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How to legitimate a scam

The technically anonymous LawProf has an elegant description of a legitimated scam, a system where the scammers hide this reality from themselves with ideology. Fascinating.

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One Comment

  1. This starts with a thoughtful discussion of the “ideological” foundation for the edububble, as it pertains to Law School. But “ideology” is also an important ingredient for the edububble generally, as well.

    There was an interesting link to “35 Shocking Facts that Prove that College Education has become a Giant Money Making Scam” –
    http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/35-shocking-facts-that-prove-that-college-education-has-become-a-giant-money-making-scam

    And it is the “has become” (emergent, developmental) or temporal aspect that is missing from Law Prof’s polemic. When did this happen? When did the train leave the tracks?

    [The roots lie, I think, in the professionalization project itself, and the willingness of practitioners to sell the "secrets" of their craft on the open market for a price; and in the fact that vocational options for youth have withered away to nothing in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, which no longer has any need for workers.]

    Both articles highlight the moral indefensibility of the entire enterprise: years from now, after the edububble has collapsed, commentators and scholars will scratch their heads (much as they did with the dot-com bust, and the housing collapse), and wonder why the edububble inflated for as long as it did; and maybe ask why no one inside the bubble … why no one inside the bubble had the moral courage to protest the Holocaust that was taking place.

    Maybe, in our post-edububble future, there will be Tribunals and War Crimes investigations, with guilty parties hunted down and put on trial for their crimes against humanity. Maybe. Just maybe.

    1. Higby on February 1st, 2012 at 1:35 am