quote:The piece of paper, the coursework, or the (claimed) benefits in learning how to think?
I think the first and the third are unnecessary. I think the first would be useful, were it not also essentially mandatory and thus cheapened to the point of uselessness when it comes to actually certifying the second.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Not many. In fact, depending on how you define "require," possibly not any. There are a few for which a degree system of some kind -- as opposed to a vocational certification system -- might still be useful, maybe. But even then I'm left thinking that the degree winds up being a measure of self-important fluffery instead of actual qualification.
That' exactly the kind of self-important fluffery and rationalization I'd expect from a college drop out.
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Well, yeah, it does logically follow, doesn't it? It's like saying that you'd expect that criticism of cake from someone who spit out the cake.
---------
Rivka, the funny thing is that I actually valued college education more before I started working at colleges. I think I'm too close to watching the sausage being made, to be honest. I've worked at three different schools in my life, and have watched all three of them as they've gone through revisions of their curriculum, and it really sufficed to damage my opinion of the entire system -- especially the liberal arts side.
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quote: I would have absolutely no objection to restricting the right to vote to landowners again, Kat, for precisely the reasons you've mentioned.
For the first time, Tom has gone down a path that I think freaking idiotic, and evil to boot.
Seriously Tom? People who don't own homes don't have a financial stake in the community, and so shouldn't be able to vote? Great! Let's take the vote away from millions of military personnel, teachers, firefighters and policemen, EMT workers and nurses, blue collar workers and laborers of all stripes...
[Edit: Removed unacceptable portion of post. --PJ]
We've been down that route. It sucked [...] for almost everyone involved... and we've got much less land available per capita now, so the probability that your "ideal world," wouldn't be a hell hole approaches nil.
Thanks, Tom. I've lost 100% of the huge amounts of respect that I had for you. You're one of the enemy now... the people who think that it takes huge amounts of wealth to be worthy of having a voice in society.
[Edit: Removed unacceptable portion of post. --PJ]
I'm going to go out on a very short limb on a tree with a very strong trunk and say that my committment to my community is orders of magnitude greater than yours. You know how I can tell? I don't think that taking the vote away from most of the country is doing those people any type of service.
[Edit: Paul, you're out of line. Dial it back or take it elsewhere. --PJ]
[ October 29, 2009, 08:53 PM: Message edited by: Papa Janitor ]
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Not many. In fact, depending on how you define "require," possibly not any. There are a few for which a degree system of some kind -- as opposed to a vocational certification system -- might still be useful, maybe. But even then I'm left thinking that the degree winds up being a measure of self-important fluffery instead of actual qualification.
That' exactly the kind of self-important fluffery and rationalization I'd expect from a college drop out.
Actually, I don't agree with Tom, but as a fellow college drop out who is constantly dumbfounded by the ignorance of the MBA's I work with daily who think they're someone special because of their degree, I must come to a pseudo defense here.
In my experience, a degree reflects very little upon the quality and quantity of work an individual produces. They're usually important in order to get noticed by the HR staff. After that, I see little correlation between the degree and the work.
I DO think degrees are important in some fields. Just not all fields...
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Rivka, the funny thing is that I actually valued college education more before I started working at colleges. I think I'm too close to watching the sausage being made, to be honest.
That's interesting. I've only worked at the one, and while I would prefer to work elsewhere, that is a reflection on conditions and persons relatively unique to this one. Not all the things that make me crazy are unique (going off comments on my listservs), but the degree to which they are common and accepted is.
Even at this one, I think most of our students gain a valuable education. I don't think I could work there if I didn't.
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And Tom is not out of line for saying that most of the people in this country and posting on this forum don't have a stake in their communities? Just because something extremely offensive, and frankly dangerous, is couched in polite language makes it "in line?" I hate that viewpoint. It does NOT, contrary to certain mores, keep society running smoothly or reduce friction. All it does is prevent particular words from being used in conversation.
