Posts by Benfell@hcommons.social
(DIR) Post #AWAKKajOw3DvqWCglM by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-05-30T01:20:59Z
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@jeff 1/2 Well, that's a little short of 'mandatory,' and it's also older than the early 2000s.There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the U.S. got worried about competing with the Soviet Union and we really started encouraging kids to go to school. This was a recognition of education as a public rather than a private benefit.As the Soviet threat receded, and as neoliberalism took hold, we decided education was an individual benefit, and we started financing education with student loans, allowing college costs to skyrocket and saddling students with ludicrous amounts of debt. That the government guaranteed the loans and kept interest rates relatively low for unsecured debt was the sole remaining concession to the notion of a public benefit.Anti-intellectualism, always a major force in the U.S., has been on the rise ever since.
(DIR) Post #AWAKKdRQrJdIFeosfg by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-05-30T01:25:41Z
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@jeff 2/2 As my own example painfully demonstrates, an education is no guarantee of a job. And that's how it should be.To make it so is to reduce education to job training, hence an individual benefit, when a neglected value to society of an educated population comes in exposure to the humanities and the social sciences, via general education requirements.That said, the anti-intellectualism in this society has reached a point where education is often a detriment to job prospects: Employers increasingly prefer idiots who will follow rather than question orders.
(DIR) Post #AWBnl3CQKg0ENpcRWq by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-05-30T01:42:11Z
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@jeff Which explains your defense of anti-intellectualism. Bye.
(DIR) Post #AWLzDjt2G2EBxc22U4 by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-06-04T16:36:47Z
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Noting for future reference: "Automatic" WatchOS upgrades are not automatic.Also gestures suck supremely. I pine for an interface to my iPhone that actually works.
(DIR) Post #AWQXb2LnwtpAxZbops by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-05-30T01:38:44Z
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@jeff Anti-intellectualism does not mean opposition to academic orthodoxy.It is, to borrow and slightly mangle Isaac Asimov, "the false notion . . . that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84250-anti-intellectualism-has-been-a-constant-thread-winding-its-way-throughIt conflates learning of academic elites with the nepotism, incompetence, and arrogance often characteristic of religious, economic, military, and political elites. (For this, see Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (New York: Crown, 2012).) Which is to say, it takes two exactly opposite things and declares them one and the same.
(DIR) Post #AWQXbEXEeE68kV37Jo by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-05-30T01:06:30Z
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@jeff Who made higher education (meaning college and university) mandatory when?
(DIR) Post #AWQu4EFiyVFzGL5ddA by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-06-07T01:38:51Z
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What? You’re telling me that Ron DeSantis is shipping migrants from Texas to California as a campaign stunt? Naw!!!! Couldn’t be!!!! https://disunitedstates.com/2023/06/06/what-youre-telling-me-that-ron-desantis-is-shipping-migrants-from-texas-to-california-as-a-campaign-stunt-naw-couldnt-be/
(DIR) Post #AXNVs5Lox8ObJYsNkm by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-05T08:17:31Z
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@troed @anneapplebaum Vladimir Putin and his backers think their war is already really with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which they believe would inevitably attack Russia. In this frame, it isn't escalation, but rather a recognition of a (distorted beyond recognition) reality.
(DIR) Post #AXWSV2WiL4InkRGmR6 by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-09T15:52:01Z
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@tante https://disunitedstates.com/2022/06/08/34884/
(DIR) Post #AXkyB7EI71FRatNSPA by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-16T15:53:04Z
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@fcktheworld587 @kkarhan @Manigarm What makes you think Democrats aren't part of the problem? They have derided the humanities and social sciences as well.Under neoliberalism, those parts of academia that fail either directly to generate profit or to tell the powers that be what they want to hear are being defunded as "useless." It's been going on pretty much my entire adult life.https://disunitedstates.com/neoliberalism/u-of-illinois-boards-denial-of-job-to-salaita-is-unlikely-to-quell-controversy/
(DIR) Post #AXxSWu5RuzX3pBhRku by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-19T02:14:01Z
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@Radical_EgoCom "Communist anarchism?"Um, that's redundant. The other things claiming to be anarchist flatly aren't.
