Terrible reading about Trump doing exactly what he said he was going to do. What does he think he is, a democratically elected leader of the executive in government?
"uh guys? I really think you should take down the poster saying 'dont be a gay, work safe today!'"
"What's wrong, you like working unsafe?"
"Um... I just think that poster from the 1950s might not be appropriate today."
"I can't believe this guy hates safety..."
"Forget about the sign that says 'work safe on the digger, don't be a--' no we need to take that sign down immediately!"
"You're fired for being anti Safety!"
"What's wrong, you like working unsafe?"
"Um... I just think that poster from the 1950s might not be appropriate today."
"I can't believe this guy hates safety..."
"Forget about the sign that says 'work safe on the digger, don't be a--' no we need to take that sign down immediately!"
"You're fired for being anti Safety!"
Meditations on meritocratic democracy
The biggest risk of democracy is the tragedy of the commons and the race to the bottom.
Plato's republic warned about the risk of democracy in this way, and in the cycles of civilization democracy is the last step towards tyranny, as a demagogue will step in promising "freedom" and "justice". Often, they turn against the elite, sometimes taking from them and giving to the people—at least for a time. Once in power, the demagogue consolidates control, turning democracy into tyranny.
According to Plato, we start with Aristocracy, rule by the wise, move to Timocracy, rule by the strong, move to Oligarchy, rule by the rich, to Democracy, rule by the people, finally ending in Tyranny, rule by the tyrant.
To understand discussions of an aristocracy it's important to note that Plato's original definition of aristocracy is not necessarily a hereditary aristocracy. In fact, his model of the progression of governments openly states that the wise rule, and the children of the wise become strong, and then the children of the strong become rich, and only then do things collapse into democracy, which shows that hereditary aristocracy is contrary to platonic aristocracy. Where I speak of aristocracy, I am referring to platonic aristocracy except where I'm specifically discussing historical contexts, but often I will use the term meritocracy because it better serves the purpose of getting across the idea of rule by the meritous.
That being said, although the idea of a structural hereditary aristocracy is definitely wrong, there is merit in believing that a functional hereditary aristocracy could end up coming out of any sort of system because the smart children of smart people are then taught by those smart people who are also wise to also be wise, and so in that way the children of the smart and wise are likely to take up the mantle. It is true that in some ways this is deeply unfair, conferring status by accident of birth. It is also true that regardless of fairness, we want the smart and wise to rule to remain rule by the wise.
Democracy is considered sacrosanct today as one of the founding principles of the modernist west, but much of western history didn't include democracy, and arguably we don't have it today. Athenian Greece spent some time as a democracy, but it was a relatively short time period compared to the much longer periods under rule of a king, and democracy ultimately devolved there. Rome spent time with democratic elements, but ultimately collapsed into an empire. After the fall of the western roman Empire and until the modern period, most of Europe was under rule of monarchs, and constitutional monarchies which provided power to voters were somewhat lacking compared to the power of the monarch.
Republics such as America which most people would argue are the most democratic places as you can tell simply from the name are not democracies, they are in fact republics where the leaders in the Republic are selected by the people. The original American method didn't even have the people selecting all of the leaders in the republic, because for example the Senate was entirely appointed by state governors. The House of Commons in parliamentary democracies also representative form of republic, where only people who have been selected by the people have a chance to affect policy.
One of the major benefits of democracy in both it's direct democracy and Republican versions is substantially increased buy-in in government by the people because they had a chance to select who is in charge or to be directly involved in the decisions. Now this benefit is not a pure benefit, it is only a benefit if the policies instituted by that government are wise. You see, if the government is unwise then it will be able to institute those unwise policies to a much greater level than any other form of government. According to literature, Democratic forms of government are capable of taxing at nearly double the rate in terms of the size of the economy compared to other forms of government.
It is ironic that political operatives who constantly chant about "our democracy" also fear demagogues who may eliminate democratic institutions -- by tipping the scales closer to democracy, they hasten their descent into tyranny.
All the negative above must however be considered alongside the reality that some of the most important, powerful, influential, rich, free, and overall meritorious civilizations of all time often had some form of democratic institutions including ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Among such excellent civilizations, the remainder often had forms of meritorious method of elevation for individuals, such as the Chinese bureaucracy based on how individuals did on a state exam or the ability of royalty to mint new nobility or demote existing nobility. Both democracy and meritorious promotion provide a chance for new information to get into the sphere of privileged elites resulting in better leadership.
The purpose of creating a republic is to try to prevent the failure of democracy by having the electric select the best among them to lead. In this way you have both elements, of democracy and meritocracy or aristocracy.
There is, however, a problem with Democratic republics with universal suffrage, and that would be that if everybody gets a chance to have a say, and people who aren't of merit get a chance to choose their representatives, then there's a good chance that those Representatives will also not be of merit. The fundamental risk of demagogues doesn't necessarily go away if people democratically vote as democrats.
The obvious solution to me is to eliminate universal suffrage. In this way we would want to create an aristocracy of voters who could then select their representatives as the best among themselves. In the past suffrage was extremely limited, and some of those eras ended up being quite prosperous. For example, in England only nobles could vote for a long time, and in America it was land owning white men.
Ultimately limited suffrage was eliminated and universal suffrage implemented, because these forms of aristocracy were self-evidently unfair and non-meritocraric. In Britain, whether your dad was a royal fart sniffer had little bearing on your merit to be making decisions. In America, which race your dad was or what gender you were or whether you were able to grab a cheap piece of land really didn't have any bearing on your merit either (though I'd argue land ownership is more reasonable a metric than any of the others)
So in my view, the answer is a meritocratic Republican democracy.
Under such a system, the vote is not guaranteed, but achieved.
So how would such a system work?
