I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
One of capitalisms biggest tragedies
Submitted 9 months ago by STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4cf5281c-c4ca-465b-b771-d1e3d72f2a30.jpeg
Comments
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 9 months ago
theangryseal@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I had a friend as a kid who made straight A’s the first semester in school every year, then straight F’s to the last semester where he’d pick it up just enough to pass. I remember a teacher laughing at him because his cousin blacked his eye while he was fighting his mother, “Oh, you mean a girl did that?”
Once he got to high school he couldn’t pass the 9th grade because the strategy of passing the first and last semester didn’t work anymore. He dropped out and got his GED. He took the test one time, scored 90% higher than average.
He slept in class every day because he spent his nights prepared to fight his dad when his dad attacked his mom.
I remember in middle school when the regular teacher was out long term for surgery, he handed a test to the substitute and she cried and apologized for not paying closer attention to him. She worked with him after that and he passed her class.
The last time I seen him, he was strung out on heroin and doing nothing. We went to school together from the 3rd grade until he dropped out and I only ever seen two teachers really try to help him. Police came to the school one time to photograph his bruise covered body and nothing ever came of it.
He used to write stories and give them to me on the bus. I asked him if he kept writing. He told me he hadn’t since his early 20s.
I can’t stand to think about how many kids out there have so much potential, only they’re stranded on an island with nowhere to put it.
UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Fuck man, that’s so sad. You tell it really well, too. I can’t imagine hanging on if the adults in your life kept letting you down that consistently. Poor guy… And like you said, he’s just one person. 0 doubt there are others out there there who’ve got it way worse (not that it’s a contest).
Reminds us to try and be kind when we come across someone who’s struggling. We don’t know their story but guaranteed they have one.
nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 9 months ago
Damn, this was so hard to read and felt so close to me…
I used to be the kid that got the best grades and didn’t care to study in the last semester too. I had severe family problems, and my father also tried to attack my mom.
I grew up left behind and with no one to ever support or guide me. I ended up isolating myself from society to such a degree that my life went downhill and I messed up everything to become a disfunctional adult who can’t evem get a job. I didn’t get into drugs, but isolation and depression did a similar thing to me… I ended up losing all my dreams, stopping doing all tbe things i was good at, and kinda losing even my cognition with time.
I can’t express in words how painful reading about your friend’s story was to me. I feel so sorry for him.
RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I was a “gifted program” kid with problems at home and undiagnosed adhd. I went from A’s to failing and dropping out and nobody cared. Nobody wanted to know what was wrong. All they wanted to do was punish me.
Pirasp@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Honestly, it’s not just capitalism. Education is anywhere from free to really cheap in Germany, and we still don’t get many people from poorer families into uni.
I see the main problem here as a sort of class divide between people with university degrees and people without. For example: if you work in a public library and don’t have a uni degree you will never get more money than salary level 9 (4k/mo) just having a degree and not doing any more/different work more or less instantly puts you on 12 or higher (6k+)
This I think understandably makes people without uni degrees kind of resentful of those who do have them. And if you grow up resenting a certain group of people you are much less likely to join them.
So, no. “Just” getting rid of the cost won’t magically get these people into higher education.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 9 months ago
Usually when people are in favour of getting rid of capitalism, they’re also in favour of getting rid of hierarchies such as class divide.
Pirasp@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sure, but one does not inherently include the other.
ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Education is anywhere from free to really cheap in Germany, and we still don’t get many people from poorer families into uni.
I am not German myself, but I am familiar with the system. Please correct me if things have evolved, but…
I thought the post-elementary education system in Germany was a tiered system. University admission requires completing the Abitur exams, but one can only feasibly do this if they’ve attended Gymnasium, or the “highest” tier of high school. It may be possible to do if one gets very high marks in Realschule (mid tier), along with Abitur preparation courses, but it’s virtually impossible if one attends Hauptschule (lowest tier). These schools are not intended to provide university preparation, but instead provide a general education to prepare students for trades/vocational careers.