Maybe Tom isn't being serious... it did not look like that to me, though.
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: Maybe Tom isn't being serious... it did not look like that to me, though.
What honestly are the odds that tom davidson actually seriously wants to restrict voting rights to landowners. Like, put some betting odds on it.
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I don't think either of those questions is relevant to what is (or should be) considered acceptable posting here.
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quote:That' exactly the kind of self-important fluffery and rationalization I'd expect from a college drop out.
Rabbit, this isn't the kind of name calling that I would have expected from you.
I happen to value college education very highly, but my experience working with phD's is that while many of them got the degree specifically to pursue an avenue of interest and to fulfill a goal of a particular career, altogether too many of them pursued "those three little letters next to their name" specifically for the snob value. In industry, it's easy to tell the players. But in academia, the degree is the message, and it's much harder to tell who's playing a game.
I know of too many people in hiring situations (both in industry and academia) who are turned down not because they don't have the skills, but because they don't have the credentials. Kind of makes the initials pretty ironic.
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Hey, no, it's fair. I've basically been kicking a couple sacred cows in the face, here, so I'm not surprised that some people feel the opinions expressed are insulting and/or dangerous despite that, upon closer reflection, I think it's obvious that neither impression is accurate.
The simple fact is that we require too many people to obtain "degrees" that certify nothing useful and may or may not expose them to useful modes of thought; we also permit and expect too many uninformed, uninvolved, and often frankly stupid people to directly elect our government, thus enabling the entrenched bureaucracy to remain entrenched by manipulating a defensive, celebrity- and narrative-obsessed media (and, at the local level, empowering small-minded and frequently nepotistic oligarchies.)
It may be the case that both of these consequences are the lesser of two evils. It may well be that there are other remedies. But certainly many people are invested both in the inherent worthiness of college degrees and of universal voter registration, and it doesn't surprise me that they'd be upset.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: Maybe Tom isn't being serious... it did not look like that to me, though.
Paul, if you want to call Tom to the mat for what I agree is a terrible and harmful idea - only allowing property owners the right to vote - I'm behind you 100%. But the tone was a little over-the-top, don't you think?
If Tom was a decision maker about allowing voting rights to property owners and expressing such an opinion, maybe such a tongue-lashing could be supported. But serious or not, he's not that person, he's just a citizen expressing his view on a message board.
Posts: 1295 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Actually, that makes a nice segue: I would define "stake" in this case as an asset to which you owe obligations.
I'm not sure I understand that definition. Would that include homeowners with an underwater mortgage? (or homeowners with a paid off mortgage?)
Ummmm, skipping over most of this page, I'd like to repeat this question because the definition of stake seems ambiguous.
I'd probably add two examples of things that I would consider a "stake" in one's community that seem ambiguous under the given one. To illustrate, someone with a pension associated with a local company is certainly invested in the long-term health of that company (and in many cases, the region that surrounds that company), but they don't really owe the pension plan any more obligations after they quit. However, one could argue that in many cases, when one starts drawing upon that pension plan they will be obligated to pay taxes to the community that houses that business.
Thus I'm curious about how the definition would apply to the two mortgage examples and to the two previous scenarios.
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quote:Actually, I don't agree with Tom, but as a fellow college drop out who is constantly dumbfounded by the ignorance of the MBA's I work with daily who think they're someone special because of their degree, I must come to a pseudo defense here.
Oh, well if we are talking strictly about MBAs, then I'm in full agreement. As best as I've been able to determine, an MBA is a less than useless degree.
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Whether or not it would be a good idea to restrict voting rights in some way so as to remove ignorant/stupid/lazy people from the pool of voters, its certainly not a good idea to restrict voting to only people who have acquired a certain level and type of wealth. Those people are inherently invested in the system in particular ways, and protecting those particular interests has almost universally, in the past, meant screwing people who aren't invested in the system in those same ways. Without a counter-balancing voice for people who have not acquired land, you get a royal-butt-prodding for people who don't own land, because the people who do own land will rule in such a way as to protect their own interests, without regard to the interests of people who do not own land. Its kinda what most people DO.
