Elsewhere (281)
Further to recent rumblings in the comments, Helen Dale on the massive oversupply of negligibly-talented artists and writers:
There are too many artists, too many people who want to be artists, and most of them aren’t very good… Meanwhile, universities (yes, you can go to university, rack up student debt, and ‘learn’ to be a writer) tell some people – depending on skin tone, sex, orientation, or something else – that as a matter of routine they have an important and luminous story to tell because of what they are… These people are everywhere in the economy, living hand-to-mouth and doing idiot things like demanding “luxury communism now.”
Via Tim, James Delingpole and David Craig on low standards in higher education:
When we were at university, probably one out of six school-leavers went to university. Now it’s about one out of every two. The number of people going to university has gone up from about 700,000 thirty years ago to over 2.3 million now… The way we’ve achieved that is not by increasing the intellectual capacity of British youth. For example, now, around 51% of all people going to university are getting in on three ‘D’s at A-level, or worse. Leeds Metropolitan University during one year had 97 courses for which you only needed two ‘E’s at A-level… We’ve increased the number of students with a huge drop in the bar you need to get over to get a place at university, and to be able to borrow up to £50,000 of taxpayers’ money.
There are currently around £100bn in outstanding student loans, of which, according to some estimates, 83% are expected to be in default to varying degrees.
Somewhat related, this:
“Teaching is proving to be one viable way for socialists to get into the labour movement and wage class struggle in a key industry that is under attack by capital,” the pamphlet declares. “Teachers across the country and indeed the world have shown us that if we organise in the schools, we can not only win concessions from the millionaire and billionaire class, but can also set a powerful example for the entire working class to follow.”
And Dave Huber on fixated academics and racist hair colouring:
Award-winning poet Claudia Rankine is back, this time dissecting what it “means” when people decide to — wait for it — bleach their hair blonde. Given her monumental racial imagination, it shouldn’t be all that difficult to guess where the Yale professor took the significance of being light-maned.
Apparently, it’s an “unconscious, ubiquitous metaphor” for “whiteness,” and therefore deeply worrying to professors of poetry.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Theodore Dalrymple on plain speaking and its enemies.
Some things never change.
Reminds me of Francis Bacon’s assertion in the 16th Century…that one cause of sedition and mutiny in any polity is “breeding more scholars than preferment can take off.”
This post by David Foster at the great Chicago Boys blog also rings true:
Too much education really is bad for you!
The above is from this article in the Spectator, and it’s well worth reading in full:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/why-cant-lefties-deal-with-a-transsexual-conservative/
I was reminded of this, from a few years ago:
Evidently, the lowering of standards is much worse than I realised at the time.
There are currently around £100bn in outstanding student loans, of which, according to some estimates, 83% are expected to be in default to varying degrees.
“What can’t go on, won’t.”
Incidentally, David Craig’s book, The Great University Con: How we broke our universities and betrayed a generation, can be bought here, or for Amazon US, here.
For example, now, around 51% of all people going to university are getting in on three ‘D’s at A-level, or worse.
Great podcast: “A mis-selling scandal that with make PFI look like small beer”.
That.
Great podcast: “A mis-selling scandal that with make PFI look like small beer”.
Yes, it’s worth hearing in full. The statistics alone, regarding grade inflation, employment figures, degree-waving dog-walkers, etc., are quite eye-widening.
Tim Newman on racist cup-holders.
. . . we can not only win concessions from the millionaire and billionaire class, . . .
There’s a millionaire and billionaire class???
Yeahright.
One does things, rather than one is something.
In turn, one has money or a lack of money, one is never the mere collection of money . . .
These people are everywhere in the economy, living hand-to-mouth and doing idiot things like demanding “luxury communism now.”
That.
That.
The ongoing, massive oversupply of mediocre “creatives” – it’s a noun now, you know – has coincided with quite a few articles like this one from the Guardian, in which left-leaning novelist Brigid Delaney expects a nicer flat and a more glamorous lifestyle, at taxpayer expense, on account of her self-imagined importance to the turning of the world. You see, living within her means, as mere mortals do, would “compromise” her immense creativity.
