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If the working class at large were willing to choose degrowth, as individuals have, then they could do something.

With a critical mass other types of action would also become more feasible, as I touched on.

I stand by the thesis that they won’t mobilize, but that if they were to do so then they would be able to make a difference. Even if they only destroyed infrastructure in a failed rebellion.

In the end it is a moot distinction, I guess.

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If you’re waiting around for someone with more power than it takes to stand in a road with a sign to do anything, you will be waiting until your dying day.

Which, to be clear, is exactly what I expect will happen. Impeding society is seen as worse than destroying society, so inaction will destroy society. Because on the other side of inaction by the working class, is the massive (and massively destructive) action that we currently facilitate. Which means we are the problem, and our only choice is whether to also be a part of the solution. The solution being the mobilization of the working class. Which naturally takes the form of small actions against system (like blocking traffic and doing PR stunts) when numbers are still small because that is exactly what the working class is capable of doing.

I’m sure I’ve already triggered enough lemmies so I’ll go ahead and add, that non-activists calling for activists to destroy infrastructure are not wrong - but they are harmful, not helpful. If they believe in the statement and if this is their true criticism of activists, then those individuals would become activists following their own ideas of what works. But people who are actually activists understand the enormous challenges in such a task while living in a modern security state, and more importantly that the culture is still too non-activist and anti-activist for these actions to catch on meaningfully. Society does not see itself as the problem here. The truth is that the people crying about traffic would be crying significantly more if their consumerism is in the slightest way impaired. They only want to be against the problem, without actually be against the problem.

I hope you all understand what this means mechanistically even if you disagree about where I place my values and judgment: Our families will all be coming to an untimely end. Those of us who are still alive when the cascades begin, will die. If you’re my age and nothing takes you out early, you will die due to climate change caused by our industrial society. If you’re rich you might live a few extra years and die in a bunker.

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It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.

Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.

I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.

I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.

I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.

Universities shouldn’t even be offering those degrees, imo. Perhaps at a higher level for those who have already worked the field and can have meta conversations about it, but the undergrad programs teach far too little over far too many years. It’s a waste for everyone but the administrators.

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