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It's easy to get a work visa in most European countries. They are facing a major labor shortage, which is why they have all those "guest workers" from the Middle East.
I still see it as a niche solution, not some general option for US students. And the niche has always been there.
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It's a whole lot harder to get a visa in other desirable countries, like Costa Rica or New Zealand. Even Australia has tightened up on their immigrant policy. People who think they can just move to Canada may be in for a rude surprise, though if they have desirable job skills they can get in.
CR is easy if you have money, around $150k in local deposits. But most students wouldn't.
It's easy to get a work visa in most European countries. They are facing a major labor shortage, which is why they have all those "guest workers" from the Middle East.
It's a whole lot harder to get a visa in other desirable countries, like Costa Rica or New Zealand. Even Australia has tightened up on their immigrant policy. People who think they can just move to Canada may be in for a rude surprise, though if they have desirable job skills they can get in.
Major labor shortages in most European countries?
Eurozone unemployment is double plus the current US rate.
It serves as an education that people should not politically put up with it. We are living in a feudal system that we have called freedom, capitalism or what have you but its functional feudalism. Feudal peasants did not have any mechanisms for dealing with their situation but we do in the form of voting, the vote changes the direction the police state gun is pointed.
I dont know why SO MANY people put up with it.
People "put up with it" because there's no alternative. A master-slave, pyramidal hierarchy has been the human lot since at least the Neolithic revolution. The monikers change, the symbols change, but the ultimate fact remains, that a few people at the apex do very well... a larger (but still small) number do semi-well by serving those at the apex... and the great majority do poorly. This was true in Medieval Europe, it was true in the former USSR, it is true in modern America, and it will likely be true in human space-colonies in the year 3500.
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Originally Posted by Quietude
... the cooperative nature and communal self-regard of, say, Norway is a better model than the hyperindividualist FYJIGM BS we have so deeply ingrained here... and there's only a hairsbreadth difference between the two. Not that you'd know it from the frantically greedy and defensive mindset so common here.
There's something endemic in the American mindset about strictly individual pursuit of property and of so-called self-reliance. American peasants can't stop dreaming of becoming kings, and based on that dream, they'd never countenance a Norway-style system. This won't change regardless of who happens to occupy the commanding-heights of government. And no, it's not because of "the media" or "the lobbyists" or "the Wall Street cabal" or "the elites". It's because of the very nature of American culture. We can vote for different leaders, but we can't exactly vote for a different culture.
Any... reform of capitalism is going to involve exactly that.
The predatory version we've lived with since about Reagan is based on the notion that anything you can grab is yours, regardless of the consequences. And now we have an adult population deeply indoctrinated that any contribution back to the socioeconomic matrix that allowed them to accumulate that wealth is some kind of theft.
Really? Despite the fact that those who were successful contribute virtually all money back into society in the form of taxes and volunteer giving?
A master-slave, pyramidal hierarchy has been the human lot since at least the Neolithic revolution. The monikers change, the symbols change, but the ultimate fact remains, that a few people at the apex do very well... a larger (but still small) number do semi-well by serving those at the apex... and the great majority do poorly. This was true in Medieval Europe, it was true in the former USSR, it is true in modern America, and it will likely be true in human space-colonies in the year 3500.
Has anybody stopped to think that all human societies are hierarchical like you describe because we are this way genetically and there is nothing much anyone can do about it?
We should count our blessings that the United States is SO wealthy that even people near the bottom socioeconomically are doing relatively well materially compared to the lot of the vast majority of the human race throughout history.
And no, it's not because of "the media" or "the lobbyists" or "the Wall Street cabal" or "the elites". It's because of the very nature of American culture. We can vote for different leaders, but we can't exactly vote for a different culture.
Where did that "culture" come from? Why was their a rather abrupt turn in the early 30s, and another about 40 years ago?
US policy has always favored the mega-rich. When we needed a strong economy to fight wars and dominate the world, then we all benefited. Once that was accomplished, it was back to the rich extracting as much as the rest of us will bear.
Public opinion, attitudes, beliefs (culture?) are easily manipulated. Much easier now than ever before.
It's because of the very nature of American culture. We can vote for different leaders, but we can't exactly vote for a different culture.
I wouldn't disagree in any way. We're... centuries from muting the Great Pioneer Spirit around here.
But I'll note that we've always had it, and it was a far more... necessary? admirable? positive trait in many eras past, when individual families, especially outside of cities, were more self-sufficient - not in the "By gosh I'm gonna forge a new plow blade today, Ma" sense (Sears-Roebuck was around and essential a long, long time ago)... but in the sense that you pretty much sank or swam on your own efforts.
But now, we're so interlocked socially and economically that a fart in NC makes noses wrinkle in OR. Having pride in our sense of self-sufficiency is one thing; maintaining an FYJIGM attitude on the largely fictitious nature of independence and self-enrichment no longer has a place here.
Has anybody stopped to think that all human societies are hierarchical like you describe because we are this way genetically and there is nothing much anyone can do about it?
Not so.
The hunter gatherer peoples were not hierarchical, and through most of human existence, that's what we were. Hierarchical systems and beliefs serve the manipulation of large groups (societies, kingdoms), but if they ever were "necessary", modern examples show they no longer are... at least not to any great extent.
Has anybody stopped to think that all human societies are hierarchical like you describe because we are this way genetically and there is nothing much anyone can do about it?
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Originally Posted by rruff
Not so.
The hunter gatherer peoples were not hierarchical, and through most of human existence, that's what we were. Hierarchical systems and beliefs serve the manipulation of large groups (societies, kingdoms), but if they ever were "necessary", modern examples show they no longer are... at least not to any great extent.
Actually, I think BCD has a point. However, saying we should be economically hierarchical (to the level we are at present) because it's in human nature to covet the biggest pile of rocks or berries or dingo haunches is a bit... theological and self-serving. Civilization is the process of overcoming hindbrain reflexes.
Not that the cave men flying around in their Gulfstreams would agree.
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