Modern Education and the Harlotry of Minds

Spectacular, millennials prefer a free-market economy to a government planned one, but at the same time sympathize with socialism more than capitalism. They want tax cuts, but at the same time do not want to eliminate or diminish the institutions of the welfare state. They want more government services to provide everyone with a "decent living", but at the same time oppose policies that lead to greater public sector interference in their lives.

Other than mental illness, what could explain why their worldview is so hopelessly ensnared in irreconcilable contradictions?

It appears that today's youngsters display the "I want to have my cake and eat it too" and that is the attitude of an entitlement complex. However, arguments could be made that the foregoing generations such as the Baby Boomers and GenXers displayed similar moral deficiencies. When adjusted to inflation, the minimum wage of 1968 can be deemed roughly equivalent to the value of a $25 per hour salary today.

The average millennial does not enjoy nearly as much material comfort as his parents and grandparents did in their youth. Hence, the entitlement complex alone cannot explain this bizarre assortment of ideologically incompatible ideas.

I propose that the true answer to this riddle lies in the problem of education in this country. It is a well-documented fact that grade inflation began increasing dramatically in the 1970s . Correspondingly, it has become typical for students to spend much less time on homework and the most intellectually challenging aspects of academic curricula were modulated or eliminated.

For example, literature instructors no longer called for students to understand the universal themes in stories and instead encouraged them to reflect on the emotional reaction this experience evoked. Fewer students majored in hard science, engineering or even philosophy and more displayed a distinct preference for softer academic disciplines such as Women's Studies or Ethnic studies.

Professors, students, deans and campus radicals alike categorically rejected the doctrines of individual rights. By the same token, they dismissed philosophies concerning the objectivity of knowledge and morality  as "intolerant", "bigoted" and "uncool". They then replaced the philosophy of individual rights with doctrines of cultural relativism, subjectivism and other tenets of postmodernism implying that all knowledge is relative to perspective, cultural prejudice and arbitrary opinions.

Consistently with this point of view, the leftist ideologues who taught the soft classes codified these intellectual intuitions in clear-cut ideologies of Political Correctness and Identity theory. The former posits that because all cultures are equal, it is always wrong to criticize demographic groups belonging to ethnic minorities or their cultural values. Identity theory implies that because there is no such thing as objective moral values, the individual cannot define his character through his own achievements. Instead, his identity is defined in whole by his affiliation with ethnic or political groups he belongs to.

Relativism and its two aforementioned tenets emerged as the centerpiece of the mainstream university ideology and this dramatically accelerated the trend of massive grade inflation. In 1988, grade A’s represent 43% of all letter grades, an increase of 28% since 1960 and 12% since 1988. With the massive proliferation of online degree mills such as Strayer, Ashford, Kaplan, DeVry and University of Phoenix, it is evident that grade inflation increased by an even wider margin in the last two and a half decades. Additionally, this is becoming increasingly evident in light of the fact that conventional four year schools are emulating the degree mill paradigm by offering more online classes and replacing tenured professor positions with callow TAs. At the very least, today's average academic institution bears a much closer semblance to University of Phoenix than to a traditional University where nearly all intellectually gifted students coveted admission in the 40s and 50s.

Today, professors can be dismissed for entertaining ideas that can be construed as offensive to certain minority groups and could even encounter serious problems with the Dean for not awarding sufficiently high grades to enough Black students. In most cases, they simply have no choice but to continue softening their academic curricula and discourage students from pursuing intellectually challenging majors.

The blame should not rest squarely on the shoulders of university professors because the problem is fundamental to our system of education in general. Young students who received their early education in European public schools or American private schools can attest to the fundamental differences in how public schools educate the young here and there. By the age of ten, most European youngsters have already memorized the table of multiplication, learned the basic rules of grammar by heart and retained basic facts about history, geography and social studies. These students have undergone arduous memorization sessions where their memory was rigorous was on exams that were closely invigilated. These studies were supplemented by basic training in arithmetic, elementary logic and vocal discussions. As the minds of these students mature, they discover that the nascent years of their education laid down the foundation on which their worldview can be built. Not only were they capable of interpreting new facts within the context of the information that was indelibly seared into their memories at a very young age, they also had the basic intellectual tools for organizing, analyzing and synthesizing the incoming material.

By contrast, American public school students are rarely subjected to such "useless memorization" and such "draconian fascist" techniques as elementary logic or arithmetic. Many have not even learned the table of multiplication by the time they've reached High-School and a significant percentage of college students struggle to grasp even the most rudimentary tenets of English grammar. Open book exams displaced classroom activities that tested the general knowledge of students and logically rigorous undertakings gave way to post-modern curricula that urged students to share their personal feelings about assignments.

All of this was justified by the premise that critical thinking and creativity are the true hallmark of intellectual achievement. For obvious reasons, route memorization is much less lofty and seemingly less conducive to the student's growth as a person, artist or a thinker. The reality is quite the opposite: route memorization is the foundation of deep learning, critical thinking and creativity. Youthful minds cannot understand logic, arithmetic, rules of language or any other instrument of intellectual activity without first memorizing the essential facts about these systems. Similarly, they cannot organize, analyze or synthesize information about history, politics or society without first knowing basic facts about these fields of study.

As a result, the academic relativist ideologues achieved the opposite of their intended results. Instead of freeing the students from the drudgery of "useless memorization", they now have no choice but to resort to memorization. In the absence of the ability to logically organize ideas and conceptualize them, students simply cannot retain any information other than by storing it in their short-term memory and forgetting it. Psychologists have long been familiar with the term "chunking" which refers to one's ability to retain ideas by developing a framework with which they can be organized in a logical order. That is why chess masters can provide a move by move account of hundreds of variations simply be memorizing a limited number of positions. By contrast, they are not capable of memorizing nearly as many arbitrary facts. Similarly, car mechanics can often provide a detailed account of what supplies the repair of each automobile will require, yet seem to have a deplorable memory in many other walks of life. The chunking technique even explains the "absent-minded professor" phenomenon that involves scholars who can memorize a myriad of scientific facts in their field of specialization, but could never recall what they ate for breakfast the day before, even if their life depended on it.

In his famous treatise on Classical Economics, George Reisman trenchantly observed that it would not be an exaggeration to claim that our system of education strives to "unencumber students of as much knowledge as possible". Instead of laying down the foundations of their worldview, it encourages students to simply learn whatever they wish to learn. Barring a few cases of exceptionally gifted children, most students naturally elect to learn nothing at all. In place of teaching them to look for logical order in information and develop strategies for recalling it quickly and using it as a foundation of new material. Such miseducation again encourages them to respond to the studied material with incoherent non-sequiturs and therefore, it debauches their minds. As a result, students are not only compelled to pass their examinations by memorizing notions that strike them as arbitrary, if not meaningless, they essentially have no choice but to regard all doctrines as ideas they must accept on faith. In plain English, they become incapable of understanding the underlying rationale behind theories and have no framework based on which they can judge an idea's merits or demerits. For this reason, many of them truly can be convinced of just about anything.

With these factors in consideration, there should be no question that the deplorable quality of education in this country is the leading factor behind the millennials' inability to form a coherent ideology. These trends took root in the early 70s and will soon reach their culmination point when the University of Phoenix defines the standards of academic rigor in American classrooms. At the very least, one has a compelling reason to expect that the intellectual ineptitude of the next generation's youth will be even more prominent.

Why taxation should be voluntary

The Republicans and the Democrats disagree about the role that the government should play in providing social services. The former insist that it should be smaller and intervene less in the economy. In contradistinction, the latter maintain that the public interest would be better served by a higher degree of government involvement in our institutions.

The Republicans are more likely to excoriate politicians who pioneer inefficient government programs than the Democrats, but they stop far short from conceding that all forms of taxation constitute theft.

Even the most intransigent conservatives will staunchly assert that taxation for some government services is legitimate. Who could argue that the government perpetrates theft by taxing all citizens to build schools, roads and police departments?

The problem with this rationale is it involves an element of coercion that could be construed as a violation of individual rights. This engenders a peculiar asymmetry in our moral outlook that creates a double-standard. Both orthodox schools of political thought prohibit individuals from coercing each other in such a manner but allow the government to do so.

Suppose you're back in school and I discover that you have several college papers to write. When I solicit you offering my services, you promptly turn me down because you do not need my help. Instead of respecting your wishes, I employ hackers to gain access to all of your virtual accounts and complete several assignments for you. In return, I'll withdraw twice as much money from your bank account as was necessary to cover the market fee for the service I've rendered. Since I now know that I will always have you as a client, I'll have no incentive to meet your deadlines or make an honest effort to fully maximize the quality of my work. In this case, you would be justifiably aggrieved, yet this still seems insufficient to show that the government is culpable of the same moral transgression.

Prima facie, it appears that I am making a category mistake. It is clear that you never authorized me to render a service to you, but all citizens entered an implicit social contract with the government that grants them such an authorization. That's quite a questionable counter-argument because most citizens do not understand what the contract is about and certainly did not consciously acquiesce to it.

In effect, the argument you would be espousing is an off-shoot of Rousseau's General Will that can be summarized as follows. The government should provide the public not with the services they vocally demand but with those that reflect their true general will. In other words, the government should analyze the cultural values, attitudes and the general ethos of the nation's collective consciousness in order to determine what their unspoken "General Will" is. History is replete with examples of how such political philosophy gave rise to totalitarianism on the left and the right and there is no need for me to go into them here.

