BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

Why should the average person need a qualified defence against the crown?

Shouldn't the justice system assess a case on its merits, not on how much coin the defendant has rendered unto the guild?

I'm very familiar with the legal system. Its a protection racket run by the legal fraternity. You get the justice you can afford.

People go to law school and medical school so they can become rich, not for the good of society or their fellow man.

onLy engiNeeRs pUREsue the iMprovMnet of HumaNity!

The other day we talked about how blue collar types seem obsessed with punching up towards white collar workers.

Are we going to now discuss why engineers feel the need to constantly punch at other fields? Like the lawyers do not even think about you people. The women's studies majors and the sociology students are too into their fields to worry about what the engineering students are up to. Engineering students are over represented in college massacres and murders. It's not the fine arts kids killing women at colleges. Next time a college massacre happens look for what major the kid had. It won't be art history.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

The other day we talked about how blue collar types seem obsessed with punching up towards white collar workers.

Are we going to now discuss why engineers feel the need to constantly punch at other fields? Like the lawyers do not even think about you people. The women's studies majors and the sociology students are too into their fields to worry about what the engineering students are up to. Engineering students are over represented in college massacres and murders. It's not the fine arts kids killing women at colleges. Next time a college massacre happens look for what major the kid had. It won't be art history.

IIRC It was uziq ridiculing bricklayers and whining about how they earn more than him which triggered this discussion.

In the field of high level psychopathy its invariably the arts graduates who are the high achievers.

I'm not aware there's any correlation between engineering and mass-shooters.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-19 18:23:35)

actually, dilbert, yet again it was you who invoked british working people to justify your hatred of polish workers. i linked an article stating that tradespeople earned more than university graduates, despite the majority of polish immigrants being tradespeople or menial labour.

you have yet, after about three posts of mentioning it, rebutted it. your best answer seems to be ‘it’s irrational and nationalism is okay-irrational but religion is bad-irrational because i don’t like it’.

apparently me and macbeth pointing out that blue-collar people disproportionately hold such views as yours, despite their economic reality (i.e. a good one) and seemingly at the beck and call of dog whistling tabloids (which you also seem aware of), makes us snobs. but you saying that lawyers and doctors who go to law school and medicine school are worthless and selfish isn’t snobby at all. it’s okay to accuse the white-collar of lousy motives and bad faith, but not the noble blue-collar worker! i suspect it’s because their views and politics narrowly align with your own, what what?!

Statistics doesn't quite agree with your claim of inherited privilege through the centuries. Today though, at least in the english speaking world, we do see that social mobility is significantly limited by wealth. As only those with money are able to afford higher education for their kids, and because their kids are usually much better prepared for school and academic pursuit than their less wealthy peers.

The last part is a real problem, selection boards for university and highly competitive jobs increasingly seek those who can show "long term achievement" as some sort of predictor for future succes. Your high school grades, volunteering, commission work all matters greatly. Without parental guidance 99% of kids wouldn't consider doing all the extracurricular nonsense that seems to be valued today. It also definitely excludes those who suffered instability and poverty in childhood, which significantly correlates with underachievement. Ergo a wealthy stable upbringing by educated parents who are familiar with the preferred path to 'succes' sets you up so much better in life than anyone else. I'm pretty sure we're creating a new aristocracy and that 'caste' seems to have a near monopoly on good education and highly paid or comfortable jobs.

But this is a new phenomenon, not one that can be traced to the dead aristocrats of the 19th and 20th centuries.

I've never said we should pander to anything, just avoid doing things which serve no purpose and will inevitably produce a backlash - because that would be stupid.

Throwing the immigration doors open in the name of 'multiculturalism' and pandering to the Europeans has delivered Brexit - is that net progress or net regression?

Your argument - the elite should do whatever is the fashion of the day in right-on-thinking circles - and fuck the plebs and their ill-educated media-driven opinions - is snobbery.
Its why people hate the snooty Euros and vote for apparent oafs like Farage and Johnson.

You can go on wishing that everyone will agree that you and your university chums are right on everything, but its not going to happen so I see a lot of griping in your future.

