We deserve what we get if we don't act on the obvious pattern, at this point. We've spent half a century throwing the public under the bus just so that a few oligarchs don't have to pay out for their bad bets, and Greenspan was absolutely their man for a significant portion of that campaign in the class wars.

i chi ri tte

bi mi ni nde

ki ite

gi ite

shi shite

>Even if you're in the group that's being discriminated against, and succeeding despite that.

I would expect the continued, sustained, and unburdened efforts to address and undo the effects of the policies and behaviors that make up what we know to be and have been systemic racism are necessary in order to remove historical racism as a cause of contemporary circumstances.

If that's your assessment, then you are, ironically, yourself proof of the failure of the American education system. (If you were educated in it. If not, you're proof of the failure of whatever system you were educated in.)

There is no reasonable read of the previous message that could lead the to conclusion that that was its argument. None. Zero.

By law, they monopolize up to half of a child's waking life for more than half of the year. This time commitment requires that parents put at least one meal, a substantial portion of the child's physical development, and almost all of their intellectual development (and, by extension, a substantial portion of their behavioral development) in the hands of the school.

If educational institutions are not taking seriously their potential influence on the social outcomes of their students, they're completely misunderstanding the practical mantle they've taken on. And so have you.

Meanwhile, an anecdote:

11th Grade: Precalculus, all A's

12th Grade: AP Calculus, C average, one D quarter (in the middle of my parents' divorce, onset of body dysmorphia/dysphoria, college entrance applications, senior research practicum)

College Sophomore Year: Applied Calculus, aced, highest final score in the class

Post-college self-study: Failure to advance

Circumstances affect performance.

>so if you can compute a derivative by 12th grade, it's due to racial discrimination benefiting you or something

Within the wider historical scope, in America, specifically: yes. Even if you're in the group that's being discriminated against, and succeeding despite that. That's why it's systemic. A cold summer day doesn't negate the existence of climate change.

If the manager hadn't stolen $100 from the cashier, there would have been a MUCH weaker incentive for the cashier to steal themselves.

This is the crux around which everything else turns: we are effectively post-scarcity, as far as production is concerned. As a society, we purposely create theft, and debt, and the associated desperation and crime, as a matter of policy. As a choice.

If you were eradicate wage theft, you would essentially eradicate the internal logic of street theft, in the vast majority of cases. We could just... not have theft. But by not prosecuting wage theft, we, as a society, have decided that we condone and even need theft.

But good forbid we actually correct a major social ill at the expense of the people who profit from it.

Sometimes literally.

(Meaning that it's not just business school indoctrination, but a dynamic they've been raised to expect and uphold. Fixing it isn't simply about convincing them of the folly of their approach, because you're attacking their personal sense of self in doing so. Which, I'm to understand, is a no-no, professionally.)

Ikaruga and Journey should be mentioned in the same conversation. More recently, Undertale and Death Stranding, pick up similar conceptual throughlines ("choice" and "connection", respectively), albeit in less elegant ways, owing to their expanded scope.

The difference is partly the attitude towards houses, but it also has to do with how difficult it is for foreign investors to speculate in the market, the ubiquity of public transit (which makes accessibility as a value-driving feature mostly moot), the way the building code precludes a "missing middle" (or "missing cheap place"), and other features of modern Japanese society that are alien to Americans (and Canadians, but weirdly not always to Britons).

The point is that there are lots of ways to chip away at the affordability issue. It's just that ALL of them necessarily attack RE investors' ability to exploit their property to the fullest extent possible.

One last anecdote: South Korea is similarly situated to Japan, but is also facing an extreme affordability crisis. So, there is the suggestion that NONE of the material aspects matter if the owner class is determined to wring every cent out of you. The changes disincentivize gouging, but in the end, you just have to have property owners willing to acknowledge housing as a an affordable necessity and not a profit center built on the backs of a captive audience...

I would rather pay 15% more on goods and 30% less on rent.

They are not about actually "doing things", they are social validation, particularly the part where the people with resources/capital enjoy your company and give you what you need to live a dignified lifestyle in exchange for it.

But acknowledging and acting on this would destroy the leverage the useless-but-likeable have in terms of being able to get paid, and that the owner class have in terms of getting people to pretend that they like them/validate their often cruel and avaricious choices and behavior.