They should switch to teaching these college kids how to procreate. Fact: College kids like sex. Fact: Japan is (not so) slowly dying off. Solution: Teach unsafe sex to college kids. Problem solved.
Until everyone gets AIDS.
what you guys are forgetting is that a higher “voting weight” is already given to those with high IQs as the voting rate of higher IQ folks is much higher than that of lower IQ folks. the voting system is already constructed to favour higher IQ voters. lower IQ voters’ complacency about election issues and about their individual situation as a result of their lack of knowledge results in lower voter turnout. as traditional IQ tests are generally accepted to be both sexist and and racist, you can’t give a higher weight to someone of higher IQ or higher wealth for that matter. the system is already set up to disadvantage minorities and women, why make it official?
further, using IQ as a measure of decision-making capabilities is not going to be effective. this is why we have chosen accepted democracy over technocracy. engineers, scientists and professors may be smart but they’ve never made a business decision, or important decision, ever before. this is why we elect businesspeople and lawyers to be our representatives. in reality, traders and analysts should be running the country b/c we make important decisions on a daily if not hourly or minutely basis.
Disallowing party affiliation to be show on the ballot would go a long way in forcing the voter to become engaged. The low IQ/low information voters would just wash each other out.
In the mean time, I would like to create the “Apple” or “Facebook” political party. Much better branding than ® or (D).
^ no way. “the free cigarettes and busch party”.
That might be unstoppable. Joe Camel for president.
AAPL AAPL AAPL AAPL AAPL!
Do little for the real economy, except produce an assload of taxes, yeah? I mean, you could argue that someone who produces $100 million of taxes over their lifetime just did more for society than 99.9% of the population. They didn’t cure cancer, but dat $100 mill tho… in theory should be used for something valuable (in practice, probably mostly wasted).
Japan’s problem is that culturally, it is a backwards country that is still stuck in pre-modern times. It is “too Japanese”. When I lived there, I would refer to it as “the decaying island”. I love Japan, but that’s what it is. It is too insular.
But where do those taxes come from? Soros takes money from X then pays some of that back in taxes. What is X? It’s probably not my place to criticize finance people that much, but I don’t think starting a bunch of hedge funds in Japan to trade Japanese stocks is the solution to their economic problems.
I guess maybe Japan could build up it’s financial center and become more of a global finance hub (like Singapore or London). But given their cultural differences, language, and time zone, this is not very realistic.
What Japan needs is some kind of economic innovation - maybe technology (iPhones) that will make people buy more Japanese cars or electronics, cultural product (Hollywood movies), or some other thing that people want. They also need to create more young people and (like you said) change culturally. No more publicly shaming office women who get pregnant, for instance.
High IQ people don’t tend to think in that small-minded way though, that’s how the low IQ and random mentally ill high IQ people think. We’d be much better off putting Gates, B. Clinton, and Hawking in charge. You want a committee of smarties, various backgrounds, not an individual.
Anyhow, I don’t see the point in the voting pretense.
Perhaps, but the important issues are never voted on. If they are, and the answer doesn’t come up “right”, revote or ignore the vote. So again, no point in voting, it’s a side-show. Also, the “higher IQ folks” you refer to are still very very low IQ, too low to grasp the problems/solutions.
You have a society that has seen widespread growth of celibancy syndrom, which is how they describe young people developing complete disinterest in sex or companionship and their conclusion is that we need less soft skills. I love it.
Society benefits in so many ways through soft majors, art, music, literature and knowledge of history; yet one hubris driven crisis from engineering or a war resulting from lack of historical or cultural awareness can undo a generation’s worth of gains.
Anyhow, it seems like every so often the math and science guys circle up and get to jerking around here.
I’m not denying that the world may be better because of music and theater. But it is worth a $200,000 education to Abilene Christian University (plus room and board) so you can get a B.A. in Art? (not a hypothetical question–our receptionist in our office went to ACU and graduated with a degree in Art. She makes about $30k per year.)
I think they’re just hurt that the girls in high school only wanted to sleep with the artists and musicians. And that they wouldn’t touch the STEM guys until they looked like they were well on their way to their first IPO.