Talk:Decentralized education

Some observations

@Janosabel: The problem is money. The money supply is controlled by private interests (mostly commercial banks) and issued as debt, or rather, loans. Modern economies need money to function, and therefore it is difficult to impossible for a person, a company, or a government to meaningfully participate in the economy without borrowing the money. Banks can exert practically limitless influence, and they're all more or less private entities, even central banks. There can be no such thing as public government so long as this is the case. I read the abstract of the article you linked, and frankly it does not leave a favorable impression. What do phrases and sentences like "by 'greening' education, and empowering individuals as ecological citizens, it is possible to challenge these approaches and balance the inequalities of power that shape our society" or "Greening education: A multidimensional power struggle" even mean? This is the argot of contemporary PR and crowd control, and the public would do well to recognize it and avoid using it. Also, education should be public. At least then the general public has some say in it. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Regarding your comment on the article linked to, I have to say that it is not safe to critique it on the basis on the abstract only, even if it is not a very good one.

The burden of the essay is that education is a control system that has the power to direct developing minds into particular ways of looking at the human world.

In my judgment the author seems to make reasonably good effort to clarify the phrases you questioned above. Janosabel (discuss • contribs) 17:41, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll look it over, if there's a public link. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Funny, I wrote this before I looked at your wikipedia page, but reading it just now (the entry you wrote in 07), it seems you already understand this. It must occur to you that that any serious reform relating to government, education, economics, or other public matters would have to depend in part on monetary reform. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:18, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

"...any serious reform... would have to depend in part on monetary reform."

Absolutely. Since we are talking about a system, any change of one element may necessitate change in others.

The question is how to overcome systemic inertia/resistance. Janosabel (discuss • contribs) 10:05, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Just off-the-cuff: Write up some good, dialectical literature and distribute it, especially to students. Make them understand they're being grossly defrauded. Never write within the mass media's diegesis or using their fake, stultifying language, as this will tend to put the reader in the wrong frame of mind. Never write a "story". Never write an advertisement. Put emphasis on actionable objectives rather than meaningless humbug. It should communicate the information in such a way that does not resemble a predictable mass media trope, and to "bootstrap" the reader's critical language and in turn critical faculties. I am neither a writer nor a linguist (nor especially skilled at writing, though perhaps I've improved a bit), but I think it has a lot to do with writing and language. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:36, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the valuable stylistic advice on writing about the resistance to changes in the fraudulent monetary system. Judging by those suggestions, your writing skills are worth copying by juniors at my stage.

However, the question about systemic resistance was not meant rhetorically.

There are well worked answers in the relevant and extensive literature. But no serious action is undertaken by the victims of the system — the "victims" being all members of society. The vulnerable point of the prevailing monetary system the lack of legitimacy of the private monopoly power which the issuing banking system is allowed to enjoy. Janosabel (discuss • contribs) 17:18, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

One solution, which I believe was conceived by Milton Friedman, is to repeal the federal reserve act, grant issuing power to the department of treasury, and then raise reserve requirements to 100%. It's simple enough and solves the problem of national debt instantly. No action is taken because the public do not understand the nature of the problem. Surely most people would not accept such a fraud if they knew how it worked. Therefore, it is a matter of education, of communicating the problem. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I should mention that I live in the US, but this solution could probably also be applied to any nation with similar institutions, just change the names. At least in my case, the existence of such a simple and direct solution is itself a prima-facie argument against the legitimacy of my government's leaders, who frame the issue as a partisan budgetary problem while ignoring the monetary solution. They are frauds. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 21:35, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

" The vulnerable point of the prevailing monetary system the lack of legitimacy of the private monopoly power which the issuing banking system is allowed to enjoy. " Yes, that's one way to put it, though the word "legitimacy" is somewhat abused in this instance. Most of the public likely assume that if there were a simple, effective solution to national debt, the government would implement it. My view, and the view I think it's most important to communicate to others, is of a simple reductio ad absurdum argument that 'de-legitimizes' the whole shebang. 1) There exists a simple and complete solution (namely Friedman's). 2) The government ignores it. By (1),(2), the public's general assumption is contradicted and people see that their leaders are malfeasant and that their monetary system is usurious. People in America don't care about monopolies (or collusive oligopolies) and have been conditioned to tolerate corporatization. One could get on a soapbox and call the bank a monopoly or a private, right-wing monstrosity all they like, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. (the word-poison in this case being the phrase 'right-wing') They don't like being fooled or defrauded though. That's why being precise and using real language is so important. One has to avoid political newspeak, as otherwise people will just fill in the blanks with their presuppositions and tune out. The information that needs to be communicated is simple. The trick is avoiding the meaningless political argot that contemporary propaganda is written in. It cannot be framed as a "left" or a "right" wing issue, it must appeal to the middle class as a whole, which it should if communicated properly. My point, I suppose, is that by explaining how USD (along with most other money) is actually created (with loans) and communicating the solution, people will then recognize they're being defrauded. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I haven't linked my essay yet. Here it is [1]. I wrote it in a rather bad mood, having watched a shameful, abject farce of a budget debate on cspan. It could certainly be improved, but it's a start. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

One more note: I suspect many critics and intellectuals are obliged to debase their own critiques of the status quo in one way or another. Most commonly, as far as I can see, this is accomplished via the use of partisan language or other cues that lessen the reader's faith in the author's objectivity. In other words, they are prohibited from publishing material that effectively undermines the status quo. Under those terms, one has to wonder what the point is and why they are still motivated to do the work in the first place. Hitchens clearly resented this constraint. Most intellectuals seem to practically relish it though, which I cannot understand. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 15:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

...I suspect many critics and intellectuals are obliged to debase their own critiques of the status quo in one way or another... ...why they are still motivated to do the work in the first place....

Is not the likely answer is that their livelihood depends on the funding their output attracts, and that funding is conditional on not rocking the boat to vigorously?

So the deeper problem is the way academic work is being financed. Janosabel (discuss • contribs) 20:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I presume that's the case, and in fact Hitchens spells it out in no uncertain terms in his essay "On the Imagination of Conspiracy". His work is somewhat an exception rather than the norm, though. Generally, one would have to be fairly comfortable with the idea of defrauding their readers and colleagues in order to still bother with it at all. Can such person claim to be a self-respecting intellectual, moralist, dissident, public servant, or citizen? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 06:44, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Also, I try (not always successfully) to avoid "we" and, unless in conversation, "you". Christopher Hitchens warned against "we". He could write very fine polemic, but some of his work is laced with the mass media's word-poison. His natural style stands out well enough though. Orwell was quite honest, I think. Bill Still has some good work on banking but his recent material is laced with media narrative, so I haven't much hope for him. Of course there are other interesting books and authors, but those three authors/journalists probably made the strongest impression as critics of the status quo. Let me know if you have any good ones to share.AP295 (discuss • contribs) 15:02, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Janosabel: Incidentally, if you're going to flesh out this article, you had better do it sooner than later. Dan Polansky is champing at the bit to delete it on grounds that it's a stub, which I suppose it is. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 00:36, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. I am trying to make contact with my friend. Janosabel (discuss • contribs) 18:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)