There is a tradeoff as you become increasingly more industrialized (decision-making is centralized). The epitome of industrialization is a monarchy or a dictatorship. You will often hear that our democracy is pretty much fascist. This is because the proletariat increasingly has less decision-making power.
I posted this in another thread about schools making people poor.
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This is in reply to the topic and not the argument that dominated it.
Here's a page from John Taylor Gattos book, "The Underground History of American Education" which is available free online at:
Table of Contents - John Taylor Gatto
This page is located at:
Occasional Letter Number One - John Taylor Gatto
Occasional Letter Number One
Between 1896 and 1920, a small group of industrialists and financiers, together with their private charitable foundations, subsidized university chairs, university researchers, and school administrators, spent more money on forced schooling than the government itself did. Carnegie and Rockefeller, as late as 1915, were spending more themselves. In this laissez-faire fashion a system of modern schooling was constructed without public participation. The motives for this are undoubtedly mixed, but it will be useful for you to hear a few excerpts from the first mission statement of Rockefeller’s General Education Board as they occur in a document called Occasional Letter Number One (1906):
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In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
This mission statement will reward multiple rereadings.
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When you centralize decision-making power, you have the inevitable side-effect that you can't make decisions that benefit each individual person. You have to blanket everybody with one decision. It is inevitable. This forces people to conform to society (as opposed to society serving the citizens). When Bush went to war and half the country disagreed, everyone has to face the consequences. Centralized decision-making means that each person has less control over their own life and as a result they have less ability to make themselves happy.