Whether a child attends Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium is decided at 9 or 10 years old, and is dependent on performance in elementary classes and teacher recommendations.
And when one considers that a child’s educational performance is directly related to both familial socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment, it’s not surprising that poorer people are less likely to attend or complete university.
Capitalists’ dominant position within the class hierarchy necessitates exploitation of the working class, and this is maintained by fomenting division. This tiered system is just one manifestation of how society can be stratefied and divided.
Turun@feddit.de 8 months ago
It is absolutely possible to get to university after only finishing Hauptschule. You just need to go to BOS after finishing your apprenticeship and then you can achieve a fachgebundene Hochschulreife (maybe even allgemeine, im not sure) and attend University. Few people do it, because the desire is not there, or maybe not the tenacity to study further after already having trained for a job. Also you get Kindergeld and Bafög while studying.
And when one considers that a child’s educational performance is directly related to both familial socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment,
This is true and criticized by PISA every time.
I think it has a lot to do with how much the parents value education. east asian immigrants are famous for how much emphasis they place on education and as a result get into university. The only thing that would help immediately (i.e. does not require behavioral change for a large portion of the population) would be to separate kids more from their families via Ganztagsschulen, to weaken this influence.
uis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Disagree about librerians because it is skilled profession and good librerian needs to be very educated, but yes,
“Just” getting rid of the cost won’t magically get these people into higher education.
Pirasp@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sure very skilled and such. But I’m not talking about librarians. Just library workers with and without a degree
Cliff@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Do you know Aladin El-Mafaalani? I think this Interview (in german) with Jung&Naiv is totally worth to watch for everyone that is just slightly interested in that topic of the german educational system, its flaws and how to improve it.
rikudou@lemmings.world 9 months ago
Not that I think capitalism is good, but how exactly does any other system solve it? And I’m talking about real-world systems, not the idealized ones. Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
irmoz@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
Also, this isn’t true - capitalism has inequality and unrealised potential built into it.
irmoz@reddthat.com 9 months ago
What do you mean by “real, not idealised”? All such things are ideals until put into practice.
rikudou@lemmings.world 9 months ago
I mean that if your argument is communism, let’s talk about the real world one, not the ideal one that doesn’t exist and will never actually be put into practice. Because comparing a real, existing system against an idea is unfair. So either let’s compare real communism with real capitalism, or let’s compare the idea of capitalism with the idea of communism.
As I said, capitalism sucks, but I’m tired of people making comparisons between the real, actually used capitalism and some made up version of communism.
june@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I think about this all the time with everything from professions to entertainment. I watch a lot of F1 and those guys are always called the best/most talented drivers in the world, and all I can think of is how the most talented driver in the world is probably a poor kid in India or China who’s starving to death that will never have the chance to develop that talent let alone drive a car.
We are missing out on so many brilliant minds because capitalism requires them to be at the bottom. Meritocracy isn’t real and never will be.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Just watched a Bad Sports episode where a champion race driver couldn’t break into the sport without become a drug trafficker to pay for it. So yeah that’s already happened, just in Florida.
prosp3kt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Justice in general doesn’t exist in nature. That is a human construct. You will have more inner peace the fast you accept this reality. Wgat we can do is do our best with the resources we have, and be grateful if we were lucky. Our call for justice is because we are in la privilege position.
june@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I do t care about justice existing in nature. Humanity has always aimed to dominate nature. Let’s do that but in a way that lifts all boats, yea?
Leviathan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not being able to afford education isn’t limited to the cost of the education either. If I have to take time to study it means I have to spend every hour of every day either working, in class, studying or working on school projects to also afford to eat and have shelter, and even then I think I’d have to choose between the two.
