Jerry Pournelle, "Jobs, Education, Republics and Democracies"
by Jerry Pournelle
I would worry less about not having enough steel than I would about not having enough steel-workers, if you get my drift. I rather like people who can do things, being as my family includes railroad car-greaser, steelworkers, canal boater, stone masons, bricklayer, blacksmith, cooks, master printers, and the like. We could not rebuild the Steel now if we wanted to. When the New Jersey Transit proposed re-opening the Lackawana Cut-off for rail traffic, they said it would take 10 years. A century and a half ago, it took the Delaware Lackawana and Western Road three years to build it from scratch, including surveying the route, blasting tunnels, and filling defiles. Whatever the post-Modern Age will be called, it will not be called "industrious."
A Republic can survive only when the citizens believe they are valuable members of the society. A nation of self-governing serfs isn't going to happen. Madison said "Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
The remedy, presumably, is education. Madison told us "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to Farce or Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." Serfs aren't educated and don't value education. Not that it matters because the purpose of the schools is to pay teachers and administrators, and to endure the dominance of gatekeepers and credential sellers. Imparting actual knowledge to actual students, equipping the 50% of the population that is below average with an ability to earn a living and imparting to all the students the civic virtues that keep a Republic going is no part of the massive public education system. Indeed, civic virtues aren't even stated as goals any longer. See today's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/
It has always been the case that civilization depends on a small part of the population; those who read this journal can congratulate themselves on being part of that small minority. The purpose of government ought to be to let those who can make things happen do them. Sometimes that requires rule by an aristocracy smart enough to allow the able to do their jobs: Rome at various times during the Republic and during the Empire, Britain during its glory days. Sometimes it can be done by a Republic. Venice during many parts of its thousand years, the United States sometimes. Republics can be glorious. They generally tend toward democracies, and as Disraeli said,
If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete. Milton Friedman was fond of saying that if something can't go on forever, it will stop."
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