Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Decentralize Everything and Get Rid of College

"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of the truth." - Albert Einstein

I've had enough jobs to know most of my "bosses" were morons, and that especially includes MBAs from Harvard and Yale. I came to the conclusion years much of college is worthless and sometimes even dangerous.

College and most jobs are based on hierarchy. There is nothing especially wrong with hierarchy, as long as those in charge are competent. That is, it is a legitimate hierarchy based on competent authority. College doesn't particularly lend itself to that. And that's the rub.

Everything is in reality a web or network. There is no one is charge of any of it. Those networks work best when decentralized. And although there are various hierarchies in that network, the people at the tops of those hierarchies have to be the best ones.

I have found the Old Boy's Network really does exist and in that hierarchy the stupid are promoted. That's an incompetent hierarchy within a network that will disappear. More competent, better networks will erase them - and this is how it should be.

Those networks or web are not static but dynamic. The existence of those webs in static but the fact they change is dynamic. We just want them to change for the better, which they don't always do.

Bureaucracies are as static as can be.

These days, those people aren't the ones coming out of those creaky, decrepit institutions known as colleges. Look at what Khan Academy has done.

There are more women than men in college. The ignorant howl. Ninety-percent of my time in college was worthless. All of high school was worthless. For all practical purposes I could have dropped out of school in the first grade, after I learned to read and write and do arithmetic. Nearly everything I learned, I taught myself.

Everything that can be decentralized will be decentralized, which is why I expect the U.S. to break up. It should have broken up before we ended up with the War between the States.

People should start at the bottom and work their way up. Like Jimmy Olson, cub reporter in the old Superman series. My father, who was a high-school dropout and became a general contractor, started as a cub carpenter. Beginners were really called that - cubs.

People want to associate with people like themselves. Smart with smart. So I expect, with these decentralized networks, that the U.S. in going to split into a few or more nations, and one of them will be mostly composed of the smartest people. Now as to where this will be, I don't yet know.

6 comments:

James and the Giant Peach said...

I teach part time at a tutoring center (age 23 myself) and the amount of stuff kids don't learn especially with the common core is insane.

I have to teach them basic stuff, and I do it without any of the retarded tricks that school books try to use. Funnily enough, I could teach the kids at least 1-3 concepts by the end of a 2 hour session.

Public education on the otherhand, has one underpaid, under qualified teacher trying to teach over 30 students. What ends up happening is the teacher doesn't give a shit and gives out handouts, and the ones who pass will pass, and ones who won't, won't. It ends up being not teaching, but testing.

The only reason I did very well in public school is because my mother was a stay at home mom, and she taught me a lot of the stuff beforehand, whether it was math or science, and she always forced me to read books.

Having only one good tutor (or heck even that thing called a PARENT) plus reading books at home, will teach infinitely better than the public school education system. (And that's saying something since I went to the number 1 public high school in NYC.)

That is why all the smart people in the past where self studying people, who also worked under a mentor.

When I went to my top 14 college and took chemistry class first semester, I was one out of 200 students. The teacher probably didn't even know my name, it was you better study yourself if you want to have a shot at passing. The school would have been better off giving us the textbooks and just giving us an exam every 3 weeks, and I would have probably done better.

Anonymous said...

College is a generational fraud of epic proportions. I know because I spent 10 years in college, not to mention thousands of dollars.

The modern college wealth extraction scheme is designed to transfer money from the millennial generation to the baby boomer generation. The justification for the ripoff is claiming that the suckers are being sold a valuable product/service. College is not valuable. It is a massive liability.

Glen Filthie said...

You can't, Bob.

You see, corporate America is every bit as f***ed as the universities are. Affirmative action is king. Feminism is queen. Productive employees are punished and held back while the sexually and mentally disturbed are promoted in hopes of making them feel better about themselves.

These idiots won't train either. Why should they? They got their own jobs just because they had the right skin colour or reproductive plumbing so why should they go to the time and expense of training? They fully expect college kids to parachute in, hit the ground running - and work miracles. These baby boomer morons are so dumb, that they don't realize that if the kids could work miracles, they would do so first by putting their idiot elders out of business, and making all the profits for themselves.
The average American changes jobs at least 10 times before he hits 40. He moves about 4 times. How can a stable working middle class arise out of that?
I have one message for Corporate America: GO SOD YOURSELF!
The best jobs are today with the small companies and most of the best opportunity will be with bosses that are old world men...or guys like us in otherwords.

Anonymous said...

The problem isn't going away any time soon.
The first big push was to get women working so their home duties could be outsourced, taxing both the women and the babysitters and cleaners they subcontract housework to.
The second big push was to get them laid up with massive debt so that even if they wanted to drop out and be a stay at home wife, they can't afford to.
I'm surprised they haven't just started calling College/University Year 13, 14, etc.
Even Australia has adopted the American model of degrees for more money. A four year degree that got you a job is now five years!

Anonymous said...

''Everything that can be decentralized will be decentralized, which is why I expect the U.S. to break up.''

What makes you think that the outcome will be different from the American civil war with the Union seeking to conquer the Confederacy that occurred as a result of rightful secession when Lincoln is president?

Unknown said...

This country is already breaking up.