Rafe Meager (they/them)

Woudl make a banging econ exam question

If there was a McDonald's at the South Base Camp on Mount Everest how much would it charge for a Big Mac

The wet bandits are Sisyphus and Kevin is their boulder

omg

real

I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.

women and canadians are ruining everything i guess

This does sound of my interests!

Hmmm… and … I think they do fear loss of status with us actually, but just not as much as with fash ppl. (as a side note: Fearing loss of status more than loss of morality is so common that it continually surprises me but eventually I guess I’ll get used to it….)

Maybe this goes to your point that they find us cringe and annoying and they don’t find fascists or racists to be that

Ah shit that does track. Appeasement logic somehow always seems to make itself seem like wisdom also. But I do think the legitimacy issue is present because they don’t try to appease us, I have sometimes wondered if it is becuase we are not violent. It doesn’t seem to just be that tho

Lmao

Yeah there is a lot to this unfortunately

One parsimonious explanation: universities presently exist quasi-independently outside the power of the state, and therefore to state actors, must be fully subsumed into the state for its ends, by any means necessary, no matter the consequences for both universities or the state

Agree with all of this, but I don't understand how taxing the fees that already subsidize unis for UK students in order to subsidize unis for UK students makes financial sense.

It doesn’t !!!!

Some of it is stupidity, in so far as UK politics and journalism has a deeply cynical anti-intellectualism shot through it ("we've had enough of experts") and the rest is a powerful resentment of the university system not just doing as it is told and wielding a modicum of non-centralised power

Yeah good points here

So they don't feel like the sort of places containing lots of people sympathetic to their own worldview, the sort of places wherein people who form their base of support congregate or work, are actually politically legitimate or economically productive places. And evidence can't interfere with this.

I think that in some deep way the centre left actually agree with the right's characterisation of them, that's behind all the angsting about Professional Middle Classes contrasted with authentic true working people which always amounts to two right wing cariactures they just agree with.

mini thread on why it is that the centre left now hates universities for some godforsaken reason

My theory, tested through exposure to Australian higher education administration, is that they are hopelessly captured by the consultants, and that higher education consultants are particularly shallow and uninteresting.

sadly well said and all true :(

"you bolshie idiots can't govern!" then turning around and setting fire to a large, important industry because of have anxiety

that sadly does kind of track, but it's so weird to be like "let's foresake billions of dollars in revenue and obvious soft power advantages so we can stick it to a fringe of people we find annoying" and that's like supposed to be a respectable, moderate position???

(to be clear, you said it / formulated it way better than i had been able to formulate it to myself, i fele like i am chewing over it. some kind of weird self hatred thing. like the simpsons joke "we hate life and ourselves" "We can't govern!"

it's got to be sometihng like this, i agree. but how on earth can that happen? it's like abuse victim mentality, but they run the nation now and yet they still dont believe in their own legitimacy.... as you can see my only way to understand this is psychological, it seems deranged as politics

i really struggle to understand why centre left parties do not like universities, do not like the soft power we wield (imagine getting to educate the children of your geopolitical rivals!!!! IMAGINE!!!). i dont believe that albo, starmer, etc are this stupid, it's got to be hatred. but y.

it's incredible to be the target of this shit isnt it!

our labor gov here is drastically capping the number of intl students instead (at a much lower cap than current numbers), which may be even stupider since it doesnt raise them any revenue