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...and we're back to asserting which type of education is a REAL education. It's less about the degree, and more about how the person applies himself or herself in getting the degree. I know plenty of MBA's that are intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful.
I tend to agree with Tom (about college)-- most people would benefit more from vocational schooling than from traditional college/university. Nonetheless, I emphasize a college education for my kids because there are opportunities that are closed to them if they don't get that piece of paper. The vocational system isn't valued as much, right now.
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I have owned a home, although I don't as of now. I didn't notice any sudden change in my intelligence or judgement (or political tendencies/beliefs) when I bought the house, and I didn't notice any change when I sold it.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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Wow I missed some explosiveness in this thread.
I confess I'm alittle sympathetic to Tom's ideas. Granted I'm not a landowner so I would lose my vote, but I'd probably find a way to get some land. I agonize over how frustrating stupid people voting is, and if there was a way to insure that only people who had put thought into their vote could vote without it being abusive I'd take it. Such a solution seems impossible.
I'd settle for a complete rewrite of congressional districts where gerrymandering was totally obliterated. At least the next election cycle would be endlessly fascinating.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Point to notice: Many countries had property qualifications for hundreds of years without the sky falling on that account, the US included. In the US, admittedly, the enforcement was occasionally a bit lax; apparently, a common practice was for a local politician to have a free barbecue on election day, and anyone who showed up was expected to vote for him. No land? No problem! The barbecue was also a venue for selling plots of land five inches on a side, for one cent and other good and valuable considerations! Then after you'd voted, you'd go back to the party and sell on your "plot of land" to the next voter!
Obviously this isn't what Tom had in mind, but it's kind of amusing and it might even be true - I read it on the Internets.
I do think, though, that a land-ownership requirement is not the right qualification in an age where labour mobility is very important and land is not the main form of wealth. In countries which took their requirement more seriously than the barbecue procedure outlined above, the qualification wasn't "own land", as such, but "own a house or land worth X per year". In other words, it was an income qualification, using the sort of income that was most common and easiest to verify. Updating this to modern conditions, I think you get "Paid more in taxes than was received in government benefits last year", with some sort of calculation of how much streets, defense, and police are worth on average - I'm not thinking purely of welfare.
Touching sacred cows, I haven't yet decided whether Tom has kicked mine. His criticism is of course extremely fair and balanced for literature, X Studies, MBAs, and suchlike dreck. But it is completely off the mark for the sciences. Presumably he did not intend to touch the worthy subjects; consequently I am quite in agreement with him. Then again I might be mistaken, in which case, I'll supply the ants for the potluck honey-and-ants party. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I can see the desire to restrict voters to people who actually know what they're talking about, but restricting it to landowners seems rather meaningless for that regard. There are plenty of people who don't own land who know what's going on and want to vote, and there are plenty of people who own land who don't care. What exactly is owning land supposed to solve?
If we're picking a random old method that proved extremely dangerous and detrimental to society, I'd think literacy tests would be a far better solution since they are at least *supposed* to solve the actual problem. Perhaps requiring people to list at least one issue that their candidate supports that they agree with.
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quote:Perhaps requiring people to list at least one issue that their candidate supports that they agree with.
Do you think that you shouldn't be allowed to vote for a person if there is no such issue with which you agree?
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quote:Hey, no, it's fair. I've basically been kicking a couple sacred cows in the face, here, so I'm not surprised that some people feel the opinions expressed are insulting and/or dangerous despite that, upon closer reflection, I think it's obvious that neither impression is accurate.
Saying "I think this country would be better off if I could strip people like you of the right to vote" isn't kicking a sacred cow, it's more like sticking a big middle finger up to a lot of the members of this community.
