That's strange. People with a career in climatology don't get money and power to fix things, they just get to report on the problem.
Come on, is this so hard to figure out?
"We think there is a serious problem with X. But we need more money to tell you how serious it is."
"We have studied problem X in more detail and have found out that it is much more serious than we originally though. There are, in fact, sub-problems X.1, X.2, and X.3. We need money to study these subproblems, plus we need money to develop possible solutions to this problem."
Repeat and extend at each step.
How much money do you think people would get for this?
"We have looked at X and determined that there is nothing to worry about. But if you give us more money, we can confirm with even greater certainty that there is really nothing to worry about."
I can read just fine. In the context of a discussion on expert consensus on climate change you state as fact that "to avoid 'significant negative impacts' to the global economy and environment from climate change, we need to restrict the change to a maximum of 2-2.5 degrees from pre industrial baseline. [...] It doesn't take anything other than high school maths to figure that we need to do something, and right now." While the question of consensus on AGW is still being debate, nobody even claims a widespread consensus that we "need to do something". I.e., your statement that this is obvious and certain is completely made up out of thin air.
You don't get funding or power by saying "everything is just fine, don't worry". You get funding and power by saying "everything is falling apart, but if you give me enough money and power, I can perhaps fix it for you."
More importantly, though, the fundamental belief was the same back then as it is today, and it is the same belief you keep reiterating, namely that it is the job of government to use scientific results and rational processes for the common good.
What do you prefer, irrational processes? Do you even read what you write?
Yes, do you? Instead of depriving people of liberty in order to promote the common good, which is what progressives and socialists favor, the job of government ought to be to secure liberty, which is what classical liberals favor.
Being progressive (the regular definition, not you weirdo version) means I'm open to any new ideas.
To avoid "significant negative impacts" to the global economy and environment from climate change, we need to restrict the change to a maximum of 2-2.5 degrees from pre industrial baseline
Ah, the usual bait and switch: taking a plausible but inconsequential result ("humans probably have contributed to warming") and then pretending as if any climate activist policy were justified because of it.
I meant I have no idea how you are trying to connect science with racism.
Yes, it is plainly evident that you don't. You really need to catch up on your US and European history.
After the greatest rise in standards of living in all of humanity since the rise of science and critical thought, it's disturbing to hear your beliefs.
As Kant put it in What is Enlightenment: "Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another." I suggest you read it, because you are still stuck in a pre-Enlightenment, pre-scientific world view in which responsibility and choice does not rest with the individual, but with society and its leaders.
I was born and educated in a 'socialist' country which has better standards of living and education than all but the 1%ers of the US. I was born poor and am now relatively well off because these systems give people like me a chance out of the swamp.
I challenge you to name a single socialist country whose standard of living comes even close to that of the US.
I'm not European, but thanks for making that embarrassing assumption
That perhaps explains your naivite.So what benighted part of the globe are you from then?
What you are referring to is something from the 19th century that shares nothing with today apart from a few shared letters in the name
Progressivism has a continuous history from the 19th century to the 21st. Many of the people who advocated segregation and eugenics are still revered by progressives.
More importantly, though, the fundamental belief was the same back then as it is today, and it is the same belief you keep reiterating, namely that it is the job of government to use scientific results and rational processes for the common good. That belief is so axiomatic for you that you can't even conceive that government could work differently. You are a typical 19th and 20th century progressive.
There is nothing "stupid or hypothetical" about it; this is what happened in Germany in the 1930's: scientists, historians, and economists claimed that Jews were inferior and were responsible for Germany's economic woes, the NSDAP got elected to fix the problem by expropriating Jews and resettling them out of the country, and the rest is history. These decisions were made both based on widely accepted scientific beliefs at the time and were reached through the democratic process. You just don't want to face facts.
I don't know what fine is assessed for such discrimination, but I'd expect it to be small. I don't even know if the bakery was fined.
Look, this discussion started with your assertion "Large fines for refusing to bake a cake? You need to read up on that. The bakers got a small fine for violating the law. However, they started a harassment campaign against the couple who wanted a cake and filed the complaint, and the resulting lawsuit was what cost them big." You needed to "read up on that", and we have established that your statement was a fabrication: there was no "initial fine", no "lawsuit", and "no campaign of harassment".
