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I was pretty poor. My mom worked part-time and call centers and did medical studies to earn extra money while my dad worked full-time. I made some bad choices,

I was pretty poor. My mom worked part-time and call centers and did medical studies to earn extra money while my dad worked full-time. I made some bad choices, but then got a 2-year degree at a community college and yes, I did use some grants which I'm very thankful for. Not to be pedantic but there's really no such thing as free is there? Someone is paying for that college. Personally I don't want to subsidize these quote unquote elite universities but if people choose to use their money to go there that's great. To your final point, no that is emphatically not what freedom is. I once heard that freedom is the ability to choose wrongly but at the core it's really freedom to choose. If everything is the same then there's really no choice.

gambiting 5y ago
>>Not to be pedantic but there's really no such thing as free is there? Someone is paying for that college. That is pedantic - literally no one with an ounce of intelligence would think that money for those services comes from the moon. Of course it comes from out taxes. I'm happy to pay my taxes to make sure everyone has the same opportunities. >>Personally I don't want to subsidize these quote unquote elite universities but if people choose to use their money to go there that's great. That's an incredibly individualistic approach that I don't agree with. >>I once heard that freedom is the ability to choose wrongly but at the core it's really freedom to choose. If everything is the same then there's really no choice. But that's exactly what other countries do! I said this in another comment - want to be a doctor? Go ahead, no debt. Want to be a lawyer? No debt. But also want to be a map historian? No debt. Art PhD? No debt. Marketing and Business studies? No debt. That's exactly what freedom is. You are free to chose what you want to learn. If you choose poorly and there is no job waiting for you on the other end, well you just wasted 3 years of your life. But we as a society made it possible for you to take that leap and have a choice. How is that "everything is the same"???
- snowflake_ptr 5y ago
  >>>Personally I don't want to subsidize these quote unquote elite universities but if people choose to use their money to go there that's great. > That's an incredibly individualistic approach that I don't agree with. You do realize that there are other reasons that people don't want to subsidize universities than just believing that people shouldn't get free education on principle? One really good one is that modern universities are incredibly wasteful. K-12 education has almost tripled in cost over the past 50 years, with virtually no improvement in student reading scores over the same period. College has increased by far more than that. I'm personally happy to pay for other peoples' school with my tax dollars as long as that education is reasonably priced - and so would tens of millions of other Americans. Consider trying to fix the rampant cost metasizing in the education and healthcare systems before trying to subsidize them. Slate Star Codex has a really good article on skyrocketing costs in various sectors: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost... A second really good reason is that many elite universities are actively pushing murderous ideologies on their students. Marxism literally led to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which killed tens of millions of people, and these universities are actively cultivating it in their students. I don't know how to describe this except for "evil". These institutions don't just not deserve my money - I want them disbanded, and their leaders' citizenship stripped, for trying to incite violence on a massive scale.

gambiting 5y ago

>>Not to be pedantic but there's really no such thing as free is there? Someone is paying for that college. That is pedantic - literally no one with an ounce of intelligence would think that money for those services comes from the moon. Of course it comes from out taxes. I'm happy to pay my taxes to make sure everyone has the same opportunities. >>Personally I don't want to subsidize these quote unquote elite universities but if people choose to use their money to go there that's great. That's an incredibly individualistic approach that I don't agree with. >>I once heard that freedom is the ability to choose wrongly but at the core it's really freedom to choose. If everything is the same then there's really no choice. But that's exactly what other countries do! I said this in another comment - want to be a doctor? Go ahead, no debt. Want to be a lawyer? No debt. But also want to be a map historian? No debt. Art PhD? No debt. Marketing and Business studies? No debt. That's exactly what freedom is. You are free to chose what you want to learn. If you choose poorly and there is no job waiting for you on the other end, well you just wasted 3 years of your life. But we as a society made it possible for you to take that leap and have a choice. How is that "everything is the same"???

snowflake_ptr 5y ago
>>>Personally I don't want to subsidize these quote unquote elite universities but if people choose to use their money to go there that's great. > That's an incredibly individualistic approach that I don't agree with. You do realize that there are other reasons that people don't want to subsidize universities than just believing that people shouldn't get free education on principle? One really good one is that modern universities are incredibly wasteful. K-12 education has almost tripled in cost over the past 50 years, with virtually no improvement in student reading scores over the same period. College has increased by far more than that. I'm personally happy to pay for other peoples' school with my tax dollars as long as that education is reasonably priced - and so would tens of millions of other Americans. Consider trying to fix the rampant cost metasizing in the education and healthcare systems before trying to subsidize them. Slate Star Codex has a really good article on skyrocketing costs in various sectors: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost... A second really good reason is that many elite universities are actively pushing murderous ideologies on their students. Marxism literally led to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which killed tens of millions of people, and these universities are actively cultivating it in their students. I don't know how to describe this except for "evil". These institutions don't just not deserve my money - I want them disbanded, and their leaders' citizenship stripped, for trying to incite violence on a massive scale.