If you are going to argue that taxation is not justified by Rousseau's General Will, then there is no reason to impose criminal penalties upon people who evade taxes. If the people truly did consent to government services, they should have no problem voluntarily paying for them. Taxation constitutes coercion and that is a fundamentally immoral act and coercion begets inefficiency. In turn, the government overcharges the citizenry for the services it renders in the same manner all monopolies do. This is a very subtle, albeit a pervasive and a clear-cut form of theft.

This leaves the establishment ideology with just one defense: mandatory government services are necessary to preserve public order. This position can be defended by the premise that a strong centralized government is necessary for preservation of social order and such a politico-economic infrastructure can be supported only by coercive taxation. Indeed, an environment of complete mayhem is often pejoratively referred to as anarchy. The fear that radical decentralization leads to a disastrous pandemonium is comprehensively supported by a plethora of historical examples. In the aftermath of the emergence of the Italian state in the 19th century, the southern territory was embroiled in incessant confrontations between mafia clans. India's lack of a centralized government has historically been associated with the nation's failure to achieve stability or economic progress until the British colonization.

Although it is possible for de-centralization to completely destroy social order, that outcome is far from inevitable. History is also fraught with examples of successful de-centralization including the Ancient Greek and autonomous city-states or polises. Even the nascent United States achieved considerable freedom and prosperity in part because of decentralization. Instead of dogmatically accepting the position that decentralization either strengthens or undermines political order, it is necessary to examine this question empirically. The only way to do so is to begin experimenting by slowly introducing minor changes to our politico-economic environment by making some forms of taxation voluntary. It is possible that this practice will engender desirable results where the consumers will opt to support the centralized government services or replace them with superior private services.

In the event where the worst fears of the establishment proponents are confirmed, mandatory taxation can be restored. It would then be clear that this form of coercion  maximizes the well-being of the largest number of people by preserving public order in the only way it is possible to do so. In that case, this course of action will be supported by a robust Utilitarian argument that's corroborated by compelling empirical evidence. Although this would be a paternalistic argument with its own authoritarian undercurrents, it would be much less dangerous than the appeal to Rousseau's General Will. Here, the government would have a clear-cut rationale for financially coercing the public and it will set a precedent for future policies that will require similarly rigorous justifications for future legislation involving coercion. At the very least, intellectual honesty behooves us to understand that the current institution of taxation is profoundly immoral because it involves theft and coercion. If it truly does serve the public interest, this hypothesis is too important to be accepted on faith and it should be subjected to rigorous social experimentation. 

Decoding the Immigration Reform Propaganda

Jeb Bush proudly volunteers the fact that his wife is from Mexico and fashions himself a champion of a "comprehensive immigration reform". In his most recent statement, he pontificated ""Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity."

Decoding: America needs more low-skilled migrant workers who are not interested in achieving socio-economic mobility. This way, the nation's leading corporations can exploit their labor-power by paying them less than minimum wage. Thereby, they will gain a competitive advantage over smaller businesses who have a more restricted access to the pool of such undocumented workers.

While this would be the ideal situation for Bush III and his coterie of Rockefeller Republicans, it is taboo to openly encourage illegal immigration. Thus, he is settling for the next best thing that will place the low-skilled Hispanic workers on a fast track to citizenship.It is not a coincidence that Reagan's "Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986" was followed by the massive widening of wealth disparities that continued well into the Clinton Administration.

Bush and his corporate cronies do not want ambitious immigrants who will rapidly cultivate highly lucrative skills to begin contributing to our economy. This is anathema to his party because the innovative accomplishments of such foreigners can challenge the reign of the corporate lobbyists.  ""Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families,"" It is interesting that Bush cited the fertility of immigrants as one reason to reform the nation's policy on this issue. When low-skilled immigrants raise six or seven children on a minimum-wage income, is it likely that their children will become entrepreneurs, doctors or engineers?

Let's just be honest here, do the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs and Monsanto want immigrants like Sergei Brinn and Carlos Slim? Clearly, these individuals posses exquisite entrepreneurial talent that less than a million of newcomers will have.

At the very least, however, the ambitious immigrants will likely help the small businesses more than the large corporations. Hundreds of foreigners are small-time entrepreneurs who operate gas stations, convenience stores and virtual enterprises. If they do not start their own business, most of them will not settle for dead-end jobs in corporate bureaucracies. They've sacrificed far too much and have come way too far to settle for a mere mediocre living at a job they don't find sufficiently lucrative or intrinsically fulfilling. They will become the kind of workers who reward new entrepreneurs for their ingenuity, boldness and morally upstanding conduct. Clearly, most modern corporations are clearly lacking these virtues and the ambitious immigrants will likely support their competitors because of that.

Why the Democratic Political Platform Creates Poverty

While one may describe this meme as propagandistic and one-sided, it carries an important insight.

The Democratic Party has always been notorious for employing the strategy of machine politics to maximize their influence. Andrew Jackson instituted the spoils system where the government provided political privileges to voters in exchange for their support.

The Democrats were able to perpetrate such blatant fraud with impunity because this country was significantly more corrupt than it is now. However, the increased political transparency compelled them to merely refine their strategy as opposed to abandon it. In other words, they simply discovered subtler and less conspicuous methods for achieving the same objective.

Instead of explicitly handing out government positions to the most steadfast party loyalists, they reward supporters by expanding government programs that benefit them. Two obvious examples of this phenomenon include the invidious "military-industrial complex"  and the aggrandizement of welfare programs.

While both appear benevolent because they have the potential to generate income, they are problematic because they disincentivize the private and the public sector from contributing to economic growth. Today's welfare state can hardly be described as anything but a spoils system in disguise: it hands out special privileges to the underclass in exchange for their support. Although this course of action diminishes the incidence of extreme poverty, it does little to provide its beneficiaries with resources necessary to enter the middle class. In part because of this, the government has an incentive to increase rather than decrease the poverty rate. For this reason, the image cited in the opening sentence provides relatively accurate description of the frequent consequences of the Democrats' long-term political triumphs.

While government contracts for large corporations create jobs, they are fundamentally anti-competitive because they allow these organizations to thrive without outperforming their rivals in the market. As a result, economic growth is stifled because these institutions reward alliances with the government more than efficiency and innovation. As a result, higher barriers to market-entry are created and the surviving enterprises often produce fewer jobs than the genuine victors in market competition would. This clearly contributes to poverty because government contracts eliminate more jobs than they create.

Since FDR's New Deal, the appeal to pity has always been the centerpiece of the Democratic political platform. However, it is a little known fact that this rationale is fallacious and famously so: it is known as the logical fallacy of argumentum ad lazarum. It is always a mistake to assume by default that acts motivated by the intention to assist the most unfortunate are morally justifiable. While very few could reject the moral premise that it is commendable to help the poor, there is a gap between people's actions and intentions. That is why the ostensible acts of compassion that the Democrats profess to engage in frequently lead to disastrous outcomes.

Pinochet Coup and The Disastrous Consequences of American Global Hegemony

This is an informative documentary on the indictment of Chile's former military dictator, General Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity. With ample financial and political support from the United States, Pinochet seized power in the September 11th coup d'etat of 1973. This event laid down the foundations of the U.S hegemonic foreign policy that subsequently led to 72 foreign interventions provoking a massive proliferation of anti-American sentiments in a myriad of underdeveloped nations where interventions have taken place. For all of the 20th century, the U.S was able to pursue these policies with nearly full impunity and minimal casualties. Nonetheless, the disastrous consequences of America's heavy interventionism in foreign countries reached this country's shores 38 years after the Pinochet coup, evincing the disastrous consequences of our hegemonic foreign policy.

Under Pinochet's aegis, Chile was transformed from an indigent Marxist state to a dynamic market-oriented democracy it is today. The junta accomplished this remarkable feat by comprehensively uprooting all political opposition through massive incarceration, torture and execution. Extra-judicial incarceration was perpetrated on over 30,000 innocent civilians, 3,000 were murdered and over 10,000 permanently displaced. Nonetheless, Chile remains the most stable, the most prosperous and the most democratic nation in South America.

Whether you applaud or decry General Pinochet's radical reforms, the relevance of this event to modern American foreign policy is worth noting. The democratization of foreign authoritarian regimes and the revitalization of their moribund statist communist economies often comes at an exorbitant cost.

The era of light skirmishes and casual conflict is over, no-one is fully immune to the threats of modern war. 

The University is the New Church

In the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes repeatedly expressed concerns that the Church and the University had the potential to undermine the sovereign's authority. When I first read that passage as a naive college student, I saw no reason to challenge Hobbes' position regarding the subversiveness of the University. After all, I thought that the University was home to many massive protests and it seemed obvious to me that the primary purpose of institutions of higher learning was to promote critical thinking.

Yet, I did not quite understand why Hobbes thought that the Church could be equally subversive. I was confounded by that bizarre assertion because the Church appeared to have the opposite influence upon young people from that of the University. Instead of promoting critical thinking, it encouraged its patrons to adhere to a religious dogma and instead of participating in protests, it promoted obedience to authority. Then, sobering realization dawned upon me: I've thoroughly misunderstood that passage from the Leviathan. 

