Initiations

For all the thousands of posts I've done at my domains and blogs I've never coordinated some scattered comments on initiations. I can't now either, but I do now pledge to do so: if I live, if my I.S. bill is paid, if blogspot.com still accepts my posts ...

In the Italy where Shakespeare set his Romeo and Juliet any young rascal with a sword, meaning "son of a property holder, perhaps a noble," could wound or kill almost any one on the street without a sword: the magistrate could be relied on to back the money, and the hell with Jesus' love or God's law. But with or without such details we all know: the privileged of the society are privileged. It's just a redundancy. The law is for the privileged, by the privileged. Ah, but in the famous (read infamous) "public" schools of the English aristocracy (and its public servants) any half-starved school master could terrorize any future duke with impunity. As soon as Lord Byron came by his great expectations, he was transferred from being tyranized by a nanny to being tyranized by the Harrow School: and he had the chilblained feet to prove it.

pk has written, only half-joking, that this practice was the society's way of getting some of their own back, in advance, from the injustices that the privileged lords (and their courtiers) would visit upon the public once they came of age. Now: who else has noticed?Don't we among the developed democracies do exactly the same thing with our own doctors while we have them trapped as interns? as residents?
Can anyone possibly actually believe that making a young doctor work an eighteen hour shift is good for those under their care? or good for the doctor?
No: it's getting our pound of flesh from them before they go off and earn $600,000 a year for being the second-leading cause of death, just behind heart disease.