First, we'd need a body who could separate the wheat from the chaff. Our point isn't universal suffrage, but it is still broad suffrage. I don't think we need particularly high standards to solve the demagogue problem. One principle which has been extremely functional in the past for limiting the issues of corruption is having different classes represented in a group to retain a balance of power. You could cover different power centers with a seat for each, from religion to workers to business owners to farmers -- some sized group, and it would likely change composition over time to represent the different power centers composing society. It could be that the council is selected randomly among voters in these blocs and for a very limited time, similar to jury duty. Refusing to participate without very good cause would be a dark stain on you, leading to a review of your voting privileges (and perhaps you could say the same for other public services such as jury duty). In this way who is picking voters is constantly varied so no entrenched elites get to form, nobody knows in advance who will be on the council so they can't be pre-corrupted, and nobody is stuck doing it forever. It could also have checks and balances from the judiciary and republican leadership to ensure massive flaws have a chance to be resolved.
I'm imagining a system that is straightforward.
We'd grant points based on a written competency exam, individual life achievements including financial (has to be you, you don't get a vote because your dad's rich), business, philosophical, practical, spiritual, military, cultural, and general contribution to society at large.
We’d then take away points based on various negative aspects such as being a rich guy who got there through government payments -- sorry, you work for us, we don't work for you -- or welfare payments for a poor person. Doesn't mean you cant be meritorious enough to justify a vote, but it'll be much harder for you to earn a vote if you're a net tax consumer than a net tax provider.
In a separate meditation, I discussed redesigning the school system, and that would be key to this whole system -- instead of creating just disposable workers, we would treat our children as potential meritorious Democrats and so would give them an aristocratic education mixed with a broad vocational education. The point wouldn't be to create a person who can get into a particular job, we'd be trying to create great people who are capable of being broadly successful, with a separate system for specific vocational training as required(but most jobs should be able to train their people). I've defined my terms in that meditation so I won't reiterate here, but the point is that we ought to be pushing people to be the elite class, to be excellent, to be worthy, and to live as if they are part of a nobility because they are (even if it's a minor role in voting)
I want to stress that the education is not that which will make you meritorious, it is solely intended to be a fertile soil from which meritorious individuals may sprout. It is entirely possible that a person who fails or drops out of school becomes meritorious, or that a person who does very well in school fails to become meritorious.
One large counter-argument is that “everyone ought to have a say in governance”, or “everyone deserves a vote”. Universal rights are an argument with a lot of strength, but we can’t assume that it’s the #1 dominant truth at all times. Some people might get their hackles up at this statement, but let me give examples that prove it. The dead have no right to vote (jokes about corrupt elections aside). People in other countries who are not citizens of your country have no right to vote in your elections. We don’t let convicted serial killers vote. We don’t let babies vote. This might seem irrelevant and obvious, but it shows that universal rights is one truth and other truths can override it. So what sort of things could potentially stand in contrast to universal rights? I think there’s a strong argument to be made that existential continuity of a civilization that protects at least some universal rights is a strong contender.
I think there’s also an argument that without arbitrary barriers to suffrage, meritorious democracy still has universal suffrage. Anyone *could* put the work in and potentially become meritorious if they wanted suffrage. With a diverse variety of ways to show merit, it’s just a matter of trying to become more meritorious and people who don’t only have themselves to blame. Not meeting the mark? Study for the exam harder and get a higher mark. Volunteer in your community more. Spend more time in church. If you refuse to do everything, then in the end I think there’s an argument to be made that if you aren’t willing to work for political power, you don’t deserve it anyway.
A person might say that if voting is a “right,” it shouldn’t be contingent on meeting a certain level of virtue or social utility—that to do so subverts it from a right into a privilege. In reality, all rights are contingent on their manifestation by the person who has them. You may have a right to speech, but refuse to speak ever, meaning you never manifest that right. You may have a right to bear arms, but refuse to buy a gun, meaning you never reach the qualification for bearing arms and thus have no right to bear arms because you have to arms to bear. Many individuals who may cry foul about "voting rights" would be perfectly ok with requiring a protest permit to limit the time, place, and manner of protests, or for requiring a gun license to own and operate a firearm, or for requiring individuals pay property taxes to own property and not have it seized by the government.
Some people might then want to discuss rights vs. responsibilities, but I would argue this is an outdated modernist view of the world. Voting is in fact both, and it must be treated as both. It is a right afforded to individuals under a democratic system (whatever conditions that right comes to manifest under in a particular system), and it is a responsibility to act with virtue and merit both in pursuit of manifesting that right and in using that right.
Another valid argument is that the system can be corrupted, and there’s no doubt that’s true. As I’ve argued in other essays, the counter to state corruption can only be state checks and balances to a certain extent, but beyond that it must be culture which defines the reality of a society. The state influences culture and culture influences state, but the key here would be strong social institutions outside of the state that would help keep people honest.
The biggest risk of democracy is the tragedy of the commons and the race to the bottom.
Plato's republic warned about the risk of democracy in this way, and in the cycles of civilization democracy is the last step towards tyranny, as a demagogue will step in promising "freedom" and "justice". Often, they turn against the elite, sometimes taking from them and giving to the people—at least for a time. Once in power, the demagogue consolidates control, turning democracy into tyranny.
According to Plato, we start with Aristocracy, rule by the wise, move to Timocracy, rule by the strong, move to Oligarchy, rule by the rich, to Democracy, rule by the people, finally ending in Tyranny, rule by the tyrant.
