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Thanks -- yes, let's hope for the best!

On poor quality clothing:
"Used clothes: Why is worldwide demand declining?"
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
"Manufacturers know that customers are more interested in low prices than durability, because they increasingly expect to wear their clothes just a few times and throw them away. "So the quality's not as good, so when our customers get [an item] they're not getting two or three hundred wears out of it - they know it's only going to be a couple of uses," he says. That means, according to Fee Gilfeather, head of marketing for Oxfam's trading division, "more [clothing] is getting incinerated than there used to be.""

Also on that:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
"For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing.
Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making."

I agree that we could be a lot happier with less stuff. It's an abundance mindset though -- to stop feeling the need to hoard.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose needs and desires were few relative to their skills and the abundance of nature relative to their populations lived more in that mindset of abundance:
http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times. ...
Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an [institution]. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger in. creases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied.
The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo."

For example:
http://marcinequenzer.com/crea... FIELD OF PLENTY
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/...
"In our Seneca Tradition, the Field of Plenty is seen as a spiral that has its smallest revolution out in space and its' largest revolution near the Earth. This shape could be likened to an upside-down tornado. When our Ancestors assisted the Pilgrims in planting Corn and raising crops so they would not starve, we taught them the understanding of the Field of Plenty by bringing the cornucopia baskets full of vegetables. The Iroquois women wove these baskets as a physical reminder that Great Mystery provides through the Field of Plenty. The Pilgrims were taught that giving prayers of gratitude was not just a Christian concept. The Red Race understood thanksgiving on a daily basis.
            The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

"Who needs a free thinking population when you are on top ..."

As John Taylor Gatto wrote:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprisesâ"no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

But with that said, there is a lot of life in the cracks of our society

There is even a lot of happiness:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"Based on these findings, it seems likely that everyday people don't opt for social change in good part because they don't see any plausible way to accomplish their goals, and haven't heard any plans from anyone else that make sense to them. But why don't they just say "the hell with it" and head to the barricades? Why aren't they "fed up?" The answer is not in their false consciousness or a mere resigned acquiescence, as many leftists seem to believe, but in a very different set of factors. On the one hand, for all the injustices average Americans experience and perceive, there are many positive aspects to everyday life that make a regular day-to-day existence more attractive than a general strike or a commitment to building a revolutionary party. They have loved ones they like to be with, they have hobbies and sports they enjoy, and they have forms of entertainment they like to watch. In fact, many of them also report in surveys that they enjoy their jobs even though the jobs don't pay enough or have decent benefits. (And as of late 2005, 93% of individuals earning over $50,000 a year describe themselves as "doing well.") They also understand that they have some hard-won democratic rights and freedoms inherited from the past that are much more than people in many other countries have. They don't want to see those positive aspects messed up."

So, while one can dwelle on the negative, there can be a lot of positives one can look at too. Example:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcit

Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the post and I hope you look at some of the links.

On the theme you raise, I've also been wondering if many people in the past might have lived longer than we give them credit for, as well (in other words, maybe the infant mortality rates may be off?).

I've seen different estimates of how many people were in North America, so you are right, it might have been higher, although I would think 2 million to 20 million for North American (above Mexico) would be more likely, but I don't know for sure. One source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
"Estimating the number of Native Americans living in what is today the United States of America before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers has been the subject of much debate. A low estimate of around 1 million was first posited by the anthropologist James Mooney in the 1890s, by calculating population density of each culture area based on its carrying capacity. In 1965, the American anthropologist Henry Dobyns published studies estimating the original population to have been 10 to 12 million. By 1983, he increased his estimates to 18 million.[42] He took into account the mortality rates caused by infectious diseases of European explorers and settlers, against which Native Americans had no immunity. Dobyns combined the known mortality rates of these diseases among native people with reliable population records of the 19th century, to calculate the probable size of the original populations.[4][5]"

The general issue is that the further you go from the equator, the more land per person you need for subsistence for various climate and sunlight reasons. So, one acre might support a person by the equator, but you might need 1000 or more up around Northern Canada.

So, yes, I was going with the low end. Of course, our wilderness is more degraded now, as well. Also, if you add in Mexico and below, I think the total for both continents could have been 100 million or so.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions:
http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239

Although another aspect of that is that the natural diversity seen in North America of animals during the 1700s and 1800s was also partially a recovery from previously heavy exploitation by natives, who, as you say, often died from introduced disease.

