The PC Culture at Mizzou

A lot of people are talking about the politically correct culture at the University of Missouri, a culture which brought down the university's president and chancellor. Conservatives, especially, are engaged in much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the unfairness of it all. But it's actually just the free market at work.

In order to see why this is true, you need to remember two things: (1) universities are not in the business of educating youth, they are in the business of credentialing youth (2) nearly all colleges and universities subsist entirely, or almost entirely, off of federal funds imported into the college by students.

To put it another way, consumers (students) use government money to vote about which college has the superior credentials. Whether they learn anything is completely immaterial. The government employees, also known as administrators and professors, compete to provide the top credentials.

In the current teapot tempest, consumers (students) have decided that they want to change what the credentials stand for. Instead of even pretending to stand for education, consumers now want the credentials to stand for their emotions. College credentials are now meant to stand for how consumers feel about certain aspects of life, not what they know about those aspects of life.

The government subsidizes the consumers who want that transformation. Government employees (college professors) are backing that consumer-based transformation by telling the customer that this particular fad is the best way to go. Since we all back the government actions in the market via our tax dollars, the market responds by changing the purpose of university credentials.

Some individuals (taxpayers) may not like that transformation. Too bad. This is what the marketplace elites want, and they control the process. We made them elites by voting for them, either at the ballot box or by buying their products. So, by voting for them with our wallets and our ballots, we made them our bosses. We made their opinions more influential than our own.

They want the credentialing to change because they don't need educated Americans. Educated help, technical help, can be imported from anywhere in the world. What the marketing elites want is docile, divided Americans. They want Americans who have been intimidated into silence through a process that they can deny they had anything to do with: deniable intimidation.

A divided America assures the elites stay in power. The American marketplace makes more sales with 300 million toaster buyers than it does with Americans who are united, who support each other, and who therefore don't need stacks of commodity items. The more things we buy, the more our wallets continue to buy them power, and our ballots continue to support the people who cut government regulations that assure the elites stay in power.

This is the logical consequence of the capitalist marketplace that Pope Francis warned us about. The Pope doesn't have a problem with profit, per se. He has a problem with the divisiveness that is inherent to pure capitalism. No conservative whose conservatism is based on pure marketplace economics, and nothing else, has a real right to complain.