Hobbes was not saying that the University was potentially seditious because it promoted critical and independent thinking. In fact, he was saying the exact opposite: the University undermined the authority of the State in nearly exactly the same way the Church did. In the "Origins of Political Order", Francis Fukuyama documented how the political power of the Catholic Church diminished the strength of the centralized governments across Western Europe. By contrast, the Orthodox Church of Russia enjoyed considerably less power and for that reason, the Tsars were able to govern with an iron-fist. He documented a similar contrast between the deeply religious medieval India that lacked a strong centralized government and the relatively secular China that has been deeply authoritarian for most of its history. 

Hobbes' point was that similarly to the Sovereign, the University and the Church had tremendous potential to inspire unconditional obedience to their authority. In so doing, they can persuade their followers to developer deeper loyalties to institutions of religious practice or "higher learning" than to the government. Unlike mere craftsmen and ordinary people who serve to provide practical benefits for others in exchange for monetary rewards, the Church and the University claim that they serve a higher purpose in society. The former generally maintains that they help people obtain salvation, find meaning in life and throughout the epochs, it has been nothing short of the vanguard of public morality. In the deeply religious Europe, it was often presumed that it was impossible for one to be moral without being religious. However, in the secular Westernized society, the average citizen clearly adheres to a different set of values more akin to those espoused by the University. Such values include participating in a democracy by voting or protesting, thinking for oneself and serving the public good. While these ideals sound great on paper, the University has only been as effective at compelling people to abide by them as the Catholic Church has been at the prequel to the Protestant Reformation. 

In light of the fundamental changes to the Western collective consciousness, the University wields far greater moral authority than the Church. The traditional Christian values are often seen as antiquated, parochial and altogether out of tune with the sensibilities of the modern society. By contrast, the University emerged as the bastion of forward looking values where all sorts of causes for social justices are championed. Thus, Hobbes' insight is quite relevant today because the University remains a politically active institution. Although most protesters on college campuses believe that their actions are driven only by their independent thought, they've been more influenced by the culture of the University than they realize. This becomes apparent in light of the fact that most students struggle to form coherent arguments in defense of their position. We all know it, only a few students are critical thinkers and even fewer base their political attitudes on facts or defensible rationales.

I think we should seriously consider the idea that the University indoctrinates students just as much as the Church used to and Hobbes' wariness of the University was quite justified. Today, his fears are becoming a reality as the University poses a more formidable challenge to the U.S government than the Church did to the governments of medieval Europe. At the outset, this seems like a good thing because the government's power must be challenged as otherwise it becomes corrupt and oppressive.

 The problem is, however, the Church and the University are not immune to this problem. The Catholic Church compromised its integrity at the heyday of the sales of the indulgences and we're beginning to see a similar problem with the modern Academia. Rampant grade inflation and the proliferation of online degree mills likens the process of acquiring a degree to that of paying priests to reserve one's place in heaven. Similarly to the Catholic Church, the University promises its students extraordinary results such as "the joys of the life of the mind" and superior employment prospects, yet they rarely honor these promises. Only graduates with a small number of highly marketable degrees tend to reap the full rewards of a college education while the majority of their peers get buried deep in debt. As for the life of the mind, I can only refer you to William Pannapacker. 

Early Feminism and Modern Misandry

Isn't feminism just another form of collectivist prejudice in the same sense that racism is? Racists make sweeping generalizations about the allegedly malevolent intentions of people of different skin color, but don't the feminists do the same thing?

Collectively, the white people have done a lot of harm to the blacks by colonizing their territories. You could argue that collectively, men have done the same to women over millennia.

Yet in both cases, the harmful actions were not caused by any malevolent intentions. The Europeans were merely pursuing their self-interest by seeking to expand their empires and patriarchs did likewise by seeking to extend their personal power.

In a lot of cases, both groups displayed callousness, myopia and even unimaginable ignorance. However, the vilification is simply unwarranted because a very small percentage of members of those groups were guided by intentions of inflicting harm upon those who suffered as a result of their actions.

I think that this is the fundamental problem with feminism itself: it unduly ascribes sinister motives to actors of history who scarcely even considered the true outcomes of their actions.

The pioneers of feminist thought such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen endeavored to address the structural causes of gender inequity. They focused on institutional, economic, sociocultural and political aspects of the problem. By and large, the severest of problems of patriarchy have been resolved. That is evident in light of the fact that a significant percentage of prestigious professional positions are held by women.

In the absence of the grossest of gender inequality problems, the modern feminists are left with little choice but to engage in crass misandry that is quite similar to the practices of racists. Both groups focus not on the fundamental causes of injustice, but on the imagined nefarious motives of groups that they regard as their adversaries.

Open letter to Professor Fritz McDonald

Dear Professor McDonald,

As a token of my appreciation for the invaluable services you have rendered to me and will undoubtedly render to many of your future students, I am responding to your most recent publication in Oakland University's virtual newspaper.  

"This university is a wonderful place. It is amazing that it even exists. You are incredibly lucky to go to such a university."

Yes, Fritz, I completely agree with you. We are incredibly lucky to spend $50,000 on a four year degree that will leave us even worse off than we were when we started. Please remind me how you get people to major in philosophy? Oh, that's right: you lure them in with that "life of the mind" claptrap. My dear child, don't you want to be wise? Don't you want to be the beneficiary of all that the intellectual life has to offer? Don't you want to be able to think for yourself instead of having your life directed by religious demagoguery, political propaganda or arbitrary social conventions!? Oh, of course you do because you are a bright young man, so how can you not major in philosophy!?

What's the problem with this rhetoric? Academic philosophy has little to do with the pursuit of wisdom as Socrates conceptualized or even how most ordinary people see it today. Instead of focusing on the important questions of life and pursuing the life of the mind, you'll just be rehashing the views of popular modern philosophers. If you're lucky, you'll be regurgitating the ideas of the authors of the classics. Oh sure, you will be asked to analyze some of their arguments, but that task will comprise 20% of your essay or final exam, at the most. What could possibly be wrong with that and who cares if you know how to think for yourself!? On the other hand, the ability to rehash every line of Roderick Chisholm's free will defense will truly make a positive difference in your life!

Is regurgitating the views of other thinkers pursuing the life of the mind or is it just providing an account of how others have done so? So, Fritz, what's your response to that? Last time you've ducked the question by asserting that you were in class to answer questions about the upcoming exam and justifying your practices simply was not part of your job description.

Here, let me help you. I know that the pursuit of academic philosophy has little to do with the "life of the mind", I am here to teach you the skills that professors of philosophy practice in their scholarly journals. You will never be able to publish a peer-reviewed article without demonstrating a thorough understanding of the views of thinkers who are preeminent in your sub-discipline of philosophy. So, why should I set you up for failure in your philosophical career by not teaching you the skills that my academic establishment recognizes as very important? Well, your chances of becoming a professional philosopher are practically non-existent, especially since you're graduating from a tier-four school, but I am not going to advertise that, alright? 

In other words, most esteemed professor McDonald, what you're saying is that you're teaching us the skills we will need for a job that we will never obtain, correct? You're more than happy to encourage us to drown in debt obtaining skills that make us none-the-wiser and not any better off in the real world, isn't that true ?

Didn't your office neighbor, Mark Rigstad boast that he gets a dollar for every new philosophy major?  Didn't you make an argument to your 2009 Capstone class that the rigor of your program would be increased if the university was to have all of its expenses covered by the government because you would no longer have to charge tuition? Right, that would exempt you from the charge that you're enticing students to get buried beneath a mountain of debt, but it will also empower you to keep on teaching them the skills that are worthless from the intellectual and a practical standpoint. At least now, some students may have the good sense to not major in your discipline because it is financially non-viable, but then you won't even have this impediment to your objectives.

 Yes, students were incredibly fortunate to have this experience in 1962 when courses in the humanities were much more rigorous and degrees far more instrumental in the job market than they are now. So, what exactly have you accomplished other than exploit the naivete of the callow youth?

"To only go to classes is to miss out on the experience of going to college itself."

Do you mean the experience of attending over-sized classrooms taught by TAs who do not even understand the most rudimentary principles of pedagogy and trudging through curricula that impart virtually no valuable intellectual or practical skills on students? Admittedly, the OU classes are much smaller than the classes of many more prestigious institutions and are less likely to be taught by TAs, yet my last criticism stands.

"When I was in college, I wrote for my university's alternative weekly. I met friends for life."

Why don't you be a little more specific here? What year was this and where did you meet these friends? In your undergraduate program or graduate school? How many of your friends were fortunate enough to spend the rest of their career in the college cocoon? Do you have an intellectually honest way of making the argument that your experiences will be shared by the students you are writing to?

" I was a member of the philosophy club, getting a good preparation for my eventual career and discussing some deep stuff."

Again, what are you doing to help your students prepare for their eventual career and what was the "deep stuff" you were discussing? You mean the nuances of Peter Singer's argument for infanticide and Robert Kane's libertarianism? While you may have engaged in some critical thinking in your graduate level academic institution, how many of your students will ever advance beyond the very basics of philosophy? What kind of "deep stuff" will they be discussing once they graduate with $50,000 of debt with virtually no viable career prospects?

"I understand that many of you work full time, sometime many jobs"

Of course you understand that because they are paying your salary or preparing themselves for a life of paying off student debt working jobs they could have easily procured before even attending college.

" Here is my advice to you: do as little work as you possibly can outside of college. College is a full-time job."

Yes, I completely agree with you, let's set them all up for a big fall: let's keep them ignorant about how the real world works. Keep them insulated from the realities of the job-market and most importantly, discourage students from having experiences that enable them to understand the difference between preparation for a career as an academic philosopher and the actual pursuit of the life of the mind.