To understand discussions of an aristocracy it's important to note that Plato's original definition of aristocracy is not necessarily a hereditary aristocracy. In fact, his model of the progression of governments openly states that the wise rule, and the children of the wise become strong, and then the children of the strong become rich, and only then do things collapse into democracy, which shows that hereditary aristocracy is contrary to platonic aristocracy. Where I speak of aristocracy, I am referring to platonic aristocracy except where I'm specifically discussing historical contexts, but often I will use the term meritocracy because it better serves the purpose of getting across the idea of rule by the meritous.
That being said, although the idea of a structural hereditary aristocracy is definitely wrong, there is merit in believing that a functional hereditary aristocracy could end up coming out of any sort of system because the smart children of smart people are then taught by those smart people who are also wise to also be wise, and so in that way the children of the smart and wise are likely to take up the mantle. It is true that in some ways this is deeply unfair, conferring status by accident of birth. It is also true that regardless of fairness, we want the smart and wise to rule to remain rule by the wise.
Democracy is considered sacrosanct today as one of the founding principles of the modernist west, but much of western history didn't include democracy, and arguably we don't have it today. Athenian Greece spent some time as a democracy, but it was a relatively short time period compared to the much longer periods under rule of a king, and democracy ultimately devolved there. Rome spent time with democratic elements, but ultimately collapsed into an empire. After the fall of the western roman Empire and until the modern period, most of Europe was under rule of monarchs, and constitutional monarchies which provided power to voters were somewhat lacking compared to the power of the monarch.
Republics such as America which most people would argue are the most democratic places as you can tell simply from the name are not democracies, they are in fact republics where the leaders in the Republic are selected by the people. The original American method didn't even have the people selecting all of the leaders in the republic, because for example the Senate was entirely appointed by state governors. The House of Commons in parliamentary democracies also representative form of republic, where only people who have been selected by the people have a chance to affect policy.
One of the major benefits of democracy in both it's direct democracy and Republican versions is substantially increased buy-in in government by the people because they had a chance to select who is in charge or to be directly involved in the decisions. Now this benefit is not a pure benefit, it is only a benefit if the policies instituted by that government are wise. You see, if the government is unwise then it will be able to institute those unwise policies to a much greater level than any other form of government. According to literature, Democratic forms of government are capable of taxing at nearly double the rate in terms of the size of the economy compared to other forms of government.
It is ironic that political operatives who constantly chant about "our democracy" also fear demagogues who may eliminate democratic institutions -- by tipping the scales closer to democracy, they hasten their descent into tyranny.
All the negative above must however be considered alongside the reality that some of the most important, powerful, influential, rich, free, and overall meritorious civilizations of all time often had some form of democratic institutions including ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Among such excellent civilizations, the remainder often had forms of meritorious method of elevation for individuals, such as the Chinese bureaucracy based on how individuals did on a state exam or the ability of royalty to mint new nobility or demote existing nobility. Both democracy and meritorious promotion provide a chance for new information to get into the sphere of privileged elites resulting in better leadership.
The purpose of creating a republic is to try to prevent the failure of democracy by having the electric select the best among them to lead. In this way you have both elements, of democracy and meritocracy or aristocracy.
There is, however, a problem with Democratic republics with universal suffrage, and that would be that if everybody gets a chance to have a say, and people who aren't of merit get a chance to choose their representatives, then there's a good chance that those Representatives will also not be of merit. The fundamental risk of demagogues doesn't necessarily go away if people democratically vote as democrats.
The obvious solution to me is to eliminate universal suffrage. In this way we would want to create an aristocracy of voters who could then select their representatives as the best among themselves. In the past suffrage was extremely limited, and some of those eras ended up being quite prosperous. For example, in England only nobles could vote for a long time, and in America it was land owning white men.
Ultimately limited suffrage was eliminated and universal suffrage implemented, because these forms of aristocracy were self-evidently unfair and non-meritocraric. In Britain, whether your dad was a royal fart sniffer had little bearing on your merit to be making decisions. In America, which race your dad was or what gender you were or whether you were able to grab a cheap piece of land really didn't have any bearing on your merit either (though I'd argue land ownership is more reasonable a metric than any of the others)
So in my view, the answer is a meritocratic Republican democracy.
Under such a system, the vote is not guaranteed, but achieved.
So how would such a system work?
First, we'd need a body who could separate the wheat from the chaff. Our point isn't universal suffrage, but it is still broad suffrage. I don't think we need particularly high standards to solve the demagogue problem. One principle which has been extremely functional in the past for limiting the issues of corruption is having different classes represented in a group to retain a balance of power. You could cover different power centers with a seat for each, from religion to workers to business owners to farmers -- some sized group, and it would likely change composition over time to represent the different power centers composing society. It could be that the council is selected randomly among voters in these blocs and for a very limited time, similar to jury duty. Refusing to participate without very good cause would be a dark stain on you, leading to a review of your voting privileges (and perhaps you could say the same for other public services such as jury duty). In this way who is picking voters is constantly varied so no entrenched elites get to form, nobody knows in advance who will be on the council so they can't be pre-corrupted, and nobody is stuck doing it forever. It could also have checks and balances from the judiciary and republican leadership to ensure massive flaws have a chance to be resolved.
I'm imagining a system that is straightforward.
We'd grant points based on a written competency exam, individual life achievements including financial (has to be you, you don't get a vote because your dad's rich), business, philosophical, practical, spiritual, military, cultural, and general contribution to society at large.
We’d then take away points based on various negative aspects such as being a rich guy who got there through government payments -- sorry, you work for us, we don't work for you -- or welfare payments for a poor person. Doesn't mean you cant be meritorious enough to justify a vote, but it'll be much harder for you to earn a vote if you're a net tax consumer than a net tax provider.
