00:40:22.320 he's realistic enough that we have to move forward.

00:40:25.340 But for a large amount of the population there,

00:40:28.780 we might need to create a kind of somewhat even synthetic world for them,

00:40:34.700 where we create occupations like this,

00:40:38.200 that they can be attached to,

00:40:40.160 and that they can,

00:40:41.540 that can be part of their identity.

00:40:42.820 In fact.

00:40:44.480 And I,

00:40:45.560 I know this,

00:40:46.340 you know,

00:40:46.720 basically it's a kind of neo paternalism,

00:40:49.200 but there would be people on top of making that decision.

00:40:52.680 I think in Switzerland,

00:40:53.560 they have something like this with agriculture.

00:40:56.480 Yeah.

00:40:56.660 So it's,

00:40:57.320 it's for the good of the national psyche,

00:40:59.160 that there are farms and people working on farms,

00:41:02.960 but the farms are uncompetitive and unproductive in comparison to importing the fruit or vegetables and the right.

00:41:09.760 So they just pay farmers to just,

00:41:13.560 it's like a,

00:41:14.220 what do you call it?

00:41:14.720 A boondoggle,

00:41:15.780 like a non job.

00:41:16.860 Yeah.

00:41:17.380 Farmers are paid to run these farms just so there can be farms.

00:41:22.020 Yeah.

00:41:22.380 And so you'd have to be quite a rich society though.

00:41:26.100 You'd have to have quite an excess of money to be able to justify doing that.

00:41:29.400 But yes,

00:41:29.680 maybe that should be what,

00:41:30.440 what goes on is,

00:41:31.300 I mean,

00:41:31.500 because what we've got now in England,

00:41:32.860 I'm afraid is just the welfare system is much more generous in England than it is in America.

00:41:37.440 You just,

00:41:38.160 you can without any problem live off it.

00:41:40.840 And it's just hereditary casts of people that are on benefits and don't work.

00:41:45.800 And so they could be made to do some sort of profession in return for some pyos. 0.71

00:41:54.380 But I think that's,

00:41:55.280 that's worth it.

00:41:55.980 And it wouldn't be entirely unproductive.

00:41:58.340 I mean,

00:41:58.580 in the sense of many of these people who are of lower cognitive abilities and,

00:42:04.120 and lower just ambition and,

00:42:06.180 and so on,

00:42:07.440 they can bring us eggs to market and it's okay if we pay a little bit more or it's less efficient or something like that.

00:42:17.080 They can do that.

00:42:18.400 And it's not like it's unproductive.

00:42:20.460 You can,

00:42:21.460 we're going to be making our omelets with it.

00:42:23.860 I mean,

00:42:24.080 it's not,

00:42:24.480 it's not just insane or something. 1.00

00:42:26.820 They do this with people who are mentally retarded. 1.00

00:42:30.760 Right. 0.96

00:42:31.160 They get people that they go,

00:42:32.540 of course they can't work properly and they can't look after themselves,

00:42:35.740 but there are certain companies that will let them basically work for them so they can feel they're doing something. 0.94

00:42:43.980 I was at a sort of leisure centre in Guildford and it's called the Spectrum Centre and a huge number of people that work there are mentally retarded. 1.00

00:42:53.360 Yeah. 0.84

00:42:55.200 I mean,

00:42:55.620 literally the girl that was working at the bowling alley didn't know her left from her right. 0.99

00:42:59.340 Right.

00:42:59.480 Now she had someone with her who you could turn to and she says,

00:43:03.700 it's not actually,

00:43:04.740 don't go left,

00:43:05.460 go right.

00:43:05.840 Oh,

00:43:06.120 okay.

00:43:06.460 Yeah.

00:43:06.800 But,

00:43:06.960 but it was,

00:43:07.940 it gave her some self-respect and some dignity and the idea she was doing a job.

00:43:12.280 And so it would be that sort of thing.

00:43:14.780 I think that's a good idea.

00:43:15.680 I haven't read enough.

00:43:16.680 I've read,

00:43:17.280 I should read it.

00:43:17.800 I've read one of the books by him on the colonization of Europe.

00:43:21.420 I've read that.

00:43:22.040 Yeah.

00:43:22.580 Yeah.

00:43:22.700 I haven't read enough for Futurism.

00:43:24.540 Yeah.

00:43:24.840 No,

00:43:25.020 he,

00:43:25.160 he talks about the incoming bifurcated society.

00:43:27.740 And that's a very interesting aspect of this because we don't want to also kind of give up on technology as well.

