<p>As EA decisions come closer, I think this thread may relieve some stress.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>I personally feel that the world would be much more rational. Leaders would be more direct and a lot of the nonsense in politics would disappear. On the other hand, I sense that some MIT students (or people who would fit in at MIT) have some subtle desire for power. A lot of people I know who would really fit in well at MIT have admitted to wanting to rule the world. That could lead to quite the interesting power struggle.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t think of desire for power as a trait that defines MIT students. Many are too interested in discovering to even begin to think about power </p>
<p>Some MIT students can get extremely pedantic, which would annoy me and sometimes get in the way of efficiency. Also, bikeshedding.</p>
<p>But I do think overall efficiency would improve, with logical results ^^</p>
<p>I would present political paradoxes into p-sets (they would still keep their names, p-sets) . Because the world is obviously going politically illogical .I guess in a few years ,most of the political mess and disarray would fade away.</p>
<p>A world run by students would be a bad idea. There would just be non stop partying and maybe a bit of work will get done.
Alumni would probably do decently.</p>
<p>One thing about MIT that’s very different from the real world is that there’s much more acceptance of people for who they are, no matter what that is. You can be a geek/jock/musician/gamer/mad scientist/builder of crazy things/queer/straight/poly/libertarian/whatever religion you want/atheist/all of these things at once at MIT and nobody will really bat an eye. That’s what I would look forward to most if the real world were more like MIT. That and the copious amounts of liquid nitrogen ice cream.</p>
<p>Major re-routing of the course of all waterways due to the high population of beavers, and what Mollie said about the liquid nitrogen ice cream.</p>
<p>For some reason I think these rulers would realize pretty quickly that getting rid of labor unions would solve a lot of problems… especially since these ruling MIT students don’t currently do some labor-related jobs that involve unions… and because labor unions only benefit those they represent.</p>
<p>So first law I’d pass if I were in this position: outlaw union membership of government workers. We can do that just by adding it to the contract. “If I work for this government I pledge not to join a labor union.”</p>
<p>Then after that we can start repealing all those union-protection laws and start busting unions. If some unions try to strike? Then if their employers don’t fire them, we can send in some troops and break up the strikes.</p>
<p>Oh yeah and we can remove the minimum wage so that people have less incentive to do unskilled labor… because wages will be so low. And those who stay unskilled can move away to some other land that has a high minimum wage…like Canada… We’ll leave Canada alone and let it have a minimum wage. So all unskilled workers will move to canada. We don’t want them in our country. So then overall less people here will be doing these unskilled jobs and labor unions will have less members.</p>
<p>Eventually labor unions can be dissolved.</p>
<p>Then all our political problems will be solved and the world will be right again…except for Canada…
o well we can’t achieve perfection immediately. but we can slowly permanently transform unskilled workers into self-entrepreneurs… So we’ll set up like education centers in canada to teach people to employ themselves or something.</p>
<p>And this is all possible because by definition, this world isn’t ruled by a democracy…it’s ruled by MIT students Unions don’t have power if they have no leverage over rulers.</p>
<p>I think if MIT people ruled the world, then there’d be a lot more peace and harmony, more cooperation between countries, and a solution to the economic crisis.</p>
<p>Workers don’t need protection. By competition, less competent workers will drop out of the workforce and they’ll have more incentive to do other things… like employ themselves or others. And they always have the choice to move to Canada where we keep the minimum wage…</p>
<p>There would be friendly rivalry. Countries would still strive to be the best and there would still be confrontations between countries; however, conflicts will be handled differently than they are now. Perhaps war would be replaced by robot battles or as MITChris so eloquently put it…</p>
<p>Workers don’t need protection? See early 1900s New York City and Chicago and how well that turned out for them. Also, people don’t just employ themselves and others when they don’t have a job. If that did happen, then we wouldn’t have such high unemployment. There are other factors at hand.</p>
<p>That probably won’t happen in today’s society, provided people make smart decisions. Why should someone accept a job with bad conditions, when they can simply hire themselves and for example start a lemonade stand?</p>
<p>The high unemployment we have is because of labor unions and minimum wage. If these disappeared, our unemployment rate would stably remain lower.</p>
<p>And even if for whatever reason someone has to choose a bad job, there is a limit to how bad it can get. We have modern laws requiring jobs to offer certain benefits to workers.</p>
<p>And there is always the possibility of replacing these workers with machines if their work is too repetitive… The same amount of productivity split between fewer people is somewhat better for an economy… provided we send the remaining people to Canada or something.</p>
<p>Alright…enough with union-busting thoughts. I just finished reading Crime+Punishment and I was in an anti-socialist mood.</p>
<p>Markets aren’t rational. Someone will accept a job with bad conditions if that’s the only job they can get. Starting a lemonade stand or a similar small business would give 0 benefits already, and there’s not enough aggregate demand to keep that business afloat. Besides, one of the reasons why more small businesses aren’t created aside from the aggregate demand issue is that we’re also embroiled in a liquidity trap. People simply cannot get the loans necessary to start that small business idea, even if it’s a good one. The high unemployment isn’t about labor unions and minimum wage. It’s about aggregate demand and liquidity.</p>
<p>Also, sure, we have laws in place to protect workers; but what if that isn’t enough? How will we know if whether workers have manageable conditions? Labor unions help to give the workers a voice in the decisions being made that directly effect them.</p>
<p>On an aside, it’d be really nice if MIT students ran the world because then they could inject some sense into the economy as only a saltwater school educated person can.</p>
Unfortunately, there were a lot of MIT-educated people on Wall Street when all of these recent shenanigans went down. No evidence that their MIT educations helped inject any sense into what they were doing.</p>
</p>
Unions don’t have power if they have no leverage over rulers.</p>