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As Student Loans Hit All Time Record, One High School Valedictorian "Gets It"
This it NOT what you would expect from a traditional valedictorian speech. Hopefully people, especially young people, are starting to wake up to just how corrupt and broken at its core, the US educational system is. Alas, tangentially, as the following data from Stone McCarthy indicates, there is little danger that the revelations captured in this video are anywhere near widespread, courtesy of record after record rise in the next big bubble: student loan debt, which is nothing but even more voluntary indentured servitude in hopes that the latest piece of paper certifying one is "smart" will make one's resume more attractive to potential employers. Alas, if they only knew...
Must watch:
And from SMRA:
In this morning's Chart of the Day, we reexamine the rising trend of student loans outstanding. Back in late June, we highlighted the steady increase of student loans that has occurred since January 2009. In the most recent release of the Fed's Consumer Credit Outstanding report, student loans outstanding increased $15.66 billion on a non-seasonally adjusted basis in July, the largest month over month increase since January. In turn, nonrevolving credit outstanding (seasonally adjusted) rose a whopping $15.4 billion, the largest monthly increase since November 2001.
We attribute the overall rise in student loans to a number of factors. However, we suspect the major reason is a struggling labor market and bleak outlook for jobs. As the economy continues to generate a less than ideal number of jobs, more people are heading back to school to enhance their education in order to make themselves more marketable to potential employers. The unemployment rate for people aged between 20 to 24 years was 24.5% in August, up from 23.1% in July. The unemployment rate for this population range averaged 15% from 2002 through the end of 2007. However, as the labor market continued to struggle, the unemployment rate for persons between 20 and 24 years of age rose to 25.7% in November 2009 and has remained elevated over the past two years. Not to mention that the unemployment rate for the civilian labor force has been above 9% since May 2009. Additionally we suspect the increased cost of tuition is forcing students to take out larger loans in order to pay for rising education costs.
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Bravo young lady. You indeed understand despotism.
Did you notice the people behind her squirming as she NAILED the stupidity of it all.
Each generation has it's own BS to deal with. Best wishes for this young Lady! This testimony will endear her to some, but will make a large number of enemies.
they are bureaurcrats in the governmental educational bureaucracy they get paid by the government to do their "jobs" how many, get a government check today in this society? yet we want amerikans to rise up as in the days of old and we want them to hit the streets in protest and in rebellion. but how can we have such vain and futile expectations? will the mouth that is fed , turn around and bite the hand that feeds it? i say no. amerikans are cheaply bought and cheaply sold and wear their chains proudly....the question then, must be , will this young girl accept the government money to fund her college education. i say she will and she will forget these wise words she has spoken. however, i could be mildly surprised. i hope that i am wrong about this but i am afraid i am right. strong and powerful words sometimes get lost in the minutia of pressure from the world system and pressure to go along just to get along. it is one thing to speak these words. it is another to walk the walk.
Ah to be young, idealistic, and inexperienced... Uh, yeah, no, thanks anyways... ;-)
Another adolesent rebel who is about to throw her life away. The problem isn't the system that "indocrinates" one to become a corporate slave. The problem is that she has no idea how to take valuable peices of information she is taught and expand it into a knoweldge that will serve her well in the future.
Yes, racking up loans for Bachelors in English Literature while partying may be a questionable investment. Approaching college as an opportunity to discover fields that are worth pursuing is not a bad idea at all. Investing in ones education is never a bad idea.
Sure, go ahead, skip that silly college. Let's see how satisfied you'll be with your life 20 years from now.
"Sure, go ahead, skip that silly college. Let's see how satisfied you'll be with your life 20 years from now."
Depends on the individual and their field of study (Engineer, Doctor...). I would be more inclined to raise kids with entreprenuerial mindset and critical thinking skills. Don't believe there is too much of that going on at most Universities... No, not right for everyone but the ROI is amazing (and you're not creating indoctrinated clones).
For every Bill Gates Harvard dropout there are hundreds of "enterprenuers" who must be kicking themselves for not learning more before setting out to change the world. Statistics, it's something the DO teach in college...
"Statistics, it's something the DO teach in college..."
Ah yes, "Statistics"... I heard it once said, "there are statistics and there are damned statistics..." :) Just like unemployment; sure, it's roughly 9%.
"...who must be kicking themselves for not learning more before setting out to change the world."
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. No, not everyone can be a Bill Gates (nor would I want them to be; all that money and he can't dress properly... just kidding, well, no... lol). But, if you don't try, you can't recapture that energy and drive from youth. You have a whole lifetime to recover if you don't succeed; find your passion, stop taking jobs that help you get by with your college degree. Live life, question, believe in yourself, love your family, be happy... There's always opportunity (and no, they won't teach you that in college).
A dedicated person can learn anything they desire using the internet.
College is obsolete. It's nothing but an indoctrination camp for the status quo. I do admit it's a great place for ass kissing students to network for their career in the corporate world. And for professors to spend all day filling out government paperwork for more grants while their ass kissing graduate students do all their work.
It dawned on me that many of you went to different kinds of colleges. See, all my degrees came from part-time night schools. No ass kissing there. The people who went there knew what they came for and why. Perhaps the problem is that this lady has no idea what she wants in life and how to get it.
Sounds like she is going to skip the going into debt part while she figures it out.
Did you hear the black chopper overhead?
why do they need to disguise themselves in those stupid outfits is something we could not understand from here....
Plus her english is hardly understandable for me, and i guess for any non-english native.
