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Regulation or deregulation. Take loan forgiveness—-the loans themselves are not the underlying root issue. They are a tertiary effect of a credentialism spiral

Regulation or deregulation. Take loan forgiveness—-the loans themselves are not the underlying root issue. They are a tertiary effect of a credentialism spiral and insane cost growth at institutions that don’t face true market pressures. Just dropping money on borrowers is not even attempting to fix the underlying problem. It’s so unambitious it invites cynicism.

ethanbond 3y ago
And how do you propose the government try to fix credentialism? For all the talk about how useless degrees are, companies still choose to require them, especially the companies helmed by “college is a scam” zealots.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  Companies have to still require them because they are a valuable signal and it’s free to them. Kids have to go because companies require them. This is what a peacock spiral looks like. Government is fundamentally for breaking these kind of incentive failures. Not supercharging them through blank check forgivable loans.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    No, companies don’t have to require them. Agreed the loan behavior exacerbates the issue rather than mitigates it, but “the current solution is bad” doesn’t necessarily mean the same agent is able to produce a good solution. If you’re certain the government is capable of breaking it: how?
    - bradleyjg 3y ago
      I have ideas but if I post them, I’m guessing you are going to pattern match me to some ideological category and try to debate from that point of view. That’s not my point at all. It’s that all our federal politicians and political parties have had their ambitions shrunk down to nothing. No one at all is saying—-hey this credentialism thing is a serious problem, vote for us and here’s how we’ll attack it. Even if someone was proposing an idea I totally hated, I would at least appreciate the effort to actually solve a real problem. If you think credentialism is impossible for the government to make a difference on, pick something else. Anywhere you look for the last 14 years we’ve had few to no ambitious proposals.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        Errmmm... okay. The Biden administration actually has both talked extensively and taken several concrete steps against credentialism. Effective? I personally do not know. But it's blatantly false to say no one is talking about it or attempting to fix it. > The Department of Labor (DOL) is announcing an Advanced Manufacturing Registered Apprenticeship Accelerator Series that will support hundreds of employers to speed the development and launch of Registered Apprenticeship programs in high-demand occupations, such as industrial manufacturing technicians, robotics technicians, and industrial maintenance mechanics. Since the beginning of this Administration, the number of apprentices in advanced manufacturing Registered Apprenticeship programs has increased by 10 percent—and this effort will build on that growth. The administration has backed numerous apprenticeship programs like BioFabUSA that explicitly do not require college degrees. The administration created "Investing in America Workforce Hubs" in several cities to attract private investment into programs that, again, prioritize high-quality jobs that do not require college degrees. So it is simply untrue that no one is saying credentialism is a problem and trying to attack it. The current administration talks about this to no end and has attempted dozens and dozens of substantial attacks on it. Again, if you have ideas other than grant funding and tax incentives, I'm truly curious to hear them.
  - lossolo 3y ago
    You still do not offer any alternative solutions to problems you presented in your original post.
vasco 3y ago
Thanks for ellaborating! Although de-regulation and regulation have other properties, I'd posit they are in essense are forms of capital allocation. When you regulate an industry you require more capital investment from that industry, either by investing in new processes, implementing compliance mechanisms, maybe hiring extra quality-assurance people or having to dispose of trash in a better way, etc. Regulation mostly implies more investment by the participants in that specific segment of the market, it's like a reverse capital injection, or an added tax. The same way de-regulation is like giving that segment of the market a cash bonus because they can relax processes that require money to run and operate more efficiently. More importantly regulation and deregulation also add or remove rules, so they change the behavior of the participants. If you want to have the same effect of regulation and deregulation but not by driving change in rules of operation (maybe because as the government you don't know yet which rules to create - or the different political factions cannot agree), an easier way is to directly give money, and depending on how you allocate it, I think it can be a fair way to do it. Another way of thinking about this as a system is imagining the case where you want to promote investment in the semi-conductor industry but not at the expense of processes. Said another way, what would you de-regulate in the semiconductor industry to have the same effect as a capital injection to the leading semiconductor companies in your country? Surely you're not proposing them to be able to use more dangerous chemicals and dispose them however they want, or other types of de-regulation? It would reduce the barriers to entry and help semiconductor companies, but with negative externalities. Messing with regulations always has this potential for unpredictable secondary effects. I'm not convinced regulation/deregulation is in principle superior to just allocating money pools with fair rules to access them. I'm obviously against nepotism and influence peddling as part of the money allocation process and I'm not defending the injection into Intel specifically, which probably suffered from a big amount of influence peddling.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Regulations is one of the major reason semiconductor industry shifted overseas. US used to be the undisputed leader in semiconductor manufacturing. If you think Intel will stay regardless of US regulation, you are definitely wrong. China will always allow manufacturing with minimal regulations.
wakawaka28 3y ago
Tuition has only exploded because of unlimited government-backed student loans. They created this problem with the "good intentions" of providing everyone an opportunity to study any subject at any price regardless of job prospects. The problem isn't credentialism per se, although a large number of people were advised to go to college for the most generic stuff on the theory that "any" college degree doubles your lifetime earnings no matter what you study.

