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Comment by fatcat500 | Hacker News Reader

A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties.

We're headed toward a medieval "Three Estates" type system reupholstered with a post-modern aesthetic: the ruling class (brokers of power), the intelligentsia (white collars), and the peasants (everyone else).

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You really think the school system is bad because the entire cadre of school administrators are taking secret orders from shadowy politicians to keep kids dumb? I recommend you rethink the logical process that brought you to this conclusion.

Where was any of that mentioned? Complete strawman argument.

Although I don't agree with the conspiracy, it's more that the politicians can achieve the outcome by misdirecting funds (free iPads!) to achieve the "supposed" end goal (producing sheeple) while looking like they are achieving a nobler goal (educating the lesser off). This can be achieved with very few people interested in the former with the majority of the politicians believing they are accomplishing the latter.

Macroscopic politics is a phenomenon in its own right. Something that should be studied like one would study chemistry or physics. No one person or party controls the course of events.

I don't believe there is a grand conspiracy with shadowy bond-villainesque bad guys. It's simply that there is positive pressure in one direction (to have an easier-to-manage populace) and negative pressure in the other (to have a virtuous populace (harder to manage)).

It is quite bond-villainesque if one tries to make the population easier to manage.

I think it's simpler than that. It's memetics. Bad/wrong ideas infect brains, and propagate themselves by making believing those ideas fashionable. People then act according to the incentives. Some borrow the occult concept "egregore" describe the emergent behaviour.

I fail to see the difference between your arguments.

Making the population easier to manage doesn't need to be an explicit goal, it's an emergent outcome of many many different policies that target other things and are incentivized.

Making money from mass populations works better with more homogeneity of demand, and social media in particular provides a lot of effective levers to promote that homogeneity.

It is many people's jobs to influence memetics, and they're succeeding.

Right. I meant I don't believe that is an explicit goal/conscious thought, for most of them. Sorry for not making myself clear.

It's not the administrators. It is the politicians and some rich donors funding things like banning books, banning sex ed, changing curriculum standards i.e. not teaching about slavery because of political pressure or the threat of prosecution or defunding.

You know, all the stuff that's been in the news for all time as pushed by the conservative agenda?

You don't need conspiracy when you have hegemony.

> We're headed toward a medieval "Three Estates" type system reupholstered with a post-modern aesthetic: the ruling class (brokers of power), the intelligentsia (white collars), and the peasants (everyone else).

We already have it, and it's nothing new. See: Fussell's Class : a guide through the American status system (1983).

The solution is simpler. People are lazy.

Schools don't equip kids with literacy, life skills and critical thinking because highschoolers equipped with those skills are more effort to manage.

In California we are already in that system

Is there no separation between the blue-collar working class and the homeless/hopeless class?

Or, the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proletariat, if you will.

> They know something is wrong,

Are you sure? Ignore is bliss and all of that.

p.s: accurate portrayal of the situation I must say.

I agree that education is extremely important to fight against social attacks. I would still add that I know a LOT of very intelligent people who are also extremely intolerant (think racism, antisemitism, homophobic, etc.)

I’ve yet to understand how this phenomena continues to persist in spite of education levels continuing to grow.

One of my current theory is that face to face interaction, especially between different types of people, is a requirement. And the wave of fascism that we see is due to face-to-face interaction going to an ATL during covid.

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