Another angle on that general theme of affluence in the stone age:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

Another related book on the pandemic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

And more on what really happened during the invasion of North America, in the own words of the profit-driven invaders (as well as some accompanying missionaries) who saw the value of the land but not of the alternative society:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

A related theme from Native Americans:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always en

Also applies to commecialism: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security [and economic] thinking. Those "security" [and "commercial productive"] agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

We can do better than allowing patents about gift giving.

Still, there is historic precendentfor this, sadly:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
"A potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. ... At potlatch gatherings, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in their family's house and holds a feast for their guests. The main purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth. ... Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1884 in an amendment to the Indian Act and the United States in the late 19th century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized" values."

See also, by a Native American:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Here is a PDF file with a presentation I put together on "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft".
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf

Here is a 12 minute YouTube video of that presentation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

We can do better than this...

You're welcome. Thanks for the comment. I've been refining the message. I hope the meme continues to propagate and others adapt it for local circumstances and their own unique style. James P. Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear is one big source of that meme for me. Marcine Quenzer was influential too:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
As was Doug Lisle:
    http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
And others (Gerry Pournelle to an extent with his "Survival with Style" essay, lots of other writers with a bit here and there, including Theodore Sturgeon and "The Skills of Xanadu"). So I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants. :-)

BTW, if you like Edgar Cayce, how do you feel about Herbert Shelton, Joel Fuhrman, and Blue Zones?
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.bluezones.com/

The Flexner Report (by Abraham Flexner, in conjunction with the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations) is where things really started to go wrong with US medicine, as someone with success doing hands-on stuff with K-12 education tried to apply it to medicine where it was less appropriate since prevention, infrastructure, and complex psychology/spiritual issues are more important for wellness:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report
Ironically, now we have hands-on treatment focused medicine, and abstraction-oriented K-12, mostly just the opposite of how it should be...

More on that from one perspective:
    http://www.sntp.net/fda/piper_griffin.htm
"In the meantime, while doctors are forced to spend hundreds of hours studying the names and actions of all kinds of man-made drugs, they are lucky if they receive even a portion of a single course on basic nutrition. Many have none at all. The result is that the average doctor's wife or secretary knows more about practical nutrition than he does."

More on how medical and other research has gone wrong in the USA (another post I made to this story):
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1964112&cid=34989572

If this cold fusion thing does work out (or even if it does not), these issues may help explain why it (as well as alternative medicine) encountered so much resistance. Still, I hope things may have improved somewhat from the days of Ignaz Semmelweis:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Thanks for the reply, and it is great that these things are being discussed. What did your discussions have to say about using some combination of a basic income (expanding social security and medicare for all), a gift economy (expanding Debian GNU/Linux, Wikipedia, Apache, and blogging), localism (expanding 3D printing, local currencies, and local gardening), and democratic resource-based planning (using subsidies, taxes, and investments to deal with externalities and build infrastructure), to realize a post-scarcity economy?

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://basicincome.iovialis.org/e00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4hFVcl6Vo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Localism_(politics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing
http://www.remineralize.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentrally_planned_economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Synthetic (by me):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives

From a few hundred years ago:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching."

Also from a little later:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
"At potlatch gatherings, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in their family's house and holds a feast for their guests. The main purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth. ... The potlatch was a cultural practice much studied by ethnographers. Sponsors of a potlatch give away many useful items such as food, blankets, worked ornamental mediums of exchange called "coppers", and many other various items. In return, they earned prestige. ... Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885[8] and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized" values.[9]"

If it takes laws and the force of arms to suppress gift giving in the USA in the past, what does that suggest about "human nature"? Also, consider how much force of arms and courts and fines and other penalties (including imprisonment) it is taking recently to suppress sharing of music and information on the internet (whether RIAA lawsuits or the firing or imprisonment of people contributing to Wikileaks). Human nature is a complex thing. Also, if you look at a count

Vitamin D is needed by the immune system: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7379094/Vitamin-D-triggers-and-arms-the-immune-system.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--NqqB2nhBE

And whole foods (especially vegetables, fruits, and legumes) help you have a disease resistant body:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm

Though a good mental attitude, exercise, infrastructure, good sleep, thankfulness, meditating on the great mystery, etc. can help with general wellness, too.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/important-sleep-habits

"Free" may be the only thing that "works" in the the long term, check out:

    "Why work"
    http://www.whywork.org/

    "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

    "A critique of a neo-futurist's vision of the decline of work" by Bob Black
    http://www.t0.or.at/bobblack/futuwork.htm

    "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine."
    http://www.reprap.org/

    "The Triple Revolution" letter to the president sent in 1964
    http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

"Free" used to work in the past in America:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Let's hope "free" works again in the future, or we may get this:
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
"In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable."

