I don't want to link to any of these in particular, but there's a theme here which is hard to pin down in words, but is unmistakable. I commented a few days ago: "the value proposition for the poor is 'skills'. The value proposition for the rich is network and connections." That's why, eg., The Chronicle says legacy admissions are so hard to eliminate. "Universities do not build wealth solely by diversifying their endowments or managing academic budgets. A university builds a portfolio of people." Exactly. But it makes universities "a city for sale and doomed to perish if it finds a buyer!" We see the pattern elsewhere. "The dominant mechanism for distributing professional opportunity is no longer slow reputation, it is algorithmic visibility." Related: "windows of increased plasticity" "a happy society is more than just a collection of happy individuals," and this: "Every era's turnaround began the same way: some unmeasurable number of people, each acting alone, declined to sell — and then made the single most subversive move available to a member of a collapsing civilization. They found the people who could not be bought." Reform isn't a political process; it's a social one.
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