In a separate meditation, I discussed redesigning the school system, and that would be key to this whole system -- instead of creating just disposable workers, we would treat our children as potential meritorious Democrats and so would give them an aristocratic education mixed with a broad vocational education. The point wouldn't be to create a person who can get into a particular job, we'd be trying to create great people who are capable of being broadly successful, with a separate system for specific vocational training as required(but most jobs should be able to train their people). I've defined my terms in that meditation so I won't reiterate here, but the point is that we ought to be pushing people to be the elite class, to be excellent, to be worthy, and to live as if they are part of a nobility because they are (even if it's a minor role in voting)
I want to stress that the education is not that which will make you meritorious, it is solely intended to be a fertile soil from which meritorious individuals may sprout. It is entirely possible that a person who fails or drops out of school becomes meritorious, or that a person who does very well in school fails to become meritorious.
One large counter-argument is that “everyone ought to have a say in governance”, or “everyone deserves a vote”. Universal rights are an argument with a lot of strength, but we can’t assume that it’s the #1 dominant truth at all times. Some people might get their hackles up at this statement, but let me give examples that prove it. The dead have no right to vote (jokes about corrupt elections aside). People in other countries who are not citizens of your country have no right to vote in your elections. We don’t let convicted serial killers vote. We don’t let babies vote. This might seem irrelevant and obvious, but it shows that universal rights is one truth and other truths can override it. So what sort of things could potentially stand in contrast to universal rights? I think there’s a strong argument to be made that existential continuity of a civilization that protects at least some universal rights is a strong contender.
I think there’s also an argument that without arbitrary barriers to suffrage, meritorious democracy still has universal suffrage. Anyone *could* put the work in and potentially become meritorious if they wanted suffrage. With a diverse variety of ways to show merit, it’s just a matter of trying to become more meritorious and people who don’t only have themselves to blame. Not meeting the mark? Study for the exam harder and get a higher mark. Volunteer in your community more. Spend more time in church. If you refuse to do everything, then in the end I think there’s an argument to be made that if you aren’t willing to work for political power, you don’t deserve it anyway.
A person might say that if voting is a “right,” it shouldn’t be contingent on meeting a certain level of virtue or social utility—that to do so subverts it from a right into a privilege. In reality, all rights are contingent on their manifestation by the person who has them. You may have a right to speech, but refuse to speak ever, meaning you never manifest that right. You may have a right to bear arms, but refuse to buy a gun, meaning you never reach the qualification for bearing arms and thus have no right to bear arms because you have to arms to bear. Many individuals who may cry foul about "voting rights" would be perfectly ok with requiring a protest permit to limit the time, place, and manner of protests, or for requiring a gun license to own and operate a firearm, or for requiring individuals pay property taxes to own property and not have it seized by the government.
Some people might then want to discuss rights vs. responsibilities, but I would argue this is an outdated modernist view of the world. Voting is in fact both, and it must be treated as both. It is a right afforded to individuals under a democratic system (whatever conditions that right comes to manifest under in a particular system), and it is a responsibility to act with virtue and merit both in pursuit of manifesting that right and in using that right.
Another valid argument is that the system can be corrupted, and there’s no doubt that’s true. As I’ve argued in other essays, the counter to state corruption can only be state checks and balances to a certain extent, but beyond that it must be culture which defines the reality of a society. The state influences culture and culture influences state, but the key here would be strong social institutions outside of the state that would help keep people honest.
The fact that some places still have covid signs up shows how often those spots are actually cleaned post-covid.
"he wore a dress once to kill a guy"
Jeez, low bar. Pretty sure Mel Gibson wore a dress in one of his movies, is he trans too?
Jeez, low bar. Pretty sure Mel Gibson wore a dress in one of his movies, is he trans too?
Sounds like a great way to ruin a perfectly good loaf of bread and a perfectly good isopropanol.
I've got a Bip S, I think one of the last ones sold new. 45 day battery life and truly water proof, but there's no question that the pebble is a superior smart watch.
Dems when they don't have slave labour to pick their cotton, clean their homes, and raise their kids
The two things I loved about it is it had a better data link than many smart watches today so you'd actually get your notifications, and the way you could use the buttons on the side to pick a quick response. Amazing how many conversations you could engage with using only "yes" "no" "maybe" "lol" "I'll get back to you in a bit, busy"
And the one week battery life, that's like my minimum. Moved to android watch after, and it's stupid. If I have to charge my watch every night, I'm probably not going to remember.
And the one week battery life, that's like my minimum. Moved to android watch after, and it's stupid. If I have to charge my watch every night, I'm probably not going to remember.
"You have to rebuild with climate reality in mind"
I think he means rebuilding in another state that has a fire management plan that isn't "burn baby burn"
Not the sort of thing I'd say as governor, but I wouldn't last 5 minutes as governor of california.
I think he means rebuilding in another state that has a fire management plan that isn't "burn baby burn"
Not the sort of thing I'd say as governor, but I wouldn't last 5 minutes as governor of california.
"I can't believe you have an unelected bureaucrat clearing out our unelected bureaucrats!"
I strongly suspect that if you eat enough wonderbread you will become immortal and ageless, like wonderbread.
What I'm imagining at the moment is that we're heading towards a multifaceted civilizational existential crisis where we have no choice but to restructure many things. At that point we won't have a choice to keep doing things the way we have. There's going to be global consequences on every continent to the population collapse, to the state collapse, and to the culture collapse, and part of that is going to be a new way of looking at the world that supports new structures.
People think that developing nations will be the saviors, but those nations are only growing because of overwhelming support of the developed world, and as that developed world collapses, there won't be resources to continue pouring into the developing world, which will mean those developing countries will be facing a more acute crisis with nobody around to save them. We won't have the resources in our communities either, so that's another non-starter.
China faces a similar collapse to developed nations, India is continuing to grow but has big problems people already are starting to realize they don't want to import. Africa is almost exclusively reliant on western capital but also competence, so once the western competency crisis hits hard, there won't be anyone or anything to send over there to bootstrap their economies and it'll be a huge crisis on the continent.
