On 1/3/2011 12:20 PM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> True, the problem of course being that just because person X was a
>> genius at Y, doesn't mean that X's children, with all the opportunities
>> and money, will either a) apply themselves to being that good at
>> anything, or b) won't be a total idiot, while person Z's kids, who have
>> no money, no schooling, etc. might not have been far better. This isn't
>> just a hypothetical either, it happens all the damn time, its just hard
>> to see, if the resources for the guy that *should have* been elite
>> consists of the stuff taken from the local trash can, while the village
>> idiot can hire 50 people, slightly smarter than himself, to make a
>> small, mediocre, improvement in something.
>
>    Maybe I'm biased in my views because I'm living in Finland rather than
> the US, the UK or some other country where education is (AFAIK) much more
> dependent on people's wealth.
>
Hmm. Yeah, I think this is precisely the issue. Where you are, the 
"baseline" is very fair, so the range of outcomes are not terribly 
different from one group to the next. You go to some place like the US 
and what you end up with is a damn mess where third world countries have 
better chances in some neighborhoods, and the only difference between a 
third world dictator and a CEO becomes how many elected officials they 
have to buy off to get what they want, where the dictator could simply 
shoot anyone that didn't play ball. The rich get rich because they *are* 
rich, not because they do shit, the poor stay poor, because you can't 
get a job that pays you jack, if you don't know anything at all, and the 
same rich bozos that got that way by inheriting it don't want to give a 
dime to fix the problem of some person they don't know having a 6th 
grade education, and no prospects for college, never mind high school, 
*ever*. The "baseline" in the US, in some places, looks less like a 
small, grassy, hill, than a shear cliff.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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