Brave young woman! Am surprised they let her finish her speech....
Awesome! You know those union members teachers were fuming!!
This video was uploaded to Youtube 1 year ago... doesn't even have 8000 views yet.
So much for going viral.
It needed to be shorter in order to get the gnat like attention of her audience
Something like
"We Suck- therefore You Suck" ..for a technical dissertation on why this is true please got to my website suckers.com and pay me one dollar for my e-book, or you can get it at Amazon.
That's all folks, its' been real...real unpleasant.
Then go to the gasoline bit.
OMFG, ROTFFL, isn't anyone going to put her out?
Why,she's on fire man?
Glad I wasn't the only one who recognized that it was from the past after a minute of major deja-vu.
She bored the tits off me to be honest.
I was expecting a Sarah Connor like torrent of pure hate............ disappointing stuff.
Agreed, a potential harmful and critical piece flaming the educational system, force-fed by corporatism and coerced by "government", reduced to a somewhat soulless performance. The speech probably looks much better on paper.
Still, nothing but admiration for the kid for doing what she did, it was a ballsy thing to do.
No doubt she has given the system some serious thoughts.
Yes maybe I was a bit hard on the girl , shit that was a bad phrase - anyhow well done for speaking up - we are lost in a sea of bullshit now - shes better then me.
Second, that went on for too long. Maybe she can take that liberated mind to Toastmasters. I'm interested in what she plans on doing - it's nice that she can point out everything wrong, but I knew a kid or two in high school whose flowery language was backed by absolutely nothing. My guess: photographer, "free-lance [insert here]", or the newest member of the Obama administration.
who needs a college degree.......just become a public employee
Great speech. Thats an awakened one right there. You'll never see that young lady waiting at the bus stop with a sad face. coffee, umbrella, and newspaper. I see these commuters day in day out standing at the train and bus stop doing their daily one hour commute into the city. None of them look happy. They are forever chasing a carrot that gets further and further away. Meanwhile their children are growing up and they never get to enjoy watching it. Then they turn 50, have their 1st heart attack, and enter the realm of the medical industrial complex.
All the young folks on this board take my advise based on these principles.
1. Debt is slavery.
2. Work for yourself
3. Think for yourself
4. Stay mobile
Great speech. Thats an awakened one right there. You'll never see that young lady waiting at the bus stop with a sad face. coffee, umbrella, and newspaper. I see these commuters day in day out standing at the train and bus stop doing their daily one hour commute into the city. None of them look happy. They are forever chasing a carrot that gets further and further away. Meanwhile their children are growing up and they never get to enjoy watching it. Then they turn 50, have their 1st heart attack, and enter the realm of the medical industrial complex.
All the young folks on this board take my advise based on these principles.
1. Debt is slavery.
2. Work for yourself
3. Think for yourself
4. Stay mobile
Until we are awakened we are all slaves, to our educational, corporate & government masters. If one spent a few moments contemplating how many hours in the day we spend doing what we value and are passionate about many would be thoroughly disapointed with our so called lives. The only true freedom is the daily pursuit of ones passions.
"We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone..."
Sorry love, Roger Waters already wrote this story.
Certainly not the speech the teachers were hoping for.
Too bad her speech sort of reeked of someone who had just watched zeitgeist, but I guess that's better than nothing.
Zeitgeist may have many factual errors, and come to the wrong conclusion on ways to fix this mess, but I do credit it for waking me up.
looks like the speech was uploaded in 2010?
So, I guess she had her first year already, moving to 2nd.
I wonder what she is doing now. Maybe she resigned herself to fate and sold out.
I paid off my 6-figure student loans in 11 years. I hated it, but was a good boy. I don't necessarily recommend it because they are generally low interest. Methinks Obama will make everybody join his army in exchange for debt forgiveness if he gets re-elected.
Hot for teacher? BTW, home-schooled kids outperform private school > charter school > public schools; in that order.
after you started practicing medicine?
or during your "residency & internship" too?
we're all so happ for you and we know what a good boy you, are, too, friend! L0L!!!
bet you like/d "little jack horner"
right?
Sad thing is most of her graduation class probably just sat there saying "when is she going to stop talking so I can go beer drinking."
This girl is far ahead of where I was when I graduated. I applaud her speech because she gets it.
As someone who was going to be part of the system before the system decided to force me out, I agree to what she is saying. I was going to be a teacher, I was in full blown student teaching. Teacher Education programs aren't really made to show potential teachers how to best "motivate and inspire young people" it's "how can I make things entertaining enough to cover these standards". They make History students take senior seminar without taking the course (although not officially) that is the prerequisite to it that shows history students the skills necessary to be good historians. They accused my girlfriend of not having the "math skills required" when she had followed the course of study plotted out in advisement, when she finally had enough of the students who didn't have the motivation to get through their senior year the first time (Senior year is an absolute joke, if you can't pass that, that's just absurd).
Damn the content knowledge, all that matters is can you pacify the kids in order to retain the information mandated by state standards. I'd rather shoot them with a tranquilizer than make it a session of Jersey Shore. I know of an elementary teacher now who is completely ignorant of some areas in her content knowledge (blatantly told me she only heard of Francis Marion 30 minutes before teaching the lesson). While there are extreme cases where children cannot handle themsleves, so many kids are medicated because they see through the BS of the system and simply choose not to tune in. You can bet these students are also being trained in the occupation of never questioning and resisting authority. Students are always expected to submit to authority and forgo any sort of knowledge of "constitutional rights". Granted, they are minors in the charge of parents, but god forbid you don't have an ID on you in an already highly controlled setting.