I'm using the language of doomerism, but I'm not a doomer and my ideas aren't doomer ideas. When the western roman empire fell, many of the people who were in Rome for the wealth left, and it set the stage for the Europe which eventually became the center of the world for a surprising amount of time. In the same way, the collapse that's inevitably coming due to demographic and economic shifts will represent the fall of an empire, but a chance to rebuild something without the same contradictions, just as Europe stopped having the systemic contradictions of the western Roman empire.
From this perspective, why will the institutions change? Because only people who are willing to build something will arrive in the future at all. Many bloodlines will be cut off entirely (Something like half of women will never have kids, and over half of men will never have kids, which is crazy -- not even not replacement rate, none!), most institutions which survived off of state largesse and existential inertia will find they can't rely on either anymore. Of those who do have kids, many of those kids are raised as non-people who only know how to tap a tablet. They won't be raised with wisdom, they won't be raised to have skills, it's assumed that our current monster state bureaucracy will figure things out with raw manpower, but that's not going to be practical. Only things which are brought into the future with intentionality will exist, and so I'm imagining an outsized role for example for a reformed church that sees the world through a new set of eyes, much like the church that brought Europe into its golden age.
Working on my next book which will incorporate and embody may of these ideas in much deeper depth than this post.
People think that developing nations will be the saviors, but those nations are only growing because of overwhelming support of the developed world, and as that developed world collapses, there won't be resources to continue pouring into the developing world, which will mean those developing countries will be facing a more acute crisis with nobody around to save them. We won't have the resources in our communities either, so that's another non-starter.
China faces a similar collapse to developed nations, India is continuing to grow but has big problems people already are starting to realize they don't want to import. Africa is almost exclusively reliant on western capital but also competence, so once the western competency crisis hits hard, there won't be anyone or anything to send over there to bootstrap their economies and it'll be a huge crisis on the continent.
I'm using the language of doomerism, but I'm not a doomer and my ideas aren't doomer ideas. When the western roman empire fell, many of the people who were in Rome for the wealth left, and it set the stage for the Europe which eventually became the center of the world for a surprising amount of time. In the same way, the collapse that's inevitably coming due to demographic and economic shifts will represent the fall of an empire, but a chance to rebuild something without the same contradictions, just as Europe stopped having the systemic contradictions of the western Roman empire.
From this perspective, why will the institutions change? Because only people who are willing to build something will arrive in the future at all. Many bloodlines will be cut off entirely (Something like half of women will never have kids, and over half of men will never have kids, which is crazy -- not even not replacement rate, none!), most institutions which survived off of state largesse and existential inertia will find they can't rely on either anymore. Of those who do have kids, many of those kids are raised as non-people who only know how to tap a tablet. They won't be raised with wisdom, they won't be raised to have skills, it's assumed that our current monster state bureaucracy will figure things out with raw manpower, but that's not going to be practical. Only things which are brought into the future with intentionality will exist, and so I'm imagining an outsized role for example for a reformed church that sees the world through a new set of eyes, much like the church that brought Europe into its golden age.
Working on my next book which will incorporate and embody may of these ideas in much deeper depth than this post.
I spent tonight thinking about what schools in the next level of civilization might look like.
Education is an important part of the world, and education shapes the citizenry. Most people of any political affiliation agree with that point, and so the structure of education is important.
Modernist education is largely based on the Prussian model. This model first and foremost wanted to create good soldiers to shove into the meat grinder because Prussia had the worst location on the map and had to contend with being land locked in the middle of the continent, and so they had to produce lots of the best soldiers they could. Later on, it was adopted by other countries and modified to produce the largest number of excellent factory workers. That’s why everything is based on schedules, and rote memorization, and standardized tests, and there’s a bell to take a break and a bell to stop your break and a bell to eat lunch and a bell to stop eating lunch and a bell to arrive and a bell to go home.
Postmodernist education is still based on modernist thought, so most schools are still largely modernist in nature, with some really pushing the envelope to eliminate things identified and deconstructed about the Prussian model. Unfortunately, in some cases, this is undeniably bad – we are producing graduates who can’t read, can’t write, can’t do math, can’t argue, can’t live without the government supporting them. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.
I think it’s safe to assume that a future society will want to achieve a number of goals. It will want to produce graduates of virtue who will be fit to become voters in the meritocratic democracy (an idea in a future society that only the worthy will get the vote). It will want to produce human beings who will contribute to culture and civilization as a whole. It will want to produce workers who can work in the jobs and produce what’s needed.
In my view, a post-metamodernist superposition embracing education will be actually really difficult on students, and people who aren’t taking it seriously will fail. The postmodern idea that if you don’t let people fail if they’re failures is stupid because it makes the fundamental mistake “the map is not the territory”. Postmodernists will bring up statistics showing that people who flunk out of school make less money and go to jail more, but when they push failures through the school system all that happens is now high school students make less money and go to jail more too – it’s self-evident, people who don’t make the grade don’t make the grade. Whether you want to blame society, their innate attributes such as intelligence, or their personal failings such as a lack of self-control, people who can’t do a thing can’t do the thing, that’s axiomatic, and lying and saying they can doesn’t mean they can, it means you lied about it and so we can’t trust you to say something that is true.
We’re going to start with a classical aristocratic education, the sort of education an aristocratic family would put their children through to prepare for leadership. Exposure to art, music, literature, philosophy, logic (including mathematics and geometry), from a very early age. In keeping with the idea that multiple things have to happen at once, I don’t think we necessarily need homework as a bygone conclusion, but that just means the school days are very dense, and when you’re at school you’re engaged all day long. To break up the day, there will be the other parts of aristocratic education such as horseback riding and physical combat training. An important chunk of the philosophy will be focused on moral teaching. Not necessarily telling students what is right and what is wrong, but helping to build the foundation to think at higher levels of ego development such that they can comprehend and complete moral analysis through the lens of their cultural framework.
