There are a lot of political blogs out there. Some of them are liberal, and some of them are conservative. Because, you know, those are the only possible permutations of political opinion. Are you left wing or right wing? Is your favourite colour white or black? Actually I'm being somewhat unfair. There are the options of centre-left or centre-right, so now your favourite colour can be white, black or grey.
As the current President of America once said, "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." There is no place for a third opinion. Why this insistence on the world being a binary system? Is it because we like things to be simple? I reckon it partly is, but I also reckon that a huge part of it is a desire for tribal affiliations.
No matter if you consider yourself right wing or left wing, you have a series of ready-made opinions that you can expect all other right-wing people to back you up on. You can get more extreme in one way or another by weighing in on contentious issues: you can advocate the death penalty, or the legalisation of all hard drugs, if you want to be considered "extreme right" or "extreme left" respectively. But on the whole, there is a sameness of opinion on both sides that becomes dreary and tiresome through sheer repetitiveness.
Both sides have yelled similar accusations at each other over the years; the left have called the right "Babykillers!" for creating policies that leave children starving, while the right have called the left "Babykillers!" for making abortion legal.
Conservatives are often accused of bigotry and intolerance in various forms, but in my experience liberals are just as likely to be intolerant of others' opinions, and a common practice among liberals is to shout down anyone making statements they disagree with. Both sides tend to stereotype the other to an often cartoonish degree.
Ultimately both sides are hopelessly blinkered, because they refuse to acknowledge that the world is not so simple that you can reduce it to an either/or argument. I think it's about time we all grew up and started acknowledging that things are just a wee bit more complicated.
To circle back to my original point: my god there are some childish idiots out there who seem genuinely convinced that their drivel constitutes genuine content. One would-be pundit says that in the absence of real balance in the media "It's up to the blogsphere!" Yes, that's right this person actually believes that people posting whatever nonsense leaps into their head onto the internet is a viable alternative to rigorous investigative journalism (which I will happily agree is lacking both in New Zealand and worldwide). At least I'm not deluded enough to believe that my drivel is anything but drivel.
As to my own political beliefs: they are complex. If I were to simplify them as far as I possibly can, I would say that I believe that I primarily believe that everyone should receive the same chances as anyone else; that people who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own should be taken care of; that government should be held directly responsible for their actions by the people and the media; and that ultimately we should be striving to transcend our current poo-flinging monkey selfishness and reach a state where people genuinely care about and look after one another. But of course that just sounds like the usual liberal bullshit.
Posted by pearce at December 15, 2003 4:00 PMHmmm. As one of those Idiots, should I be insulted? (though looking at the time, you can't have read my bog-standard post about free tertiary education :)
Posted by: Idiot/Savant at December 15, 2003 10:44 PMIf you really wanna be insulted, then be my guest. But quietly and secretly, I agree with a lot of what you write. :) Eg, state funded tertiary education - wouldn't an educated workforce be better for everyone? Including employers, who'd have bigger talent pool to choose from?
Good point on your blog about the reactive nature of blogs etc. It's a small jump from reactive to reactionary.
As for letters to the editor - blurgh, especially when a square-head like Garth George (of the Herald) picks them. I am convinced that the most well-balanced letters are the first in the trash heap.
Posted by: Pearce at December 16, 2003 9:15 AMNot that I disagree with your point about free education, personally I think people should get living allowances if they're not in the labour force, which includes students and possibly parents as well. However,
More education may not necessarily be a good thing in and of itself - unless you are doing the extra education because you are interested in doing it. If, for example, you are doing education to increase your employability, and everyone else does the same education to increase their employability, then all that happens is that education is used as a signalling device, and the entry point to the labour market is raised for everybody, thus benefiting nobody. Similarly if you do vocational education then cannot gain employment in that vocation following the training, then is that education of use to you, or is it just an illusory migrage?
So yes, a more educated workforce might be a good thing - depending on the reasons that workforce is more educated.
Posted by: coat stand at December 17, 2003 9:06 AMso, that's a mirage, not a migrage. I've got a migrane.
Posted by: coat stand at December 17, 2003 9:07 AMGood point, coat stand. I think that people who spend years obtaining an education in subjects they have no interest in are silly people.
Most people spend more time working than anything else except possibly sleeping. Isn't it better to do something you enjoy, if possible? And isn't tertiary education largely about making sure that you are more likely to be able to find a job that you WANT, as opposed to bing forced into any job you can get?
People who enjoy their jobs are more productive, and are less likely to waste valuable working time doing things like writing blogs.
Posted by: Pearce at December 17, 2003 10:03 AMCoat stand: this is exactly what has happened as a result of wider access to tertiary education. Yes, more people have access to the opportunities granted by tertiary education - but at the cost of a dramtic closing of opportunities for those who don't have that all-important degree.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of degrees has massively devalued the "private good" of tertiary education (the basis the whole loan scheme is predicated on). So in effect we've all spent a hell of a lot of money to get absolutely nowhere.
Posted by: Idiot/Savant at December 17, 2003 3:08 PMIs that because of a lot more people getting degrees, or a lot more people getting THE SAME degrees? Clearly the world doesn't need a huge influx of economics or geology graduates.
In my experience, many employers value experience over qualifications. Corny as it sounds, hard work and the application of intelligence still go a long way.
I always thought you were supposed to go to school to LEARN, not to get a piece of paper that you hope gets you a job.
Posted by: Pearce at December 18, 2003 8:39 AMI went to school to learn, and I learned a hell of a lot. Unfortunately, merely being educated doesn't allow me to live in the style to which I wish to become accustomed :(
As for degree mix, we're vastly oversupplied with law and commerce grads. And while for some reason the government and industry whines constantly about a shortage of science grads, none of them can find jobs...
Posted by: Idiot/Savant at December 18, 2003 10:25 AMAs far as I'm concerned, it's all about a lifestyle choice. You do what you need to do to live how you want to live. We've all got plenty of freedom to live how we want, and the Career paradigm is only one option. We're all forced to live in a money-driven system, but you don't necessarily need a job to get money; you don't need to steal or bludge either. Provided you're willing to do what you have to and put in the work where it's needed, you can get by just about any way you want to; you're only limited by your skills and your practicality imagination.
Science grads can't find jobs, and Crown Research Institutes do a lot of overseas recruiting; CRIs has an unusually high variance in accents. I sometimes wonder if there's a real or unjustified bias against local tertiary qualifications.
Posted by: Pearce at December 18, 2003 12:48 PMAs far as employers are concerned at present, we have a massive oversupply of graduates at the same time as having skill shortages of non-university tertiary graduates in areas such as trades. This of course, will last until the end of the business cycle, when suddenly all the people in trades will no longer be able to get jobs and we'll have a shortage of something else. Personally, I think if you're going to get a tertiary education, you should either do what you want, or do what leads to the job that you want, not do what you think that you should do in order to get a job that leads into a nice career that you think you should have.
Too many people end up going from school straight to university without even considering what they might want to do, either for tertiary education or for a career, because university is the only option presented to them. However, don't even get me started on the lack of decent career guidance in secondary schools, or the way our society still thinks that going to university is the pinnacle of status achievement, despite the fact that many graduates end up in call centres and just *can't understand why*
Posted by: coat stand at December 19, 2003 8:52 AM