The minute you try to get students to follow "do this for your own sake, not for the grade" students don't know how to handle responsibility for themselves and grades tank. That gets administrators attention.If you aren't structuring your lessons that conform to those standards, that's gonna flag you for termination.Compulsory schooling should burn just like the rest of all fiat currencies. When I said enough with the BS it isn't what I want for my life, my supervisor was sympathetic to the position saying something akin to 75 percent of new teachers leave within the first 5 years. Public schools are indoctriantion centers and when I wrote in my weekly journals that public schools promote ignorance, both my cooperating teacher and supervisor were concerned and told me "you can't say those kinds of things, you have to advocate for the good of public schools." At the same time, they had the impression "they wanted me to speak my mind". Mind you, my cooperating teacher was telling me these kinds of things while the state provided health insurance he had was not adequate.
There are bright students in the school system, it's a shame what the school system does to them.In the copy room, of where I was teaching, there is a piece of paper with a students name with their standardized test score.It is broken down in a Unimodal distribution and is put on to a markerbaord with different score ranges.Student's arent individuals, but rather a number to be improved upon. As messed up as our school system is, we can also put the blame on the generally inept American Public. Too busy chasing wealth with credit cards to properly teach and discipicline their children. Becaue we have a "culture of entitlement" in this country ontop of a public school system that encourages ignorance, we are bound to have a cultural disaster soon in this country. Let it happen, let the ignorant succumb to their own mistakes, as a new society can be created ontop of their corpses. They should make for nice fertilizer. Individual responsibility and industriousness is a rare quality to find and I hope that we can let it back into the gene pool,instead of letting humanity evolve into a lazy, stupid creature. I hope South Carolina's Public School system completely collapses ontop of it's already decaying State Government. Too much information to discuss on an already too large post, if you want more info, just ask me. I've got a rather large hatchet to put in the back of the system.
Wanna work on a new system for South Carolina?
http://www.southernnationalcongress.org/
http://dixienet.org/rights/index.shtml
hmm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-16/protests-push-pinera-to-end-30-...
"Chile the model of economic and political stability in Latin America for the past 20 years, has in recent months been rocked by protests after a quarter of a million pupils occupied classrooms in June to demand more state investment in education. On Aug. 25, the weekly protests degenerated into pitched battles with police, who drenched the center of Santiago in tear gas."
Intelligence demonstrated.
And to think her last name is Goldson.
Now, how many commenters will change their perspective because she is "one of those people"?
[sarcasm on]
Clearly, she is someone responsible for the economic mess, and is playing her part in taking over the world.
[sarcasm off]
I remember this speech and a great one I thought it was. I posted it myself elsewhere last September.
That Bitch needs to get on a Boat and man up a lil!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf7AkSdJcD4&feature=
She sounds like a moron, the sound of her voice makes me cringe.
And posting this here, you sound like...?
A loser who never did a fucking thing in his life?
Bravo. Amazing that she gets it at such a young age. I'm shocked she received applause, though. I figured the sheeple would maul her long before she had a chance to finish.
Yes I was surprised as well, and gladly so. Thanks for the post Tyler
There were no negative reactions in the audience because the adults were daydreaming. The teachers were pondering retirement. The blue collar workers were pondering whether they'd be outsourced. The civil service workers were browsing porn sites on their Droids. The policeman was polishing his taser. The Mothers were watching General Hospital on their iPhones. The enlisted were filling out insurance forms. The unemployed were considering murder suicide. The veterans were re-experiencing their PTSD induced war experiences. The bankers were calling their Swiss brokers. The new age parents were smoking joints in the back. And last of all, the ZHs were counting their silver. Nope. No reactions to that speech.
don't forget the other students texting eachother: OMFG, STFU alredy
and Calvin was worried Hobbs was looking up her skirt! LOL!! (that is age appropriate! Calvin is like 5 - 7 years old, so stick it!)
it would have been far more effective if she had gone Greek at the end with a little gasoline.
pretty good though, young lady.
Bash in the windows and burn the school? Now that would be a graduation.
Just ask Alice, Cooper that is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qga5eONXU_4
Nice reference.
Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes
You mean to say that here in AMERICA, they actually let her say this without cutting off her mic, tasing her, and tackling her to the ground in a furious cloud of Police fists and kicks?
Dang! There's hope for this country yet!
capitalistrock, your self-righteousness is impressive, congratulations! but inthe end we won't be able to eat our gold, will we? there is 'zero hedge' against the failure of the ecosystem, and social systems. i don't have 'the answer,' but i'm pretty sure it won't be more more selfishness within the same old, bankrupt model as you seem to be advocating.
Well, you will be wrong, then.
BTW, find another, slightly less stupid, aphorism than "you can't eat gold".
You can trade gold for food, as long as people want it. Which, for around the 6-8000 years of recorded human history, someone has.
they give gold coins to our pilots in the military so if they crash in enemy territory and survive they have something to eat ... didn't you know?
No they do not.
At one time (not too long ago), university was strictly for education and not for work training. Somehow the North American world got the idea to turn universities into degree mills and that these pieces of paper would turn into jobs.
Not so.
And along the way, it became big, big business.
The Student Loan Bubble - http://www.saloforum.com/index.php?threads/the-student-loan-bubble.967/
Watch the "teacher"-parasites behind her squirming.
Great fun.
