My thoughts on "Education and the Proliferation of New (Old) Concepts"

            The essay “Education and the Proliferation of New (Old) Concepts” is an argumentative piece of literature that would have one believe that agrarianism is the solution to some of America’s “most vexing problems.” The authors also support the idea of a maximum wage and no growth economics. To be completely honest I do not even know where to begin with this essay. The authors present the idea that everything should be distributed equally amongst society, and that industrialism is bad for the world. In short, this is a terrible idea. This essay assumes that the world is full of hardworking nice people. I’m not sure where these authors grew up, but it must have been some sort of happy paradise. The world does not function this way, and an agrarian way of living would not work at all.

            Life is not fair. Everyone needs to come to accept that fact. If life was fair, everyone would live a healthy life and people would not get sick. Everyone would be of the same intelligence. Everyone would be beautiful. There would be no variation in skin color. Everyone would be almost exactly the same. There has to be a winner for there to be a loser. Hierarchies will always exist. Monkeys, wolves, and lions all have natural hierarchies. By extension, humans will always have those who are privileged and those who are not.

            Industrialism creates competition, and thus a better society. As a result of competition, new technology is created and used to make better products. If you were to distribute everything equally there would be no motivation to do challenging work. People set goals and strive to be better people because of competition. Why should someone work and study hard to become a computer engineer, when they could simply make the same amount of money as a waiter? If you are going to give everyone and equal amount of land just for being alive, why should they work at all? What would motivate someone to work 50 hours a week, when they can just receive free handouts? Simply put, with an agrarian lifestyle there would be no reason to attempt anything challenging. It would require everyone to get together and do their part to help the world, and that will never happen. People are lazy, and most will only do the bare minimum required. In summary, agrarianism is a concept that would only work in happy fairy tales, not the hard reality we live in.