The very next day, the Guardian also brought us the lamentations of Amien Essif, who was apparently shocked to discover that writing about “consumerism, gentrification and hegemony” isn’t a sure-fire way to pay the bills, let alone to live in a manner befitting a would-be member of the cultural elite. Naturally, rather than rethinking his own life choices, Mr Essif believes that taxpayers should be made to “subsidise creativity” – specifically, his own.
Naturally, rather than rethinking his own life choices, Mr Essif believes that taxpayers should be made to “subsidise creativity” – specifically, his own.
To which, I reply, “Wallace Stevens, insurance executive.
And as far as public subsidies for “creatives,” I note that only certain types of creativity warrant a spot at the public trough. No one ever talks about public subsidies for chemical engineers designing pharmaceutical plants. I wonder why that is . . . ?
And as far as public subsidies for “creatives,” I note that only certain types of creativity warrant a spot at the public trough.
It’s quite strange to watch these people parading an attitude, a swollen sense of entitlement to other people’s earnings, that for an earlier generation – my parents’ generation, certainly – would have been widely regarded as degenerate and mortifying.
And as far as public subsidies for “creatives,” I note that only certain types of creativity warrant a spot at the public trough.
It’s the flip-side of a conceit whereby all manner of “creativity” is bundled together so as to obscure distinctions between viable and not, and talented and not. As when Everyday Feminism’s Katherine Garcia bemoaned how hard it is to be taken seriously as “a creative… a multi-dimensional creature,” albeit one unburdened by any obvious talent:
But if you poke through the archives – almost anything tagged ‘art’ – you’ll find dozens of iterations of the same dishonesty.
It’s the flip-side of a conceit whereby all manner of “creativity” is bundled together so as to obscure distinctions between viable and not…
I present, “Five Syllables Without an Haiku:”
Sit On A Pickle.
Where’s my check?
a swollen sense of entitlement to other people’s earnings, that for an earlier generation – my parents’ generation, certainly – would have been widely regarded as degenerate and mortifying.
My parents generation as well. What I learned in AP history in high school and later in macro economics in college was that my parents were just uneducated/ignorant people who simply did not understand the big picture. We owe everything to the philosophers. If you doubt that you could simply ask them. If you don’t know any yourself, I can point you to one or two. My parents never had the “advantage” of a college education (or in Dad’s case, completing one) to tell them how wrong they were. Heh…I remember how my silly father reacted when I told him (because I learned it in school, of course) that it was WW2 that ended the Great Depression. Even though he and my mom lived through it, they simply did not understand how reallocating resources to creating and then dropping tons of bombs on Europe and Japan and then spending tons of money to rebuild Europe and Japan is what really ended it. Well that and having the Germans and Japanese kill off a significant number of our able bodied men. Philosophers are educated and they understand these things, of course, what with their great vision and all. We really should be more appreciative. Really. And the to Nazis and Japs as well if you really think about it. Just think how good things would have been if only they had done more damage. Probably the main reason why we don’t have flying cars today. Well that and a lack of government funding. Damn Republicans. But I understand they’re learning as well.
I suppose you’ll have to judge for yourself regarding your own parents. Sorry if I smashed any illusions but if you think about it you will realize it’s really for your own good.
…depending on skin tone, sex, orientation, or something else…they have an important and luminous story to tell because of what they are…
How many writers are submitting manuscripts with fake CVs and photos to make them appear to be socialist black LGBBQWTFOMG± amputees? Do we have any recent best-selling authors who refuse to do book-signings and appearances because of “crippling social anxiety” or the like?