Wow, government lending to students putting them into crushing debt slavery. Well, it gets the credit stats higher, who cares if they can pay it back. After all, its non-dischargeable in BK. A debtor's army to fight the next war. They will wipe out your debt for time in the infantry!
id hit dat.
by the way, when the revolts starts - firstly drag the smirking student loan absorbing "professors" out of their towers and to the gallows.
Highly overpaid is understatement, and the grant centered brain is a diseased brain.
In education expenses, there is no such thing as price discovery because people are infatuated with the concept of a college education. Practical value of said education is null and void at this point. Logically, the price of a college education should have decreased as the jobs afforded by said education began to decrease (which was many years ago). Instead, the prices continue to rise unabated. Thus, the college education expense model does not conform to the standard dynamics of supply and demand.
Public speaking, like playing the violin, is pretty easy if you're sitting on your ass watching some one else do it.
For an 18 year old newbie, crappy sound system, amateuer video, that was mahvelous, simply mahvelous.
They are not all sheeple, folks. Take allies where and as you find them.
Everyting after grade four is a waist of time.
You must have stopped at the third grade. They teach the difference between waist and waste in the fourth grade.
The time period folks expand?
The waist of time needs to be trimmed through chronologic restriction?
She has balls. The reason I won't do anything is I'm afraid of the system and I rely on its largesse. They have the power to crush anyone.
They don't have the power to crush everyone.
unforunately, grrl, they dont need to, just enough to make examples of....
The examples work both ways; they show that the last resort of the state is force, a telltale sign of ideological failure.
The fact is, the status quo ideology is intellectually bankrupt and is accelerating us directly towards the immovable object of reality. The problem with control is that it is always temporary, and no matter how many sociologists, media sycophants, psyops, and agents of the state are applied to those opposing that control, distortion of reality will always correct itself eventually. I don't think it will take too long, either. Once cheap oil is gone, the empire will implode.
The paper chase is coming to an end, at least everywhere except government. Employers want to know what you can do, not how you did in gender studies or art history.
The paper chase is coming to an end, at least everywhere except government. Employers want to know what you can do, not how you did in gender studies or art history.
fast forward to 4:55 to hear the headline
corporatism ... the truth and nothing but the truth
So, what would it take to get you to fight the system?
http://dixienet.org/rights/what_would_it_take_to_get_you_to_fight.php
I think her speech was said before...
We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
"Wrong, Guess again!
Wrong, Guess again!
If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?
You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddie!"
"The Bulls are already out there"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!"
"This Roman Meal bakery thought you'd like to know."
I don't need no arms around me
And I dont need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.
Yeah, I was wondering if that song/movie was what partially inspired her speech. Even if that was part of the inspiration, she gave a damn fine speech.
I have a short attention span did not make it past 45 seconds.
My nephew just transfered to a very large University. His sole purpose in going to school is to join the band so he can march at the football games. To acomplish this worthless goal he lost most of his existing credits from a junior college, will accumulate large student debt, and spend 6 years getting a degree in a soft major (communication/music/etc/) with no hope of finding a good job. A lot of kids just don't understand that large student debt is a form of imprisonment and a life of salvery. They have been taught since a young age that they deserve to pursue their passion. They believe Their self-fullfillment is all that matters. BTW, he found out that most of the members of the marching band were from "connected" families. So he will spend another year dreaming and living on student financial aid.
i'll bet he really loves, respects, and wishes the best for you, too
People who give a damn about you don't mince words.
bingo! However I interviewed about 150 engineers for jobs at a company I worked for a few years ago, many with an excellent GPA and, well, most of the jobs they are looking for have left for china and india. We snagged a few (~20 to 30) but that's it.
yea c'mon
she is ACKNOWLEDGING the limitations of her educational and cultural experience and i think we can take it for granted that that would affect/limit her diction, elocution and public speaking prowess
in the context of her admitted limitiations, this is inspirational, and you jerks bagging her are just being intellectual snobs. Encourage her to acheive your standards of communication, for she clearly wants to better herself
but instead you shoot her down? You must be secretly insecure, or just a miserable sod
Note to anyone intelligent: being intelligebt opens your eyes to all the shitty things about life. But you fail at life if you allow that to make you a mean spirited miserable bastard.
Try being intelligent AND positive.
GM workers just got a $5,000 "signing bonus" in addition to guaranteed pay raises.
In Asia, $5,000 is two years salary for many factory workers.
Market forces will continue working on this somehow.
its not 'market forces' working on it, its fascist globalism directed by the money power of international finance and their sock puppets in governments around the world. The 'market' for those goods from Asia will die off as Americans getting poorer and poorer
I was at a presentation by a company that gets hired by families to help find funding for tuition, etc. After the presentation, the instructor sat next to me and we discussed his handout of 7 or 8 program options for Massachusetts tuition financing. I said that this is the subprime market waiting to happen. To my surprise, he pretty much agreed.
I forgot to mention to him that one of the major differences between subprime (Fannie and Freddie) and student loans (Sallie), is that at least subprime has some sort of collateral attached. Student loans have none except recourse to the signers.
Give it some time to ferment but if the imbedded trends of high unemployment and roaring inflation continues (which it will), there will be an enormous level of default.
Good luck with that.
Thanks for sharing that. It's an interesting view into the education racket.
But as for having no collateral, I really hope you are joking. Literally, their capacity to make money in the future is their collateral. The kids I've talked to recently have hundreds of thousand of dollars in loans that are not dischargable even in bankruptcy, so they are actually debt slaves. Not sort of, not kind of, but actually debt slaves. Some of the loans are at better than 11%! This is nothing less than the banker class literally sucking the life out of people just starting out. I will be very interested to see what happens when all these kids default on their student loans.
