20.11.2008., četvrtak
Sanadercraft III
I have been thinking over these last few days about the concept of going to college in a country that propagates itself as a "land of knowledge" - i.e. Croatia.
It seems to me that the choice of whether to go to college or not to go is basically the same as choosing whether to tech it or footie rush it in Warcraft III.
In the past I have talked about the myriad universal truths one can find in today's games, and have explained why this is so (the games are a rather deliberate mimicries of real life) - and today I feel like doing a bit of "foaming at the mouth" in relation to studying in Croatia.
The reason why tech rushing (learning/studying) is a viable strategy in RTS games is because it can give you an edge in the race to victory (as in success in life). Teching works if and only if your opponent doesn't know what you're doing (and so will not try to stop you in time). Stopping you is something that is easily done - in order to tech up you spend all your resources on teching instead on army and defense. This makes you EXTREMELY vulnerable in early game.
Players who have a habit of scouting will easily counter your tech rush strategy, if you are a good player yourself, you will have done some scouting of your own and will hopefully be able to stop teching in time and build defense once you notice an incoming army of darkness coming to strip your village of everything. This is called changing your strategy when it begins to fail.
Teching is always walking a thin thin line, its a "make it or break it" type of strategy. The main premise of tech rush strategy is that you will 1) be able to finish it in time and thus 2) gain an advantage over your opponent.
This means that your clever little plan is to intentionally sacrifice a portion of your defensive and offensive power in order to win an ADVANTAGE in terms of bonuses teching gives you.
Gaining a distinct advantage is the only reason why someone will choose this type of strategy.
The whole purpose of (any and all) educational system(s) is to give people (who can afford education) a distinct advantage (won in blood, tears and sweat) over those who didn't wanna make such an sacrifice.
What would happen in a game where teching can not yield a distinct advantage? No one would ever this strategy.
In Croatia, the ROI (return on investment) of studying is almost non existent. Let us compare two imaginary persons, one of these persons finished a college course which took him 6 years, in the same time period the other started working in a local shop selling stationary equipment.
After 6 years have passed, the student starts working at his first job and his starting salary is 800 $, at the same time, the sales person is already getting paid 1100$ and in the following 5 years will receive yet another raise. At the same time when the sales person gets a 1300$ salary, the student will be getting 900-1000$.
Now, let us compare the quality of life between the two, first of all, the student type had no money to spend on pleasure and entertainment. Unlike the working guys, the students quality of life was abysmal during those initial 6 years.
Ironically, at the end of this golgotha the student hasn't won a distinct advantage, au contraire, the advantage is in the hands of the working guy. 5 years in the future, the working guy has had 11 years of quality life and now has a larger salary than the student.
Bear in mind that this situation is specific to Croatia, our government has chosen to tighten the belt when it comes to education, we invest less percent of moneys into education than Romania, which is like, horrific.
Ironically, one of the main slogans for elections of our ruling party is "Croatia - the land of education" - yeah right.
Everyone and their mother and her dog has a bigger salary, even those working in public transportation and sanitation. In some cases they even get double the salary of a high school professor.
So, why bother going to a college? What is the purpose of our education system? It obviously doesn't give you and advantage over anyone, so why would anyone want to endure the hardships it entails?
In my ever so humble opinion the educational system should produce a very specific type of goods - which means produce the exact type of highly educated workers that are needed to make the economic system of that particular time work. This means that the government should in fact motivate people to pursue those specific studies that are relevant to the current situation in the country. This would be done by giving scholarships and various vouchers to students willing to study something they would not normally choose to study.
As it is now, many students study to become specialists in fields that do not guarantee future employment - Croatia does not need thinkers, Croatia needs highly skilled physical workers and various craftsmen.
Instead of producing specific units needed to make the economy grow - producing peasants in Warcraft terminology - we are producing unneeded units which end up migrating to those countries that need highly educated thinkers. Therefore we spend tax payers money in order to send the finished product to work and contribute to (more developed) other countries.
Of course, it would be a bad marketing stunt for the ruling party to ever admit that there in fact is a problem (which they themselves caused) - this would make them risk losing precious votes. They are better off burying the problem altogether and looking the other way. In the meantime they are destroying what little faith in the educational system we still have. Education is the only way out of the current economic crisis. Another way would of course be to stop building roads and other costly projects and instead letting people earn a living by providing them with specialist training and ensure plenty of work places.
The economic crisis in our country happened because people don't have enough money to buy anything. In order to prevent the economic engine from stalling you have to let the middle class have money to spend on goods and services, this is another lesson our politicians chose to ignore - simply because they have only 4 golden years in which to rob the country blind and make themselves and their families financially secure for life (or several life times). After those 4 years of mayhem, all the problems that you produce (by pillaging the economy) your opponent will inherit and thus lose the elections after 4 years - the same old treadmill.
At this point we really shout admit to the simple fact that Croatia has already been plundered and pillaged far too much and that someone has to rebuild it from scratch - not by reading books and writing research papers, but by picking up the shovel and pike. In the end, all of us who don't count among the "200 families" will end up doing that kind of work simply because there are no options of employment in any of the other sectors. The problem is; people would probably rebel at the notion of having to pick up the pick and the shovel whilst those privileged (who in fact caused the entire problem) once again exploit their work.
I wonder if our prime minister would be able to win a single warcraft game session by utilizing his current strategy. Lets see how this would work.
Sanadercraft III build order:
You start off by assigning 5 peasants to the gold mine which you are already planning to sell to the opponent by messaging him that he is free to send his peons into your mine and giving him a guarantee that you will not attack them. As they start bringing money you don't use this money to build farms, instead you keep the money in the castle (for yourself so to speak). In order to fool the poor peasants into obedience you start building unnecessary units which you keep trading to the opponent hoping he will never attack but instead act civilized and proper (Slovenia stalling EU negotiations). Just before elections you stop exploiting the only gold mine left and in order to fund the elections campaign, you borrow money from the opponent in order to build another base (which is completely unneeded at this point) in order to impress the peasants forcing them to later repay the foreign debt which was used for something they themselves will not use. As soon as the shit hits the fan, you disband 4 out of 5 workers working in the mine which you sold to the opponent in order to minimize expenses, after all the game session will be over soon so who the fuck cares. Its like ---- WTF!? are you kidding me?! How can anyone be that incompetent?
NEWSFLASH: if a parasite kills its host, it too will die
Being a thief is one thing, but being a dumb thief is an altogether different thing.
You know, what I will post that strategy to Warcraft III forums (hoping those are still active) and ask the players for ways in which I could improve the winning strategy, if I get any comments (instead of getting banned for being a prick) I will relay them on this blog. Lets see what 12 year old nerds have to say about the efficiency of our current development strategy.
It is my hypothesis that any warcraft III player would be able to construct a working build order that would serve to fix those problems considering educational system misfiring and economic system collapsing. Choosing to neglect the possibility that all of our politicians are simply retarded the only conclusion left to us at that point is that our politicians willingly chose not to fix the problem. This then means that they are somehow gaining from maintaining such a situation. This realization is only a beginning of the process of discovering what in fact is going on in Croatia.
The reason why education is so neglected in Croatia is simply because, in the end, its easier to rule over un-educated cattle than over educated people.
|
- 13:49 -
Komentari (2) -
Isprintaj -
#
|