[p2p-research] Job Losses and Productivity

[Michel Bauwens]

The educational system is certainly in crisis for a number of reasons, but
as to its full disappearance, let's see what happens ... I don't know of any
past civilisation which didn't have it and didn't believe that human
relationality was part of it, and I don't think individual technological
learning of skills is a sufficient alternative. Your statement seems to wipe
out any life of culture and thought that isn't instrumental and that my
friend, is indeed neoliberalism. So I say, read Make magazine And learn
philosophy and poetry and music, refined thinking and creation, etc... We
certainly lost the balance towards the latter, and now that neoliberal
education is pretty successfull in destroying any remaining sense of culture
and history, it seems you will get your way ...

of course I agree with your last sentence (mostly), but I don't see how you
can get there with a totally uneducated citizenry, no matter how many skills
they have ..

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Michel:
> I'm not sure what "education" is.  I doubt it leads to happiness.  I doubt
> it leads to wealth.  I doubt it leads to good citizens.  It correlates best
> with wealth.  But most of it is wasted and silly.  The entire university
> system of the West is now more wasteful in my view than it is productive.
> It is more broken than the states that support it.
>
> Regardless, it is rapidly becoming software.  There is simply no arguing
> that Rosetta Stone teaches students languages better than classes.  If that
> is true, how long is it before we have Rosetta Algebra, etc.  And at that
> point, what do we need with the little red brick buildings and the pleasant
> 27 year old young ladies who hold hands and wipe noses?  Morever, what do we
> need with the professors whose "research" helps no one live longer, better
> or wiser?  People who believe they are owed the right to think what they
> want and write what they want on the public's dime.  Why?  For whom?  It has
> become silly.  It is a matter of time, whether you or I like it or not.  It
> is dying and will die in the next 30-50 years totally.  I have talked with
> enough leaders from the field to know this is true.  They know it.  Now we
> must prepare for it.  For profit universities in the US are crushing the
> state schools in terms of enrollment and use of technology.  Soon it will
> reach a tipping point.  Europe will follow.  Contemplating the Frankfurt
> School is a luxury for the rich...not a national necessity.  What nations
> like India and China need is people who read Make Magazine and who build low
> cost or free software and bicycles from open source machines.  You don't get
> that by training philosophers and poets.
>
> As to debt, inflation doesn't restart the clock.  It destroys the clock.
> Once it is destroyed, there will be poverty and misery (for the poor) unlike
> anything yet known.  It is very likely the poor will simply be slaughtered.
> They cannot defend themselves (we will sadly soon see this in Thailand) and
> they cannot appeal to world outrage (there isn't any.)   Whatever
> neo-liberalism is, I hope it is orderly financial markets, jobs, and free
> trade of innovative goods and services.  That is what we need.  The old left
> is dead.  Long live the new left...libertarian, anti-state, co-op intensive,
> civil society supporting, and willing to earn and trade with a moral sense.
>
>
> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> ryan, education is emphatically Not a product meant for the markets to
>> consume, it is a education for citizenship and human happiness, that as a
>> sideproduct, should create people who can contribute to the wellbeing of
>> society through their work and activities ... and for this of course, they
>> need skills as well as education ..
>>
>> here is an article I hope you will read, on sovereign credit, and why, it
>> is not over, and why the people of Europe and elsewhere should not acquiesce
>> in the neoliberal holdup and destruction of social structures of support and
>> solidarity,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> via http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/hyperinflation.php
>>
>>
>
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>


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