BaardFigur@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s not a problem with capitalism, just deregulated capitalism. In Norway higher education is essentially free
Rediphile@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
’ Deregulated capitalism’ is capitalism so it’s 100% a problem with capitalism. And running things for profit with private ownership is the basic definition of capitalism… so it sure doesn’t sound like Norway’s free education is ‘for profit’ unless I’m grossly misunderstanding.
suction@lemmy.world 8 months ago
don’t be obtuse of the sake of it
derpgon@programming.dev 8 months ago
So is in Czechia, public universities are free unless you repeat a year (and even then it is not very expensive and IIRC you pay a single fee, 2500$ Bachelor’s, 3200$ Master’s, and 20$ (yes 20) Doctor’s, all per year - taken from my university). Textbooks are freely available in 99% of cases, the rest costs about 20$ printed but can be obtained for free in electronicformat, IIRC legally.
The quality is not perfect all the time, some curriculums are outdated or taught in strange ways, but it’s ever-changing.
steveman_ha@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Norway is actually a good example of this, from what (little) I know about the place – where pro-social regulatory policies (i.e. beneficial not from the perspective of capital, but from the perspective of actual societal conditions) are used to help mitigate some of the BS that capitalism produces.
Regardless… Yeah, it’s a problem with capitalism. It’s a problem that stems from the literal core of the ‘system’: utilizing ‘capital’ to create opportunities for the creation and extraction of ‘surplus’ from labor and its products. It’s great that regulation is able to reign in, in some cases, the deeply criminal BS that such a system naturally produces… But it seems like a huge overreach to assume this is possible “globally” (as it would need to be for a blanket statement like that to be true).
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Not just education, but profitability as well. Doctors and Engineers are incentivized more than educators.
Malfeasant@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not real capitalism is just as much capitalism as not real socialism is socialism…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 months ago
just deregulated capitalism
The line between “well-regulated capitalism” and “socialism” is entirely subjective. One man’s big government job killing mandate is another’s sensible growth-oriented reform.
Napain@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
there are lots of capitalst countries in europe where education is pretty much free. what you are talking about is neo-liberalism
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Nah, it’s Capitalism as well. Capitalism depends on the global orphan crushing machine, not just insular countries. There are many, many Einstein level talents that have died without access to necessary education to fully take advantage of their talents simply to keep the orphan crushing machine going.
suction@lemmy.world 8 months ago
yep
bartolomeo@suppo.fi 8 months ago
Yes, in South America too, as long as you pass entrance exams which are difficult af.
jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Even the people that can afford it no longer want to work in the industry because capitalism has made them entirely profit oriented and very unrewarding to be a part of, both financially and spiritually.
echodot@feddit.uk 9 months ago
Someone once said how many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in Ethiopia?
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 9 months ago
This is way more the problem than people missing out on going to medical school when they really wanted to.
Most people who are in the United States and want to go to a high paying career, can take out student loans and achieve something close, assuming good grades. Not that there aren’t problems with that scenario, but everyone wants kids to get high paying jobs, society is organized around helping those kids.
Meanwhile, some people would be great authors or philosophers or artists if they didn’t have to spend time making the money to survive. Those are valid goals that are being oppressed by the system.
And in the same way the global system is oppressing billions of people who are born as the rural poor and just not able to do much beyond subsistence farming.
indepndnt@lemmy.world 9 months ago
How many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in America to a working class or poor family or as a person in a marginalized group?
echodot@feddit.uk 8 months ago
I don’t think the comment was necessarily to dunk on Ethiopia per se as much as to make a point. The person who worked out at least a theoretical model for faster than light travel was Mexican. So we are obviously not dealing with this situation in which the most intellectual unnecessarily born into western society.
pancakes@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Not only that, but think of all the intelligent people that could have done something to revolutionize a field but instead work in finance.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 8 months ago
Or real estate, advertising, etc.
Capitalism wastes talent.
zerog_bandit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Capitalism isn’t interested in your passion. Capitalism is interested in your ability to enhance the bottom line of the company you work for. Whether that’s a hospital, a pharma company, a charity, etc etc.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Capitalism is interested in your ability to enhance the bottom line of the company you work for.