The bakery said "go away". The couple was feeling emotionally hurt at being illegally discriminated against, so they filed a report. I assume you are in favor of people being able to report illegal actions.
No, I am not in this case. I think the lesbian couple acted shamefully in turning what should have been a matter between private parties into a legal issue, and I condemn their choice. The fact that the law allowed them to do this doesn't make it right.
LAA is the 3rd Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP) effort to standardize operation of LTE in the Wi-Fi bands. It uses a contention protocol known as listen-before-talk (LBT), mandated in some European countries, to coexist with other Wi-Fi devices on the same band.
Ah, if only people voluntarily used that contention protocol.
no tax= no infrastructure, health, schooling, law enforcement or anything really. want that backroad fixed? pay up.
Infrastructure, health, schooling, and law enforcement are paid for through local taxes, user fees, and sales taxes; they do not justify national corporate taxes.
Furthermore, the US has spent massively on European defense, so by your reasoning, US companies operating in Europe should get a massive tax break just for that.
These European countries benefit from the services paid for by US taxation (R&D, military defense, infrastructure, education, healthcare, legal system etc.) but contribute almost nothing back.
The point under dispute was whether an entirely laissez-faire free market (that initially met your definition) could end up in a position where it didn't (e.g. a monopoly).
No, I didn't "take it as given". I am saying that this is not possible for the kinds of diverse and large markets we have. It's like the Second Law of Thermodynamics: large systems have the possibility of behaving that way, but it is so unlikely that we consider it a "law" that they don't.
You took it as given that "when free markets break down, it is through politics, not market mechanisms", meaning that by definition any such failure could only be ascribed to external interference in that otherwise free market- that is to say, the free market is perfect because the free market is perfect...!
Ah, I see the source of the confusion. The expression "free markets break down" is ambiguous: it can mean "free markets yield bad outcomes due to the emergence of monopolies" or it can mean "people are coerced by force to engage in economic transactions against their wishes". I was using it in the latter sense. Sorry for not expressing that more clearly.
So, what I'm saying is that if a monopoly on some good were to arise in a large free market and the political system continues to allow the market to operate freely, then market mechanisms will eliminate the monopoly; monopolies just aren't stable in large free markets. The only way a monopoly can be stable is when the political system intervenes in the market and forces people to continue to buy from the monopoly.
My point was that they still use the same shared infrastructure which either requires external regulation to allow access, or (in an unregulated market) is a weak point with high risk of failure- i.e. falling into the hands of a small number of parties exerting monopolistic or near-monopolistic control and using it as a barrier to entry for competitors.
And I'm saying that that belief is rooted in an analysis that mixes up existing government monopolies with free market mechanisms. That is, as a home owner living on a public street, I have no private property interest in the road that leads to my property. The fear of monopolistic control in that situation is well justified, but the monopolistic control over utilities arises out of monopolistic control over roads, which is something government established in the first place.
If the road leading to my property is instead owned and administered by a private association of the people living on that road (as they are in many places), the issue of monopolistic control over the road disappears, because now the property owners are in control, and they now have the power to decide how the wires running to their property are shared.
What if what you want do negatively impacts someone else's freedom? How do you control that? [...] I believe individual freedom have to be restricted in the common interest
So, which is it? Do you believe that people's freedom should be restricted so that they don't interfere with someone else's freedoms? Or do you believe that individual freedoms should be restricted for the good of society? The two are entirely different concepts.
Like many Americans and classical liberals, I draw the line of what is permissible at what Locke stated as: "Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." That applies both at the level of individuals and "society", which is nothing more than a collection of individuals.
Oh so now it's making sense. You were born in a soviet controlled country and now associate Hillary with Stalin.
No, I wasn't "born in a Soviet controlled country", I was born and educated in Western Europe, but I spent enough time in socialist countries to have a good idea of what socialism is all about, unlike you apparently. My parents were also old enough to have experienced the Nazis sweeping through Europe and government scientists performing craniometry on them.
Nope. I believe individual freedom have to be restricted in the common interest [...] and science proved them wrong. the racists tried to validate their view with science and science proved them wrong
So you are saying that the problem with scientific racism was that it was incorrect? If it had been right, the political choices based on it would have been justified? That, in principle, society has the right to prevent people from procreating and to oppress them if science can prove that they actually are mentally or physically inferior on average?