"Go ask your parents for more money, if they have it." Of course, what grown child in his late teens or early 20s ever dreams about being independent, let alone becoming a productive adult who makes valuable contributions to society!  Now, serving society as opposed to the narrow interests of your academic institution is something that you know a great deal about, don't you?

Feel free to dismiss me as an envious libeler, after all, I should have followed your advice to extend my college life for as long as possible, right? I just couldn't have done better than to have insulated myself from the real world for 10 full years to obtain a PhD, who could have ever questioned the precious wisdom of that proclamation!?

Perhaps your colleague, William Pannapacker would have? Have you ever considered exposing your students to an alternative point of view by citing links to his publications in the Chronicle of Higher Education? Oh, right!? He is a crank, a marginalized radical and probably even a shill for the Republican Party! He teaches in Holland, Michigan; a relatively small town that is much more conservative than Oakland University, the bastion of independent thought, forward-looking values and the pivotal actor in the progress of the Western civilization.

Forget about the thousands of PhDs in philosophy who compete with high-school drop-outs for entry level jobs. Forget about the shrill cacophony of voices from thousands of adjunct-professors who are hovering on starvation and the hordes of unemployed PhDs who echo Pannapacker's central message.

What can I say, you're a good man, Fritz: you truly have your students' best interests at heart. They don't need to grow up or worry about their staggering student debt. Forget about all of those pesky statistics regarding the plights of students with the kind of degrees that you are promoting. After all, who cares about the mundane banalities of the economic world when you live the dream of the life of the mind!

Besides, a college degree is your ticket to the middle class, right? So, what could possibly be wrong with going deeper into debt, squandering your parents' money and postponing exposure to the real world until you're well into your early 30s, like yourself? You don't even need to preach the noble lifestyle of perpetual childhood, your life is the embodiment of your teaching.  

Your Sincerest Admirer,

-Aleksey

"The middle class must be artificially created by the government"

An inveterate leftist acquaintance of mine remarked that "the middle class must be artificially created by the government". The underlying theme of his claim was clear: it is impossible for a society to improve the quality of life for the average citizen without empowering the government to control the economy.

Ad hominems aside, this claim reveals stark ignorance of the history of the nascent stages of the modern society. Although the industrialists of the 19th century were notorious for providing factory workers with exiguous compensation and subjecting them to deplorable work conditions, the standards of living for ordinary citizens have improved.

Prior to the emergence of these opportunities, a significant portion of the population engaged in mere "subsistence farming" where a minor decline in productivity often resulted in famines that wiped out entire villages. To find evidence in support of this claim, one must look no further than the Irish Potato famine.

My interlocutor explained that the middle class must be artificially created by the government because the business elites invariably use technology to exploit the work-force. While that is true, the technology also empowers ordinary citizens to find more rewarding work.

This example is not limited to the 19th century United States and Britain, but also various nations of the developing world. For all of its affronts to human dignity, the proliferation of sweatshop labor across Southeast Asia empowers ordinary civilians to work in factories as opposed to prostitute themselves or engage in the commerce of begging.

The middle class in China and India is a phenomenon of the late 20th century. To be sure, it was not "artificially created" by the government. It is almost entirely a product of industrialization quite similar to the one that took place over a century ago in Western Europe and North America.

Collectivism and Moral Relativism

The authors of a popular persuasion book evinced the fundamental differences between the mindsets of collectivism and individualism. Individualists are often stereotyped as whimsical, flaky, self-absorbed and unlikely to stay true to their word. By contrast, collectivists are often seen as reliable, duty-oriented and dedicated to the public good.

Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini have shown that quite frequently, the exact opposite is closer to the truth. In their example, the individualist Tiger Woods exercised resolute self-discipline to compete in a major tournament despite a myriad of personal tragedies that beset him. Why did he do it? Because he made a personal commitment to the tournament and strongly believed that he should exercise self-discipline in his golfing career. Unlike the thinking of a collectivist, his moral reasoning was not motivated by social expectations, cultural mores or even obligations to society.

In his interview, Woods unabashedly disclosed that on that doleful day, he golfed only for himself. The authors explained that by their nature, individualists tend to operate based on their personal moral compass. By contrast, collectivists tend to believe that morality is determined by the expectations of their communities and individuals lack the moral prerogative to challenge it. In so doing, the collectivists have implicitly reaffirmed the key tenets of cultural relativism: that morality is determined by communities rather than inviolable and objective principles.

Although individualists can be moral subjectivists and subscribe to arbitrary and self-serving principles, most tend to believe that there is an objective justification for their stance. In other words, they are more likely to claim that they espouse their moral values because they are "right" rather than simply because they want to do so.

 Individualists may be open to the possibility that they are misguided in their beliefs and that is why it is common for people of this point of view to display pluralistic tolerance for the diverging views of others. Indeed, the world's most pluralistic societies tend to be resolutely individualistic and by contrast, totalitarian societies of communism and Islamo-fascism are invariably collectivist.

Although the United States has been founded as an individualistic nation and remains as such, the Academic Community has been taking our culture in the collectivist direction. They have done so by promoting the creed of post-modernism one of the key premises of which is that people are mass-produced by their environments, they are powerless to resist such influences and true objectivity is impossible. This ideological orientation has been re-affirmed by a proliferation of "hyphenated American studies" where the curricula center on the discourse of marginalized groups such as women, LGBT, African-Americans, Asians, etc.

While they may be correct that people invariably operate with biases and are often much less objective than they think they are, it is a mistake to conclude that people lack the capacity to resist social influences. By promoting this notion, the universities undermine the type of moral resolve and consistent behaviors with moral principles that is the basis of morality itself. Individualism is the foundation of objective moral values and the true vanguard against the encroachments of collectivism upon a free society. In light of this notion, Karl Popper famously declared that an Open Society is necessarily individualistic and its principal nemeses such as Plato, Marx and Hegel were inveterate collectivists.


What lesson about persuasion did Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini wish to impart on their readers? When dealing with people from an individualistic culture, we should entice them to act ethically by pointing out that such behavior is consistent with their personal moral principles. Conversely, when interacting with collectivists, we should encourage them to act in accordance with the moral principles espoused by their communities.

On the mentality of a politician

Reciprocity is the basis of all human relationships and because of that, most people want to earn a living in a way that benefits society. In a free-market economy, one must sell goods or services to others in order to obtain profits. Most customers are unlikely to make purchases unless they believe that doing so will benefit them. While it is true that customers often misunderstand what is in their best interest, they generally tend to purchase commodities that at the very least, appear to benefit them in the short-run.

Thus, to raise profits in a free-market economy, one must convince the consumers that the commodity they promote could be be useful even in the most superficial and short-term respects. By contrast, if one promotes goods or services through government programs that are imposed upon the entire population, he or she does not need to do that. Instead, that person must either become a politician by convincing voters that he is capable of serving their best interests or building an alliance with a member of the incumbent government.

The fundamental difference between the persuasive efforts of the entrepreneur and the politician is that the former must provide immediate evidence of how his product is useful to the consumer. By contrast, the latter must merely make it seem like it will be useful in the future. For example, President Obama promised that despite the rising health-care costs, the Patient Affordable Health-Care Act will improve the American healthcare system in the long-run. Similarly, Bush II did not need the immediate approval of the public to invade Iraq because the justification for this course of action rested on a dubious promissory note of making America safer.

Gross intellectual fraud is the basis of political discourse  because politicians rarely have incentives to provide immediate evidence that their programs serve their intended purposes.

Why anarcho-capitalism is not sustainable

Anarcho-capitalism is the ideology that in a market-oriented community, no government should be established. However, that is unsustainable because in such an environment, private parties will establish a government of their own in the interest of maximizing their share of control and prosperity.

When that happens, the new government will be unlikely to preserve the liberties of the citizenry at all costs. Instead of setting up an anarcho-capitalist state, why not take preemptive measures against the emergence of a tyrannical government by setting up a very limited government whose sole purpose is to preserve liberties of the citizenry.

If we could have learned anything from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, it is that in the complete absence of a sovereign, liberty in the community will be extremely difficult to preserve. As Hobbes himself put it, in the state of nature "life is nasty, brutish, solitary and short".

Anarcho-capitalism is little more than a naive attempt to preserve personal liberties by eliminating an institution that often encroaches upon individual freedoms. This course of action is fundamentally erroneous because it overlooks the vital role that governments play in preserving law and order, which is a prerequisite for a free society.

That is one of the pivotal differences between Libertarianism and Anarcho-capitalism: the former postulates that the existence of a government is justified only by its ability to maximize liberty and the latter posits that there should be no government.

The truth about Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Today's callow youth blithely wear T-shirt bearing the image of Ernesto Guevara without having the slightest clue as to what he stood for. They call him "Che" assuming that this was his name when that's just Argentine slang, which loosely translates to English as "dude."

When asked what was admirable about their mascot, the neophytes natter that he is a symbol of "anti-establishment" and "revolution." It is a little-known fact that in the aftermath of the U.S. orchestrated a coup in Guatemala, Guevara swore on the picture of Stalin that he would not rest until he crushed the "capitalist octopi."

Less than a decade later, the Communist Commandante urged the Soviet Union to mount a nuclear attack on the United States. It goes without saying that the likely possibility of permanent annihilation of all civilization was completely inconsequential for him.

