Monday, June 4, 2012

The "it could be worse" fallacy

They must be having quite a struggle in the boardroom of Canada's newspaper of record. (and no, despite their pretensions, that wouldn't be the National Post). On the one side you've got the view that those troublesome Quebec protesters are a bunch of spoiled brats. On the other, there seems to be some appreciation that we're into something potentially large here, something that goes way beyond a tuition hike.

A social movement.

Just the other day they gave their front page over to the social movement faction. Today the spoiled brat crowd fought back with a preachy editorial about how those spoiled brats should thank their lucky stars they don't live in Chile.

In Chile, so we are told, tuition is even higher than in Canada. Therefore we should  be grateful that compared to Chile our tuition regimine is relatively affordable.

That's a tempting argument. Be thankful Caterpillar only wants to cut your $30 per hour pay to $15, because there's folks in Georgia who are willing to work for $12.

To the Georgia workers they say be thankful for your $12 an hour because there's folks in Mexico who would be thrilled to do your job for $3.

To the Mexicans they say, mind your P's and Q's Pedro, there's folks in Viet Nam who would thank their lucky stars to have a chance at this job and all they'd want is a bowl of rice at the end of the day.

So maybe tuition is even more onerous in Chile than in Quebec.

I know it's a lot less onerous in many European countries.

Why don't we compare ourselves to places that are doing a better job of affording young people an accessible education?

Sure things could be worse...

But they could be better too.

We should try setting the bar higher instead of constantly lowering it.

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