“The number of people going to university has gone up from about 700,000 thirty years ago to over 2.3 million now”
It’s worth bearing in mind that this is because the sooper-jeniuses of the Blair government saw that graduates in the ’90s got better-paid jobs than non-graduates, and concluded that if everyone was a graduate, we’d all be professional high-flyers. It beggars belief that grown adults – graduates themselves – actually thought in this cargo-cult manner, but yes, they actually did. And these are the people now considered sane “moderates” in the Labour party.
“[T]hose on the left regard me as a Judas.”
I wonder what they’d make of Deirdre McCloskey, if they ever heard of her.
“There’s a millionaire and billionaire class???”
It can’t help picturing the author jumping into a hansom, lighting a pipe, and telling the cabman to drive of into the old pea-souper.
“creatives”
Oh, do not get me started…
Ayn Rand didn’t invent the character of Balph Eubank, she merely observed it, and saw where it led.
Oh, do not get me started…
As a noun, it’s so conveniently non-specific.
“So what do you do, then?”
“I’m a creative. Obviously.”
There are currently around £100bn in outstanding student loans, of which, according to some estimates, 83% are expected to be in default to varying degrees.
Waitaminute! Is this the UK? Hang on here: the younglings on internet social media continually demand that American universities should be free, as they are in the UK.
Are they full of shit about this, just as they are about everything else?
No one ever talks about public subsidies for chemical engineers designing pharmaceutical plants. I wonder why that is . . . ?
Um, most Western first world governments offer massive subsidies, tax incentives, and other forms of public support for technological R&D.
Do we have any recent best-selling authors who refuse to do book-signings and appearances because of “crippling social anxiety” or the like?
There’s a non-trivial number of men writing romance novels under a female nom de plume because women won’t buy trashy housewife porn written by a man. Since a significant portion of a genre writer’s income can now come from conventions and book-signings, they suffer financially for it.
Fern Michaels, who’s been in the romance business forever, is a man. I forget his real name but ages ago he wrote an interesting article about the business.
If I had to choose between being forced to subsidize “creative” hipsters and being forced to subsidize Walmart, I guess I’d go with the hipsters as they’re probably cheaper, but I’d rather not subsidize hipsters OR Walmart.
All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately.
The correct and underused word for most of these lumpenintelligentsia types is loser. Like unemployed rustbelt workers, they don’t have what it takes to compete in a globalized world.
But unlike rustbelt workers, who didn’t vote to have their working conditions degraded by global competition, the lumpenintelligentsia are losers on terms they’ve chosen themselves, they’re losers according to principles they celebrated on the assumption that they’re turn out to be among the winners. Their “creative output” is as freely available on the Internet as everyone else’s – so if they’re not globally competitive they have no excuse, and there aren’t many small ponds left where they can be a big fish.
A “creative” who’s reached 25 years old with no sign of the kind of success that pays a mortgage should think about whether he’d be happy being a struggling genius at 35 or 45 years old. He’d probably be better off taking the kind of advice he’d give to the deplorable losers in the rustbelt – learn how to code, or train for a job in the thriving elder-care industry. And he can carry on his artistic projects in the evenings and weekends – if Philip Larkin and TS Eliot had day jobs, who has the right to to sneer at it?
“Are they full of shit about this, just as they are about everything else?”
Pretty much, yeah. Tuition fees are capped at £9,000 p.a. (which, of course, our students say is still too much; clearly, since the cap exists, it’s not nearly enough), but they do exist. In England. The great statesmen of the Scottish Parliament abolished them a few years back for all EU citizens except the English. But don’t call them Nazis.
(I’m not sure about Wales and Northern Ireland. My impression is that Wales is the same as England. Ulster, I’ve no idea.)
The wiki for Fern Michaels refers to her as female.
The Wiki is wrong. His real name is Michael Something (of the Boston Somethings, I believe.)
My gosh, the Internet’s wrong! What’s the world coming to?
Too many artists…
I’ve probably told this story here before, but anyway…
Many many years after I graduated, I was at UC Berkeley, walking up Bancroft Avenue from Sproul Plaza. I’m about to pass a middle-age man sitting on a low wall next to the sidewalk. He has that subtle look of the college town person who never really re-entered the real world following his stint at Uni.