A sci-fi novel about a clash of old and new ways of thinking:
    _Voyage from Yesteryear" by James P. Hogan
      http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=29

"If we ever get to the point where less than 20% or so of the population is required to work in order to support the rest of the population then people really wouldn't have to work anymore because let's be honest, not everyone works just because they want money, there are lots of people who would continue working because they were passionate about their jobs. What we need to do is get rid of the boring mundane jobs that no one wants."

Insightful, but we reached that point decades ago.

See:
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."

And:
"The Triple Revolution: Cybernation, Weaponry, Human Rights" sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson in March 1964
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

Of course, we actually had such a life as hunter/gatherers (ignoring some of the downsides there). Essentially, when there was a small human population relative to the size fo the planet., food was abundant relative to the number of people, so it was very easy to acquire.
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

And here is the great tragedy of the Americas:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Thankfully via the GPL and some inspiration (RepRap), those abundant days may come again:
http://reprap.org/
"RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer

Judging by how my replies have been modded both up and down, and there are a couple of speculative Anonymous Coward personal attack replies, as well as some agreeing replies, obviously this issue has hit a nerve. :-)

You make some good points, but essentially what they seem to amount to, "This is they way the system works now, so best go with the flow." Sure, there is credentialism in science; so what? All this proves is academia is *good* at using labels to control and get bright young people to waste their youth jumping through hoops instead of making change or learning how to be free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism
Does that mean people without credentials are not qualified to do science, engineering, or education (including of their own children)? Should any programmer without a PhD be turned away from any Open Source or Free Software project?

Isn't "rankism" a bad thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankism
But this is essentially what you are perhaps unknowingly arguing for: "Fuller has defined rankism as: "abusive, discriminatory, or exploitative behavior towards people who have less power because of their lower rank in a particular hierarchy""
Gatto and John Holt argue it only takes fifty to one hundred hours to teach a kid enough about reading or math to bootstrap themselves up from there in those subjects as far as they want to go -- if the kid wants to learn. What are the other 12000 hours of schooling for if not to produce conformity? Are you saying you could not have learned all those other things on your own or in peer groups or from individuals in the community? On language, if you had lived in Japan at age six, or had a Japanese caretaker, you would have learned it effortlessly and fluently. Self learning in isolation or school learning of languages (except for immersion courses) almost never makes anyone fluent. Please note: mentoring and educating is completely different from compulsory schooling. Every child needs mentors and educators in their life; no child needs schooling or school personnel in their life. As Gatto suggest, most of what goes on in compulsory schools (public or private) has little to do with what kids need to learn to be free individuals in a 21st century post-industrial information age economy.

You are essentially arguing for the status quo based on convenience. Is there no point in talking about GNU/Linux or Open Office on Slashdot since Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office products are still used by most businesses? Is there no point in discussing Python here since Visual Basic has so many users? Is "freedom" always (or ever) the easier road in the short term?

The point of that article on college and cowardice is that there are alternatives -- and many people who might benefit from them have been scared into conformity with the schooling enterprise -- especially the ones labeled "gifted" who otherwise might be troublemakers, just like a lot of people have been scared into conformity with Microsoft Office and Visual Basic. Sure people live in a somewhat capitalist society in the USA (ignoring huge government subsidies to major industries), but if Capitalism is driving the society off a cliff through short-sighted greed, is it smart to stay as a passenger in the car? Remember, the reason people in the USA now live in a militaristic capitalist scarcity-based society is that some greedy people used guns and biological warfare to wipe out the societies based on abundance and open-source style gift-giving which existed in North America beforehand.
From:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm
"When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough

AoT, you might also want to check out: Conceptual Guerilla
On Rankism
Voyage from Yesteryear
Or my essay: how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society