this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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I thought school was for basic education, not getting ready for the labor market.
The point of school is to churn out workers. The government didn't throw money into education because it felt generous.
Ya'll are forgetting it also doubles as childcare for all the workers you're employing, but paid for by the state, which is why capital was behind it.
Oh, 100%. But we wouldn't need childcare if the kids could work the factories. Unfortunately, that needs a minimum level of education.
In a democracy, you should have good schools for the simple reason as to have a people that's actually able to carry a democracy.
The United States is a flawed democracy, so we have good schools for few and great schools for fewer.
I don't think I need to learn chemistry and physics to get a job.
And that's how we accidentally get chlorine gas made by the janitors
They're worth learning to understand the universe and the history of how that knowledge was derived and/or discovered.
If it helps you get a job, all the better, but they're worth learning for their own sake.
That hasn't been the case... Ever I think. We're still trapped in the industrial revolution's education system - create laborers - but with a lot of extraneous bullshit tacked on in an attempt to mesh it's obsolescence with modernity and labor-saving tech. It's always been about controlling the workers.
Originally, school was for the nobility and (fledgling) bourgeois, so they could run their spreadsheets, wage wars, and impress people with trivia, everyone else's education came from family tradition, neighbours (farmers talking farming stuff), or an education in the trades. Want to study geometry? At some point, the best option was to become a mason. And they would swear you to secrecy.
Universal education is a brainchild of Martin Luther, he wanted everyone to be able to read so that all could read the Bible.
Sorry to burst your bubble. We're all just pawns for the capitalists.
My bubble is already completely destroyed.
At least keep walking and become a queen.
I had to check where I had seen your name before. :)
I say burn the board.
:) But don't hold that in my favor.
Burning the board reverses development. Which decision in the past was wrong that could have led to a better society?
We would make the same mistakes again.
We could create a white pill. When groups of humans become enemies and it's ok to hate them, then somebody is playing a fascist playbook and it becomes time to offer an alternative to all participants. (Which is just other words for 'pawns of capitalists'.)
From my current pov, there is no good life, hell not any life on this planet in the future, under capitlism.
The infinite extraction of profit needs to go.
That is what I mean by burn the board. Because the idea that the pawns are only able to run towards the enemy in the hope of becoming a queen (which is the epitome of the carrot on a stick) is just sick.
How to change human nature? People could stop being pawns and redefine the game but they don't do it. Here, NEETS stop playing the game and they are immediately shunned by society. People can't stand to see in others what they have to suppress in themselves.
The end of capitalism would require some benevolent people to be in control or a majority of society that doesn't fall for manipulations.
The best that I can imagine is that those who don't like capitalism create their own island, kind of like the situation in brave new world. Fortunately I am not that clever so I hope that others find a better solution.
you mean the neoliberalist take of social darwinism. thats debunked. people are born good and empathetic. even evolution has not happened as capitalists like to picture it. not the strongest individuum has prevailed but the most kooperative group.
The next neoliberalist take of individualizing systemic problems. people have zero real influence on their lives. there are also very few countries that even have a semblance of democracy. even in germany, people are so manipulated that they obviously decide against their own self interest.
That is currently being done. Many places are building horizontal, base democratic communities. It also has been done many times over, but capitalist countries have destroyed a lot of them. Sometimes killing the people involved.
The western countries are in a very precarious situation in terms of democracy. Capitalism is ultimately a fascist system (absolutist hierarchies, eviction of the weak, darwinism) and will always lead to fascism if unrestrained.
Some ideas of people are either solely worker owned companies, full blown democratic socialism or base democracy with federation. All promising concepts.
yes
Which means that they haven't become the most kooperative group.
Are those going to be the most kooperative groups?
If we assume that it is possible for society itself to become the most kooperative group then something seems to be missing to make that possible.
My personal hunch is that there must be a more efficient way to resolve in-group conflicts that stand in the way of cooperation. So maybe we should look very closely at what is wrong with the current NEET situation.
I am not familiar with that particular situation but I'm absolutely sure that the answer lies in exploitation, oppression and manipulation. Everything can be traced back to it in capitalism.
And I suggest that it does not matter anymore who is the most cooperative group because you have all encompassing totalitarian rule of capital. You could think of a much better system and be discredited by the capital owned media, jailed by the capital owned nationstates, etc.
There is always the all encompassing totalitarian rule of capital. People trade in prisoner of war camps. Everything has a value and people will exchange things by value unless they have a joined identity. Capital doesn't crush families. Why should capital try to crush cooperating people who don't oppose capital itself?
Now you're mixing trade and capitalism. Trade is much older than capitalism and is also part of the massive majority of non capitalist states and groups.
Ask americans who are right now losing their families due to capital interests (e.g. health insurance)
It doesnt, necessarily. It absorbs them, makes them profitable, etc. It corrupts everything by making it part of profit generation. E.g. Nelson Mandela. It changes the narrative to paint them as friends when the same people today would be killed as terrorists.
It only crushes those which will not let themselves be absorbed. Those who through systemic and continuous effort shield themselves from capitalist influence. It discredits them, brands them as enemies, openly lies about them and uses the nation states to back it up.
State propaganda is real in every country on earth. We're living under the totalitarian rule of capital.
I am curious how NEET will handle this. They tick all the boxes.
What I meant to say is that the totalitarian part comes from our brain doing value judgements. If it wouldn't, Capitalism wouldn't work. Capitalism is a reflection of our mind.
If that makes Capitalism inevitable, could it be that we need more instead of less Capitalism for a better society?
Totalitarian comes from wikipedia:
This has nothing to do with value judgement. To say totalitarian is good or bad is a value judgement.
Capitalism doesnt work. It consumes itself.
Sorry but I'm at the point where this is becoming very hard to take serious. Capitalism came from feudalism whete we already had massive wealth accumulation of wealth and slavery. You're mixing up nature with nurture.
That would be anarcho capitalism. The fascists wet dream. Of course this would make a "better" society for the owner class but you would suffer and die at work while they sniff cocaine off someones butt.
Neoliberalist takes will always lead to more inequality, more suffering and more monopolies. Look at the US. They have more capitalism now. They're dying like flies, outlawing books that picture the dystopian fresh hell they're building and pushing so much anti trans propaganda that goebbels would be envious.
Without the expectation of being taken serious I want to double down.
In feudal times, peasants were controlled by the sword. They didn't have access to swords and couldn't change their situation.
Capitalism has the militarized police, but the main weapon is the control of the markets. Profits are made with the prices that the peasants are willing to pay.
At least in theory, it's within reach of the peasants to influence those prices because those prices are living in their heads.
You're onto something... About not being taken seriously.
One needs to have serious delusions to believe making the situation even worse would somehow make it better. except maybe by waking people up and spark violent uprising but the death toll would be insane and empathy forbids that idea.
And the assumption of "theoretical reach of influence" in full knowledge of the nuclear arsenal that states wield, only someone with no grip on reality would suggest thay this in earnest.
States bomb their own population, but nuclear self destruction is a bit too much. I don't see the link to what I suggested.
I am talking about things in the mind, about attitudes. If changing that already leads to anhilation, what is then left but acceptance of the current situation?
Maybe I didnt really get the second part yesterday as it was late for me. But still, of course people have to change their thinking but the "solution" you described was so thin and abstract that I cant see how that could be done or how it would help.
Hmm maybe at one point but that point is long gone