Another part of the education won’t be just being exposed to art, music, literature, philosophy, and logic, but engaging in the creation of the same. The expectation is to be able to somewhat contribute to society by the end of a high school education, that’s why it’s called “high school” – it’s a high end school that goes above and beyond to prepare you for life. The point won’t be to create a piece of garbage 500 word composition which tries to pad out the words as much as possible, people would be focusing on creating creative and interesting works that contribute to societal discourse (as much as an 18 year old really can).
The final part that would fill out the school year would be classes that look at general job skills. This isn’t actually to prepare people for jobs, the understanding in culture ought to be that jobs will train you on the job. Instead, it’s to help people understand the fundamental basis of all the things people around them have to do to keep the world running, everything from welding and machining to woodworking to carpentry and cement work to banking and computer programming and lawmaking. Not a lot of each, but exposure so individuals everywhere know that work consists of things across the board.
I can imagine such a school system would not be a raw institution, it would routinely have parents volunteering from the community to help out if they’re not working to ensure a high number of adults per child in class. This would fit with the idea that the community is something separate from the state, and that they are involved in raising their own kids directly.
One thing I think would be mandatory would be for at least one person at home and one person at school to take a pledge to take responsibility for the success of the student, and for the student to pledge their dedication to success to the teacher and the parent. If that student doesn’t meet their potential, the school and the person at home (probably a parent) will have to publicly take responsibility for the failure which will be a deeply disgraceful situation neither the sponsoring teacher nor the sponsoring parent will want. Poor students will be encouraged to drop out to spare the teachers and the parents the disgrace. I suppose this wouldn’t be mandatory, but in a society that has re-embraced meaning as something that exists even if in superposition, honor would have to be one of those values, and it would be an expectation that parents or students honorably accept the shame of their failing children. The teacher wouldn't want to falsely fail students typically, because they'd have to go in front of everyone and say "I failed Bob as his teacher". The parents claiming their child was unfairly failed would have to face the teacher who would also be shamed. In both cases, the child would have to publicly apologize to the parent and the teacher for the shame of their failure. If a student seems on track to fail, a quiet conversation between the teacher, student, and parents might have to occur. A student could even go back to school afterwards, it would just be understood that their sponsors may face further shame if they continue to not meet the mark. On the other hand, if the student gave it their all and didn’t fail because they were being dishonorable but just because they didn’t meet the mark, they can hold their head high and say “Thank you for your efforts, my skill was simply not enough to pass.”
An opposing potentiality is that teachers pass students who are not meeting the mark. I think we can utilize honor here too. When a student clearly fails, the sponsoring teacher can say while apologizing, “I’m sorry, I did my very best but I failed Bob as his teacher. However, it is my opinion that Bob did not enter this class capable to pass it, and last year his sponsor was Mr. X” which would be quite scandalous towards Mr. X, who would suddenly have to defend their honor. Of course, the principal would get to see all this and can make decisions as head teacher about what to do with these teachers who are publicly disgraced. Part of the purpose of future I’m envisioning is that the principal is ultimately the one to choose how to manage their school, and in some cases that could mean re-training their teachers, in other cases it could mean reaching out to parents to recommend retraining for them. I will mention here, fitting with post-metamodernist superposition, that “disgrace” in this case isn’t something as powerful as shame in premodern societies, it’s just intended to be a bit of a sting to ensure everyone involved has to feel responsibility for their charges, whether parent, teacher, or themselves.
One important thing about the above schooling is it isn’t a bare minimum required to function in society, it’s intended to produce graduates who are really exceptional people. Such people might not get the vote right away in a meritocratic democracy, but they would be well situated to do so. They might not be directly sent into good jobs, but they’d be well rounded enough to engage in them or end up in management of them. They might not write the great American novel right away, but they would have the skill set required to do so and contribute to the culture at some point in their lives, probably once they’ve gotten some life experience and engaged in culture and society at a deeper level than a teenager. In other words, most jobs should not at all require a full school graduate.
On the topic of success or failure, I don’t think something as modernist as standardized testing makes sense, but I think a bar can be set for each grade in terms of what good looks like regardless of the specifics within the group of teachers working at the school, and maybe a principal’s association to make sure different schools are roughly putting out the same calibre of graduates. There is probably a way to put students into situations that test their competency in each situation, perhaps routine assessment by a group of teachers who are acting like a phd board? I don’t know, that’s a detail I suspect the schools would have to work out. I expect that a student who is exceptional in all areas but one may be told “Ok, you’re moving forward, but be aware of this weakness and work on it next year because even with all your strengths we won’t move you forward next year with this weakness remaining”, but part of the point of being non-bureaucratic is to give individuals the power to choose for themselves knowing there may be consequences later.
More on the topic of success or failure, you could have a lot more flexibility within the year, within reason. An excellent student may find they reach the minimum level of competence in a grade quickly, while a struggling student could take additional time to reach the same level. I expect the would be some maximum time you can spend at a level, probably something like 2 years, and I’d also expect your sponsoring teacher would let you know when you’re ready, or if you’re not ready with in 2 years you’d have a choice to drop out or to try anyway knowing you’re not likely to pass.
That being said, if every year of school is difficult and substantial, each year of school should be something of a measure of a man if employers are looking for such a thing. Someone who dropped out in Grade 2 is probably going to struggle in most things, someone who made it to grade 11 is probably going to be pretty competent at most things, and each step along the way would represent a more and more comprehensive education along the way.
