Obama vs. cattalactics, and catallactics wins

Last week Yahoo featured a news article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/uspoliticsobamaeducation) talking about Obama’s speaking trip at the University of Texas and its focus on the “need” to acquire a higher education in order to thrive in today’s marketplace. I’m currently working on an article critiquing this absolutely nonsensical notion – for expediency I can pretty easily summarize the flaws with his thesis therein:

1) Education is not a homogenous commodity – surely Obama wouldn’t think that having a 200% increase in B.As in basket weaving will help our economy.

2) Our education system is – in the aggregate – massively lacking in its instruction of actual marketable skills. The emphasis has shifted over time, tragically, to the acquisition of getting a degree instead of the acquisition of a truly solid education represented by the awarding of a degree

3) College is extremely expensive right now, thanks to countless regulations on schools, subsizidation of loans that people can barely afford to pay, etc. How exactly is going $20,000 into debt to get a communications degree a good investment? How is that sage advice in an economy that the Fed destroyed after Greenspan’s interest rate slashes in 2002, and on the precipice of a double-dip (d)e(pr)ession?

4) For those who will contest Point #3 by stating that you can get a “more marketable” degree such as one in scientific fields, engineering, etc should be reminded that a) there are cheaper alternatives to the Leviathan educational-industrial-complex schools where it can be acquired, and b) though they may not be as marketable as a degree from a “big school” (aka a super expensive educational-industrial-complex school), this would not be the case in a laissez-fare market for education, which we don’t have and which individuals cannot have thanks to armies of bureaucrats.
I probably missed some other points as well. But this is just the start.

Prop 8, schmop 8

So US District Court judge Vaughn Walker's decision to strike down the bigoted Prop 8 in California has led to a flurry of celebration among socially tolerant people far and wide, ranging from libertarians/anarchists all the way to the progressives -- many of my fellow libertarian/anarchist friends have cheered on the decision openly, declaring it as a major in-road victory for social and human freedom. I myself am a big advocate of open embracement of homosexuality for those of that persuasion as well as adoption of any kind of social relation (marriage, etc) that augments their persuasion. So why am I not cheering about the ruling?

Simple -- it hands the State a crucial philosophic victory: the celebration of the ruling overlooks the fact that the State has won a victory in that people are -- now more than ever -- going to look at marriage as something the State grants to people, that people go to the State for, that people rely on the State for. Punch-drunk in this celebration, they will forget that marriage was not a creation of the State, but a creation of social relations in which the State just happened to have its Leviathan tentacles sunk into. Also startling is how people are attempting to justify the ruling based on the Constitution -- while the Constitution is the only tool that can be used to (attempt to) limit the expansion of the State's tyranny, such nearly-religious adherence to it to gain a tiny social freedom is handing a gigantic intellectual victory to the State.

A true victory for marriage will be when people turn away from State-sanctioned marriage entirely and opt for marriage outside of the system, pulling the rug out from underneath the intellectual foundations of the government marriage monopoly. It's irrelevant whether it's a straight, gay, polygamous, marriage. Application of the revolutionary agorist approach as expounded by the late Samuel E. Konkin III is the only way to truly win a victory for marriage.

Celebrating the overturning of Prop 8 only gives the State another victory in the war of ideas. I will not stand for this.