As I pass, I clearly hear him mutter “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be artists.”
So perhaps reality can set in, and enlightenment strike. Even if it takes a decade or two.
It’s worth bearing in mind that this is because the sooper-jeniuses of the Blair government saw that graduates in the ’90s got better-paid jobs than non-graduates, and concluded that if everyone was a graduate, we’d all be professional high-flyers. It beggars belief that grown adults – graduates themselves – actually thought in this cargo-cult manner, but yes, they actually did.
This was observed by Instapundit back in 2010, and subsequently labeled “Reynolds’ Law“:
@David
Theodore Dalrymple on plain speaking and its enemies.
It is clear that “Trudy” mentioned therein fills a much-needed void.
the Blair government… concluded that if everyone was a graduate, we’d all be professional high-flyers. It beggars belief that grown adults – graduates themselves – actually thought in this cargo-cult manner, but yes, they actually did.
They don’t seem to comprehend a basic fact. The intelligence doesn’t come from the university.
Is This the Stupidest Book Ever Written About Socialism?
Thought I’d share the latest from California — Gov Jerry Brown just signed a bill eliminating all money bail.
Good for him!
Education is not as important as everyone thinks.
Pogonip
Not only NOT good, but will increase crime that has already gone up in this criminal coddling state.
as our public fund pays for things like health care, education, scientific research, and infrastructure—
Because money by itself just does stuff. Things will simply appear if we go through the magic motions of handing green pieces of paper to each other.
All the hogs should be slopped out of the same trough. People have sat in jail for months on misdemeanor charges because they couldn’t buy their way out. No bail for anyone.
I can’t remember which one, but some state is setting up an algorithm to decide if someone’s a flight risk. My experience with computers does not make me optimistic about this. I’d prefer a system where non-violent suspects are released on their own recognizance and violent ones aren’t. If that means Mr. Bigshot sits in jail with the peasants for 6 months while waiting to come to trial, too bad.
Hi Lotocoti,
At least she’s not insisting everyone should go to college!
Education is not as important as everyone thinks.
The operative word being “survived”, which is not exactly the same thing as “flourished”.
If that means Mr. Bigshot sits in jail with the peasants for 6 months while waiting to come to trial, too bad.
Except you know it won’t, because Mr. Bigshot will have an army of expensive lawyers to convince Judge “thanks for the campaign donation” Zotz to let him walk, whereas Joe Baggadonuts will have a public defender who has 100 other clients and might remember how to spell Joe’s last name.
Out with education, in with indoctrination. They’re being quite clear about that.
This will go swimmingly when ebola comes calling.
The elimination of cash bail options presumably does not do away with surety bonds as bail. Cash bail, at least in my jurisdiction, is always an option, but most people pay 10% to a bail bondsman. Cash bail is only required for people who’ve already failed to appear to answer charges.
Further, the risk of absconding is not the only consideration. The majority of people accused of crimes have long histories of contacts with the criminal justice system. For many, the inability to make bail at least keeps puts their criminal activity on hiatus for a few months.
I should also mention, those people who cannot afford bail for a misdemeanor, usually can’t afford the fine if they’re convicted and normally get sentenced to time served. Additionally, people charged with crimes are usually given a preliminary arraignment within 48 hours if they’re in jail. If they cannot post a bond–cash or surety–judges will order an pretrial release investigation to determine their suitability for an OR release. Suffice it to say, having people stay months in jail waiting for a misdemeanor trial disposition is extraordinarily rare and undoubtedly due to some sort of administrative “F”-up and not the fact that a cash bond was required.
Thanks, R. Sherman!
There are an awful lot of those administrative screw-ups…
The elimination of cash bail options presumably does not do away with surety bonds as bail.