That isn’t to say that further education doesn’t exist, but it would likely be significantly reduced from today, because today higher education is used as a gauge because high school is considered useless and meaningless. People get hired as managers who got arts degrees because that’s all companies can do, but if even a grade 10 education suggests a highly competent individual for a supervisory position, then they can use that as their measure instead and leave higher education to highly specialized education for specific fields such as science and engineering.
Another thing to consider would be how schools would be funded. There are obvious problems with state funding of schools, so we have a few options here. One would be to have the schools be funded by the church who would pay for it from tithing and donations. Another would be to have the community band together to pay for schooling. In a future with significantly less bureaucracy, the cost of a school might not be so bad, especially if parents are volunteering to reduce the paid head count required. In my vision, even the principal serves the role of “head teacher” more than chief administrator. There are administrative parts to the job, but with less bureaucracy in general, they could focus on trying to ensure their school was being the best taught including by teaching the teachers. It could end up being that multiple sources of funding end up the case, perhaps with some donations from the local church if that’s possible, some from local businesses or philanthropists, some from parents of students or alumni.
A question may come up of students who aren’t good at everything but want to learn a specific thing, I think that doesn’t really fit with the purpose of the school as a public service, so I’d propose that students who want to study but don’t want to become well-rounded could leave the graduation track and their parents can pay for courses a la carte. That way the graduation rolls aren’t cluttered by people who can’t do it, students who want to learn can still learn (and can still claim to be a grade 12 philosopher) but can’t claim to be anything other than a grade 10 student otherwise for example, and the school gets a form of funding from people who aren’t going to graduate.
Education is an important part of the world, and education shapes the citizenry. Most people of any political affiliation agree with that point, and so the structure of education is important.
Modernist education is largely based on the Prussian model. This model first and foremost wanted to create good soldiers to shove into the meat grinder because Prussia had the worst location on the map and had to contend with being land locked in the middle of the continent, and so they had to produce lots of the best soldiers they could. Later on, it was adopted by other countries and modified to produce the largest number of excellent factory workers. That’s why everything is based on schedules, and rote memorization, and standardized tests, and there’s a bell to take a break and a bell to stop your break and a bell to eat lunch and a bell to stop eating lunch and a bell to arrive and a bell to go home.
Postmodernist education is still based on modernist thought, so most schools are still largely modernist in nature, with some really pushing the envelope to eliminate things identified and deconstructed about the Prussian model. Unfortunately, in some cases, this is undeniably bad – we are producing graduates who can’t read, can’t write, can’t do math, can’t argue, can’t live without the government supporting them. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.
I think it’s safe to assume that a future society will want to achieve a number of goals. It will want to produce graduates of virtue who will be fit to become voters in the meritocratic democracy (an idea in a future society that only the worthy will get the vote). It will want to produce human beings who will contribute to culture and civilization as a whole. It will want to produce workers who can work in the jobs and produce what’s needed.
In my view, a post-metamodernist superposition embracing education will be actually really difficult on students, and people who aren’t taking it seriously will fail. The postmodern idea that if you don’t let people fail if they’re failures is stupid because it makes the fundamental mistake “the map is not the territory”. Postmodernists will bring up statistics showing that people who flunk out of school make less money and go to jail more, but when they push failures through the school system all that happens is now high school students make less money and go to jail more too – it’s self-evident, people who don’t make the grade don’t make the grade. Whether you want to blame society, their innate attributes such as intelligence, or their personal failings such as a lack of self-control, people who can’t do a thing can’t do the thing, that’s axiomatic, and lying and saying they can doesn’t mean they can, it means you lied about it and so we can’t trust you to say something that is true.
We’re going to start with a classical aristocratic education, the sort of education an aristocratic family would put their children through to prepare for leadership. Exposure to art, music, literature, philosophy, logic (including mathematics and geometry), from a very early age. In keeping with the idea that multiple things have to happen at once, I don’t think we necessarily need homework as a bygone conclusion, but that just means the school days are very dense, and when you’re at school you’re engaged all day long. To break up the day, there will be the other parts of aristocratic education such as horseback riding and physical combat training. An important chunk of the philosophy will be focused on moral teaching. Not necessarily telling students what is right and what is wrong, but helping to build the foundation to think at higher levels of ego development such that they can comprehend and complete moral analysis through the lens of their cultural framework.
Another part of the education won’t be just being exposed to art, music, literature, philosophy, and logic, but engaging in the creation of the same. The expectation is to be able to somewhat contribute to society by the end of a high school education, that’s why it’s called “high school” – it’s a high end school that goes above and beyond to prepare you for life. The point won’t be to create a piece of garbage 500 word composition which tries to pad out the words as much as possible, people would be focusing on creating creative and interesting works that contribute to societal discourse (as much as an 18 year old really can).
The final part that would fill out the school year would be classes that look at general job skills. This isn’t actually to prepare people for jobs, the understanding in culture ought to be that jobs will train you on the job. Instead, it’s to help people understand the fundamental basis of all the things people around them have to do to keep the world running, everything from welding and machining to woodworking to carpentry and cement work to banking and computer programming and lawmaking. Not a lot of each, but exposure so individuals everywhere know that work consists of things across the board.
I can imagine such a school system would not be a raw institution, it would routinely have parents volunteering from the community to help out if they’re not working to ensure a high number of adults per child in class. This would fit with the idea that the community is something separate from the state, and that they are involved in raising their own kids directly.
