A Look at Idiocracy

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Mike Judge wasn't calling for systematic social eradication of dumb people. Everything in the movie can be explained through cultural practice. Intelligence isn't supposed to be considered solely innate or genetic. You guys very well know that education is an applied discipline.

That being said, the modern practice of how we view media aims to be aware of the representational value of media, deliberate or otherwise. That's still not necessarily a direct implication though.

My contention is just that there is a nasty subtext there, and it is something worth talking about when analyzing the movie.

I would believe Mike Judge if he said that he didn't realized that subtext was there while making the movie. It is just denying the existence of that subtext that bothers me.

I can breathe this in a lot easier than just speaking in direct metaphor about the movie.

[Riedquat]

Flipside I have seen businesses wanting a college education for entry level positions. IE minimum wage. Now why would anyone rack up the debt to go to college to earn the same amount you could get pumping gas?

The real problem, and the one nobody really wants to admit because it means radically restructuring our entire society and ideological basis, is that thanks to automation, and some other factors but mainly automation, that there are more people than there are employment opportunities. The stupid entry requirements for minimum wage jobs are just a way to keep the applications for each job down to the manageable levels that HR folks can cope with. And thanks to automation, even that is changing since filling an application out online allows the almighty algorithm to do the work of dozens of HR people. And it is only going to get worse from here.

We need to work out a system that allows people to live without the traditional employment structures, and gig economy and influencer ain't gonna cut it either.

Or question just what is actually the point of all this automation, is it really improving our lives and societies? Yes, in some areas - particularly dangerous, unpleasant, or boring jobs for example, but overall I'm finding the whole concept ever more ridiculous.

[CrypticMirror]

Flipside I have seen businesses wanting a college education for entry level positions. IE minimum wage. Now why would anyone rack up the debt to go to college to earn the same amount you could get pumping gas?

The real problem, and the one nobody really wants to admit because it means radically restructuring our entire society and ideological basis, is that thanks to automation, and some other factors but mainly automation, that there are more people than there are employment opportunities. The stupid entry requirements for minimum wage jobs are just a way to keep the applications for each job down to the manageable levels that HR folks can cope with. And thanks to automation, even that is changing since filling an application out online allows the almighty algorithm to do the work of dozens of HR people. And it is only going to get worse from here.

We need to work out a system that allows people to live without the traditional employment structures, and gig economy and influencer ain't gonna cut it either.

Or question just what is actually the point of all this automation, is it really improving our lives and societies? Yes, in some areas - particularly dangerous, unpleasant, or boring jobs for example, but overall I'm finding the whole concept ever more ridiculous.

You mean if you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man?

[TulipQulqu]

Flipside I have seen businesses wanting a college education for entry level positions. IE minimum wage. Now why would anyone rack up the debt to go to college to earn the same amount you could get pumping gas?

The real problem, and the one nobody really wants to admit because it means radically restructuring our entire society and ideological basis, is that thanks to automation, and some other factors but mainly automation, that there are more people than there are employment opportunities. The stupid entry requirements for minimum wage jobs are just a way to keep the applications for each job down to the manageable levels that HR folks can cope with. And thanks to automation, even that is changing since filling an application out online allows the almighty algorithm to do the work of dozens of HR people. And it is only going to get worse from here.

We need to work out a system that allows people to live without the traditional employment structures, and gig economy and influencer ain't gonna cut it either.

Or we could just move towards a 20 or 10 hour work week while doubling to quadrupling wages to keep incomes steady.

This requires an ideological shift but it is not a total restructuring of society.

[Thebestoftherest]

Flipside I have seen businesses wanting a college education for entry level positions. IE minimum wage. Now why would anyone rack up the debt to go to college to earn the same amount you could get pumping gas?

The real problem, and the one nobody really wants to admit because it means radically restructuring our entire society and ideological basis, is that thanks to automation, and some other factors but mainly automation, that there are more people than there are employment opportunities. The stupid entry requirements for minimum wage jobs are just a way to keep the applications for each job down to the manageable levels that HR folks can cope with. And thanks to automation, even that is changing since filling an application out online allows the almighty algorithm to do the work of dozens of HR people. And it is only going to get worse from here.