Perhaps most ironically about your two positions in this thread, Tom: If you're trying to weed out stupid and uninformed people from voting, you'd be much better off restricting the right to vote to only those who have college degrees than you would to only those who own property. That would at least have SOME correlation with the attributes you are trying to select for.
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quote:Do you think that you shouldn't be allowed to vote for a person if there is no such issue with which you agree?
If you can't name a single reason to vote for a person other than their good looks and party affiliation, then no I don't think you should be voting for that person.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: ... In other words, it was an income qualification, using the sort of income that was most common and easiest to verify. Updating this to modern conditions, I think you get "Paid more in taxes than was received in government benefits last year", with some sort of calculation of how much streets, defense, and police are worth on average - I'm not thinking purely of welfare.
I'm fractionally more sympathetic to a qualification based on income or taxes paid, at least it wouldn't have the perverse effects of encouraging people to buy a house before they're ready (e.g. subprime loans), hold onto a home after retirement even if they don't want it just to vote, or encourage people to not move when looking for jobs. Fighting over a house when divorcing would also be fighting for a vote, which would be bizarre.
I still think its a fairly bad idea in practice though, for a tax qualification, you wouldn't want to randomly gain or lose your vote based on whether you got sick that year and had to use health-care, or whether you got a government grant, or if you had to use EI. It could also be prone to abuse, creeping up to disenfranchise targeted groups on the margin. There is also one big grey area when it comes to how to classify seniors who would gradually use more and more benefits as they age.
(Taxation planning would be obnoxious too, not only would you need to minimize assets between tax-sheltered and taxable accounts, but you would have to do it in such a way to maintain being above a voting threshold for both you and potentially a non-working spouse too. Oy, but thats just a detail (On second thought, I'm sure politicians would start to game which types of income or tax credits would affect people's votes, making it even more fun))
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Not only do you have to select the name of the person you are voting for, but also choose which list of platform points you want. If the two don't match, your vote isn't counted. And the order could randomize for every voter!
This would be based simply on the fact that you should know what it is your candidate stands for... not just that they have a catchy name/slogan/commercial/sign, or some other nonsense.
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quote:Originally posted by Godric: If Tom was a decision maker about allowing voting rights to property owners and expressing such an opinion, maybe such a tongue-lashing could be supported. But serious or not, he's not that person, he's just a citizen expressing his view on a message board.
I don't think black people should be allowed to vote, because they're subhuman. I'm not a decision maker, mind you. I'm just a citizen expressing my view on a message board.
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quote: Not only do you have to select the name of the person you are voting for, but also choose which list of platform points you want. If the two don't match, your vote isn't counted.
Except that very few platform points (I can't think of any, myself) are purely binary in nature. Also, I may disagree with your assessment of a candidate's platform.
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quote:There is also one big grey area when it comes to how to classify seniors who would gradually use more and more benefits as they age.
That's a feature, not a bug. A lot of the current economic problems can be traced to rich old people with political capital and time on their hands voting themselves subsidies at the expense of working young people.
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I think removing party identification next to candidates names as well as the straight ticket option could only do good in ensuring people who don't really know what they are doing don't vote recklessly.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Godric: If Tom was a decision maker about allowing voting rights to property owners and expressing such an opinion, maybe such a tongue-lashing could be supported. But serious or not, he's not that person, he's just a citizen expressing his view on a message board.
I don't think black people should be allowed to vote, because they're subhuman. I'm not a decision maker, mind you. I'm just a citizen expressing my view on a message board.
Touche. I guess... Posts: 1295 | Registered: Jan 2003
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FC: Also, especially for local races where much of a position's duties are bureaucratic, I would definitely (and have) vote for someone I disagreed with on nearly every campaign "issue" but was morally upstanding over someone who "agreed" with me on the issues, but was morally bankrupt.