Next time you visit Europe and have an hour to kill in a customs queue I suggest you ponder this.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-20 01:03:23)

the obvious benefit, dilbert, is that there has been a ready labour force to take low-paying, unglamorous, unwanted labour. are you seriously asking what is the benefit of migrant workforces, now? they’ve been used for time immemorial to keep margins cut-throat, or simply to exploit and enrich owners.

hence why the CBI is apoplectic about the new points system.

i guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the govt’s ‘training british workers’ cant works out, seeing as shortly the country’s fruit and vegetable fields, old people’s homes, restaurant kitchens, long-distance haulage firms etc are going to be vacant. i mean what possible benefit did the migrant worker bring, picking kale for minimum wage!

the patriotic little englander is either going to have to get cozy with the idea of taking £300 a week home for back-breaking field work, or paying 1.5x the price for their weekly grocery shop. i see little alternative.

everything is so much simpler when capitalism keeps the underpaid and exploited workers hidden out of sight, out of mind in other countries.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-20 01:19:15)

uziq wrote:

the patriotic little englander is either going to have to get cozy with the idea of taking £300 a week home for back-breaking field work, or paying 1.5x the price for their weekly grocery shop. i see little alternative.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-20 01:33:39)

uziq wrote:

so you think the social mobility has stalled if not gone into total decline in a large number of western countries, no surprises that it’s the people who have been sending their children to the same schools since 1845 who are naturally claiming all the jobs in law, academia, politics, journalism, finance, business, etc.

not sure how you can argue against inherited privilege on the one hand and then open up the topic of social mobility on the other. two sides of the same janus face.

i’m quite sure this is worse in the UK than europe, so we might be talking of different contexts.

@dilbert, just let me know how ‘the average person’ thinks isn’t xenophobic, in the meanwhile you can stop with the petty snob accusations. your best defence seems to be ‘it’s irrational but so it goes’. so we should pander to people’s prejudices rather than try to improve people? interesting.

No, it's mostly a new caste. Social mobility was pretty decent in the 70s, 80s up until the 2000s. Now our insistent reliance on 'elite institutions' and companies who claim a monopoly on producing 'the leaders of tomorrow' is creating a new elite - the ones who attended those places and who send their kids that way. Yes, this is from a different perspective as we didn't have the established oxford/cambridge/lse/ivy league on the continent. Up until a decade or two ago university was also basically free and you'd receive generous government stipends for being a student. Today that system is pretty much gone and you'll be seriously in debt once you have your degree.

What I'm noticing is that increasingly many people in top management or government programs did their postgraduate or a second masters at LSE, Kings, Oxford, some comparable US institution or the French sciences po, HEC, INSEAD or ENA. They are completely overrepresented. Also, statistically less and less people from middle-lower class background attend university.  Inequality is rising, but to believe it's all the old aristocracy re-establishing themselves is wrong. By and large these are people who's grandfathers and parents propelled themselves to riches.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-02-20 02:07:24)

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

so you think the social mobility has stalled if not gone into total decline in a large number of western countries, no surprises that it’s the people who have been sending their children to the same schools since 1845 who are naturally claiming all the jobs in law, academia, politics, journalism, finance, business, etc.

not sure how you can argue against inherited privilege on the one hand and then open up the topic of social mobility on the other. two sides of the same janus face.

i’m quite sure this is worse in the UK than europe, so we might be talking of different contexts.

@dilbert, just let me know how ‘the average person’ thinks isn’t xenophobic, in the meanwhile you can stop with the petty snob accusations. your best defence seems to be ‘it’s irrational but so it goes’. so we should pander to people’s prejudices rather than try to improve people? interesting.

No, it's mostly a new caste. Social mobility was pretty decent in the 70s, 80s up until the 2000s. Now our insistent reliance on 'elite institutions' and companies who claim a monopoly on producing 'the leaders of tomorrow' is creating a new elite - the ones who attended those places and who send their kids that way. Yes, this is from a different perspective as we didn't have the established oxford/cambridge/lse/ivy league on the continent. Up until a decade or two ago university was also basically free and you'd receive generous government stipends for being a student. Today that system is pretty much gone and you'll be seriously in debt once you have your degree.

What I'm noticing is that increasingly many people in top management or government programs did their postgraduate or a second masters at LSE, Kings, Oxford, some comparable US institution or the French sciences po, HEC, INSEAD or ENA. They are completely overrepresented. Also, statistically less and less people from middle-lower class background attend university.  Inequality is rising, but to believe it's all the old aristocracy re-establishing themselves is wrong. By and large these are people who's grandfathers and parents propelled themselves to riches.

I wouldn't get too worried. At least here in America, while they dominate the public sector, they're not as sought after in the private sector as they once were. Something about all being the same, entitled, and more interested in socializing than working...