We need to work out a system that allows people to live without the traditional employment structures, and gig economy and influencer ain't gonna cut it either.

Or question just what is actually the point of all this automation, is it really improving our lives and societies? Yes, in some areas - particularly dangerous, unpleasant, or boring jobs for example, but overall I'm finding the whole concept ever more ridiculous.

You mean if you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man?

Yes but what to do?

[Riedquat]

Or question just what is actually the point of all this automation, is it really improving our lives and societies? Yes, in some areas - particularly dangerous, unpleasant, or boring jobs for example, but overall I'm finding the whole concept ever more ridiculous.

You mean if you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man?

Quoting a film so inane that it doesn't take too much of a leap of imagination to assume it could be written by someone creating a strawman to make the automationeers look good by making their opponents look hopeless?

WALL-E is a better example of the sort of future we're after (not considering the Earth covered in rubbish part).

[Riedquat]

Or we could just move towards a 20 or 10 hour work week while doubling to quadrupling wages to keep incomes steady.

This requires an ideological shift but it is not a total restructuring of society.

That's a considerably better way of looking at it, but it should've already happened, decades ago. In more recent times there's been pressure in the other direction, if you can get work at all.

If you can do all that's done econmically now in 10-20 hours working week most will clamour for using that to have Moar Wealth! Oh, they'll probably point to the third world sweatshop labourer to justify it whilst igoring the billionaire who just needs that extra cash to buy that bigger superyacht that is what they feel they really need if they'll ever be happy...

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, I finally watched this review. Overall it left me feeling hollow and kind of dirty. I was expecting the eugenics angle to be addressed, because it's the biggest and ugliest factor in this film, but I fault comrade puppet for not bringing up the film's classist angle. There's a great deal of conflation of being stupid with lower-class speech, lower-class living conditions, and lower-class everything, especially the "they breed like rabbits" aspect. Even Tim's lazyness angle ties into the portrayal of lower class people as those who just drink beer and collect welfare checks because they are obviously too lazy to become rich through hard work.

Also, I gotta say that IQ is useless. IQ itself was created by eugenicists to prove that certain types of people were better than others, and you get radically different results just by repeating the test at different times.

If I was to say something good about the film, honestly the Carl's Jr bit with the mother was the closest it came to the effective social commentary that it so desperately wants to be praised for while using the excuse of comic satire to avoid being criticized for failing to deliver.

[TulipQulqu]

Also, I gotta say that IQ is useless. IQ itself was created by eugenicists to prove that certain types of people were better than others, and you get radically different results just by repeating the test at different times.

Actually, IQ was invented so special needs children could be identified and helped. A child with an IQ of less than 100 is behind on their academic abilities and thus needs more attention, a child with an IQ above 100 is doing great and can be left to self-direct some. Child IQ also changes decently rapidly over time.

Adult IQ is the one that ends up producing deeply messed up racial and eugenicy views.

Alfred Binet did nothing wrong. He was trying to get it so kids would be given special needs education instead of being sent to asylums.

[Muzer]

Trouble with the IQ tests is the questions are so bloody esoteric that it's not the sort of thing you can just pick up with zero practice. And the kids who get the most practice are rich kids. So while IQ tests in a vacuum may well test intelligence, in real life they test intelligence heavily weighted by socioeconomic class. In the UK some counties still have selective state schools ("grammar schools"), and at least when I went, the "11 plus" test to get in was basically just an IQ test. There was a chap in my primary school class who was just as clever as I was, but my family could afford tutoring for the IQ test and his couldn't, so I passed the test and he didn't. Without the tutoring I probably wouldn't have even understood some of the questions. How is an 11-year-old kid supposed to know what "A is to B as C is to ?" means? What sort of insane maniacs came up with these tests? Seriously...