Sentimentalized hagiographies portray this man as a martyr who abandoned his privileged life in Cuba for the global revolution against Yankee imperialism. The truth is much less inspiring: Fidel Castro deported "Che" because he compromised the fledgling communist state's alliance with the Soviet Union.

When your hero's intransigent ideology is far too extreme even for the most totalitarian state in the history of humanity, think twice before plastering his face onto a banner symbolizing your rallying cry for "social justice."

Rational self-interest is the true basis of morality

Adam Smith is first and foremost known as the pioneer of laissez-faire economics, a theoretical framework postulating that the public good is most expediently served in a society where all individuals pursue their rational self-interest in the market-place. Today, he is regarded as one of the world's most distinguished economists and all challenges to his credentials as an economist are dismissed as absurd. However, it is a little known fact that Smith saw himself not as an economist, but as a moral philosopher. Prior to his landmark publication "The Wealth of Nations", Smith laid down the foundations for his moral philosophy in the "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Therein, he argued that morality is grounded not in reason, but in sentiments of sympathy towards other individuals. It is these sympathetic feelings that infuse us with the desire to treat others with dignity and humanity.

In light of the gap between one's intentions and actions, one is compelled to ask the question of whether or not one must intend to do good in order treat others well. "I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good." Smith offered a controversial to this question positing that people who trade for the public good rarely achieve their intended objectives. By these merits, he developed the concept of the Invisible Hand which emerged as the centerpiece of the The Wealth of Nations and the cardinal notion of free-market capitalism. It postulated that if everyone acted consistently with their rational self-interest, a society characterized by voluntary cooperation and efficiency would be created.

One may immediately object to this point by asserting that if people began acting selfishly by oppressing others in order to achieve their goals, the Hobbesian state of nature where life is "nasty, solitary, brutish and short" would ensue. As a remedy to this crisis, Hobbes prescribed the appointment of a Leviathan, or a sovereign who will impose disciplinary measures upon the violators of public order. However, the proponents of the the Invisible Hand will argue that people would not be acting in their rational self-interest by living amok, instead they'd be behaving in a manner that only appears to serve the best interests. In reality, such behavior destroys the shared environment and makes life more difficult for nearly everyone involved.

This thought experiments leaves one with the following unavoidable question: to what extent are people capable of recognizing their rational self-interest? Clearly, if their ability to do so was unlimited, there would be no need for conventional morality. If selfish behavior always led to actions consistent with one's rational self-interest, there would be no need for people to be told to behave altruistically. Because actions consistent with rational self-interest benefit everyone,  there simply would be no need for anyone to be motivated by the desire to do good for others as opposed to for oneself.


Clearly, that scenario does not describe the modern social and political reality and that is why there is  a need for morality. However, it is commonly presumed that conventional morality comes ahead of the morality of rational self-interest. In other words, that people rarely behave consistently with their rational self-interest and they need to be constantly disciplined by the voice of altruism. According to the modern bio-economist, Paul Zak, that is not true In the Moral Molecule, Zak affirmed Adam Smith's thesis that most of human behavior is guided by the Moral Sentiments. Far from being antithetical to the credo of the invisible hand, Moral Sentiments render the behaviors of rational self-interest possible. Precisely because most people generally want to treat others well it is possible for most people to pursue their own agendas without exploiting and undermining others in the process.


Most of the world's popular religions such as Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity extol altruism and deplore egoism. Befittingly, Buddhists regard selfish urges as the manifestations of the ego, Christians, Muslims and Practitioners of Judaism see egoism as an act of succumbing to Satanic influence. Consistently with that theme, Anton LaVey, the founder of Satanism declared declared that man's true nature is that of a carnal beast who behaves selfishly and disregards the impact of his actions upon others. In general, morality focuses on creating a peaceful social environment where people treat each other with respect and no accomplished moral philosopher takes LaVey's thesis seriously. At best, it merely feeds into the religious notion that all self-interested actions are evil by definition. That is not the case because egoism and altruism are not mutually exclusive and the fusion of the two leads to the morality of rational self-interest, the essential manifestation of human conscience that is the driving force behind the Invisible Hand. While it is true that people are naturally tend to be more egoistic than altruistic, their selfish actions are tempered by moral considerations of the well-being of others. Therefore, the conscience of rational self-interested is the basis of morality itself and not the ethic of altruism espoused by religious leaders. At best, the latter is merely a supplement for the former and that is why most people treat others decently without being constantly exhorted to do so by the moral authorities.

Megalomania in the American clergy

This morning, I turned on the TV and it was set to a channel that I did not recognize. At the center of the stage, a charismatic speaker was entertaining a large audience who were fully captivated by his message. Their responses shifted from wild applause to unrestrained laughter and I initially presumed that the speaker must have been a comedian.

As he continued to talk about God, it seemed that he was merely be facetious and poking satire at the religious fundamentalists. To the best of my recollections, his story could be summarized along the following lines.

"My wife and I were driving at night on an empty interstate in Texas and she urged me to slow down or else I'd get a ticket. I retorted that there was nobody on the roads at this hour, so there was no danger in driving fast and there would be no policeman to discipline us. Then suddenly, I saw lights flashing behind us and I pulled over. As the cop approached our car, my wife anxiously began looking through the glove compartment to find our proof of insurance and registration. The already vexed officer was becoming increasingly impatient, but suddenly God's grace shone through! My wife found our first wedding ring in the glove compartment that she couldn't find for three years! And suddenly, the police officer recognized me and asked me if I was that famous pastor he saw on TV. I responded with a nod and he inquired if I'd save him a spot at my next sermon and he left immediately when I told him that I'd save him the whole section!"

Wild applause erupted in the audience and the lecturer seized the moment to provide his own interpretation of this event. "You see, God works in mysterious ways!" He elaborated as the audience cheered enthusiastically. "Everything in your life is strategically ordained and if it wasn't for that police officer, we would have never found that ring. If I wasn't God's servant with a large following at my Church, he would not have let us off with a warning".

I could not refrain from laughing and the comedian appeared to be an outstanding job ridiculing televangelists with delusions of grandeur. After all, I thought, how could this guy possible be serious!? There is no way any reasonable person can honestly believe that God "strategically ordained" the circumstances of his life to turn him into a popular preacher so police officers do not give him tickets. Even by the standards of public figures such as movie stars and politicians, it takes a megalomaniac of stupendous proportions to even entertain so preposterous of a notion that God purposefully put a police officer on the streets of rural Texas JUST SO he can find the ring that he lost three years ago.

To my astonishment, the speaker then promoted his book "Fearless" which he promoted with even fiercer missionary zeal than his faith. Despite his cheery demeanor and the wild applause from the audience, it turned out that the speaker was not a comedian but a popular pastor, John Fischer.

The hubris of televangelists knows no boundaries and their self-centered thinking habits never cease to confound me. The famous Oxford Psychologist Kevin Dutton cited several studies showing that similarly to politicians lawyers and CEOs, psychopaths and narcissists are quite common among the religious leaders. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself!




Never-mind that our most popular televangelists live in mansions, drive luxury sedans and preach in opulent Churches when thousands of people live in poverty just miles away from where they preach. Forget about the allegations that Paul Robertson was involved in the smuggling racket of the Congolese blood diamonds .

Just try listening to the messages of these self-centered demagogues and judge their character on that basis. Keep an open-mind and see if in all honesty, you can see these individuals as anything but raging megalomaniacs.

Why the ideals of Democracy and Republicanism are antithetical to each other

American Conservatives assert that the United States was founded as a Constitutional Republican and they are 100% correct. Befittingly of its name, the Republican Party aspires to defend the founding principles of this nation by preserving the essential elements of the Republic. One of such elements is the principle of individual rights that they jealously guard from all threats "foreign or domestic". Most people are inclined to see that as a good thing and presume that other admirable political ideals such as democracy can be reconciled with this principle.

The reality is that the United States was not founded as a Democracy, it was founded as a Republic and that is evidenced by the fact that the word "democracy" has not been mentioned in the Constitution. The essential definition of "democracy" is a rule by the people and most people desire to have fulfilling lives characterized by dignity, material comfort and opportunities to actualize their talents. In the process of a achieving a truly democratic society, it is inevitable that the rights of some people will need to be compromised. For example, if one wishes to create a society where all people have equal opportunities to achieve upward mobility, the well off will need to sacrifice some of their rights to maximize their prosperity. While economics is not a zero-sum game and in some scenarios it is possible for the rich and the underprivileged to undertake a collective venture that benefits both sides, that is not always the case. Thus, a compromise of individual rights is simply an inevitable prerequisite for the creation of the commons where as many people as possible are able to advance their interests. Admittedly, this will impose limitations on the degree to which the most capable and resourceful of individuals will be able to advance theirs.

The bottom line is that the ideals of preservation of the individual rights cannot be fully reconciled with the democratic ideals. The two are fundamentally antithetical to one another because one seeks to safeguard the individual rights of all individuals and the other seeks to compromise them in the name of another political objective. The Republican Defenders of individual rights are rightly called conservative because they wish to preserve the foundational principles of this country. By contrast, their opponents who wish to undermine them are called progressive because they have abandoned the founding principles in favor of other political ideals.

