Friday, September 05, 2008

Chinese Don't Major in Sociology

This chart is supposed to show a decrease in the seemingly limitless pool of Chinese labor. I noticed it because it doesn't look like any of them majored in sociology.

For reference I just imaged searched "sociology majors" and came up with this for comparison;



The question I ask all of ye out there, who is contributing more to GDP?

Post script- Langman made an astute observation and I thought it warranted mentioning;


Sadly, Langman, you have to realize that to the sociology majors of the world, it's not REALLY about helping out the poor people, as much as it is doing the least amount of work to make THEMSELVES feel better. Ergo, it doesn't matter if the place is still a dump 7 years later, all that matters (in their mind) is that they tried. And warm fuzzies for everybody muffle the fact they've achieved effectively nothing.

It is the most hypocritical, shallow exception I take with the "charity pimps" of the world. It's not really about the cause, it's all about them. The poor starving people of country "x" are merely a means to make rich, spoiled preppy Americans who are too lazy to study math feel good about themselves.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the late 1970s I wrote a column for my college paper named "The Science" which was a weekly discussion of hard science and its affect on our society. For our annual joke issue in April, we renamed it to "waste your time in" The "social" Science

Nice to see nothing's really changed in 30 years.

Mitch said...

I remember our science newspaper at University having two key quotes:

1. An arts major is not worth the chemical cost of his/her body; and,

2. Social Science sounds a lot like social disease.

'nuff said

Anonymous said...

But, of course, there is more to life than GDP. Have you considered that "finding yourself" (whatever that means) and living a life you deem meaningful are also important endeavors in a post-scarcity society? True, some of those majoring in rubbish such as Sociology or--gasp!--English might some day regret it, but it's unclear that that this is the rule rather than the exception. Furthermore, college these days is more a matter of signaling than of bona-fide education; it proves to employers that you can show up not too inebriated a few times a year to pass a few exams and, perhaps, even plagiarize a few papers without getting caught.

-JB

langmann said...

The fact that the "house" in figure 2 still looks like garbage 7 years later just goes to show that sociology majors just like in the first world can't fix anything in the third world either.

Anonymous said...

I have no problem with someone finding himself, as long as he pays for the journey. Today I pay for the journey and I am damned tired of all the moochers.