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I am of the opinion that even willfully ignorant, evil, and wrong-headed people are, by virtue of being human, as deserving (whatever that means) of having a say in their government as anyone else. This is often an enormously frustrating opinion to hold, but I can't talk myself out of the notion that it is central to the idea of democracy.
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quote:(Taxation planning would be obnoxious too, not only would you need to minimize assets between tax-sheltered and taxable accounts, but you would have to do it in such a way to maintain being above a voting threshold for both you and potentially a non-working spouse too. Oy, but thats just a detail (On second thought, I'm sure politicians would start to game which types of income or tax credits would affect people's votes, making it even more fun))
It's a point, yes. I'm also very strongly in favour of massively simplifying the tax code, which would reduce this problem. In fact I would do that before changing suffrage rights. But in any case, the threshold for a vote would be quite low, I think, extending to say 75% of the adult population. At that rate, the people who are on the voting threshold and the people who need lots of tax planning are not the same people.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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[quote]Except that very few platform points (I can't think of any, myself) are purely binary in nature. Also, I may disagree with your assessment of a candidate's platform.[quote]
What does binary have to do with it? As a candidate, you should have a platform of what you stand for. It doesn't matter whether or not your opponent agrees or disagrees with you by a factor of 100% or by a shade of grey. (On a similar note, I have no idea what you were asking about before. Candidates, by definition, should have ideas on what they intend to accomplish. You should know what at least some of those ideas are.)
As for who determines what a candidate's platform actually IS, well that certainly is an issue. On one hand I DO think it'd be fair to require candidates to submit a list of their primary goals to a centralized, neutral location that everyone can refer to. But most goals worth accomplishing are probably going to be complex enough that a simplified bullet point won't necessarily convey the specifics.
On a different note: I think one of the biggest issues with the American system is the reliance on the single vote system. It forces the two party system upon us and stifles innovation. There are many alternatives that would work better, the two simplest would be to either vote for all candidates that would be acceptable to you or to rank all candidates in order of preference.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am of the opinion that even willfully ignorant, evil, and wrong-headed people are, by virtue of being human ...
I am sympathetic to this view, although I think that allowing all adults to vote is merely the best pragmatic compromise we've come up with rather than an ideal of democracy.
I would, however, quickly note that most states do not in fact allow all "evil" adults to vote, for at least one definition of "evil." For example prisoners are allowed to vote in Canada but not in the US
quote:In 48 American states and seven European countries, including Britain, prisoners are forbidden from voting in elections. Many more countries impose partial voting bans (applying only to prisoners serving long sentences, for instance). And in ten American states some criminals are stripped of the vote for life, even after their release.
The question for people under those jurisdictions isn't "Should we start taking away the vote from certain groups?" but merely "Are we taking away the vote from the right groups?"
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Except that very few platform points (I can't think of any, myself) are purely binary in nature. Also, I may disagree with your assessment of a candidate's platform.
Two things.
One, platforms wouldn't even need to contain the same points, let alone be opposite from one another. A candidate's platform is a candidate's platform.
As to whose "assessment" it is, the best place to get a list of platform points is from the candidate him/herself, no?
quote:FC: Also, especially for local races where much of a position's duties are bureaucratic, I would definitely (and have) vote for someone I disagreed with on nearly every campaign "issue" but was morally upstanding over someone who "agreed" with me on the issues, but was morally bankrupt.
Maybe then you wouldn't have to pick which list of platform points you wanted, just make sure you match the platform to the candidate you've chosen?
***
On a more serious note, maybe have a rule that a candidate must have some type of platform included in the voting booth associated with their name so that people who have never done an ounce of research might actually be able to see what that person stands for at least once.
Of course they could still ignore it, but maybe make it a screen they have to click past, or something.
I just think there are too many people who vote without having any idea what the candidates are about, simply because of a single commercial or their party affiliation.
As an aside, my grandmother never cared who was running. She'd go into the booth and pull the Democrat lever to select all of the candidates in that line, then leave. If they were Democrats, that was good enough to her - most of the time she couldn't even name them.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:As to whose "assessment" it is, the best place to get a list of platform points is from the candidate him/herself, no?
