you can't assume that printing money here will incur inflation, as money is being just sucked up by the system right now - a lot of it in the form of housing prices falling (and thus falling off the assets sheets of banks)
> But what's the point of trying to catch cheaters if it hurts the class dynamic and if those who get caught don't even get suspended? The students are clearly OK with cheating otherwise the cheaters would be ostracized by the other students. The school management clearly doesn't care, since they don't take action against those who are caught red-handed.
So, what you're saying is, it's too hard, the risks too great -- therefore we shouldn't try?
I'd offer that the it would have gotten Google zillions of video conferencing clients and a leg up on implementing that into their VOIP style offering. Instead, we're looking at Microsoft struggling to fit into an online platform that has almost no users. Now, if they integrate more Skype functionality into their Office suite, that could be interesting.
I think the delusion may stem more from the fact that there have been far more software engineers than say, lawyers, law enforcement agents that have had a huge impact on society. This doesn't mean they are at the absolute top of the heap - I think there is an open recognition that there are a number of other sciences that are having the same type of impact right now.
Whether or not this has anything to do with a truly "different" way of thinking, that's up for argument.
This is really about freedom, education/opportunity, justice. Whereas there really was a stratification, that's becoming flattened. As you say, the pessimistic part of me thinks that all of those things I just listed are being reduced for that segment of population formerly known as the middle class.
It is easy to confuse consumer goods and an easy life with what is means to be middle class.
. the collapse of the middle class will have easy to reduce the size of the professional class, in particular doctors and professors as noone will be able to afford their services
. everyone will continue to confuse having an smartphone and a flat screen with being rich
. cars and houses will become luxury items, we become a renters society (serfdom)
. the loneliness and islotation of the previous two decades will only accelerate and increase with the advent of more mobile powerful devices
. the quality of human relationships will continue to suffer
. this will effect politics in a profoundly bad way
. also, the birthrate will drop precipitously
. the gap between what we know we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know will grow even larger - more because of arrogance that we everything than humans actually learn more despite increased cheapness of information (inability to separate signal from noise)
. the principals of the enlightment will be essentially dead for the majority of the world
. something smarter than human will arise
. the power of transhumanity or AI will be restricted to a solitary few - noone will see why this is initially an incredibly bad development for all of the human race (well, maybe nobody outside this forum)
. a new dark age will arise as orwell's visions come to fruition
. the new dark age will be nice and short due to the effects exponential evolution