"Blue-collar workers don't have it easier. Food delivery riders are reportedly trapped by an algorithm that automatically works out the optimal delivery time for app users, never mind if the workers have to risk getting into road accidents to catch up."
"The bar keeps raising, it seems, the harder people work. Fears about an increasingly cutthroat job market deepened on recent news of master's and doctoral degree holders from China's top universities vying for a neighborhood committee job. Meanwhile, applicants for a position at a major bank are tested not for their knowledge of finance but a wide range of subjects from astrophysics to modernist poetry during the Tang Dynasty"
The Chinese characteristics here are where the state dept outlets bring more attn to the issue without trying to justify it's existence. "Hey, workers are being exploited." Vs "here's why we need to keep exploiting workers."
Why are education systems all over the world so broken?
Not only is it barbaric to put kids and young adults through all that shit but it seems like, ironically, it's highly inefficient. Asking bankers about astrophysics, come on. Nobody needs to know that much information by heart.
There are plenty of issues with the traditional university model of education (and a lot of those, to be fair, crop up because education on a mass scale is really difficult to do), but what you're highlighting is pretty squarely a problem with the employer.
The rat race is definitely at least partly the fault of the education system.
I know in my case the most stress (so far, I'm only 30) I've ever felt was during high school and college. You're only a few failed exams away (or in the case when transitioning from high school to college only one failed exam away) to prove you're worth some shit to society, that shit takes a toll on a young mind.
And I'm one of the lucky ones since I work in IT where jobs are abundant, the stress just fucking continues for most people.
I think a big part of the problem is that people don't view education as a form of labor, so there has never been a wide spectrum push for a "forty hour school week" or something like that. Every year the expectations get higher, there's a new standardized test to study for, and in SE Asia there's another hour of night school you have to attend.
But no matter what age a person is or what they're doing there's only a certain amount of useful work you're going to get out of them every day, and demanding that much is also inhumane because that ensures that every moment of free time the person has is spent exhausted.
Yeah but modernism is a very specific movement from the 19th century. Fair point though, and the Tang dynasty is when the modern idea of "Chinese-ness" in terms of cultural forms like poetry gets codified, so I get it.
"Blue-collar workers don't have it easier. Food delivery riders are reportedly trapped by an algorithm that automatically works out the optimal delivery time for app users, never mind if the workers have to risk getting into road accidents to catch up."
"The bar keeps raising, it seems, the harder people work. Fears about an increasingly cutthroat job market deepened on recent news of master's and doctoral degree holders from China's top universities vying for a neighborhood committee job. Meanwhile, applicants for a position at a major bank are tested not for their knowledge of finance but a wide range of subjects from astrophysics to modernist poetry during the Tang Dynasty"
:yikes:
So, capitalism then.
no no, you are missing the Chinese characteristics of this type of socialism
The Chinese characteristics here are where the state dept outlets bring more attn to the issue without trying to justify it's existence. "Hey, workers are being exploited." Vs "here's why we need to keep exploiting workers."
Why are education systems all over the world so broken?
Not only is it barbaric to put kids and young adults through all that shit but it seems like, ironically, it's highly inefficient. Asking bankers about astrophysics, come on. Nobody needs to know that much information by heart.
There are plenty of issues with the traditional university model of education (and a lot of those, to be fair, crop up because education on a mass scale is really difficult to do), but what you're highlighting is pretty squarely a problem with the employer.
The rat race is definitely at least partly the fault of the education system.
I know in my case the most stress (so far, I'm only 30) I've ever felt was during high school and college. You're only a few failed exams away (or in the case when transitioning from high school to college only one failed exam away) to prove you're worth some shit to society, that shit takes a toll on a young mind.
And I'm one of the lucky ones since I work in IT where jobs are abundant, the stress just fucking continues for most people.
I think a big part of the problem is that people don't view education as a form of labor, so there has never been a wide spectrum push for a "forty hour school week" or something like that. Every year the expectations get higher, there's a new standardized test to study for, and in SE Asia there's another hour of night school you have to attend.
But no matter what age a person is or what they're doing there's only a certain amount of useful work you're going to get out of them every day, and demanding that much is also inhumane because that ensures that every moment of free time the person has is spent exhausted.
soulless bitcoin vampires are literally draining away the small amount of energy that has remained in our universe since the big bang
this shit :deeper-sadness:
Super irrelevant nitpick but how the fuck is poetry written during the Tang Dynasty (which ended in around 900) "modernist"?!
China has a very long history
Yeah but modernism is a very specific movement from the 19th century. Fair point though, and the Tang dynasty is when the modern idea of "Chinese-ness" in terms of cultural forms like poetry gets codified, so I get it.