00:43:35.740 And where the,

00:43:36.220 the idea of returning to medievalism has always been a silly notion to begin with,

00:43:41.200 but how can we basically decisively create dignity for people's lives and that we basically lose these liberal illusions of everyone can make it if you just want it hard enough or something like that.

00:43:56.840 And we actually,

00:43:58.260 and we come to terms with the fact that particularly,

00:44:01.260 particularly now with education,

00:44:02.920 it is basically an IQ test.

00:44:05.380 It's what school can you get into more than what you're actually learning?

00:44:08.920 Can you get into Stanford and hack it for four years?

00:44:13.120 Okay.

00:44:13.420 Your IQ is 140.

00:44:14.980 Therefore you can go work here.

00:44:16.180 No one actually looks at the curriculum curriculum and says,

00:44:19.280 Oh,

00:44:19.800 look,

00:44:20.200 you've,

00:44:20.400 you've contemplated the spheres for four years.

00:44:22.200 Now we want to hire you.

00:44:23.360 It's basically just an IQ test that is funded at $200,000,

00:44:28.200 you know,

00:44:29.680 through wall street backed up by the U S government.

00:44:32.540 I mean,

00:44:32.840 it is just a totally fraudulent system.

00:44:35.160 So why don't we,

00:44:36.860 you know,

00:44:37.020 if we're going to,

00:44:38.020 if we're going to engage in a fraud,

00:44:40.400 basically,

00:44:40.860 why don't we engage in a good fraud and subsidize human dignity and,

00:44:47.080 and a certain pastoralism subsidize.

00:44:50.520 Yes,

00:44:51.780 yes,

00:44:52.060 yes.

00:44:52.400 That's I could,

00:44:53.540 I mean,

00:44:53.860 how could anyone say,

00:44:54.980 yeah,

00:44:55.360 we should subsidize human dignity.

00:44:57.680 I think that's an,

00:44:58.140 and then you wouldn't have this to the same extent.

00:45:01.440 Anyway,

00:45:01.740 there's bitterness and resentment and malaise and,

00:45:04.440 and,

00:45:04.700 and envy that,

00:45:06.800 that is,

00:45:07.220 that is,

00:45:07.540 that is,

00:45:07.960 that is so prevalent among a significant component of the population.

00:45:12.140 Right.

00:45:12.540 And I think Plato,

00:45:13.580 I mean,

00:45:13.760 again,

00:45:14.120 just,

00:45:14.580 despite my rages against Platonism,

00:45:17.800 I actually do agree with him on fundamental levels and that,

00:45:23.840 you know,

00:45:24.480 you,

00:45:24.980 you have to subsidize human dignity.

00:45:26.860 You,

00:45:27.040 you,

00:45:27.200 you can't tell the absolute truth to your children and you can't tell the

00:45:32.400 unvarnished,

00:45:33.780 unadulterated truth to the human population.

00:45:36.720 And something like a noble lie in the sense of,

00:45:41.720 well,

00:45:41.860 you were born as a bronze person,

00:45:44.560 but actually as a bronze,

00:45:46.200 you are the most important.

00:45:48.000 You are the foundation of society and you're connected to golden sold people 1.00

00:45:53.440 and even silver sold people.

00:45:55.220 You can't be them and you can have some resentment towards them.

00:45:59.160 But you are the foundation that we,

00:46:02.380 that we as a whole can achieve our destiny.

00:46:05.420 And you are born into this occupation that will be highly dignified,

00:46:11.280 but will be a laboring occupation.

00:46:15.160 And that is actually a good thing.

00:46:17.800 That is how that,

00:46:19.360 that is an ideal society that would reduce intramural resentment and would

00:46:26.480 bring a kind of purpose and meaning to people's lives.

00:46:30.720 There isn't a,

00:46:31.400 I don't see a lot of purpose and meaning and owning of your status of

00:46:35.040 saying,

00:46:35.280 I am working class and I'm proud among Amazon employees in a place where

00:46:40.140 they're increasingly being competing with robots and,

00:46:43.500 and just,

00:46:44.180 and,

00:46:44.440 and being worked to death.

00:46:45.780 And if they,

00:46:46.560 if they collapse,

00:46:47.820 they're fired or they're replaced by a,

00:46:50.200 you know,

00:46:50.560 some new robot that they've come up with or a drone or whatever.

00:46:53.960 It's like slavery,

00:46:54.900 but it's worse than slavery because the slave was worth something.

00:47:00.520 Yeah.

00:47:01.120 Economic value.

00:47:02.120 They were worth something.

00:47:03.120 They were a commodity that had been paid for these people.

00:47:06.060 Nothing.

00:47:07.220 Right.

