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Why should the 3/4 Americans without a college degree be forced to subsidize the private enjoyment of an individual? Should the government also subsidize my pri
by abeppu 16y ago
Why should the 3/4 Americans without a college degree be forced to subsidize the private enjoyment of an individual? Should the government also subsidize my private enjoyment of video games, pornography or martial arts?
OK, I think maybe it's worthwhile to distinguish between the issues of (a) whether higher education has a value and function beyond job training and placement and (b) whether higher education is worthy of receiving public funds. My response above was in response to a position I perceived you to be making with respect to (a), and not so much because of my opinions with respect to (b). I think there's a coherent position that could say that higher education has value beyond job placement, but which still held that it didn't deserve public subsidies. That said, I think the $40k of public funding for a neglectful English student turned waiter is an unfair characterization. It's not like we're throwing 40k scholarships after any high school graduate that moves, and most educations are not subsidized to nearly that degree.
If that is the case, would you favor denying the vote to people unable to make correct judgements, deal with political rhetoric or form opinions about highly technical issues? It seems that filtering the noise is far cheaper than increasing the signal, in this case.
That seems messed up, mainly because (a) evaluating people's sophistication with respect to those abilities is tricky and doing it in a politically neutral way is even trickier and (b) I would expect that people who weren't disenfranchised by such a policy wouldn't represent the interests of the people who were disenfranchised.
However, I do think we need more high quality, wide availability of events and materials arranged by non-partisan organizations with the intent of providing the necessary background to follow the issues.