A Modest Proposal for Republicans: Use the Word “Class” | Hacker News Reader

A Modest Proposal for Republicans: Use the Word “Class”

astralcodexten.substack.com

7 pointssavanaly3 comments

I haven’t read the entirety yet (will do after work, and it’s great to see coherent long form). The analysis at the beginning sounds close to spot on. The prescriptions sound wildly off.

Republicans legislating against the ability of businesses to hire on the basis they see fit? Making the unpalatable racists unwelcome? I don’t see Democrats trying to limit colleges to the upper class only, but rather to extend it to more people.

Going against the upper class also goes against the best-funded of the donor class. That would be interesting to watch.

Democrats definitely do try to expand the reach of colleges to all, including the lower classes, but I imagine that a lot of lower classes would feel excluded at the institutions (not knowing the lingo, how to dress, etc. all the things talked about in the blog post previous to this one in the series).

I think he wants Republicans to come at the solution from another angle: instead of college for all, make college not a pre-requisite for things that it's obviously not a pre-requisite for. Like a lot of things in this essay, this is one of those ideas that's been percolating and growing in popularity in the grey-tribe blogo-substacko-sphere that Scott Alexander belongs to which he is proposing Republicans graft onto their platform. Another example from the essay where he's doing this: advocating prediction markets over credentialism (this one is the most laughably unlikely to actually become part of the Republican platform, IMO).

I so totally agree with not requiring college credentialling. And though I write code for a living, I respect the work of my auto mechanic father-in-law and any custodian more than much white-collar stuff that doesn’t add visible value. You ask me what I do for work, I say what I do doesn’t count as work. Socially, the snobbery of the keyboard-and-phone class towards people who actually work really grates.

But forbidding unnecessary credentials by law? Hard to see. I think it’s more an issue of devaluation of a degree and the lowered standards of earlier education. More, not completely.

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