See, the problem with scientific racism was not that it was wrong, the problem with scientific racism was that people like you are willing to use scientific claims (whether right or wrong) to violate the rights of individuals for "the good of society". After the horrors of the 20th century, it is disturbing how common your beliefs are, in particular among people who really ought to know better based on their history.
Dude you have some issues there that won't be uncovered here.
Dude, you seriously need to read up on the history of progressivism and come to terms with it. Given Europe's history (I'm assuming you are European) not to understand what I'm referring to is an embarrassingly poor showing on your part.
The idea that the majority rule is called a democracy. What you are arguing against is not progressiveness, it the democratic model. [...] Politics is just a representation of attitude. eg If I think two people should be allowed to demonstrate their love for each other by society's standard of legal partnership, I will support a political party that share's that view.
So, just to encourage you to think that through. Let's say you live in some European country. Statistics suggest that Muslim immigrants to Europe are disproporationately opposed to gay rights, religious freedoms, women's equality, and free speech; they are overrepresented among violent criminals and recipients of government benefits. So, voters in your country reason that the country would be better off without Muslim immigrants and they vote to expel them all; they also decide to demand repayment of any and all welfare payments and other government benefits those immigrants have received, if necessary by expropriation. And for good measure, they are deciding to revoke the citizenship of Muslims who have recently immigrated.
So, it's a majority decision, you don't like people who believe in "sky fairies" anyway, and in addition, there is good evidence that it would actually benefit society on average. By your political reasoning, that would be a democratic decision, it would be a legitimate decision, and you would support it, right?
So you only care about yourself? That's not very "Christian".
I'm an atheist. And, I do care about others, which is why I believe that others should have the same free choice in these matters that I do.
It does actually, you just don't realise it.
I do realize it. But unlike you, I'm not selfish about it. You believe that other people's freedoms should be restricted so that society conforms to your preferences, and that is both illiberal and selfish.
True Freedom means greater risks from others exercising their freedom,
Yes, it does. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
But the data tells us that it is likely to affect you slightly less overall under a socialist model.
You know, I spent part of my childhood in a socialist country, and I'm afraid you are totally naive.
Politics is just a representation of attitude. eg If I think two people should be allowed to demonstrate their love for each other by society's standard of legal partnership, I will support a political party that share's that view.
And I believe that the very idea that society should have "standards of legal partnerships" is wrong. Who I love or cohabitate with is none of your or society's business, and shouldn't be subjected to social "standards". You have already accepted a view of government in which it is the responsibility of the state to bind individuals together into a society, you are simply quibbling over the details of the policies that such a state adopts.
Because people in the 19th century were racist, you refuse to support any political movement that existed in the 19th century? It all sounds a bit ridiculous.
Well, yes, that would be ridiculous. In fact, as I keep telling you, the reason I oppose progressivism (and its close cousins of socialism and fascism) is because it fundamentally denies the right to self-determination and individual liberties when they conflict with supposedly overall societal interests, as you yourself keep affirming. The particular "scientific" justifications used to deprive people of their liberties change every few years. A century ago, it was scientific racism, these days, it's other pseudo-science.
Christian churches receive massive state funding and special legal status in many European countries. I suggest you read up on whatever country you're interested in.
my point was even if the Queen of England was fucking the Pope, more people will still vote for an Atheist leader in Europe than the US.
Well, given that there are a lot more socialist and communist-leaning voters in Europe, that is hardly surprising. Why you think that matters either way, I don't know.
I'm glad you are happy, but that doesn't mean that progressive (not 19th century US progressive) policies don't improve lives.
Progressive policies improve some lives at the expense of harming others and interfering with civil liberties. And the fact that progressives accept those tradeoffs is at the heart of what's wrong with progressivism as a political movement.
Any minority group should be well aware of the that.
What any minority group should be well aware of is that they are at grave risk of being declared the minority that needs to be sterilized, expropriated, and/or silenced "for the common good", as progressive have historically done that to liberals, to the disabled, to homosexuals, to blacks, to Jews, and to many other minority groups. Being temporarily favored by progressives isn't worth the serious downsides.