00:47:07.640 So we can have automation,

00:47:09.280 but then we could have a subsidized human dignity and the sense of creating a

00:47:15.500 status for people and,

00:47:18.180 and saying,

00:47:19.220 no,

00:47:19.380 you,

00:47:19.640 you are in charge of bringing healthy,

00:47:22.640 organic eggs and meat.

00:47:24.960 You have to care for these animals and bring these to our society.

00:47:28.140 And you,

00:47:28.740 your life has purpose and meaning.

00:47:30.440 We couldn't do it without you.

00:47:31.760 And that's actually not a lot.

00:47:32.780 I love the way in India,

00:47:34.260 if you basically drop out,

00:47:36.160 if you,

00:47:36.500 if you basically a peculiar old man that can't get girls and you, 0.61

00:47:41.780 you,

00:47:42.580 you,

00:47:42.900 you,

00:47:43.400 you,

00:47:43.900 you,

00:47:44.400 you,

00:47:44.900 you, 0.63

00:47:45.400 a resentful, 0.99

00:47:46.740 bitter,

00:47:47.400 you know, 0.99

00:47:47.920 eating male that has to go around shooting up schools and whatever. 0.99

00:47:51.220 Yeah. 0.55

00:47:51.400 Yeah.

00:47:51.800 You become a sadhu. 0.99

00:47:53.440 You become a,

00:47:54.320 you become a religious devotee.

00:47:56.400 Right.

00:47:57.080 Give you money and you bless them and you become part of this.

00:48:01.180 And suddenly you have status and you're considered on the status of a brahmin, 0.93

00:48:04.920 no matter what caste you are,

00:48:06.600 because you're basically,

00:48:07.440 a lot of these monks and these kinds of places,

00:48:10.060 not all,

00:48:10.720 but that's what a lot of others drop out men that can't get girls. 1.00

00:48:13.900 And so they,

00:48:16.400 they religiously sanctify it.

00:48:18.020 And then it's worth something.

00:48:19.960 You drop out man,

00:48:21.160 can't get girls, 1.00

00:48:22.240 go to a temple prostitute. 1.00

00:48:24.340 Then it's not just sordid, 1.00

00:48:25.960 sordid sex with a hooker. 1.00

00:48:27.900 It's, 1.00

00:48:28.100 it's, 1.00

00:48:28.400 you're having sex with a God. 0.99

00:48:30.440 Right. 0.99

00:48:30.900 And you're not,

00:48:31.360 you're,

00:48:31.800 you're not a loser.

00:48:32.720 And they should,

00:48:33.180 I was thinking the other day,

00:48:33.940 they should perhaps do Finland has this cast of alcoholics that basically retire at 63 and then drink themselves to death.

00:48:40.060 And maybe they should be conceived of as kind of worshipping,

00:48:43.900 back us.

00:48:45.440 Yeah,

00:48:45.500 exactly.

00:48:46.000 A kind of Dionysian cult that is important for society.

00:48:49.060 Yeah,

00:48:49.220 I agree.

00:48:49.940 Yeah.

00:48:50.880 We need people that are devoted to Dionysus in this way.

00:48:54.020 And then maybe they won't be happy and stop drinking themselves to death.

00:48:58.900 Yeah.

00:48:59.760 Again,

00:49:00.460 people are going to react to these,

00:49:02.780 you know,

00:49:03.680 thought experiments is,

00:49:04.780 Oh,

00:49:04.900 how crazy and outlandish.

00:49:06.740 We aren't saying anything as crazy and outlandish as developing a trillion dollar student loan program in which you lie to people and you get,

00:49:17.980 or,

00:49:18.080 or as just evil as,

00:49:20.160 you know,

00:49:20.800 getting people who should be working at a coffee shop or,

00:49:24.300 or,

00:49:24.480 or some kind of manual labor,

00:49:26.400 getting them a hundred or $200,000 in debt due to their useless master's degree.

00:49:31.260 We're not doing anything like that.

00:49:33.420 All right.

00:49:33.680 Someone's knocking.

00:49:34.920 If,

00:49:35.120 if,

00:49:35.900 if they are,

00:49:37.060 if they,

00:49:37.380 if they find themselves working in this coffee shop or whatever,

00:49:40.120 what's the matter?

00:49:42.000 Right.

00:49:42.620 Take two.

00:49:43.080 If they find themselves working in this coffee shop or whatever as a, 0.86

00:49:46.120 as a consequence of this massive student debt and the inability to get the middle class job,

00:49:50.460 it's because they're competing for a job that they're not capable of doing.

00:49:54.920 Right.

