Pickled

Belmont Club » The Miseducation of the First World: "A world in which money and skill could find a match and produce goods would be one in which an unemployed person could find a job if he were willing to work for a low enough wage.  In such a world whole sections of the First World with long term unemployables should not exist. There are Southern European countries like Spain, where large numbers of people would be better employed doing almost anything remotely productive than simply remaining on a meager dole. Those people should be willing to work for any incremental income at all, no matter how low the rate.

He should be able to plant a garden, open a lemonade stand, become a flea circus impresario — anything. But bureaucratic regulations which penalize him for earning anything additional will prevent this. So those enclaves of despair continue to exist and their inhabitants remain unemployed in order to avoid upsetting the apple cart. The gatekeepers are everywhere: union shop stewards, health and safety regulations, legal requirements, certification requirements, educational requirements and requirements requirements, all working to keep the status quo “just so”. ...

In that regard future generations may wonder at how careless the current leadership were of that precious resource. Keeping people in a prolonged welfare performs a “pickling” function which ultimately destroys human minds. The inner city ghetto residents, the growing British chav population and the hapless students who’ve gone $50,000 into debt for 5 year course in media studies alike share one thing. They’ve consumed an enormous amount of good money to destroy their perfectly good minds. They’ve bought themselves a one-way ticket to nowhere and the trains going in that direction are still many and full.

This process of wholesale destruction isn’t going to change until the gatekeepers are either swept away or we go back to being a world of walled cities. “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” is the slogan which was once the public face of education. But maybe the real and cruel translation is of that phrase is “what you don’t know won’t hurt you.”"

And do I smell formaldehyde?