If ever there was a group treated especially unfairly by the banking cartel, it is younger folks with student loans.
What we have here is a student who has learned to think for herself and teach herself. Bravo. These are the most important things for anyone to learn.
Exactly. Anyone who can pull that speech out of the nonsense that passes for education these days has a goodly number of functioning neurons and should be encouraged to further exercise those neurons. Somehow I think she'll be able to figure out what she really needs to know, which is an encouraging thought.
Possibly one of the largest regrets in my entire life, is that I did not drop out of high school during my very first year. I regard college identically, but the barriers to entry in any scientific and/or technical profession are too great to attempt without your "proper papers".
Nevermind that 1/3 of the students in my senior level Biochemistry courses couldn't calculate a Molality. At the beginning of each laboratory, The professor would perform every calculation and supply every forumula. One merely had to ape through the experiment then insert their own numbers. Accuracy nor precision were considered for your grade so long as you could adequately bullshit your "findings".
My best friend recalls a distinctly similar experience of his "peers" as a mechanical engineering student.
I applaud her brave fight against conformity. The natural state of humans is freedom, but that is not taught in schools, rather we are taught to conform like little drones. Our schools have become tools of the state, and the first goal of the state is to imprison the minds of it's subjects. School is our first experience with government where we are taught political correctness, and obedience. That is not learning, that is indoctrination. All the more reason we need to seperate government from our schools. She is pulling back the curtain, and asking dangerous questions that threaten the staus quo and the power that wishes to control her. Her skepticism is natural and correct, it is the very essence of discovery. Good on her.
Oh, she gives a good speech, but does she even KNOW what's happening on Jersey Shore right now or WHO the latest American Idol is?
Hmmm??
Does she?
Smartypants!
young cankles?? she gonna work long time
She was both more realistic and more inspiring than my college commencement speaker, the dir. of the Peace Corp...
Look at the girl to the speaker's right. That's how a proper mortar board is worn, not like a Jackie Kennedy pill box on the back of the head.
heroic comment.
Unfortunately, this woman will never be hired by government, or even worse -- she will be.
I come away with a completely different view of this, especially after reading all of the comments. I also think the real problem facing society is encapsulated in both this speech and the comments. Maybe she hits on it a bit, maybe not. Maybe she still doesn’t get it. She is young, however, so I can cut her some slack.
The simple explanation is this: YOU are responsible for your own life and your own decisions. YOU are also responsible for the consequences.
I hear all this raging against the machine stuff, which is a load of crap. There is no machine, other than laws. Maybe there is a merry-go-round playing a catchy jingle in the background, but we are all free to climb aboard, watch it from afar, or turn our backs on it and walk away.
Nobody told this girl she had to do shit. People give advice, even lecture, but we all have free will. She and everybody else just look for somebody to blame when they don‘t like the consequences of their own choices. If you buy the shit---material or ideological--that surrounds you, it’s your own fault. Nobody made her study. Nobody made her want to go to college or be a worker drone. Nobody made her buy an iPad or a BMW or a LuLuLemon yoga outfit or an A&F t-shirt or chic-ly tattered jeans. Nobody made her get fat or be anorexic and bulemic. Nobody made her still believe in whatever superstition her society or family like. Nobody will make her stay in the US (though they will set up some obstacles if she wants to leave).
When and if she starts work, nobody is going to make her take a loan to buy a house or take a loan to buy a brand spanking new car or spend her wad vacationing in Phuket. Nobody is going to make her work 24/7. Nobody is going to make her have 2.4 kids named Zoe and Jacob and TBT, or even drink responsibly.
She will choose each and every thing she does. If those choices lead to pleasure and personal fulfillment, great. If they do not, she can take responsibility and make changes.
It seems now everybody hates the “system” and everybody hates the “banks”. Any of us is free to walk away at any time. Nobody is making anybody stay, and nobody really gives a shit if any of us stay or not. If that “system” is what our elected officials have made for us, then it is our fault for electing the ones who have done it. If the media controls the message, then control the media. Nothing is preventing anyone from becoming another voice. If someone is ambitious enough, he can buy CNBC and put Peter Schiff or Max Keiser on as host of SquawkBox and Market Wrap. Anyone on a tighter budget can blog, like a certain Tyler Durden.
As for the banks, part of what they have done falls back on the system that allowed it, which means the politicians we elected. The banks, however, are not alone in sharing blame. Credit is not a right, it is a choice. Credit is the means to other choices, not necessities. Anyone who could get a mortgage could have rented. Anyone behind on car payments could have kept the old car, or if it was a first car, bought a clunker, or even a bicycle. They could have lived in a city and taken public transport. Anyone who took credit made a choice. That choice has consequences. Rather than always foisting the blame on someone or something else, the only way anything is ever going to improve is when everyone accepts responsibility for his own actions.
Anybody who wants to be free has to step away from the noise. There is noise everywhere including here on Zerohedge, where there is a groupthink just as effective and just as intolerant as what this young girl rails against in her speech.
There is plenty of blame to go around. What there is not enough of is personal responsibility.
"Nobody told this girl she had to do shit. People give advice, even lecture, but we all have free will. She and everybody else just look for somebody to blame when they don‘t like the consequences of their own choices. If you buy the shit---material or ideological--that surrounds you, it’s your own fault. Nobody made her study."