Not in CA’s SB10 that Brown signed. In or out of custody before pretrial is by assessment only. All misdemeanor arrests, except for domestic violence or 3rd DUI within 10 years, are to be released within 12 hours of booking. In felony cases, there are supposed to be some ‘violent offenses’ that will remain in custody until arraignment, ineligible for early assessment, but CA’s definition of “violent crime” is pretty damn narrow. For instance, felony arson is not considered “violent.”
The court is directed by this law to take the least restrictive measures prior to pretrial. Felonies will be assessed as low, medium and high risk with high risk the only ones considered to be kept in jail.
The ACLU was among the sponsors of the original bill, but are now opposing it as passed because the “pretrial assessment group” will be organized by the county courts with judges’ input and also allows prosecutors to object in court when they disagree with the group’s finding.
I’m assuming (I have to go back and trace the history) the ACLU wanted a group picked and fully independent of the court plus cutting the prosecutor out of the assessment completely.
I look at the Mental Disorder Diversion sh*tstorm that just got dumped on us and the da gets next to no input in on that one. Only one mental health professional will examine the defendant and THAT person is the sole pick of the defense.
I would also add that *if* someone is sitting in jail on a misdemeanor waiting for pretrial “for months” then look at the defense attorney. In CA someone in custody has to be arraigned within 2 business days AND if they don’t waive time they have to have their pre-trial within 30 days.
There are an awful lot of those administrative screw-ups…
No, there are not “an awful lot.” They are very, very rare, despite propaganda to the contrary. (In NYC, for example, the average pretrial stay in jail for misdemeanors is seventeen days.) I keep track of these things, and I can think of one case from New Mexico in the past several years. And yes, it was a heinous f-up, but the public entity paid a huge amount of money to the victim. But it’s only one case.
People sit in pretrial misdemeanor detention for reasons far beyond not being able to pony up a cash bond. As indicated, cash is required only when someone has failed to appear at least once and more often twice or more and warrants have been issued for their arrest. Judges don’t just throw people in pretrial lock-up for grins. There’s not enough room for one thing and it costs public entities money for another.
I do criminal defense and there are a lot of areas in criminal justice which deserve reform, IMHO. But reform should not be predicated on wildly sensationalist propaganda.
There are an awful lot of those administrative screw-ups…
What’s “a lot”?
Can I offer some numbers off the top of my head from my office? I’m one of 4 locations within my county and we process 1/2 of all cases in the county (misdemeanor & felonies – all infractions are not reviewed or processed by the DA office)
We processed over 70,000 cases last year in the county. My office did about 35K of them. We are flooded with misdemeanors.
We have two misdemeanor pre-trial departments, calendars are 4 days a week. The calendars are running over 100 cases/day/department so that’s between 700-800 cases/week. Pretrials are usually calendared 5-7 days after arraignment. That’s also to give time for at least one continuance if the defendant doesn’t waive time. Our judges push real hard not to allow a case to be continued more than 3 times. Settle or set ready for trial.
Out-of-custody misdemeanors we file, we issue an arraignment with a date 8 weeks out from when we mail the letter. All those discovery packets are placed by date so within a couple of days after arraignment a clerk looks them up in the court system to see what happened (ddas don’t appear on arraignments – except maybe for very serious crimes like murder, where they may have to counter bail motions by the defense)
Let’s say we have 30-40 1st time arraignments for Wednesday … only about 10-15 people will show. Of that 10-15, half will plead directly to the court the other half will have a pretrial date set. The rest will fail to appear and have a bench warrant issued. Because so many FTA/BW, then are picked up and cited out with a promise to appear – THEN FTA/BW all over again, our judges only allow that 3 times then they are kept in custody for video arraignment & in custody pretrial within a few days of the arraignment.
Hope this wasn’t boring.
Most of the world doesn’t have money bail.
How do the Europeans cope?
Discussions about “only” waiting a couple of weeks for misdemeanors ignores the effects of that wait. How many of us here would treat two weeks inside lightly?
Losing your job over a misdemeanor is not really an effective way to keep the marginally criminal in work and therefore on a path out.