🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <pete.725064249@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>, pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:

 [stuff deleted]

|> However, I think you're missing the point.  The cultured hoard their culture
|> not by keeping secrets but by controlling the resources required to
|> promulgate their culture. 

Close enough.  Let's switch from Kornbluth (yes, I did read him) to
Vonnegut, not famous for his optimism, and specifically 'Player Piano.'  In
that book, an educated elite of managers and engineers coexisted smoothly
with a proletariat who were not actually morons, but might as well have
been: they were given no opportunity to do anything except the things that
machines could do for them.  The resulting society was prosperous and
(mostly) contented, though naturally Vonnegut created some rebels in it.
The elite occasionally used the masses as grunt labour or cannon fodder,
and provided them with a fair standard of living otherwise.

Also read, if you can find it (I can't), 'A Torrent of Faces' by James
Blish and Norman somebody-or-other.

My point is: what's *wrong* with having a lot of morons as long as there
are still some smart people around?  The problem, if there is one, is
correctable in a few generations anyway.

[Of course I can think of some things wrong with this.  Can you?]

Personally, I rather like Larry Niven's notion of "birthrights."  You get
an automatic right to have one child, and can obtain more in various ways.

			- Richard