From a perspective of mitigating risk, she had to do exactly what she was told. It is very risky to drop out of ninth grade (or earlier) because you are smart enough to do so. So risky in fact, that the probability of a comfortable existence is near zero. SHe had to play along as a lackey. You do have the right to insist that "YOU are responsible for your own life and your own decisions. YOU are also responsible for the consequences." And I have the right to insist that you are wrong, unless of course you are born into, or adopted by, the WarBucks family.
It is very risky to drop out of ninth grade (or earlier) because you are smart enough to do so. So risky in fact, that the probability of a comfortable existence is near zero. SHe had to play along as a lackey.
No she did not "have" to play along. She had choices (drop out at age 16) or stay in school, but the choices carry consequences. She could also choose not to work, as often it is tedious, but that would also place the probability of a comfortable existence near zero. Nobody, however, is entitled to a comfortable existence. People decide what they want or need, then make choices as to how to achieve those wants or needs. There is always a price.
For some reason, we have broadened the range of things that qualify as entitlements, and abjucated personal responsibility for our choices. Banks made bad choices, they want someone else to pay. People made bad credit choices, and they want someone else to pay. It is not fair that the banks get made whole, but at the same time it is not unfair that people who made bad credit decisions or who got caught short are not being made whole. Anyone entering into a transaction assesses the odds and makes a decision. Sometimes the odds come up short. There was always the choice of not entering into the transaction, which would have obviated any future problem.
But banks were made whole, and individual people were not. There is not an equal assignment of blame here.
Are you unable to discern the difference between a banker, presumably educated in the proper assessment of risk, and the borrower, often an uneducated, highly indoctrinated person who has been trained since birth to irrationally submit to authority? How about professional responsibility? Ever hear of that? How about fraud?
There is not an equal assignment of blame in such a case, and the bankers must be made to eat the losses of their bad decisions since they are the ones who underwrote the loans. Really, I think you are way off base here.
First, I absolve the banks of nothing. What they arranged for themselves is wrong. That is one of the reasons Zerohedge is here, working to point out the unfairness and hopefully correct it.
Perhaps with the non-bankers, I take a less condescending and paternalistic approach than you. I give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they can do basic math. There has to be a certain level or degree of assumed competence amongst the general population. That degree of assumed competence should include understanding that credit is not free and that its misuse has consequences. If somebody can't figure out that he cannot afford something, he has no right to expect those who do understand to save him from his own mistakes. If one is "indoctrinated" it is because he allowed himself to become indoctrinated. We're all born with a mind and free will. We choose to have kids...or not. We choose to buy a home...or not. We choose to take on debt to buy something we do not have the available cash to buy at the time of purchase...or not. It's time we began to use the free will we have and accept responsibility for our own actions.
I happen to be a saver. I consume well below my ability to consume, partly because I try to plan for uncertain tomorrows, and partly because there isn't really much I want to buy. Maybe I haven't been properly "indoctrinated" to know my life can't possibly be rewarding if I don't own the latest this or that. There are lots of people who behave in a similar manner to me. Perhaps you think we have some obligation to carry people who bought more than they could afford, or judged the odds incorrectly, or simply did not take the time to learn what they were doing before doing it. I disagree. If someone is a drunk, and he wears out his liver, I do not think a healthy person should be forced to give the drunk a piece of his liver.
Yes, the bankers think they are owed something they do not deserve. Collectively perhaps we can disabuse them of that notion. At the same time, we had better learn nobody is entitled by birth except to the basics as noted in our various founding documents. Otherwise we are wasteful, inefficient, and open to moral hazard.
Your initial position was that blame was equal among all parties. I challenged that position, and now you are arguing that one of your basic working assumptions is that all people who apply for a mortgage can do math and determine what they can afford? Where do you get this stuff from? Again, what about professional responsibility, of the bankers? Who is the greater fool, the borrower or the lender?
I notice you didn't answer my question: how does one check out? How does one extract oneself from this system that is centered around money?
If you think that those who borrow are not responsible for the consequences of their choice, you are more than welcome to bail them out yourself.
You don't like TPTB or "the machine", but you are perfectly happy to have them step in to help out your borrowers who are bad at math or cannot figure out what they can really afford. Seems inconsistent.
(By the way, I did not say the blame was equal. I said both sides have blame.)
If you think the lenders are not responsible for the consequences of their choice, you are more than welcome to bail them out yourself. Ooops, that's right. Already happened. Several times. With more to follow. I'm not asking for a bailout for anyone, nor do I think anyone should get one. Borrowers bad at math should lose their houses, and bankers bad at math should lose their money/banks. I'll just note that there have beeen a huge number of people put out on the street, but I challenge you to name even a single banker who has gone to prison for the fraudulent activities associated with the ridiculous run-up in real estate prices from around 1997 to 2006.
And I'll note again that you still have not answered my question as to how one "checks out" of this society apart from money. Still waiting for an answer on that one.
Sorry, chindit13, but you are arguing against yourself if you consider yourself a conservative. Wake up -- it is precisely because of government intervention that she *has to* do what they say to have any chance of a comfortable existence. Before the government ever controlled exactly what was taught in the classroom (i.e. when some of the educational authority was decentralized to the local schoolmaster), I would 100% agree with your conservative viewpoint. The problem is that we no longer live in a decentralized society, but one that has been centralized to the point where it is choking intelligent and hard working people to death. We should live in a country where we have true freedom of choice to pursue what will allow us to gain more capital, not in a society that imposes bureaucratic hoops as an acceptance criteria for work. *That* is what America has evolved towards. Go back and read the book, "1984."
