The Capitalist "Work Ethic"

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Christian Science Monitor
A better way to prevent student cheating

NEW YORK – As another academic year draws to a close, amid a rushed flurry of final exams and term papers, it's time for professors to play their least favorite role: cop. With some surveys finding that up to three-quarters of college students cheat, faculty and administrators are making a bigger push for integrity. What most still lack, however, is a compelling moral argument against cheating.

Honor, with its emphasis on doing the right thing for its own sake, is no match for the anxious cynicism of many college students. This point was driven home to me by a junior I met last year in North Carolina. Why not cheat, he argued, given how many of America's most successful people cut corners to get where they are? Cheating is how the real world works, he said. Look at the politicians who lie or the sluggers who take steroids, or the CEOs who cook the books. The student also pointed to the hurdles he faced as he tried to get ahead: high tuition costs, heavy student loans, low-paying jobs without benefits. America wasn't a fair place for kids like him, so it made sense to try to level the playing field by bending a few rules.

Many young people take this bleak view. A 2004 poll of high school students found that 59 percent agreed that "successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating." Young people believe in honor and value integrity; they also worry that living by these beliefs could mean ending up as a loser. In justifying her cheating, one student told a researcher: "Good grades can make the difference between going to medical school and being a janitor." Few professors have a ready retort to this logic.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0508/p09s02-coop.html

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Publius]

Whatever gets you the grades.

[Tungsten]

Who cares. Exams nowadays are so dumbed down even people who have never studies the work can pass them without cheating.

[bezdomni]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 07:07 PM
Whatever gets you the grades.
The perfect capitalist attitude.

[England Expects]

Don't know what to think of this really.

I don't really like rules much. If someone makes a rule they should be able to enforce it effectively.

I've heard a few people on this site prattling on about ends justifying means anyway.

[Hegemonicretribution]

I thought this was going to be about Weber, but really it is just about a sensible reaction to a ridiculous system. Meritocracy my ass, we all know what it takes to get ahead. I supose some say capitalism is a response to human nature, I think perhaps it has more than a little hand in forming this nature don't you?

[Publius]

The perfect capitalist attitude.

The perfected attitude, period, when you're young and apathetic, as I am.

They key is to figure out why students cheat.

The answer is 'school sucks'.

We hardly need to 'destroy capitalism' to change schooling.

It's really a matter of practical, pragmatic change, something communists are apparently devoid of skill in.

[Publius]

I thought this was going to be about Weber,

A little high brow, even for the Communist intellectuals.

:lol:



but really it is just about a sensible reaction to a ridiculous system. Meritocracy my ass, we all know what it takes to get ahead. I supose some say capitalism is a response to human nature, I think perhaps it has more than a little hand in forming this nature don't you?

You game the system when you can.

I've cheated on tests; I do it whenever I can.

There's no reason not to.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 12:34 AM

I thought this was going to be about Weber,

A little high brow, even for the Communist intellectuals.

The Frankfurt School. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_school) :P

"Communist intellectuals" of the world unite....and kick Publius up the arse. <_<

By the way, the c in communist is a lower case letter; unless you are talking about an Official Communist Party funded by Moscow, or the ruling parties of the old USSR and co.

[Publius]

Originally posted by Armchair [email protected] 9 2006, 01:03 AM




"Communist intellectuals" of the world unite....and kick Publius up the arse. <_<

That&#39;ll be what, 7 people? 8? They&#39;re all old and feeble too.

It&#39;ll be like the library scene in A Clockwork Orange.

:lol:



By the way, the c in communist is a lower case letter; unless you are talking about an Official Communist Party funded by Moscow, or the ruling parties of the old USSR and co.

Unless, of course, I&#39;m being being jocular.

[RevMARKSman]

No, that&#39;ll be me too. And I&#39;m trying out for my school&#39;s football team next year.

Get the picture? :D

[Capitalist Lawyer]

You guys put far too much emphasis on class. Especially in America, where there exists a high degree of social mobility (probably one of the highest in the world). In a given lifetime one can go from lower to middle to higher class and back again. Because of this mobility, traditional positions and stereotypes associated with certain classes are not that easy to assign to each group.

It&#39;s all fluid. Much of it has to do with improved communication in the 20th and 21st centuries. Marx never predicted this and it&#39;s why his theories have proven wrong.

[red team]

Because of this mobility, traditional positions and stereotypes associated with certain classes are not that easy to assign to each group.

There are certain indispensable services for those that engage in commerce and make their fortune in that area. Without comparison to the actual utility of those fields of work, those more valued areas of work are paid for more handsomely than others by those who control the majority of the wealth. How would it be any other way and why should we find this surprising?

That said, I would fully expect lawyers, accountants and doctors to be on the list of eternally valuable occupations as long as Capitalism is in effect. But, there are only so many people that can fill those occupations before it loses its value as a commodity. That is why it is very difficult to be established in those jobs.


It&#39;s all fluid. Much of it has to do with improved communication in the 20th and 21st centuries. Marx never predicted this and it&#39;s why his theories have proven wrong.

Saying Marx was wrong is not entirely accurate. People are motivated to be rich and to live in luxury only so far as they are not satisfied with their current conditions. Depending on the person most people are willing to do anything to avoid uninspiring toil even by passing that toil on to others through force or trickery. That&#39;s the history of human "civilization" and its accompanying class conflict in a nutshell, but what could change all that is material conditions and it is technical innovation of the means of production that does that.

In its dynamic beginning Capitalism was able to at least improve the techniques of production to increase the efficiency and productive output of labour, so it held out the hope of minimizing labour to achieve an abundance of goods even though it was an exploitative system. In its stage of decline Capitalism fail to even do that. Just take a look at the main growth areas of business and you&#39;ll find that none of it involves innovation or materially productive activities more than economic shell games, entertainment and gambling.

[Dean]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 10 2006, 06:38 PM
You guys put far too much emphasis on class. Especially in America, where there exists a high degree of social mobility (probably one of the highest in the world). In a given lifetime one can go from lower to middle to higher class and back again. Because of this mobility, traditional positions and stereotypes associated with certain classes are not that easy to assign to each group.

It&#39;s all fluid. Much of it has to do with improved communication in the 20th and 21st centuries. Marx never predicted this and it&#39;s why his theories have proven wrong.
The US has less mobility than most other industrialized nations.

And capitalist economists have come out saying that more of MArx&#39;s ideas were making sense in present conditions than they used to think, or than what economic data used to imply. Plus you can&#39;t prove his ideas as wrong OR right. The latter we can get closer to, but the point remains that a theory of economic evolution is inherantly too vague to have a provable falsification, and thus cannot be taken as &#39;scientific&#39; or even properly theoretical, except in purely philosophical terms.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 12:13 AM

I thought this was going to be about Weber,

A little high brow, even for the Communist intellectuals.

:lol:
I do try ;)

As for capitalist lawyer, I think redteam and dean have responded well to you. However I do disagree partially with dean that there cannot be any falsification of Marx&#39;s work, although I do think that you are right about it being vague enough to not allow for total falsification, perhaps until such (hypothetically) that the state of human existence becomes so great, despite not following down communist lines, to make a socialist revolution undesireable for the btterment of society. I can&#39;t foresee this happening however.

Marx was partially incorrect about the time of a revolution occuring, although he was changing his "where and when" attitudes in his later works. Of course Marx himself was fallible, despite providing us with an invaluable Marxist analysis method, as well as historical materialism. Remember that Newton dabbled in alchemy and the likes, and not all of their predictions were shit hot, so claiming Marx "falsified" as a whole misses the point.