One thing I think would be mandatory would be for at least one person at home and one person at school to take a pledge to take responsibility for the success of the student, and for the student to pledge their dedication to success to the teacher and the parent. If that student doesn’t meet their potential, the school and the person at home (probably a parent) will have to publicly take responsibility for the failure which will be a deeply disgraceful situation neither the sponsoring teacher nor the sponsoring parent will want. Poor students will be encouraged to drop out to spare the teachers and the parents the disgrace. I suppose this wouldn’t be mandatory, but in a society that has re-embraced meaning as something that exists even if in superposition, honor would have to be one of those values, and it would be an expectation that parents or students honorably accept the shame of their failing children. The teacher wouldn't want to falsely fail students typically, because they'd have to go in front of everyone and say "I failed Bob as his teacher". The parents claiming their child was unfairly failed would have to face the teacher who would also be shamed. In both cases, the child would have to publicly apologize to the parent and the teacher for the shame of their failure. If a student seems on track to fail, a quiet conversation between the teacher, student, and parents might have to occur. A student could even go back to school afterwards, it would just be understood that their sponsors may face further shame if they continue to not meet the mark. On the other hand, if the student gave it their all and didn’t fail because they were being dishonorable but just because they didn’t meet the mark, they can hold their head high and say “Thank you for your efforts, my skill was simply not enough to pass.”
An opposing potentiality is that teachers pass students who are not meeting the mark. I think we can utilize honor here too. When a student clearly fails, the sponsoring teacher can say while apologizing, “I’m sorry, I did my very best but I failed Bob as his teacher. However, it is my opinion that Bob did not enter this class capable to pass it, and last year his sponsor was Mr. X” which would be quite scandalous towards Mr. X, who would suddenly have to defend their honor. Of course, the principal would get to see all this and can make decisions as head teacher about what to do with these teachers who are publicly disgraced. Part of the purpose of future I’m envisioning is that the principal is ultimately the one to choose how to manage their school, and in some cases that could mean re-training their teachers, in other cases it could mean reaching out to parents to recommend retraining for them. I will mention here, fitting with post-metamodernist superposition, that “disgrace” in this case isn’t something as powerful as shame in premodern societies, it’s just intended to be a bit of a sting to ensure everyone involved has to feel responsibility for their charges, whether parent, teacher, or themselves.
One important thing about the above schooling is it isn’t a bare minimum required to function in society, it’s intended to produce graduates who are really exceptional people. Such people might not get the vote right away in a meritocratic democracy, but they would be well situated to do so. They might not be directly sent into good jobs, but they’d be well rounded enough to engage in them or end up in management of them. They might not write the great American novel right away, but they would have the skill set required to do so and contribute to the culture at some point in their lives, probably once they’ve gotten some life experience and engaged in culture and society at a deeper level than a teenager. In other words, most jobs should not at all require a full school graduate.
On the topic of success or failure, I don’t think something as modernist as standardized testing makes sense, but I think a bar can be set for each grade in terms of what good looks like regardless of the specifics within the group of teachers working at the school, and maybe a principal’s association to make sure different schools are roughly putting out the same calibre of graduates. There is probably a way to put students into situations that test their competency in each situation, perhaps routine assessment by a group of teachers who are acting like a phd board? I don’t know, that’s a detail I suspect the schools would have to work out. I expect that a student who is exceptional in all areas but one may be told “Ok, you’re moving forward, but be aware of this weakness and work on it next year because even with all your strengths we won’t move you forward next year with this weakness remaining”, but part of the point of being non-bureaucratic is to give individuals the power to choose for themselves knowing there may be consequences later.
More on the topic of success or failure, you could have a lot more flexibility within the year, within reason. An excellent student may find they reach the minimum level of competence in a grade quickly, while a struggling student could take additional time to reach the same level. I expect the would be some maximum time you can spend at a level, probably something like 2 years, and I’d also expect your sponsoring teacher would let you know when you’re ready, or if you’re not ready with in 2 years you’d have a choice to drop out or to try anyway knowing you’re not likely to pass.
That being said, if every year of school is difficult and substantial, each year of school should be something of a measure of a man if employers are looking for such a thing. Someone who dropped out in Grade 2 is probably going to struggle in most things, someone who made it to grade 11 is probably going to be pretty competent at most things, and each step along the way would represent a more and more comprehensive education along the way.
That isn’t to say that further education doesn’t exist, but it would likely be significantly reduced from today, because today higher education is used as a gauge because high school is considered useless and meaningless. People get hired as managers who got arts degrees because that’s all companies can do, but if even a grade 10 education suggests a highly competent individual for a supervisory position, then they can use that as their measure instead and leave higher education to highly specialized education for specific fields such as science and engineering.
Another thing to consider would be how schools would be funded. There are obvious problems with state funding of schools, so we have a few options here. One would be to have the schools be funded by the church who would pay for it from tithing and donations. Another would be to have the community band together to pay for schooling. In a future with significantly less bureaucracy, the cost of a school might not be so bad, especially if parents are volunteering to reduce the paid head count required. In my vision, even the principal serves the role of “head teacher” more than chief administrator. There are administrative parts to the job, but with less bureaucracy in general, they could focus on trying to ensure their school was being the best taught including by teaching the teachers. It could end up being that multiple sources of funding end up the case, perhaps with some donations from the local church if that’s possible, some from local businesses or philanthropists, some from parents of students or alumni.
A question may come up of students who aren’t good at everything but want to learn a specific thing, I think that doesn’t really fit with the purpose of the school as a public service, so I’d propose that students who want to study but don’t want to become well-rounded could leave the graduation track and their parents can pay for courses a la carte. That way the graduation rolls aren’t cluttered by people who can’t do it, students who want to learn can still learn (and can still claim to be a grade 12 philosopher) but can’t claim to be anything other than a grade 10 student otherwise for example, and the school gets a form of funding from people who aren’t going to graduate.
Reminds me of when Cheney et Al were defending torture. It's like "are you hearing yourself? Nobody wants this but you!"