That’s a very broad reading of Capitalism as a system of incentives. But when you break it down, you find that it isn’t holistically profit-maximizing. It is locally rent-seeking. Which is to say, if I have a freeway that moves $10M/day in commerce and I - personally - have the opportunity to erect a toll gate that earns me $100k/day but inhibits $1M/day in commerce as a result, I will build that toll gate.
We saw this problem play out with the collapse of the Sears Roebuck Company under CEO Edward Lampert. Lampert took the capitalist ideology to its logical conclusion and began pitting individual departments within the greater corporate behemoth against one another. Consequentially, he dissolved all the economies of scale Sears had aggregated. Far from enhancing the bottom line, his business strategy dissolved all the economies of integration and scale that the firm had built up over its 120 year history.
Wherever the tenants of rent-seeking are applied, individuals with power will attempt to extract surplus wealth from weaker agents beneath them, even when that would destabilize the system as a whole. This can be disastrous for the “bottom line”. We used to even classify it as such, labeling these behaviors as “price gouging” and “embezzlement”.
applebusch@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Wow I’ve never thought of it that way. That makes so much sense. This kind of implies all subscription based services will inevitably devolve into paying more for less in a race to the bottom until the whole thing collapses. Which is interesting because I remember hearing about an economics paper that showed that the most profitable business model is bundled subscriptions. It’s kind of amazing someone can say that with a straight face looking at what has happened to cable TV.
zerog_bandit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Rent seeking is just the latest in a long line of buzz words invented by MBAs to define their profit-seeking practices.
Capitalism rewards the extraction of profit from assets. All the fancy words above dress up the process but in essence remains the same across all industries.
You seem to not like this. I would recommend putting down the phone that are using to browse this website, since it exists due to the aforementioned capitalistic system. Then, go outside, and quite literally touch some grass.
Otherwise, you should probably make peace with your existence within this system, because every human on this Earth is already partaking in it to some degree.
an0nym0us@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
[deleted]Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone 9 months ago
The cliche is Asian parents bullying their kids into it “because money”
Sad.
A fancy car does not equal any respect from me.
HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Generally reduces respect from me.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I hope you are not talking about medicine as the example lists. In a capitalist society these roles remain undervalued and most people struggle for much of their career to pay debts. If you are going into medicine to get rich you are ill advised and foolish.
Maeve@kbin.social 9 months ago
In my limited observation, everything in capitalist societies revolve around money (power) and appearances (illusion).
Jarix@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This isnt a unique capitalist problem.
This is power dynamics 101.
The capitalism version of this problem is not even the worst version
unreasonabro@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is a super important point. As fucking brutal as capitalism is, any move backward will only make things worse. The only thing we can see with any clarity in the past is the church anyway (which was like a thousand year nightmare) since they took the evidence for everything else and won’t let anyone see it.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 8 months ago
We won’t to move forwards, to a leftist society not backwards to some right wing authoritarian shitheap.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Sure, so let’s go beyond Capitalism into Socialism.
penquin@lemm.ee 9 months ago
This is one reason why I advocate for free and open source software, this same exact reason. So many poor people/kids can’t afford to pay for software they need that could help them achieve something.
prosp3kt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
The last barrier we have to destroy is the formal certification institutions such as colleges and universities. Their career are not equivalent to knowledge a lot of occasions, even Musk said that in the past.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I feel like its almost a lottery in canada, I know a few people on their 4th-5th round of applications years after getting a university degree. These are good candidates too, 90-something average, volunteer… and then we wonder why theres a huge shortage of family doctors and wait times.
52fighters@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
I thought capitalism had something to do with capitalists owning the means of production and alienating labor from their work. Where I live most universities are public entities.
unreasonabro@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Capitalism is a method for the control of information. If information were given freely, like as in an actually civilized society not full of fucking barbarians, the world would be a much better place.
ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
That’s an America problem, not a capitalism problem. Free, or at least highly subsidised, higher education isn’t exactly limited to communist countries.
nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee 8 months ago
There’s a few problems with this. Two I can identify right off the bat:
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Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you’re good at it. I don’t want the William Hung of medicine doing my surgery.
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By artificially limiting the supply of doctors you are increasing demand and salaries (I agree this seems morally wrong a priori/prima facie, especially for something like health care that is a public good). However when the salaries drop then you reduce incentive for smart people going into the field, which has already been happening in medicine for decades. The top of the class that would’ve become the brilliant physician in the 20th century is your 21st century finance bro. AKA brain drain. (See also point 1.)
I do agree that it is wrong for people to be unable to pursue careers due to the misfortune of their station of birth. I don’t know how to fix it other than funding public education.
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SpicyLizards@reddthat.com 8 months ago
Same deal as sexism. Even if you get in, your work will probably be stolen or you will be pushed out.
mellowheat@suppo.fi 8 months ago
Then again, capitalism gave many societies the wealth that could then be used to educate everyone.
HolyDiver@aussie.zone 9 months ago
b b but it breeds innovation!!!1!1!1
pickleprattle@midwest.social 8 months ago
It’s ironic that capitalism is missing out on more efficient workers who could maximize production and profit because of this. Who knows where we would be if we actually helped people pursue their goals regardless of current income?
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They don’t want experts, they want drones and demagogues.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
As soon as the selection criteria for access to higher education is less than meritocratic, it undermines the maximization of Economic outcomes because it reduces the chances for the best people for a job to end up in that job (you get maximum Economic productvity if all over the Economy the best person for a job is the one doing the job).
So even by Rightwing principles of better life by more money making, paid-for Education actually detracts from from it because it leads to less money being made (as people who would otherwise be the most capable for certain highly specialized positions are locked from reaching them due to not being able to afford the right education for it).
What paid gor Education does achieve, and really well, is making sure children with high-middle class and upper class parents inherit their priviledges, no matter how inept they are.
It’s basically Feudalism extended to cover the Burgeousie, which is why you see this kind of thing deeply entrenched in countries with barelly reformed monarchic systems such as the UK.
Arkaelus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
BuT hOw WoUlD yOu PaY fOr It?!
General_Effort@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That one is actually weird.
People with more education draw higher salaries. That only works because employers make a higher profit with better educated people. Which means that for profit-maximization, you want to have a pool of potential employees that is maximally well-educated on the expense of someone else. Note the push for more STEM graduates.
You’d think businesses would be all for tax-funded education for everyone.
Smoogs@lemmy.world 8 months ago
More than this. People from different countries with qualifications are often denied to transfer their qualifications. We are missing out in more than one area here.
dipshit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Please. Think of the shareholders!
Pavidus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have viable career paths that are NOT being selected because the income simply won’t be enough. We miss out on a lot of talented and motivated individuals that would love to get into a particular field, but it just doesn’t pay as well. Teachers and corrections officers come to mind. The career I’m in was not my first choice, but it pays better than what I wanted to do.
Thrillhouse@lemmy.world 9 months ago
To be fair the correctional system in its current form in North America is primarily constructed and controlled by capitalist interests.
Glitchington@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Idk, I’ve never made enough money to live on and at this point never expect to. I’d rather do something I’m passionate about while I die under capitalism, than sit here feeling useless while I die under capitalism. Shit is depressing and unsustainable.
Bakachu@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Fully agree with this. Anything in the arts immediately comes to mind. Not just performing arts either - history, literature, and philosophy fields have a lot more uncertain career paths than others.
This is one of the reasons why I favor UBI and universal health care. I think there’s a growing deficit in overall creativity, leisure, and social engagement that the arts and other so-called lower-income jobs provide to society. And its not that people care more about money. You just dont have the option to pursue these jobs when your income level affects life or death decisions for you and your loves ones.
udon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah, try being a nurse these days if you want to play life in hard mode