You'll notice that it also allowed the society of services to emerge, and we wouldn't have this discussion on Hacker News if we had to work 12 hours a day just to satisfy our basic needs.

Overall, I don't share your opinion that the country is a "whole worse off" now. We only face different challenges because our fathers did their job in their own time.

Unfortunately, we don't have an example of what adolescence would look like if we had the same growth of technology but without the decline in the political system. I suspect though, if we could glimpse into this alternate world it would blow us away.

As for universities - the top universities have a rainbow of skin colors, but the culture is overwhelmingly "Whiter Person" - http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

I would argue the exact opposite. The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. The statistics show we have a society of increasing class stratification; people never marry down anymore, for example.

College and credentialism is also reinforcing an elitist attitude to manual labor. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." We're getting MORE social division, not less.

And let's not kid ourselves about the real level of diversity in colleges. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.

It depends on the college that you go to. Some colleges don't let anybody of less-than-middle class in.

people never marry down anymore, for example.

You'll have to clarify this a bit more. People marrying down wasn't ever common, to my knowledge. And, this is my biased and bigoted opinion, but people in similar classes often have the same values, and this is why cross-classing never works so well. For instance, I tend to be attracted to people who are very logical and very expressive. I find myself attracted to the gap right in between programmers and actresses, because that's where people share similar values to myself. That might be shown as a sign of bias on my part, and it is, but it's a bias that can't be fixed, because elsewhere people and I are less compatible. I'd assume the same to be true across social boarders: people who go to certain places in society all have similar traits. Forgive me if I sound ignorant: I'm not at all knowledgeable in this field.

I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker."

I don't look down on people who work with their hands. At the same time, though, I think that the power to create original things is the best power we've got. To be fair, few people ever do this, regardless of position. If you look at hackers as a whole, we're no better.

Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.

True. But I was talking more about people based on location. People of similar classes and skin color will be radically different based on where they come from. And some people never realize that until they get to college. It's not a huge change, not as huge as it could be, but it's a change and I'd argue that it's good for most college students.

Please provide citations of serious studies of these trends you talk about; this analysis seems facile and frankly misleading, even as a first-order approximation, but I’m not an expert so I’d be glad to be convinced otherwise. In particular, “indoctrination” of immigrants is going to be hard to establish as a primary goal of the education system, and the benefits of credential laws and the technical training institutions that go along with them in fields such as medicine, engineering, and so forth are hard to overstate.

As for credentialing laws, pretty much all professions rely on some level of book knowledge plus on the job training. The book knowledge can be provided for by reading books and passing an exam. You don't need to attend three years of law school in person to become a great lawyer. Nor do you need four years of university to be a great engineer. The architecture profession seems to have been much better off without any degree requirements. Just compare the architecture of the 1800's to that of the past few decades.

30% of jobs in the U.S. economy now have legal credentialing requirements. That includes everything from hair dresser to interior designer. Even jobs like parole officer now require a four year college degree. We're essentially recreating the old guild system, which stifles economic growth. I don't think it's any accident that the most dynamic sectors of the economy - software, consumer electronics, movies - have virtually no licensing requirements.

What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees?

Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?

Today all of them do because it is legally required. My girlfriend is currently attending architecture school and it is beyond useless. She's learned an awful lot about "aura" and "algorithmic design" and precious little about designing buildings for the real world. Architects end up learning everything on the job.

In the 19th century, it was not uncommon for architects to be high school drop outs. The New York Public library, some of the tunnel projects under London, the California Aqueduct, were all designed by drop outs.

The structural integrity of the buildings was very high, and the aesthetics far surpass the creations of modern architects.

To construe it as purely anti-competitive is pretty misleading.

I obviously would not want an untrained surgeon practicing on me. The trouble is that credentialing laws are a highly unstable equilibrium. It requires 8 years of post-secondary schooling to prescribe penicillin, read an x-ray, or set a broken bone. I could be convinced that 2 years of schooling might be necessary. But not 8. The reason it is so high is because of lobbying by the AMA. I'm sure they argue that the requirements are in the public interest. Perhaps they even believe their own PR. But if you talk to doctors about medical school, most of them will tell you that it had little relevance to their actual job.

Perhaps the most notorious example of credentialing is the orthodontist profession. The average orthodontist works 35 hour weeks and makes 350k ( about 40% more than dentists). The reason for this is that number of orthodontists allowed to graduate each year is actually capped at 280. The orthodontist association have even gone after inventors who devise new labor-saving (and thus income-reducing) braces, See the case of Viazis v. American Association of Orthodontists. This is blatantly anti-competitive, and it costs thousands of dollars from the pocket book of every American.

Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?

I once worked a bit on capitol hill. The civics class description of American democracy bears little resemblance to the reality. However, these the civics class lies are probably necessary to make a democratic system even marginally functional. My preferred solution then, would be to get rid of electoral democracy.

To be replaced with...?

Other options include something like Juristopia ( http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/05/juritopia.html ) or Formalism ( http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali... )

Or, if you want something a little more proven, there is always Monarchy.

Basically, anything that doesn't use a ritualized form of gang warfare would be better than democracy in my book.

Luckily, the job of the government isn't to do good deeds -- it's to hold onto power in order to stop even worse people from getting it.

The purpose of democracy isn't to get the best people into power, it's to stop the worst people from getting into power.

I'd also note that democracy is altogether a failure at preventing the worst people from getting into power. Some of histories worst tyrants from history have come to power through party politics.

Or are you saying that all systems with parties are abominable because of parties, regardless of the details of how the systems work?

Well, that list mostly goes:

1. Hitler

2. A few others

But, y'know, Hitler counts for something.

But you could also do a lot worse than US-style democracy. See any number of lunatic 20th century dictators - and lots of monarchs. The disaster of WWI, for example, can largely be blamed on the monarchs of Germany, Austria, and Russia.

My take on the origins of World War I is quite different than yours. From my readings, the monarchs were much less willing to go to war than the politicians, and the politicians were less rabid than the mob. Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia all had elected parliaments with universal manhood suffrage that voted for the war. The rise of universal suffrage in the late 1800's gave rise to a number of jingoistic newspapers and politicians. Imagine five powerful countries and all the sources of news were like Fox News - no NYTimes or NPR. That's the recipe for one of the worst wars in human history. Pre-democracy, the kings would fight a few battles and call it a day ( see the Franco-Prussian war of 1871). With a democracy, calling a truce was "giving in to the aggressor" and the war lasted four terrible years.

Some good books/articles on the subject: Liberty Or Equality ( http://blog.mises.org/archives/006326.asp ), The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, Once an ArchDuke by Archduke Ferdinand, "Churchill on the Great War" - http://themonarchist.blogspot.com/2008/08/churchill-on-great..., Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"