(DIR) Post #AXxSWwCG4eAQMstue8 by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-19T08:27:36Z
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@duckwhistle @Radical_EgoCom Except that when you say 'communism,' most people think of authoritarian socialism, so no, it doesn't actually help with understanding.
(DIR) Post #AXxSWxcAnmUUlY27g8 by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-22T00:47:54Z
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell @duckwhistle @Radical_EgoCom I'm going to have to bow out on how the Soviet Union or various People's Republics should be categorized.A part of the issue is that there is no pure system. Authoritarian socialist regimes had or have capitalist elements. Capitalist regimes have socialist elements.So while I can see the argument that so-called "communist" regimes were in fact "state capitalist," I can neither endorse nor refute it. Ultimately, it hinges on how much of each you can have to categorize as either, and I haven't the first idea how to decide that.
(DIR) Post #AXxSWyro98aieKM7ge by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-22T01:05:13Z
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell @duckwhistle @Radical_EgoCom Properly understood, communism cannot be authoritarian. As Emma Goldman explains in https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-is-no-communism-in-russia , communism is egalitarian. We might disagree with Karl Marx about means to the end, but we agree on the end, which is why, for all the suffering that resulted from his ideas, I'm inclined to allow him a little grace--I think he meant well, and by the time we had the proof that Michael Bakunin was right, it was too late.Accordingly, I label these regimes "authoritarian socialist," specifically to distinguish from libertarian socialism, which along with anarchism, recognizes that both political and economic power over others is a problem (anarchists would say it's illegitimate).As to democracy, I'm not clear on why we even still talk about it. You ask, "Are the people doing the work deciding who, what, how much and why?" In any country I'm aware of, the answer is flatly no--the rich and powerful make those decisions.
(DIR) Post #AXxSX0Fb0BDIwOUdP6 by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-07-22T01:25:53Z
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell @duckwhistle @Radical_EgoCom Don't know what happened to the communes of the 1960s and it's been a while since I heard what happened to Israeli kibbutzim, but I very faintly recall that capitalism had something to do with it.When we speak of co-ops, I think we may need to be more specific.Sure, that co-op I joined in Erie is open to the public--anyone can join.But a bunch of independent car wash operators joined forces in Pittsburgh to meet competition from a couple chains moving in--I don't know how they structured their merger, but it occurs to me they might have formed a co-op with a somewhat higher price of admission (for one thing, you'd need a qualifying car wash).Then there are co-ops in real estate, a step beyond subdivisions or "plans," but I'm failing to remember the nuances.
(DIR) Post #AaTg2OD2QmSrHnYNdI by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-10-06T01:15:59Z
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@lowqualityfacts Sorry, not enough rich people to eat.
(DIR) Post #Aaqalidlxh2gPrkpjE by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-10-17T02:28:29Z
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@Yehuda This neglects that many, many Jews came from elsewhere and it is something of a red herring anyway.You cannot expect to drive people from their homes not just once, but innumerable times over many decades, harass them, abuse them, deprive them of their livelihoods, kill them, and not expect blowback. This could be anyone, not just Jews, not just Palestinians (whom Zionists seek to erase). This is the crime Zionists have perpetrated against Palestinians. This is the crime, indeed violation of international law, that the world faults Israel for, but has failed to hold Israel accountable for.So no, Israel does not win my sympathy. Hamas draws support from the Gazan population under severe provocation.You may not like that. But that's just you evading accountability.
(DIR) Post #Ab95hamOhgsVMJL3MO by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-10-26T00:29:21Z
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Israel violates international law in Gaza. What else is new? https://disunitedstates.com/2023/10/25/israel-violates-international-law-in-gaza-what-else-is-new/
(DIR) Post #AbtxikF91jMYeFkzjc by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-11-17T15:28:40Z
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@lowqualityfacts Yup, right up to the International Date Line.
(DIR) Post #AcBQF0PAZeMERXw6pk by Benfell@hcommons.social
2023-11-26T01:38:12Z
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@Wolven I'm not sure how much of this is a failure to appreciate how ludicrously complicated y'all have made technology. If you want people to understand it, you've got to be prepared to explain it to them.And if that translates into six years of college, that's a big part of your problem, because while many journalists have Master's degrees, relatively few will be in computer science.