Although it is impossible to be fully committed to Republicanism and Democracy, we must be very wary of the tendency to fully embrace one at the complete exclusion of another. An excessive commitment to democracy can erode individual rights to the point where a state of totalitarian communism will ensue. Conversely, an intransigent adherence to the Republican form of government that guards individual rights at all cost will invariably lead to social stratification where only the most fortunate and the most talented can find fulfillment. It is essentially impossible for the two ideologies to be in perfect harmony with one another and all societies will unavoidably be more committed to one than to the other. Thus, a humane and a free society requires not a bipartisan balance between Republican and Democratic ideals, but a constant conflict between the two.

Vilification of the poor is our sacred duty!

Demonizing the poor is not merely a Republican strategy of aligning the middle class with the financial elites, it is a meme that has been sanctified by the Church since the 19th century. This phenomenon is known as the "Protestant Ethic" which was founded on the Calvinist principle of predestination which held that all people were selected by God either for salvation or eternal perdition. According to scripture, God's presence in ones life manifests in the fruits of the spirit and industriousness is one of them. Because it was also believed that affluence was solely a result of hard-work, the leaders of the religious establishment were inclined to presume that the rich were saved by definition. By contrast, poverty appeared to be solely a result of indolence and the poor were presumed to have been condemned to hell.

In light of the premise that no-one could override God's will, the secular and the religious elites concluded that it was pointless to attempt to alleviate poverty. After all, they are poor just because they are lazy and they are lazy because God made them that way and no-one could change that, so no-one can stop them from being poor! Who could possibly argue with that!? Besides, colluding with the industrialists was a far more lucrative venture than abiding by Christ's dictum of a "rich man is just as likely to enter heaven as a camel is to go through the eye of a needle".

Since then, the religious establishment has been a foremost ally of the financial elites who were granted a moral justification to renege on their responsibilities to the poor. In return, the Church received ample financial support and procured a large number of lucrative followers who had little interest in being sincere Christians. Within a century, religion emerged as a multimillion dollar business and the net-worth of its best practitioners exceeded that of many Wall-Street speculators. Virtually any person with a conscience would find this enormous hypocrisy daunting, if not altogether unbearable. That is why a significant percentage of preachers have lost their faith but the financial incentives compel them to preserve their stature as religious leaders.

Why Pope Francis sticks out like a sore thumb in Vatican

Although Christianity as we know it today was a marginalized sect for centuries after Christ's death, Emperor Constantine soon turned it into the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire. For the ensuing centuries, the secular and the religious authorities formed steadfast alliances that have endured to this day. Despite that the doctrine of the Separation of Church and State is enforced in Western Europe and North America, Christianity remains a religion of the powerful and the privileged. The clerical authorities of most European countries enjoyed lifestyles of material comfort and often required the financial support of the secular elites.

Naturally, the Catholic Church seized the opportunity to turn its religious institution into a burgeoning enterprises. They have achieved considerable success by engaging in the practice of the sales of the indulgences. The ordinary Church members were led to believe that they could shorten their stay in Purgatory by making munificent donations to their religious leaders. Despite the Protestant Reformation, the American churches began engaging in similar practice. In a book that is now known as a classic of sociology, Max Weber explained how the elites have used Christianity to renege on their responsibilities to the poor.



The Protestant Ethic that Max Weber described was founded on the Calvinist principle of predestination which held that all people were selected by God either for salvation or eternal perdition. According to scripture, God's presence in ones life manifests in the fruits of the spirit and industriousness is one of them. Because it was also believed that affluence was solely a result of hard-work, the leaders of the religious establishment were inclined to presume that the rich were saved by definition. By contrast, poverty appeared to be solely a result of indolence and the poor were presumed to have been condemned to hell. In light of the premise that no-one could override God's will, the secular and the religious elites concluded that it was pointless to attempt to alleviate poverty. After all, they are poor just because they are lazy and they are lazy because God made them that way and no-one could change that, so no-one can stop them from being poor! Who could possibly argue with that!? Besides, colluding with the industrialists was a far more lucrative venture than abiding by Christ's dictum of a "rich man is just as likely to enter heaven as a camel is to go through the eye of a needle".

Conversely, the Latin American clergymen were much less fortunate because they were not able to procure the blessings of the financial elites. Naturally, they sympathized with the underprivileged and their concern for the underclass was codified in the tenets of Liberation Theology. The differences between the point of view of Christianity as interpreted by the South American religious establishment and the European are glaring: that is the reason why Pope Francis sticks out like a sore thumb in Vatican. To protect their alliances with the secular elites, the European and American Christian leaders have denounced him as a communist and inveighed Liberation Theology as heretical. Whether you support or decry the Pope's efforts, it is undeniable that his teachings are founded on one fundamentally Christian insight: followers of Christ must display compassion for their fellow human beings by fighting poverty.

This notion flies in the face of the neo-liberal dogma of unfettered free-markets. While countries with considerable labor-power such as India and China are able to benefit from globalization, that does not hold true for most of the underdeveloped nations. According to Paul Collier's "Bottom Billion", the poorest nations on this planet simply lack the fundamental resources needed to take advantage of the opportunities the international markets offer. There is no reason to expect Chad and Niger to compete with the economies of developed nations when half of their population can barely avoid slow death due to starvation and malaria. Jeffrey Sachs put it well, regardless of how many mosquito nets you try to sell them, no progress will be achieved in eradicating extreme poverty through market solutions: markets do things for people that have something and there is no sense in trying to sell things to people who have nothing. Our millionaire televangelists have no concept of what it means to have nothing and that is why they are simply incapable of understanding the Pope's point of view.

Education and the political economy of merit

Education and the Political Economy of Merit

“The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way, that he simple cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will”. Johann Fichte

The value of education in the Western society

Most residents of North America and Western Europe highly value education and want to be seen by others as educated.  Education is commonly associated with the ability to learn efficiently, to make judicious moral judgments and to act as a responsible citizen. It is merely conventional wisdom that a highly educated work-force promotes political stability, makes the citizenry more likely to enjoy a high quality of life and even reap the joys of the life of the mind. Although these characteristics of education are often used in conjunction with one another, they can be separated from each other. It is certainly possible for an intellectually gifted person to excel academically and fail to enjoy a high quality of life. Indeed, exceptionally gifted academics do not always lead more fulfilling lives than individuals who are intellectually inferior to them. The eminent 20^th century scientist Nikola Tesla struggled to form rewarding interpersonal relationships and died in abject poverty. Albert Einstein was believed to have had the Asperger’s personality that prevented him from excelling at even the simplest tasks of life such as safely crossing the street. The pioneers of the two most prominent schools of thought in Moral Philosophy, Utilitarianism and Deontology; Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant respectively, faced similar challenges in everyday life. That is not to say that intellectual giftedness predisposes one to developing an Asperger’s syndrome or facing extraordinary difficulties with other walks of life, but there is an important difference between academic accomplishment and success in the less intellectual activities.

One may dismiss this assertion by claiming that the intellectually gifted individuals have a much higher general intelligence than the average person and they can use it to excel in any activity of their choice. In other words, Albert Einstein did not find happiness in all aspects of his life simply because he was an impractical man: had he focused less on physics and more on activities that he struggled with, he would have become a much better balanced individual.  This assertion romanticizes the concept of general intelligence by treating it as an elixir to all of life’s dilemmas. At best, a superior intellect enables the individual to solve complex problems in scenarios where their premises and fundamental facts are readily available or can be discovered with further inquiry. However, in most activities of life, true knowledge and competence are cultivated not through intellectual realizations, but through a combination of experience and thoughtful reflection upon it. Albert Einstein was very well aware of this distinction and prudently declined the appointment to become the second president of Israel with the explanation that he was too naïve for politics.  The concept of naiveté aptly illustrates the crucial distinction between intellectual and practical competence showing that even the most intellectually gifted of individuals can lack the experiences necessary for success in practical endeavors. 

This notion has been expounded upon by an eminent contemporary psychologist Robert Steinberg who revised the traditional intelligence test by introducing the criteria of practical and creative intelligence. His findings have shown that individuals who perform exceptionally well on the analytical portion of the test and achieve results on traditional IQ tests that indicate their superior intelligence that of an average person often receive much lower scores on the other two sections of the assessment. Moreover, college graduates whose IQ scores are slightly above average generally enjoy greater professional success than their peers with lower scores, but that is not true for students who receive exceptionally high IQ scores. Chris Lagnan, the man who achieved the highest score in the history of IQ tests works as a bartender.  Considerable controversy surrounds the question of whether or not Lagnan can be regarded as the paragon of intellectual supremacy because it is not certain that IQ tests accurately evaluate one’s intellectual ability. As evidenced in the famous 1996 American Psychological Publication “Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns”, IQ tests tend to carry heavy cultural biases and can often be manipulated by experienced test-takers. 

Nonetheless, there is a very strong correlation between success in academic courses and IQ tests because both activities require similar skills such as test-taking, solving problems in a way that is commonly taught in schools across the Western world and solving abstract problems without an immediate practical purpose. Students from other cultural backgrounds often receive lower scores than Caucasians in part because they are less familiar with the cultural elements of the IQ test, but with appropriate guidance, they can often be trained to excel on these assessments.  For example, one recent APA study featured two groups of African-American students where one was instructed that intelligence is determined solely by natural talent and the other that it could be increased through diligent practice. In stark contrast to conventional wisdom, the students in the latter group have not only outperformed their peers from the other group, but also displayed a significant improvement in their grades and other standardized tests. 