00:49:55.280 And they've sold in a,

00:49:56.440 in a competitive society and they have been sold this lie that they are capable of doing it because they've got a degree.

00:50:03.080 And so they are part of the elite and they should be able to get an elite job.

00:50:06.720 And rather than get a job,

00:50:07.900 which they should be able to do,

00:50:10.040 they will carry on doing a job which is unsatisfying and is below them in,

00:50:15.060 in order to try to pursue a job,

00:50:16.540 which is above them. 0.92

00:50:17.960 And that is a ridiculous situation.

00:50:19.720 It's like when I was in Chicago and there was this bar and there was this girl that served us and she, 0.95

00:50:24.120 she had a master's degree in dramatic arts or something.

00:50:28.100 And she'd been working in this bar for years and years.

00:50:32.640 Yeah.

00:50:33.040 And as a hobby did acting.

00:50:36.900 And I'm like,

00:50:37.140 well,

00:50:37.260 yeah,

00:50:37.520 why don't you get a proper job and then keep your hobby?

00:50:41.680 Yeah.

00:50:41.820 Like you don't need,

00:50:42.860 yeah.

00:50:44.200 It's great that you're doing community theater.

00:50:46.140 Like no one's against that,

00:50:47.220 but you don't need to go get a master's in that or,

00:50:49.960 or get in debt,

00:50:51.520 you know,

00:50:51.780 for 50 grand or whatever.

00:50:53.020 Yeah.

00:50:53.320 I love watching a bunch of elderly people doing Gilbert and Southern operettos. 0.98

00:50:55.840 It's great.

00:50:57.560 It's much more interesting than going and watching professional actors do it.

00:50:59.840 But when they don't hit the high notes and it's all she's trying,

00:51:05.460 you know,

00:51:05.600 it's great.

00:51:06.140 Yeah.

00:51:06.380 Yeah.

00:51:06.520 Yeah.

00:51:06.780 No,

00:51:07.000 I,

00:51:07.120 I like the community theater here and whitefish actually,

00:51:09.460 they do good stuff actually,

00:51:10.740 but yeah.

00:51:12.140 Um,

00:51:13.060 yeah,

00:51:13.340 I,

00:51:13.560 I,

00:51:13.800 I would love to not have them in debt and see various,

00:51:17.380 uh,

00:51:18.080 community productions of Les Miserables.

00:51:21.800 Yeah.

00:51:22.880 Two,

00:51:23.580 four,

00:51:24.060 six,

00:51:24.480 oh,

00:51:24.880 one.

00:51:27.000 There you go.

00:51:27.520 That was my performance.

00:51:28.000 Are you auditioning to your,

00:51:29.360 to your local whitefish?

00:51:30.860 I'm a baritone.

00:51:31.940 So I,

00:51:32.200 I would be a good job there.

00:51:33.460 Don't you think?

00:51:34.680 Yeah.

00:51:35.120 Baritones normally baritones.

00:51:36.660 I'm kind of a high baritone.

00:51:37.820 I have the normal male voice.

00:51:39.220 I'm,

00:51:39.320 I'm,

00:51:39.860 I can't hit high notes,

00:51:41.220 but then a little,

00:51:42.260 I'm not like a bass or any kind of a high baritone.

00:51:44.520 It's,

00:51:44.720 it's actually a little common male voice.

00:51:46.700 Are baritones only baddies?

00:51:48.740 Yeah. 0.59

00:51:49.020 They're usually baddies.

00:51:50.080 Yeah.

00:51:50.460 But I like that.

00:51:51.420 Yeah.

00:51:51.720 That would be typecast.

00:51:56.400 They're out in the darkness.

00:51:58.740 It would be good if they did.

00:52:00.240 Lugitive running.

00:52:02.140 Go ahead.

00:52:03.120 Yes.

00:52:03.460 It would be good if they did the,

00:52:05.100 the Mormon thing,

00:52:05.920 the book of Mormon.

00:52:06.640 I've,

00:52:06.800 I've never seen that.

00:52:07.720 Who am I?

00:52:11.880 Two,

00:52:12.700 four,

00:52:13.400 six,

00:52:14.220 one.

00:52:28.740 Two,

00:52:29.740 one.

00:52:30.200 Two,

00:52:30.540 three,

00:52:32.000 four,

00:52:32.680 three,

00:52:33.600 one.

00:52:34.980 One,

00:52:35.520 two,

00:52:36.200 two,

00:52:36.460 one.

00:52:37.140 One,

00:52:37.620 two,

00:52:38.560 two.

00:52:40.000 One,

RadixJournal - December 11, 2020

Seven Years of College . . . Down The Drain

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