Progressivism, its foundations in scientific racism, and its policies of segregation and eugenics were worldwide phenomena. The US progressive movement was fairly moderate compared to the crimes committed by progressive movements in Europe.
The idea that the majority rule is called a democracy. What you are arguing against is not progressiveness, it the democratic model.
"Democracy" just means that the source of government power comes from the people; there are many kinds of democracy. Majoritarianism is one form, but a particularly lousy one, which is why it is rarely used. Representative democracies were intended to address some of the problems with majoritarianism but are prone to corruption. Free market minarchies, anarcho-capitalism, demarchies, and cellular democracies are all also forms of democracy, and likely better choices than either majoritarianism or representative democracies.
If hell means longer life expectancy, greater access to health and education, lower corruption, and greater social mobility then I guess so. Do you not want these things?
There are a lot of problems with that entire list, but let's just look at a couple. You ask me: do I want a long life expectancy? Of course. But my personal life expectancy isn't determined by population averages. The fact that Americans have more freedom to overeat and engage in dangerous activities doesn't affect me; the fact that European governments impose strong and costly regulations on everything to keep people from doing stupid things did affect me in Europe. Greater access to education is great if you are a mediocre student, because you can go to university anyway; it's not so good for excellent students who have to go to dumbed down classes and get less attention.
To the small degree that the European model delivers on its promises, it does so by helping those below average by harming and limiting those above average and paying massive social and economic costs (cf. the massive youth unemployment). That's why people like me leave.
I just reject the notion that progressive attitudes have brought about all the world's evils, when clearly a lot of "progressive" nations are doing quite well (as the measurable statistics demonstrate)
There is nothing wrong with progressive attitudes. There is everything wrong with progressive politics.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, is this so hard to figure out?
"We think there is a serious problem with X. But we need more money to tell you how serious it is."
"We have studied problem X in more detail and have found out that it is much more serious than we originally though. There are, in fact, sub-problems X.1, X.2, and X.3. We need money to study these subproblems, plus we need money to develop possible solutions to this problem."
Repeat and extend at each step.
How much money do you think people would get for this?
"We have looked at X and determined that there is nothing to worry about. But if you give us more money, we can confirm with even greater certainty that there is really nothing to worry about."
I can read just fine. In the context of a discussion on expert consensus on climate change you state as fact that "to avoid 'significant negative impacts' to the global economy and environment from climate change, we need to restrict the change to a maximum of 2-2.5 degrees from pre industrial baseline. [...] It doesn't take anything other than high school maths to figure that we need to do something, and right now." While the question of consensus on AGW is still being debate, nobody even claims a widespread consensus that we "need to do something". I.e., your statement that this is obvious and certain is completely made up out of thin air.
Viruses can kill of large percentages of populations, but they are never 100% effective. Humanity would survive.
Dr. Longbore? Is that you?
You don't get funding or power by saying "everything is just fine, don't worry". You get funding and power by saying "everything is falling apart, but if you give me enough money and power, I can perhaps fix it for you."
You're welcome to correct me. How do you imagine Hitler came to power, and how do you think Germans justified their anti-Semitism?
Seriously? Switzerland is "socialist"?
You're right: time to give up; obviously your "public education system" has failed you and you are beyond the pale of rational discussion.
Yes, do you? Instead of depriving people of liberty in order to promote the common good, which is what progressives and socialists favor, the job of government ought to be to secure liberty, which is what classical liberals favor.
You're quite funny, even if unintentionally.
Ah, the usual bait and switch: taking a plausible but inconsequential result ("humans probably have contributed to warming") and then pretending as if any climate activist policy were justified because of it.
Yes, it is plainly evident that you don't. You really need to catch up on your US and European history.
As Kant put it in What is Enlightenment: "Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another." I suggest you read it, because you are still stuck in a pre-Enlightenment, pre-scientific world view in which responsibility and choice does not rest with the individual, but with society and its leaders.
I challenge you to name a single socialist country whose standard of living comes even close to that of the US.
That perhaps explains your naivite.So what benighted part of the globe are you from then?
Progressivism has a continuous history from the 19th century to the 21st. Many of the people who advocated segregation and eugenics are still revered by progressives.