From the standpoint of Steinberg’s tripartite conception of intelligence, one group of students displayed a higher analytical intelligence than the other. Yet it is far from obvious that this is the case because the students who were told that intelligence is not determined by natural ability gained superior results not because they were more gifted than members of the other group, but because they were more confident in their abilities and better motivated to perform well.  One may argue that with the assistance of their instructors who participated in the study, they have utilized their practical intelligence in order to find the motivation to outperform their peers from the other group. In the process of this experiment, they were not taught the analytical skills needed to achieve such a performance and the majority of academic courses focus primarily on the cultivation of analytical rather than practical skills. Very few instructors actively counsel and mentor their students on how to perform at their peak capacity. The implication of this study is obvious: success on IQ tests, standardized tests, academic courses and other activities that bear the hallmark of one’s success in the system of education.  It is evident that individuals who excel at these undertakings do so not only because they are intellectually gifted but also because they tend to be well-motivated, organized and confident in their abilities. In fact, it is possible for an individual who is not intellectually gifted to possess all three of the aforementioned qualities and achieve significant academic success because of that. On this basis, one may conjecture that it is the practical skills that the students have cultivated outside of the classroom that enable them to perform well academically and professionally, not the analytical skills learned in the classroom. 

Clearly, success in the schooling system is a result of a broad range of disparate factors that are only tangentially related to each other.  That leaves one with a curious question regarding why conventional wisdom dictates that academic success is predominantly a result of intellectual ability, if not inborn talent. A superficial answer to this question would place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the eugenicists, craniologists and the scientific racists who developed culturally biased IQ tests and insisted on deporting thousands of low-scoring Jewish immigrants to a certain death in Nazi Germany. The reality of the situation is far more complex because the conception of intelligence as singular, monolithic, homogenous and ubiquitously generalized is deeply embedded in the annals of the Western civilization. Alfred North Whitehead famously said that all of Western philosophy consists of footnotes of Plato and indeed, the first conception of intelligence as a generalized phenomenon can be traced to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Theory of the Philosopher Kings. 

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato argued that all knowledge is abstract by definition and can only be acquired through intellectual realization. In other words, the ultimate reality of the universe resided in another realm known as the Heaven of Ideas that could only be perceived through incisive analytical reasoning, intuitive insight and ponderous contemplation of complexities. By contrast, experience with the material world played no role in the acquisition of knowledge because the world of tangible phenomenon or the world as we know it constitutes a distortion of the ultimate reality. For example, the Heaven of Ideas contains a perfect form of a chair and the visible chair is nothing more than a reflection of that idea. The same also holds true for the more recondite concepts such as justice, truth or political order and because of that, ordinary people who only experience the world as we know it are not qualified to govern. On that basis, Plato rejected democracy in favor of an enlightened dictatorship operated by Philosopher Kings or individuals who are sufficiently insightful to understand the nature of the political order and serve social justice. An obvious challenge that one may mount against Plato’s argument is that understanding what social justice is and promoting it are two different tasks. 

It is possible for an individual to have an impeccable understanding of what a just regime entails and give into the temptation to serve one’s own interests as opposed to that of the public good.  In light of this premise, an eminent 20^th century Political Philosopher Karl Popper charged Plato with being the principal enemy of the Open Society who authored the doctrines that were used to justify totalitarian regimes from Nero and Constantine to Mao Ze Dong, Stalin and Hitler. There is a significant parallel between despotism that the Philosopher King doctrine leads to in the government and the trend of “mis-education” that it often entails in the system of education. When the agenda of schools is heavily influenced by the interests of powerful parties who presume to know what is in the best interest of the students, the process of education often takes place in a manner that serves the interests of these parties rather than the students and society by and large. The doctrine of the Philosopher Kings often serves as the underlying justification of such regimes because it implies that individuals who are not members of these powerful parties do not understand the true “Idea” of how education should be and must be reduced to passive observers of or obedient participants in the system. In that scenario, individuals are “schooled” or indoctrinated rather than educated by the system. 

Remarkably, the majority of students are not dissatisfied with their university experiences and nation-wide surveys have shown that over 80% of high-school graduates desire to matriculate at a university. Upon acquisition of their Bachelor’s degree, over 85% of students report being mostly satisfied or completely satisfied with their university experience. Such surveys have also shown that most students are more likely to admire pop-culture celebrities rather than scholars of stupendous intellect and do not believe that they must be intellectually gifted in order to excel in life. If most students were asked if they would rather be more like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Albert Einstein, they would select Arnold with little hesitation. Moreover, most would strongly agree with Albert Einstein’s claim that he was too naïve to enter politics implicitly rejecting the Philosopher King thesis that intellectual ability makes one competent in all walks of life. Echoing Mark Twain’s dictum of “do not let schooling get in the way of your education”, most students acquire higher education for practical rather than the intellectual reasons. 

When asked to justify their position, most students would likely maintain that true education takes place outside of the classroom in extracurricular activities. For example, by attending Harvard or Yale, one may develop considerable social capital that would empower them to gain the connections needed to enter the highest echelons of our society’s socio-economic hierarchy. Even the students of the less prestigious schools can greatly improve their interpersonal communication skills that would dramatically increase their chances of finding lucrative work. Nonetheless, it is also undeniable that because of the rampant grade inflation that plagues the modern universities, the precipitously declining academic standards in the curricula of the courses across the nation and oversized classrooms, many universities fail to provide students with opportunities to obtain these practical skills. This leads one to wonder if the students are truly getting the “true education” in the practical sense of the term that they desire it in or if they are simply acquiring a degree because that increases their chances of finding more lucrative work, even if it does not endow them with any skills that are worth cultivating.

Distinction between schooling and education

It is a fundamental fact of the 21^st century job-market that individuals holding a Bachelor’s degree are more likely to find lucrative work than their peers who do not. For many, obtaining advanced academic credentials in a marketable occupation is the first step to launching a rewarding career. Most employers who offer highly prestigious jobs prefer applicants who hold a university degree, even when they struggle to justify their bias. When asked to provide an explanatory rationale for this point of view, managers and human-resource professionals often claim that education is a good thing in and of itself. In other words, a highly educated person is a better worker than the less educated by definition. Clearly, such arbitrary out assertions cannot withstand critical scrutiny and one is compelled to inquire what qualities underscore the superiority of educated employees to the less educated. When pressed with such questions, they tend to maintain that when an individual finishes his or her Bachelor’s Degree, it is safe to assume that they are perseverant, diligent and sufficiently intelligent to understand abstract concepts. Yet, even such assertions prove to be untenable when confronted with further inquiries as experienced Human Resource professionals will attest that there is no shortage of incompetent employees with impeccable academic credentials in virtually all professional occupations. 

Nonetheless, one can make the generalization that on average, the highly educated workers tend to be more capable and better suited for demanding jobs of the contemporary market-oriented economy than their less well-educated peers. While that may be true, it is difficult to estimate the extent to which acquisition of further schooling empowers an individual to become a better employee. For example, it would almost certainly be an error to claim that if all book-keepers of a small business were to be required to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in order to retain their jobs, they would become significantly more productive. Clearly, the book-keepers would be able to acquire job-related competencies by attending classes that are directly related to their vocation such as accounting, finance, applied economics and business mathematics. Despite that in the process of acquiring their academic credentials, the book-keepers would be very likely to complete many classes that are irrelevant or only tangentially pertinent to their field of specialization; it is likely that they would learn skills that will prove to be valuable in the work-place. Not only will the book-keepers learn the technical skills required in the modern métier of Accounting, they will also increase their capacity to understand complex scenarios in the world of business, rigorously analyze them and develop practical solutions to problems that they are likely to encounter in their field. One may even go so far as to argue that it is much more important for modern accountants to be college-educated because the world of business is becoming increasingly complex in light of globalization, introduction of complex technologies to the market and emergence of transnational corporations that engage in complex financial transactions. Although many book-keepers could greatly benefit from formal education, it would be an error that all of them would reap such benefits by obtaining conventional schooling. It is quite possible that they will attend an academic institution with oversized classrooms, inexperienced instructors and highly relaxed academic requirements.  Despite that, it can be safely assumed that even the low-quality academic institutions that mostly school rather than educate students will provide them with some useful education that could be of practical value. 

 By the same token, a similar claim can be made with respect to the need for engineers to acquire a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree and in some cases, supplement it with an advanced or a professional degree. It is also true that practitioners of other highly demanding and important professions such as law, medicine, education and counseling could greatly benefit from formal education. In the past, it was possible for specialists of these careers to gain considerable competence in these occupations through informal training such as apprenticeships or collaboration with experienced professionals in their field. However, the challenges modern physicians, engineers and attorneys face are significantly more complex than those of their predecessors from the foregoing generation. Therefore, one may mount a compelling argument that the dramatic changes that the market has undergone justifies the fact that professionals of these disciplines are required to supplement their skills with  systematic training that takes place in academic settings. 

