Even if you accept the pessimistic premise of your post there is still plenty of upward mobility available.
Not really though.
Imagine your typical fast food restaurant, with, say, 12 employees. If a shift manager leaves that position, now 1 of the other 5 employees has a chance to move up. Now, the owner is most likely to either move up the best of those 5 employees, or hire somebody new as shift manager who had previously been a shift manager. That means that at best that burger flipper has a 20% chance of advancing their career. Which means that 80% of those families are still stuck, even those who did good work and were above average but weren't quite as good as somebody else.
And if you're wondering why our hardworking but not stellar burger flipper doesn't go and start his own restaurant, that's usually because (a) he has no capital to invest, (b) he doesn't typically have the skills to go to a bank and get a business loan, and (c) he has no idea how to check into whether the restaurant could survive if he tried to start one.
Rich kids are definitely trained and prepared for leadership. Somebody like, say, George W Bush was born into wealth, went through the best schools we could come up with, was taught all sorts of skills that would help them run businesses or gain political office, put through a top university, typically followed by business school, and then starts their career near the top of the heap.
Upper-middle class kids go through lower-tier private schools or good public school systems. They are frequently taught leadership through opportunities like running school extracurriculars. They come out of their educational career with the skills they need to start in a white-collar position and work their way into middle management.
Lower-middle class kids go through pretty good public school systems, and learn what they'd need to know to get into college and have a good shot a white-collar job.
Poor kids, on the other hand, are taught to go along with things as best they can. They are given lousy schooling, and it's clear throughout the process that the best they should hope for is to manage the fast food restaurant rather than work for the boss.
There are exceptions to these rules, but they are definitely exceptions. There's some mobility: A bright poor person can work towards a white-collar career, and a real dullard may turn out a failure, but right now the primary determining factor of a kid's economic and educational achievements is the achievements of their parents.
As any player of Illuminati: NWO can tell you, he's not actually controlled by the gnomes of Zurich but instead by the Adepts of Hermes (through a tangled web involving urban gangs, Bill Clinton, vampires, and South American Nazis.
If you're really really good at Starcraft, you could end up a pro-gamer in Korea, which would put you in the same ranks in their society as a NFL player is here. Of course, your odds of that are even worse than your average high school player becoming an NFL star.
The other counterargument, as described by a college friend of mine: "2000 hit points, and no life".
the balanced social democracies emerging in '50s and '60s Europe
Not just Europe. Many Americans who identify themselves as "conservative" would love a return to the '50s United States. What they seem to forget is that that period in US history was one in which the top marginal tax rates were over 90% (instead of the current 35%), unions were the strongest they've ever been in human history, banking and other businesses were highly regulated, and the welfare state was growing stronger. And this was all under a Republican administration.
The succession rules aren't there to ensure that there's someone "who can lead America" -- they're there to ensure that there isn't a melee and free-for-all power grab among those same officials (or the military, or whomever) if this were to happen. They exist to guarantee that if person #4 on the list shows up to claim power away from person #6, person #6 will hopefully do the honorable thing (possibly at the prodding of the police and military) and gracefully hand power over to person #4.
That's only part of the story. The other part of the story (based on when the current succession rules were written) was that if the USSR had blown up large areas of the US with a nuclear strike, there'd be somebody officially in charge with the authority to order retaliation. It's well-understood that if the Secretary of Education is suddenly the head of state, you have loads of problems that don't have to do with orders of succession. The bureaucrats in question also aren't directly elected, but they do have the approval of the elected president and the elected senate.
And lastly, when it comes to a newly "brainless" US government, I'm not entirely sure how you'd notice.
How can it happen that one company (however large) can seemingly make most of the manufacturers to comply with their crazy ideas?
Like this: "Our operating system will only run on machines with this idea implemented. We've told all your major customers this, and we've made it clear that we will only sell operating systems to them if they only buy equipment that can handle this. You sure wouldn't want to lose 95% of your customer base." If their market share was 5% rather than 95%, they couldn't pull that off.
Only in markets where the economies of scale are greater than the diseconomies of scale up to the entire volume of the desired product. There are plenty of markets where there's no monopoly and no real tendency for monopoly, such as high-end restaurants.
The thing is, in case of compromise altering the stuff you have and the stuff you know is far easier than altering the stuff you are. For example, how would you easily replace a thumbprint?
I only interviewed with them a long time ago, but here's what I saw that made me not want to work there, and should give you an idea of why they suck: 1. The whole company is structured as "move up or move out". You have to get promoted at a particular pace, or you're fired. And yes, there are fewer promotions available than there are people on the team, so your coworkers are your competitors. 2. There's a specific hierarchy and pay scale for techies which is kept separate and unequal from the hierarchy for everyone else. All techies are officially second class citizens, and there is no way for developers, no matter how much they contribute, to move anywhere beyond either a more senior developer position, or a front-line manager of developers. 3. The pay was way lower than standard for somebody with my skill set and experience. You get what you pay for.