More importantly, though, the fundamental belief was the same back then as it is today, and it is the same belief you keep reiterating, namely that it is the job of government to use scientific results and rational processes for the common good. That belief is so axiomatic for you that you can't even conceive that government could work differently. You are a typical 19th and 20th century progressive.
There is nothing "stupid or hypothetical" about it; this is what happened in Germany in the 1930's: scientists, historians, and economists claimed that Jews were inferior and were responsible for Germany's economic woes, the NSDAP got elected to fix the problem by expropriating Jews and resettling them out of the country, and the rest is history. These decisions were made both based on widely accepted scientific beliefs at the time and were reached through the democratic process. You just don't want to face facts.
Look, this discussion started with your assertion "Large fines for refusing to bake a cake? You need to read up on that. The bakers got a small fine for violating the law. However, they started a harassment campaign against the couple who wanted a cake and filed the complaint, and the resulting lawsuit was what cost them big." You needed to "read up on that", and we have established that your statement was a fabrication: there was no "initial fine", no "lawsuit", and "no campaign of harassment".
No, I am not in this case. I think the lesbian couple acted shamefully in turning what should have been a matter between private parties into a legal issue, and I condemn their choice. The fact that the law allowed them to do this doesn't make it right.
Ah, if only people voluntarily used that contention protocol.
Infrastructure, health, schooling, and law enforcement are paid for through local taxes, user fees, and sales taxes; they do not justify national corporate taxes.
Furthermore, the US has spent massively on European defense, so by your reasoning, US companies operating in Europe should get a massive tax break just for that.
There, FTFY
Yeah, but a regular $80 Kindle (or other e-ink reader) will do just fine for cheap outdoors reading.
No, I didn't "take it as given". I am saying that this is not possible for the kinds of diverse and large markets we have. It's like the Second Law of Thermodynamics: large systems have the possibility of behaving that way, but it is so unlikely that we consider it a "law" that they don't.
Ah, I see the source of the confusion. The expression "free markets break down" is ambiguous: it can mean "free markets yield bad outcomes due to the emergence of monopolies" or it can mean "people are coerced by force to engage in economic transactions against their wishes". I was using it in the latter sense. Sorry for not expressing that more clearly.
So, what I'm saying is that if a monopoly on some good were to arise in a large free market and the political system continues to allow the market to operate freely, then market mechanisms will eliminate the monopoly; monopolies just aren't stable in large free markets. The only way a monopoly can be stable is when the political system intervenes in the market and forces people to continue to buy from the monopoly.
And I'm saying that that belief is rooted in an analysis that mixes up existing government monopolies with free market mechanisms. That is, as a home owner living on a public street, I have no private property interest in the road that leads to my property. The fear of monopolistic control in that situation is well justified, but the monopolistic control over utilities arises out of monopolistic control over roads, which is something government established in the first place.
If the road leading to my property is instead owned and administered by a private association of the people living on that road (as they are in many places), the issue of monopolistic control over the road disappears, because now the property owners are in control, and they now have the power to decide how the wires running to their property are shared.
Incidentally, here is another interesting article by the same author, well worth reading for both Europeans and Americans.
So, which is it? Do you believe that people's freedom should be restricted so that they don't interfere with someone else's freedoms? Or do you believe that individual freedoms should be restricted for the good of society? The two are entirely different concepts.
Like many Americans and classical liberals, I draw the line of what is permissible at what Locke stated as: "Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." That applies both at the level of individuals and "society", which is nothing more than a collection of individuals.
No, I wasn't "born in a Soviet controlled country", I was born and educated in Western Europe, but I spent enough time in socialist countries to have a good idea of what socialism is all about, unlike you apparently. My parents were also old enough to have experienced the Nazis sweeping through Europe and government scientists performing craniometry on them.
Obviously not, which is an embarrassing lapse of historical knowledge on your part.
You're confusing "scientific" with "true". Racial superiority was a widely accepted scientific theory; it happened to be incorrect. More importantly, progressivism used scientific racism as justification for eugenics, segregation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
So you are saying that the problem with scientific racism was that it was incorrect? If it had been right, the political choices based on it would have been justified? That, in principle, society has the right to prevent people from procreating and to oppress them if science can prove that they actually are mentally or physically inferior on average?
