I don’t think the comment was necessarily to dunk on Ethiopia per se as much as to make a point.
E.g.
The person who worked out at least a theoretical model for faster than light travel was Mexican. So we are obviously not dealing with this situation in which the most intellectual necessarily are born into western society.
This is way more the problem than people missing out on going to medical school when they really wanted to.
Most people who are in the United States and want to go to a high paying career, can take out student loans and achieve something close, assuming good grades. Not that there aren’t problems with that scenario, but everyone wants kids to get high paying jobs, society is organized around helping those kids.
Meanwhile, some people would be great authors or philosophers or artists if they didn’t have to spend time making the money to survive. Those are valid goals that are being oppressed by the system.
And in the same way the global system is oppressing billions of people who are born as the rural poor and just not able to do much beyond subsistence farming.
Someone once said how many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in Ethiopia?
How many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in America to a working class or poor family or as a person in a marginalized group?
Less than in Ethiopia
Probably, I didn’t mean to make it a competition. In both cases it’s a nonzero number and every one is a tragedy.
I don’t think the comment was necessarily to dunk on Ethiopia per se as much as to make a point.
E.g. The person who worked out at least a theoretical model for faster than light travel was Mexican. So we are obviously not dealing with this situation in which the most intellectual necessarily are born into western society.
This is way more the problem than people missing out on going to medical school when they really wanted to.
Most people who are in the United States and want to go to a high paying career, can take out student loans and achieve something close, assuming good grades. Not that there aren’t problems with that scenario, but everyone wants kids to get high paying jobs, society is organized around helping those kids.
Meanwhile, some people would be great authors or philosophers or artists if they didn’t have to spend time making the money to survive. Those are valid goals that are being oppressed by the system.
And in the same way the global system is oppressing billions of people who are born as the rural poor and just not able to do much beyond subsistence farming.