Basically, they're the epitome of a corporate whale that provides very little real value while raking in tons of cash from big companies and government.
You're going to have many many summers to code. If all you've ever done is coding, you're going to find yourself to be an exceptionally boring person. You may also find that your first love isn't coding at all, but actually something completely different. It's far cheaper to make that discovery now than 3 years into your CS major.
Or would you prefer we bring back slavery? will that fix your problem:?
Nah, what they're looking for is a return to the Good Old Days of 1905 or so when we didn't have to pay people enough to live on even if they had every member of the family aged 7-70 working 15 hours a day 7 days a week.
It's NOT all about jobs, we do NOT want jobs, we want the final product.
You're generally right, but wrong about this point. We want the final product to be sure, but in order to afford to buy the final product we need jobs to earn the money to buy the final product, and right now what is scarce is not stuff but jobs. Hence the emphasis on jobs.
The entire PC industry has spent twenty years concentrating on "Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper!", look where it's got us.
It took the price of a desktop PC from about $3600 to about $500 (in 2010 dollars) over that period, all while massively improving the technology. Yeah, that's a real loss.
See, here's the thing: What's a loss for the PC industry in terms of higher margins is a win for every industry and consumer that uses PCs for anything. That competitive pressure would cause the price to go down isn't a flaw, it's capitalism doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
Wow. I'd hate to hear your review of Homer's Odyssey.
Oh, that's a great one for the kids - chock full of exquisite sex and wholesome violence that underscores our values (to quote a certain ex-president). Also has generous helpings of drug use, rock-and-roll, and of course a lot of religious imagery which I'm sure the Christian right would find horrifically evil.
Basically, the way to get kids to remember stuff and want to learn stuff is to make it relevant to their real life. For example, to teach algebra, focus on personal finance, because most kids who are bored to death by "let's study exponential growth" are far more interested in "here's how to make more money". To teach physics or chemistry, a few controlled and safe explosions go a long way towards making kids interested.
Actually, it's not "launching social networks" as much as "launching bleeding-edge viral cloud-based scalable social software with user-generated content".
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you accept the pessimistic premise of your post there is still plenty of upward mobility available.
Not really though.
Imagine your typical fast food restaurant, with, say, 12 employees. If a shift manager leaves that position, now 1 of the other 5 employees has a chance to move up. Now, the owner is most likely to either move up the best of those 5 employees, or hire somebody new as shift manager who had previously been a shift manager. That means that at best that burger flipper has a 20% chance of advancing their career. Which means that 80% of those families are still stuck, even those who did good work and were above average but weren't quite as good as somebody else.
And if you're wondering why our hardworking but not stellar burger flipper doesn't go and start his own restaurant, that's usually because (a) he has no capital to invest, (b) he doesn't typically have the skills to go to a bank and get a business loan, and (c) he has no idea how to check into whether the restaurant could survive if he tried to start one.
Rich kids are definitely trained and prepared for leadership. Somebody like, say, George W Bush was born into wealth, went through the best schools we could come up with, was taught all sorts of skills that would help them run businesses or gain political office, put through a top university, typically followed by business school, and then starts their career near the top of the heap.
Upper-middle class kids go through lower-tier private schools or good public school systems. They are frequently taught leadership through opportunities like running school extracurriculars. They come out of their educational career with the skills they need to start in a white-collar position and work their way into middle management.
Lower-middle class kids go through pretty good public school systems, and learn what they'd need to know to get into college and have a good shot a white-collar job.
Poor kids, on the other hand, are taught to go along with things as best they can. They are given lousy schooling, and it's clear throughout the process that the best they should hope for is to manage the fast food restaurant rather than work for the boss.
There are exceptions to these rules, but they are definitely exceptions. There's some mobility: A bright poor person can work towards a white-collar career, and a real dullard may turn out a failure, but right now the primary determining factor of a kid's economic and educational achievements is the achievements of their parents.
As any player of Illuminati: NWO can tell you, he's not actually controlled by the gnomes of Zurich but instead by the Adepts of Hermes (through a tangled web involving urban gangs, Bill Clinton, vampires, and South American Nazis.
If you're really really good at Starcraft, you could end up a pro-gamer in Korea, which would put you in the same ranks in their society as a NFL player is here. Of course, your odds of that are even worse than your average high school player becoming an NFL star.
The other counterargument, as described by a college friend of mine: "2000 hit points, and no life".
Wait, how the heck did they manage to get a swamp?
the balanced social democracies emerging in '50s and '60s Europe
Not just Europe. Many Americans who identify themselves as "conservative" would love a return to the '50s United States. What they seem to forget is that that period in US history was one in which the top marginal tax rates were over 90% (instead of the current 35%), unions were the strongest they've ever been in human history, banking and other businesses were highly regulated, and the welfare state was growing stronger. And this was all under a Republican administration.