See, the problem with scientific racism was not that it was wrong, the problem with scientific racism was that people like you are willing to use scientific claims (whether right or wrong) to violate the rights of individuals for "the good of society". After the horrors of the 20th century, it is disturbing how common your beliefs are, in particular among people who really ought to know better based on their history.
Dude, you seriously need to read up on the history of progressivism and come to terms with it. Given Europe's history (I'm assuming you are European) not to understand what I'm referring to is an embarrassingly poor showing on your part.
So, just to encourage you to think that through. Let's say you live in some European country. Statistics suggest that Muslim immigrants to Europe are disproporationately opposed to gay rights, religious freedoms, women's equality, and free speech; they are overrepresented among violent criminals and recipients of government benefits. So, voters in your country reason that the country would be better off without Muslim immigrants and they vote to expel them all; they also decide to demand repayment of any and all welfare payments and other government benefits those immigrants have received, if necessary by expropriation. And for good measure, they are deciding to revoke the citizenship of Muslims who have recently immigrated.
So, it's a majority decision, you don't like people who believe in "sky fairies" anyway, and in addition, there is good evidence that it would actually benefit society on average. By your political reasoning, that would be a democratic decision, it would be a legitimate decision, and you would support it, right?
I'm an atheist. And, I do care about others, which is why I believe that others should have the same free choice in these matters that I do.
I do realize it. But unlike you, I'm not selfish about it. You believe that other people's freedoms should be restricted so that society conforms to your preferences, and that is both illiberal and selfish.
Yes, it does. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You know, I spent part of my childhood in a socialist country, and I'm afraid you are totally naive.
And I believe that the very idea that society should have "standards of legal partnerships" is wrong. Who I love or cohabitate with is none of your or society's business, and shouldn't be subjected to social "standards". You have already accepted a view of government in which it is the responsibility of the state to bind individuals together into a society, you are simply quibbling over the details of the policies that such a state adopts.
Well, yes, that would be ridiculous. In fact, as I keep telling you, the reason I oppose progressivism (and its close cousins of socialism and fascism) is because it fundamentally denies the right to self-determination and individual liberties when they conflict with supposedly overall societal interests, as you yourself keep affirming. The particular "scientific" justifications used to deprive people of their liberties change every few years. A century ago, it was scientific racism, these days, it's other pseudo-science.
Christian churches receive massive state funding and special legal status in many European countries. I suggest you read up on whatever country you're interested in.
Well, given that there are a lot more socialist and communist-leaning voters in Europe, that is hardly surprising. Why you think that matters either way, I don't know.
Progressive policies improve some lives at the expense of harming others and interfering with civil liberties. And the fact that progressives accept those tradeoffs is at the heart of what's wrong with progressivism as a political movement.
What any minority group should be well aware of is that they are at grave risk of being declared the minority that needs to be sterilized, expropriated, and/or silenced "for the common good", as progressive have historically done that to liberals, to the disabled, to homosexuals, to blacks, to Jews, and to many other minority groups. Being temporarily favored by progressives isn't worth the serious downsides.
Progressivism, its foundations in scientific racism, and its policies of segregation and eugenics were worldwide phenomena. The US progressive movement was fairly moderate compared to the crimes committed by progressive movements in Europe.
"Democracy" just means that the source of government power comes from the people; there are many kinds of democracy. Majoritarianism is one form, but a particularly lousy one, which is why it is rarely used. Representative democracies were intended to address some of the problems with majoritarianism but are prone to corruption. Free market minarchies, anarcho-capitalism, demarchies, and cellular democracies are all also forms of democracy, and likely better choices than either majoritarianism or representative democracies.
There are a lot of problems with that entire list, but let's just look at a couple. You ask me: do I want a long life expectancy? Of course. But my personal life expectancy isn't determined by population averages. The fact that Americans have more freedom to overeat and engage in dangerous activities doesn't affect me; the fact that European governments impose strong and costly regulations on everything to keep people from doing stupid things did affect me in Europe. Greater access to education is great if you are a mediocre student, because you can go to university anyway; it's not so good for excellent students who have to go to dumbed down classes and get less attention.
To the small degree that the European model delivers on its promises, it does so by helping those below average by harming and limiting those above average and paying massive social and economic costs (cf. the massive youth unemployment). That's why people like me leave.
There is nothing wrong with progressive attitudes. There is everything wrong with progressive politics.