The fact that the practitioners of the aforementioned important professions are committed to important occupations obscures that most students do not find employment in fields that they have specialized in as students. It is a well-documented fact that most students change their majors at least twice before obtaining their Bachelor’s degree. Moreover, once making their final decision regarding the major that they intend to obtain their academic credentials in, the majority of students do not find work in their field of academic specialization. While it is credible that students of accounting, engineering, marketing or journalism will enter the corresponding careers in these disciplines, only a small percentage of students will select such majors. Similarly, most students will not pursue graduate level education in medicine, law, education; counseling or acquire formal academic training in disciplines that would serve as the foundation of their careers in those fields of specialization. Recent publications of the Federal Reserve Bank study revealed that as few as 27% of college graduates work jobs that are related to their college degree and as few as 36% are employed in a line of work where a college degree is required. The implication of these findings is clear, one must not obtain a college degree in order to excel at most lines of work and this premise is well-supported by the fact that many of the jobs held by college graduates today were occupied by high-school graduates in the 1970s. Although one clearly does not need to have a college degree in order to be an effective sales-associate or an administrative assistant, employers fielding these tend to be highly biased in favor of college-graduates. Moreover, Human Resource professionals and scholars have often asserted that new college graduates tend to be deficient in their business communication skills and struggle to effectively collaborate with their peers. On this basis, it is asserted that colleges simply are not doing enough to prepare students for the world of work because they appear to be merely schooled or processed through the curriculum as opposed to genuinely educated. 

In light of these observations, one is compelled to question the rationality of the employers’ preference for applicants who have obtained a university degree. It is possible that the prospective employees who have not obtained a degree spent the previous four years of their lives cultivating the skills needed for success at the work-place that the college graduates appear to lack. Indeed, one may argue that one of the main reasons why college graduates fail to communicate effectively or work in teams is that the university environment does not provide them with sufficient exposure to activities where they may cultivate such skills. On a similar note, the work-place often provides employees with ample opportunities to enhance their communication and collaboration skills. Despite the shortcomings of recent graduates, the interests of the government and the transnational corporations are well-served by the decision to employ as many college educated individuals as possible. By definition, genuinely educated individuals excel at critical thinking, tend to be creative and desire to fight for the moral values they believe in. By contrast, the merely schooled individuals not only lack such qualities, but they may also be more pliable to political manipulation and economic exploitation.   

The role of schooling in the Western society

            As conceived of by the thinkers whose ideas created the foundation of the ethos known as the tradition of the Enlightenment, education must cultivate the student’s capacity to display intellectual autonomy. John Stuart Mill famously argued that upon becoming well-educated, the individual gains the ability to make effective judgments about aesthetic and social phenomena.  On this basis, he or she will have the sufficient intellectual ability to make decisions about complex moral issues and contribute to the democratic process of serving social justice. John Locke, a proponent of the political doctrine of classical liberalism who is widely regarded as a powerful influence upon the Founding Fathers of the United States claimed that a liberal society must be supported by a well-educated citizenry capable of independent thought.  The Founding Fathers of the United States embraced Locke’s ideas and ensured that the students not only learned the value of discipline at the academic institutions, but also underwent rigorous intellectual training that heavily emphasized independent analytical reasoning. Whether or not the schools of the early United States succeeded in this undertaking is open to debate, but it is undeniable that the academic institutions were truly committed to genuinely educating rather than merely schooling their students. The rationale given for their decision to do so was fully consistent with Locke’s injunction that a liberal state must be supported by the genuinely educated citizens who participated in the political arena. However, it was not the intention of the elites of the early American society to enable all individuals to become active participants in the nation’s political activities as only white men who owned land were allowed to vote. On that basis, education was a privilege that only the elites could afford rather than a service available to all citizens.

            In 1837, Senator Horace Mann aspired to change that by forming the first board of education in Massachusetts. It was his intention to make education available to all citizens, yet he fully understood the implications of this decision: it could empower the ordinary citizen to play an active role in the political milieu and challenge the interests of the privileged class. To avoid this outcome, he refrained from implementing the Liberal model of education in the public schools and traveled to Prussia where students were well-known for their unquestioned obedience to authority, discipline and fierce loyalty to their state. The Prussian system of education was founded in the aftermath of the nation’s heavy defeat by Napoleon where it was concluded that the defeat could have been avoided had the soldiers been fully devoted to the cause of the state rather than their selfish interests. Mann noticed that there was a strong line of continuity between the students’ obedience to their future employers, the state and the elites of the Prussian society. 

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking and acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects entirely without the need of armies or policemen” (Johann Fichte, addresses to the German Nation).   

            As the eminent proponent of the Prussian system of indoctrination explained, in contrast to the Liberal system of education, it should prevent students from thinking independently rather than encourage them to do so. Such an act of prevention must take place simply because it is impossible to coerce individuals to behave in a manner that is in the best interest of the elites through an exercise of brute force. Instead, it would be far more efficient to teach them to unconditionally obey authority under all circumstances. Fichte’s conception of education is not new and can be traced to Plato whom many historians regard as the founder of the general theoretical framework of totalitarian political systems.

“The strongest principle is that everybody, whether they are male or female, should have a leader. Likewise, no one should get into the habit of doing anything at all on his own initiative—either in earnest or in jest. Both in war and during time of peace, he should respect his leader and follow him faithfully. He should look up to his leader and follow his guidance even in smallest matters. For example, he should get up, move around, wash, and have his meals…only at such times when he is ordered to do so. In other words, he should get into the habit, by a long process of training, of never even dreaming of acting independently, and thus becoming utterly incapable of such action. In this way, the life is spent in total community. There is no law, and there will never be one that is above this. It is the most effective way of achieving salvation and victory in war. And in peacetime, and from the earliest childhood this should remain the highest law—the need to rule and be ruled by others. All trace of independence and anarchist spirit must be completely eradicated from the life of all men, and even the wild beasts which are kept by these men.” (Plato, the Laws, 942 a-f).

            Plato’s doctrine holds not only that students should be prevented from thinking for themselves, but that it is a fundamental principle of all political order that everyone should have a leader who will dictate how every aspect of their life is to be lived. One may argue that it would be a mistake to claim that the system of education in the United States is based on Plato’s model, but the similarities between Fichte’s Prussian Model that the American system of education was founded on is remarkably similar to Plato’s general political vision. Consistently with the general criticism of his Philosopher King thesis that there is an important difference between knowing what justice requires and serving it, the system of schooling indoctrinates rather than educates its students. Also consistently with the criticism of Plato’s theoretical framework that intellectual achievement does not lead one to be competent in all walks of life, it is questionable that even a genuinely educative academic environment would enable students to have the practical skills needed in their work-related activities after graduation. As it will be evinced in the interviews conducted in the ensuing chapters, most students who have used the academic ghost-writing services report that the academic work they are assigned is scarcely relevant to the field of work they expect to enter. The descriptions of academic assignments that most students commission the ghost-writers to complete seldom require an exercise of independent or creative thought and can be successfully completed through a simple process of following instructions that even the least intellectual gifted of students can complete on their own endeavor.

The culmination of the schooling tradition and the emergence of the degree mill

            It is unmistakable that Plato’s conception of intelligence played a key role in shaping the foundation of the Prussian system of education that was implemented in the United States towards the middle of the 19^th century. Nonetheless, there is an important element of Plato’s theory of knowledge that is missing in the modern system: much like knowledge of truth, justice and political order, merit is an abstract concept that belongs in the Heaven of Ideas. Accordingly, one can become meritorious through an exercise of natural talent, diligent practice and fierce commitment to one’s intellectual activities. By contrast, in the modern system of education merit can be bought and sold in a manner similar to the sales of the indulgences in the Catholic Church prior to the Protestant Reformation. Rampant grade inflation and proliferation of for-profit schools make academic success possible even for students with only tepid commitments to their education and minimal natural talent. In fact, there is a number of for profit schools that accept all applicants with a GED and require academic advisers to enroll as many students as possible. These institutions also employ telemarketers who are also required to entice a certain number of students to enroll and salespeople who fail to meet their quotas are promptly terminated. The academic standards employed at these organizations are deplorably low and their graduates have lower chances of finding lucrative employment than their peers who enrolled at the traditional four year institutions.  

“If colleges miseducate their students, the nation will eventually suffer the consequences. If they can do a better job of helping their students communicate with greater precision  and style, think more clearly, analyze more rigorously, become more ethically discerning, be more knowledgeable in active civic affairs, society will be much the better for it.” (Derek Bok,  Our Underachieving colleges).

            For those who believe that the system of education should empower students to become responsible and intellectually autonomous citizens, this is a matter of grave concern. As the former Dean of Harvard University aptly noted, if schools continue to miseducate their students, the nation will suffer the consequences accordingly. Although it would be convenient for the Chief Executives of many for-profit schools, leaders of transnational corporations, government officials and members of other privileged parties benefitting from the status-quo to exculpate the academic institution from the charge of miseducating the students by placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the students who use the academic ghost-writing services, such arguments cannot endure rigors of critical examination. It is a well-documented fact that the trends of grade inflation and lowering of academic standards existed long before academic-ghostwriting emerged as a highly lucrative online enterprise. The argument exculpating the academic institutions and inculpating the students would have been plausible in the event where only a small number of students cheated. However, most academic ghost-writers seldom run out of work and as it will be shown in this book, it is the abundance of cheating students that enables the writers to thrive.

 Contemporary bio-economist Phillip Zak has shown that all human beings have a natural tendency to be rule-abiding and live consistently with the norms of society. Although all societies will have deviant citizens, only collapsing societies with long histories of exploiting their citizens face massive disobedience. Anyone who has lived through the early decades of a unified Italy or the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union will attest that law-abiding citizens are hard to come by in disintegrating societies. John Locke argued that all political legitimacy stems from the support of the people or no institution of power can expect to be obeyed without behaving in a manner that its constituents would regard as worthy of their respect. Had the academic institutions truly educated the public and limited access to courses only to the most talented and devoted of students, it is almost certain that academic ghost-writing would be much less prevalent.