Because that's exactly what this conversation has been about.
Your half of it has, anyway! Looking back I think I can see where we started talking about different things, but since the genesis was a flippant remark on my part I'm happy to leave it at that without a further post mortem.
On incidental/accidental, I wonder how you'd describe another phenomenon that's been in my mind while we've been having this conversation, from quite another part of the forest: unpaid internships. I don't know how big an issue they are in the States, but here they're very controversial. To their proponents they are a double win: the intern gets valuable training and experience, and the company gets free labour - what's not to love? However, they also act (incidentally? accidentally?) as a class filter, since the only people who can realistically apply for an unpaid internship, especially in London where living costs are high, are those with parents rich enough to bankroll them for a year. Since experience of such internships is increasingly seen as a necessary qualification for work in some high-paying sectors (e.g. finance, advertising), this means that only people who are London-based and/or rich (probably 'and' rather than 'or', in practice) can enter those kinds of job. I'm guessing that would be incidental in your terms, right? Though cynics might claim it was part of the point of the exercise, or at least that it has over time become part of the point.
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Date: 2015-07-01 04:59 pm (UTC)Your half of it has, anyway! Looking back I think I can see where we started talking about different things, but since the genesis was a flippant remark on my part I'm happy to leave it at that without a further post mortem.
On incidental/accidental, I wonder how you'd describe another phenomenon that's been in my mind while we've been having this conversation, from quite another part of the forest: unpaid internships. I don't know how big an issue they are in the States, but here they're very controversial. To their proponents they are a double win: the intern gets valuable training and experience, and the company gets free labour - what's not to love? However, they also act (incidentally? accidentally?) as a class filter, since the only people who can realistically apply for an unpaid internship, especially in London where living costs are high, are those with parents rich enough to bankroll them for a year. Since experience of such internships is increasingly seen as a necessary qualification for work in some high-paying sectors (e.g. finance, advertising), this means that only people who are London-based and/or rich (probably 'and' rather than 'or', in practice) can enter those kinds of job. I'm guessing that would be incidental in your terms, right? Though cynics might claim it was part of the point of the exercise, or at least that it has over time become part of the point.