The Education Gap: Will it continue to matter?
Will we plunge into oppression?
By Rod Van Mechelen
01/08/2012 Olympia, Wash. - On several of the financial and investing news sites I haunt, they write about the education bubble. Millions of Americans taking on student loans to get a college degree that is often worse than worthless.
A few examples:
What degrees are worthless? Why are they worthless? Who's getting these worthless degrees?
Who's getting these worthless degrees?
I haven't checked. Don't have the time. But given that women get most of the college degrees, now, I suspect that women are getting most of the worthless degrees.
Why are they worthless?
It depends on what you want it for. If you want a degree to help secure a job and pursue a career, but get a degree that provides you with none of the necessary skills, then it's worthless. If the market only needs 10 people each year who have degrees in the historical significance of Shulamith Firestone, but 1,000 students a year graduate with that degree, then for 990 of them, it will be worthless; or, at best, worth little.
It might be very valuable to you. That's fine. As people who have attained a degree of affluence get older many choose to return to college to pursue "worthless" degrees. In that context, the degree is not worthless.
It depends on why you get it. For most students, the primary purpose of college is to get marketable skills. Degrees in science and technology provide marketable skills. Trade schools provide training in marketable skills. Law is a marketable skill, too, although the millions of people with worthless degrees have created an excessive demand for lawyers. Objectively, it makes more sense ot graduate thousands of geologists than thousands of lawyers. Yet the universities are churning out thousands of minty fresh lawyers every year, and few geologists.
If the degrees are worthless, then why are they getting jobs?
We like to talk about feminists, so let's look at them. The hate-male campaign is almost 50 years old. At least a billion people have embraced their big lie. Hate-male programs have increased with the popularity of the campaign. They have generated jobs. But a huge number of those jobs rely on government funding. As long as a nation is affluent and can afford the luxury of funding distorted priorities, like those promoted by the hate-male campaign, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, could get jobs that required worthless degrees.
This imposes a huge burden on the societies of the nations infected by the hate-male ideologues. It has destroyed millions of families. But that was part of the point, as Shulamith Firestone's book, Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
, made clear.
This has contributed to the national debt of many nations through government programs that, when laid bare, really have no other purpose than to replace men with the government. Affluent societies can sustain those costs...until they can't.
Wealth of Nations
The wealth of a nation depends on several things. Take those away, and the wealth will eventually go away, too. This is what we face today. Those things that made many nations wealthy have been lost to the hate-male campaign, as well as to other campaigns that turned segments of society into parasites.
The military, for example. There are few callings higher than that to defend one's homeland. To serve in the military is an honorable thing. Until the purpose of the military goes beyond defense to impose empire. Then it becomes a parasite.
Motherhood, too, is an honorable calling. Until it is perverted to turn mothers into parasites by making motherhood a meal ticket at the public trough.
Producing life saving drugs is a good thing. Until the drug maker and government collude to crush the competition through force rather than innovation and real competition.
There is no shame in being a victim of a crime. Until victimization is elevated to a permanent status and used to require never-ending sympathy and support.
Each of these, and others, have become avenues to parasite status. Not all, but too many, now suck the life out of the economy.
Then there is the blatant corruption. Graft has become blatant because it is ignored. High government officials commit crimes against the people, and go unpunished. Together, they invite a day of reckoning.
The days of reckoning
The day of reckoning comes. Cans are kicked. But that won't last. Eventually, they will run out of tricks to maintain the illusion that we are running on anything other than empty promises. Then, funding for the hate-male programs will evaporate. Those, and other government programs, will wither to dust. Millions will be left destitute.
David Wiedemer, Robert A. Wiedemer and Cindy S. Spitzer, authors of Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit
, argue that this poverty will be relative, and that the resulting depression will be nothing like the Great Depression of the 20th Century. Others suggest it will be worse. Regardless, it will be bad enough.
The rise of manhood
One consequence, will be the rise of manhood. Masculinity will come back into style. Men have always been called upon to make sacrifices to sustain and protect women and children. But always those sacrifices came with rewards: respect, appreciation, opportunities, love. Rewards which are denied by the hate-male campaign. Those will return.
But there will be negative consequences, too. America is one election away from the end of "the land of the free." The ensuing chaos will lead to political oppression to preserve the status quo.
We can see this already: the Patriot Act gutted the Fourth Amendment (safeguard against unreasonable search and seizure). The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 gutted the Fifth and Sixth Amendments (right to due process and the right to trial by jury). The Stop Online Piracy Act threatens to purge the First Amendment from the Internet. SOPA, if it passes in its present form, will prevent citizens from using the Internet for political purposes. The NDAA now grants the government the power to imprison political opposition. And the Patriot Act already allows the government to strip us of any privacy.
The aftermath
In the aftermath, will the education gap matter? On the one hand, women will once more have to embrace men as their partners to survive. The programs that made it possible to use worthless degrees to get jobs will be gone. Valuable skills will matter. Masculinity will regain respectability. On the other, what made America different and great is trembling on the precipice, where the slightest nudge will send it plunging into the mundane oppression that has kept mankind in bondage for thousands of years.
Is there no hope?
Liberty and the singularity
Millions of Americans already "get it." They see what is coming. This is why presidential candidate Ron Paul is rising against candidates who are funded by the wealthy. All of the other candidates get contributions from billionaires, Ron Paul does not. His funding comes from the grassroots. From the millions of Americans who understand that anybody else will only maintain the status quo, which will lead only to tyranny and oppression. If Ron Paul wins--and it's a long shot--we will have a chance to back away from the precipice and reclaim our heritage of liberty.
Then, there is the singularity. So-called to mark the beginning of a new era. It is a collection of developments and events that will change...everything.
On this side of the singularity, mortality, pervasive sickness, ignorance, poverty. On the other side, incredibly long lives, health, wealth, virtual transcendence...maybe. It could also lead to annihilation. We don't know, yet. But we will. It's coming. We have no choice in that.
Our only choice is whether it will be available to all, or only to a chosen few.
The education gap matters. It matters today. But against the backdrop of these future events, it won't matter much at all.
Regards
Rod Van Mechelen