I was not aware that as a private company I was required to hire only people who have graduated from State supported schools, and that what I pay them must be based on their official level of achievement. I guess that condemns home schooled kids to a life of endless poverty.
As a private company, once your company grows beyond a certain size, you will have barriers thrown in your way to prevent further growth. If you have steps leading into your business, you will have to install a ramp instead (in California). If you are in a business where competing businesses have put laws in place that make it very difficult (but not impossible) for you to compete with them, that will limit your growth. As a business owner, you have more hoops to jump through than most. What I'm saying is that if I'm offering a product that is competitive, I should not have regulations standing in the way of me selling my product. I should let the masses decide how to best patronize my business and and I should let the masses decide if my product is better than my competitor. Can you see how a diploma is similar to the regulation your business deals with each day? It is a hoop she has to suck it up and jump through if she wants any reasonable chance at success (assuming she does not have a source of capital through inheritence or personal connections). Saying she has freedom of choice is not entirely true.
Even simpler in terms of business -- assume you get 50 resumes from people you have never met at all education levels, all with similar (minimum wage) work experience background, all with similar qualities of grammar, and three of them dropped out of 10th grade. From what I uderstand you to be saying, you are going to pick at random which resumes you call in for interviews (or interview everyone), and ignore what education they have, and instead ask what personal choices they have made in their life? Seriously? I'm sure there are tens of ways you can counter this argument, but not without limiting the (practical) freedom of choice of the employee to get a job based on their actual ability, rather than their bureaucratically approved level of competence.
Really? That's what you got from her speech? Wow, just wow. You really cannot see the forest for the trees, then.
You think that as individuals we can just walk away from the systems of control that have been arranged by TPTB to ensure our continued compliance? Please enlighten me, because I see no way, no way whatsoever, to extract myself from being forced to sell my labor for money tokens in order to live (food, water, shelter, heat, clothing - not ipads), and I have been at it for 30 years as an adult. If we can just "walk away," please demonstrate how that can happen outside of the context of the money system and the guns behind the money? I don't see it, and think you're just blowing smoke. Outside of some remote villages in the Amazon, your claimed "exit" is practically unrealizable, and in fact, impossible.
For kids just starting out, there are so many more impediments in their way that I can only view your comments in the context of someone who has either a) been given everything, or b) has been uncommonly lucky and mistaken that luck for "personal responsibilty." Did it ever occur to you that sometimes people make all the right choices for all the right reasons, and still get run over and ground out by the machine?
it can be done, all of what yousaid geek, just follow the examples of tptb,thats how these kids are doing it, good night
Property taxes are the equivalent of rent to the state, so I would be very interested to hear how you avoid property taxes.
Rent.
Sigh.
Rent implicitly includes property taxes. Landlords are profit seeking, and will set rents to cover mortgage costs (if any) plus taxes. Most are slumlords anyway, so your answer is moot.
What a vastly different way to look at existence! TPTB are not forcing you to sell your labor. Society in the collective has made the rules. You can choose to play or not. (You can even work to change it.) You want to eat. You want shelter. Perhaps you want other "stuff". Sounds like you want a free lunch, that is, getting some or all of those things without having to "sell your labor". The world doesn't work that way. It never did. Long before the bankers and TPTB came on the stage, the rules were the same as they are today. I suppose you could go live with the Amish, whom I'm assuming would not qualify as TPTB, but I'm guessing they will expect you to put in a day's work if you want to eat.
I think it is nonsense about "the machine" and "indoctrination". Don't you have a mind of your own? You are free to use it at any time, free of charge. If you've bought into whatever it is you think people are required to buy into, then it is because of laziness or weakness of character. Maybe that is why you have created "the machine", because you give it an omnipotence that prevents you from having to take full responsibility for your own life. Harsh? Maybe.
I wonder if you are religious? Religious indoctrination is much stronger than any indictrination of TPTB. It is the core of most people's personality, depending on where they were born and the family into which they were born. Despite that, some people switch religions. Some have no religion at all. Free will. Indoctrination can be swept away.
Take somebody like Steve Jobs. Put aside for a moment the fact that many on this site now hate him. Instead, look at his path in life. College drop-out. Dabbled in Hinduism in India. Came back to the US and fiddled with electronics. Made friends with Steve Wozniak. Is largely responsible for having built the personal computer industry. He had the imagination and strength of character to ignore "the machine" and the "indoctrination". He did his own thinking and made his own path in life.
Incidentally, nothing was handed to me. Maybe I missed all the indoctrination, but I realized early on in life I was responsible for myself and that nobody owed me a thing. The only advantage I had was winning the birth lottery (size, shape, mental faculties). Nothing I can do about that.
Oh, I happen to live at present in a society that has an overwhelming and invasive government presence. By comparison the US is infinitely more free, at least in terms of such things as free speech, press freedom, freedom of assembly, access to information, etc. The non-governmental part of society here, on the other hand, is the quintessential world of no free lunch. No social safety net whatsoever. Zip. You work, or you don't eat. Everybody knows the rules. Even those who barter know that somewhere along the line they have to "sell their labor".
Society in the collective has not made the rules. The rules have been made by the people with power and money and influence, a small minority of the population. It has been this way for a long time, but it is coming to an end.
But again, I am curious about this idea you keep throwing out there, saying that we can choose to play or not. You do understand you're talking about survival, yes? You have not yet provided a solution to existence outside the money system, so it seems like a false choice. Again, would you care to enlighten us how we can choose to exist apart from the entire monetary-prison?