Not necessarily.
quote:On a more serious note, maybe have a rule that a candidate must have some type of platform included in the voting booth associated with their name so that people who have never done an ounce of research might actually be able to see what that person stands for at least once.
Or at least what they claim to stand for.
quote:I just think there are too many people who vote without having any idea what the candidates are about, simply because of a single commercial or their party affiliation.
You may be right, but I'd have trouble believing that it's that big of a problem without some proof. It seems to me that most people who would vote that would wouldn't bother to vote at all.
Look on the bright side -- at least we don't have mandatory voting here.
Hey, 5 years ago, didn't you argue that it's not worth it for you to vote at all?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: I happen to value college education very highly, but my experience working with phD's is that while many of them got the degree specifically to pursue an avenue of interest and to fulfill a goal of a particular career, altogether too many of them pursued "those three little letters next to their name" specifically for the snob value. In industry, it's easy to tell the players. But in academia, the degree is the message, and it's much harder to tell who's playing a game.
I know of too many people in hiring situations (both in industry and academia) who are turned down not because they don't have the skills, but because they don't have the credentials. Kind of makes the initials pretty ironic.
I'd like to know where you work and in what field. I find it hard to believe its common for people to get Ph.D's for the prestige value. Ph.D.s just don't get that much respect, we aren't "real doctors" after all. And frankly, getting a PhD is just too hard for many people to seek them for the extremely minimal prestige that it garners.
That's not to say that there aren't more than enough arrogant PhDs out there. But that is a different issue.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: And frankly, getting a PhD is just too hard for many people to seek them for the extremely minimal prestige that it garners.
IIRC the statistics properly, only about 10-12% of those who begin a PhD complete one, and the vast majority get stuck at the thesis step -- so they have done much of the work (all the coursework and often lots of the research/writing meant to produce a thesis) -- and are still ABD. Which really is not as cool as a doctorate. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:I'd like to know where you work and in what field.
Currently I work in fuel cell development. Previously, I was a Middle School teacher, and before that I was in applications research and development at a major industrial gases company.
quote:I find it hard to believe its common for people to get Ph.D's for the prestige value.
Don't underestimate the motivational value of insecurity. I've had people inform me they had a PhD as many as 20-30 times a day, as if I hadn't noticed it the first time, and continue to do so for years of working together.
I've also worked in an environment where we desperately needed B.S. engineers, but because the people in charge of hiring all had PhD's, They only hired PhD engineers and "college dropout" technicians. That particular prejudice meant that either unqualified technicians do engineering work, or PhD's haul cement, depending on what work was needed. The latter was a waste of a valuable resource, while the former was a recipe for safety and quality issues.
Where I work now, there is a definite caste system, and information only flows downhill, which creates a serious knowledge vacuum among the PhD's, who only know what they want to know. It's not an effective way to do research, even if they are orders of magnitude smarter than the hoi polloi.
And of course, as a teacher I've seen elementary school teachers and principals insist that their students call them "Doctor" instead of Mister or Ms. or whatever. One guy I worked with required his 2 year old daughter to call a co-worker "Doctor Tim" instead of just Tim or "Mr Delaney," or even "Doctor Delaney." That's just pretentious. Doctor is a professional title. Kids are not in a professional relationship, and are excused from such ridiculous pretense.
None of this is to say that these people didn't know their stuff. They did. And there were many that I worked with for years where I didn't know that they had a doctorate. They just did their jobs, and did it well. But you could tell which ones were using their title as a crutch.
quote:Hey, no, it's fair.
No it isn't. Rabbit generalized a negative trait, attributed it to all college dropouts, and then used it as an insult. That's just plain rude.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Well, she was just returning the same insult that Tom had just applied to people with college degrees, so it's not like it was unprovoked.
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