The succession rules aren't there to ensure that there's someone "who can lead America" -- they're there to ensure that there isn't a melee and free-for-all power grab among those same officials (or the military, or whomever) if this were to happen. They exist to guarantee that if person #4 on the list shows up to claim power away from person #6, person #6 will hopefully do the honorable thing (possibly at the prodding of the police and military) and gracefully hand power over to person #4.
That's only part of the story. The other part of the story (based on when the current succession rules were written) was that if the USSR had blown up large areas of the US with a nuclear strike, there'd be somebody officially in charge with the authority to order retaliation. It's well-understood that if the Secretary of Education is suddenly the head of state, you have loads of problems that don't have to do with orders of succession. The bureaucrats in question also aren't directly elected, but they do have the approval of the elected president and the elected senate.
And lastly, when it comes to a newly "brainless" US government, I'm not entirely sure how you'd notice.
Requiring employees to demonstrate that they don't ingest particular mind-altering substances in their spare time as a condition of their employment?
(Full disclosure: I don't use drugs, but I think it's completely inappropriate that employers test for them.)
Who said the CEO would use this on himself? No, this kind of tracking is only for the peons.
How can it happen that one company (however large) can seemingly make most of the manufacturers to comply with their crazy ideas?
Like this: "Our operating system will only run on machines with this idea implemented. We've told all your major customers this, and we've made it clear that we will only sell operating systems to them if they only buy equipment that can handle this. You sure wouldn't want to lose 95% of your customer base." If their market share was 5% rather than 95%, they couldn't pull that off.
Capitalism tends towards monopolies.
Only in markets where the economies of scale are greater than the diseconomies of scale up to the entire volume of the desired product. There are plenty of markets where there's no monopoly and no real tendency for monopoly, such as high-end restaurants.
You missed the joke - I'm arguing that GGP lost his wife because he was starving. Think along the lines of this Monty Python sketch.
The thing is, in case of compromise altering the stuff you have and the stuff you know is far easier than altering the stuff you are. For example, how would you easily replace a thumbprint?
I only interviewed with them a long time ago, but here's what I saw that made me not want to work there, and should give you an idea of why they suck:
1. The whole company is structured as "move up or move out". You have to get promoted at a particular pace, or you're fired. And yes, there are fewer promotions available than there are people on the team, so your coworkers are your competitors.
2. There's a specific hierarchy and pay scale for techies which is kept separate and unequal from the hierarchy for everyone else. All techies are officially second class citizens, and there is no way for developers, no matter how much they contribute, to move anywhere beyond either a more senior developer position, or a front-line manager of developers.
3. The pay was way lower than standard for somebody with my skill set and experience. You get what you pay for.
Basically, they're the epitome of a corporate whale that provides very little real value while raking in tons of cash from big companies and government.
Another good answer: Something other than coding.
You're going to have many many summers to code. If all you've ever done is coding, you're going to find yourself to be an exceptionally boring person. You may also find that your first love isn't coding at all, but actually something completely different. It's far cheaper to make that discovery now than 3 years into your CS major.
Who's starvation, your's or her's?
Or would you prefer we bring back slavery? will that fix your problem:?
Nah, what they're looking for is a return to the Good Old Days of 1905 or so when we didn't have to pay people enough to live on even if they had every member of the family aged 7-70 working 15 hours a day 7 days a week.
Because it would interfere with their antivirus software, of course.
It's NOT all about jobs, we do NOT want jobs, we want the final product.
You're generally right, but wrong about this point. We want the final product to be sure, but in order to afford to buy the final product we need jobs to earn the money to buy the final product, and right now what is scarce is not stuff but jobs. Hence the emphasis on jobs.
The entire PC industry has spent twenty years concentrating on "Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper!", look where it's got us.
It took the price of a desktop PC from about $3600 to about $500 (in 2010 dollars) over that period, all while massively improving the technology. Yeah, that's a real loss.
See, here's the thing: What's a loss for the PC industry in terms of higher margins is a win for every industry and consumer that uses PCs for anything. That competitive pressure would cause the price to go down isn't a flaw, it's capitalism doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
Confused you are? Translate I will:
Understand Yoda speak, everyone on this site will.
"Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer 'extortion' - the 'X' makes it sound cool." - Bender Bending Rodriguez
Wow. I'd hate to hear your review of Homer's Odyssey.
Oh, that's a great one for the kids - chock full of exquisite sex and wholesome violence that underscores our values (to quote a certain ex-president). Also has generous helpings of drug use, rock-and-roll, and of course a lot of religious imagery which I'm sure the Christian right would find horrifically evil.
Basically, the way to get kids to remember stuff and want to learn stuff is to make it relevant to their real life. For example, to teach algebra, focus on personal finance, because most kids who are bored to death by "let's study exponential growth" are far more interested in "here's how to make more money". To teach physics or chemistry, a few controlled and safe explosions go a long way towards making kids interested.
Actually, it's not "launching social networks" as much as "launching bleeding-edge viral cloud-based scalable social software with user-generated content".