Good luck in whatever dog-eat-dog place you're living in, but I prefer to live in a place where folks take care of each other. I don't see that happening at a national or even state level, but on the local level, I see that people are starting to band together. Folks around here are getting tight and we'll do just fine.
Good speech, yourself. I generally agree, and I have been on the 'personal responsibility' rant for a long time. I also think, with regard to living in the US and all the requisite daily obstacles that entails, that 'the only way to win is not to play'. That said, in my unhumble opinion, I've been 'winning!' since moving abroad '96.
I've also been on the 'complicity' rant for a long time, too. In short, it goes like this: if you pay taxes to a government which will, with your foreknowledge, use those resources for war, then the blood of the dead innocent civilians is on your hands as well as the hands of the murdering soldiers. My buddy used to have a sticker on his car: "bring the troops home--to face war crimes charges". I go a step farther: I say the tax-payers are also guilty.
When you can make $325,000 in one year because you had a kid and your mom is a former vp candidate, then you can see what kind of game this is.
Wow - that is one of the most impressive valedicatorian speeches I have ever witnessed. Anyone who can reference H.L. Mencken in this milleau deserves a thumbs up!
To the girl who wrote the speech:
Erica, you wrote: "I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition."
I wish to tell you that you can. You needn't frame the thought as 'running away', and you also needn't have the purpose of formal education as your reason to travel internationally. Travel is an inherently educational process, and in my opinion, the greatest and most profound. Our planet is extremely large compared to our movements about it; the profundity of the lessons available is inexhaustible.
I have been an ex-pat since graduating high school--now already fifteen years on, and I have had the great fortune of traveling twenty or so countries. I now speak Chinese and live in Taiwan.
My accomplishments are modest compared to some of the travelers I have met. In university at Guam, I was dormmates with a Serbian genius; he was an escapee of the civil war in his country, and funded himself through school by seeking numerous small scholarships, learning to write grant proposals, and formally seeking funding from all sorts of sources that were not explicitly offering any. Upon completing his PhD in geology in Hokkaido, he told me that it was the best investment of his time that he had ever made because now he had attained the highest international standard and all doors were now open to him. As as avid traveler and researcher, he has now visited above one hundred countries and speaks fluently five languages with bits of another five (a plan to learn five more). He has done this with self-motivation, self-determination, and self-reliance. And now he is the master of his world, and a freer, more educated thinker I cannot say I have met. He's still only 37 years old.
The original and final point that prompted me to write to you today is cautionary: so long as you remain within the establishment, particularly the USA, you will need to remain ever-vigilant to protect your own mind; the brainwashing influences are subtle, nuanced, and will attack you with a 'united front' approach from every aspect. You will be bombarded by disinformation, misframing of issues, and the concealment of truths from every angle of mainstream media--radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, internet. Even if you cut yourself off from those sources and insulate yourself from that constant and pervasive hum of propaganda, as soon as you step outside the door of your home, every other person will be a conduit of that same propaganda right into your face. It's harsh, but it's the truth, and even if you already know it, it is actually very easy to forget. You really are inside 'The Matrix', and you will have to tell yourself that every morning when you wake up, lest you may gradually forget. Or, of course, I entreat you, consider to live outside the US; the Earth is more vast than you or I know or can imagine, and it is wonderful. It is also wonderful to be outside the pressure cooker of nonsense into which we were raised.
Best wishes to you.
shes smart, creative, inovative, impulsive, lost, and the top of her class what else does she want to do
.
make a movie
Thank you for this one Tyler
This is a young person's speech. I'm surprised it went "viral". It is not so different from a thousand other HS Valedictorian speeches over the last few decades, and not even so different from the one I gave a long time ago. It has that hint of Montessori School, where we are all precious and delicate little snowflakes with such uniqueness and potential. It is idealism. It is Lake Wobegon.
I can't quite figure in what countries do they have "an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition." I haven't heard of any, and I've visited schools in many countries, East and West. I do remember from my own public high school that teachers asked us questions, allowed us to ask questions back, and encouraged us to debate. Most students couldn't be bothered.
We might all be unique, but not everyone can be innovative. Not everyone can be brilliant, just like not everyone can be the best quarterback or the most gifted artist. I'm willing to bet not a single "doodler" in her class is going to be Picasso, or few or none will be able to make a living through art (unless we go Dutch and have the government buy and warehouse the stuff). Even this young woman writes that not everyone was able to "reflect as I have". Why her and not the others? The answer is an inconvenient truth, perhaps not one a senior in high school wants to hear. By accidents of birth, all are not equal.
She quotes H.L. Mencken. The quote is from 1924. In the time since that quote, man has walked on the moon, gone to the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, developed TV, mobile phones, integrated circuits, the laser, cured polio, come to understand the nature and power of the atom, written Fanfare for the Common Man, Porgy & Bess, Kind of Blue, and The Power and the Glory, to name but a few accomplishments.
It seems somebody somewhere occasionally breaks the surly bonds of (indoctrination) and touches the face of God.
Truly, a remarkable young woman. I particularly enjoyed watching the cow behind her.....as baffled as any cow going down the shoot to be slaughtered.
Here is a video with John Taylor Gatto that she mentions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8cr0p9HaG8&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
Also see Charlotte Iserbyt on the deliberate dumbing down of America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyDtYy2I0M&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
Here's a fine example of a Post-Petroleum Human. Her head is well outside the box. -- Michael C. Ruppert
http://www.collapsenet.com/154.html