The myth of the US social mobility.

Her Aww. Poor him.

Me I imagine for a number of the Romanian ppl who you know, met me while I was visiting Timisoara a few years ago and formed the immediate assumption that I'm Romanian just like them, live in a Romanian town just like them, I'm basically just like them. Then five years pass, and it becomes obvious that no, I wasn't a Romanian in the sense they gave to the term, but a Romanian in the sense I give to the term, as the one who actually has the authority to define what being Romanian means. Which is exactly what I said at the time, too, but they happily ignored it because what! WHAT!!! could one do with something like that ??? And so there they are and here I am and... wow. This is possible ?

Her Mhm.

This article has nothing to do with me and everything to do with football teams. Consider a town that really cares about whatever dumbass competitive sport, soccer or baseball or whatever. Some people working in that town, employed at the business of making money, spend some of that money to make more back. Specifically, they buy three guys from Africa, a couple Russians and an Armenian, make a "team" which "represents" the "city" and "win". Every redneck for miles around is beyond thrilled "their" team won. How is it theirs ?

In what sense is Shaw an English playwright and economist ? Is he an Irish playwright and economist ? What does either of those mean ? Shaw born in Scotland'd have not been Shaw, on the grounds of Scotland being so very different from England (or Ireland), and that difference somehow fundamentally important ? If you've made a Shaw, you've not made that Shaw, said no Shaw ever ?

In fact Shaw is neither English nor Irish not anything other than Shaw-ish, in that sense. Sure he happens to use some tools, and the tools in question should be extremely flattered that he does them the honor, in the plain knowledge that he could just as well use some other tools. Countries are not things, they're hotels, groups don't matter when human achievement is concerned. Collectivism has no power here. Which brings us to the point : the US "social mobility" is a myth. The people who appear socially mobile are geographically mobile in the first place. They come from China and Rwanda and wherever else. I spent some time in a small Massachusetts town that Kerouac lived in. Does this make me an "upwards mobile American" ? Why not, it improves the look of the data, right ?

More importantly, the people who appear socially mobile are socially mobile in and of themselves. Their mobility is not a characteristic of whatever place they happen to at any point bless with their presence, but of them themselves. There's nothing about a place that helps social mobility. Herr Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was just as "socially mobile" - which is to say successful - in Nazi Germany and in pre-Nazi US, and while Ovid still wrote mostly Latin in Rome and on the Pontus, he nevertheless wrote most of his better material outside of the very "socially mobile" Republic.

Living in a neighbourhood with rich people doesn't make you any richer. Going through a gender change operation won't give you a better life expectancy, even if "women" live longer than men. All these pseudo-statistical considerations are exactly two things :

A way for people to create jobs for themselves out of the pretense they're doing "scientific research" while outputting pseudoscientific but politically relevant goop. This is an antisocial activity.

A way for people that really want to have the wool pulled over their eyes to have that wool pulled over their eyes. Is it better to be an office drone on a dead track in a company where 30% of employees end up a VP at some point in their career, rather than another company where only 28% of employees end up a VP eventually ? It doesn't matter. Not because the meaning of "VP" has been diluted to cater to HR considerations, but because office drones on dead tracks aren't in the demo for that dog and pony show anyway.

Change is not in and of itself improvement, social sciences are anything but scientific and statistics have much less impact on your actual life than you tend to imagine.

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Friday, 25 July, Year 6 d.Tr.