ethanbond 3y ago

And how do you propose the government try to fix credentialism? For all the talk about how useless degrees are, companies still choose to require them, especially the companies helmed by “college is a scam” zealots.

bradleyjg 3y ago
Companies have to still require them because they are a valuable signal and it’s free to them. Kids have to go because companies require them. This is what a peacock spiral looks like. Government is fundamentally for breaking these kind of incentive failures. Not supercharging them through blank check forgivable loans.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  No, companies don’t have to require them. Agreed the loan behavior exacerbates the issue rather than mitigates it, but “the current solution is bad” doesn’t necessarily mean the same agent is able to produce a good solution. If you’re certain the government is capable of breaking it: how?
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    I have ideas but if I post them, I’m guessing you are going to pattern match me to some ideological category and try to debate from that point of view. That’s not my point at all. It’s that all our federal politicians and political parties have had their ambitions shrunk down to nothing. No one at all is saying—-hey this credentialism thing is a serious problem, vote for us and here’s how we’ll attack it. Even if someone was proposing an idea I totally hated, I would at least appreciate the effort to actually solve a real problem. If you think credentialism is impossible for the government to make a difference on, pick something else. Anywhere you look for the last 14 years we’ve had few to no ambitious proposals.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Errmmm... okay. The Biden administration actually has both talked extensively and taken several concrete steps against credentialism. Effective? I personally do not know. But it's blatantly false to say no one is talking about it or attempting to fix it. > The Department of Labor (DOL) is announcing an Advanced Manufacturing Registered Apprenticeship Accelerator Series that will support hundreds of employers to speed the development and launch of Registered Apprenticeship programs in high-demand occupations, such as industrial manufacturing technicians, robotics technicians, and industrial maintenance mechanics. Since the beginning of this Administration, the number of apprentices in advanced manufacturing Registered Apprenticeship programs has increased by 10 percent—and this effort will build on that growth. The administration has backed numerous apprenticeship programs like BioFabUSA that explicitly do not require college degrees. The administration created "Investing in America Workforce Hubs" in several cities to attract private investment into programs that, again, prioritize high-quality jobs that do not require college degrees. So it is simply untrue that no one is saying credentialism is a problem and trying to attack it. The current administration talks about this to no end and has attempted dozens and dozens of substantial attacks on it. Again, if you have ideas other than grant funding and tax incentives, I'm truly curious to hear them.
- lossolo 3y ago
  You still do not offer any alternative solutions to problems you presented in your original post.

vasco 3y ago

Thanks for ellaborating! Although de-regulation and regulation have other properties, I'd posit they are in essense are forms of capital allocation. When you regulate an industry you require more capital investment from that industry, either by investing in new processes, implementing compliance mechanisms, maybe hiring extra quality-assurance people or having to dispose of trash in a better way, etc. Regulation mostly implies more investment by the participants in that specific segment of the market, it's like a reverse capital injection, or an added tax. The same way de-regulation is like giving that segment of the market a cash bonus because they can relax processes that require money to run and operate more efficiently. More importantly regulation and deregulation also add or remove rules, so they change the behavior of the participants. If you want to have the same effect of regulation and deregulation but not by driving change in rules of operation (maybe because as the government you don't know yet which rules to create - or the different political factions cannot agree), an easier way is to directly give money, and depending on how you allocate it, I think it can be a fair way to do it. Another way of thinking about this as a system is imagining the case where you want to promote investment in the semi-conductor industry but not at the expense of processes. Said another way, what would you de-regulate in the semiconductor industry to have the same effect as a capital injection to the leading semiconductor companies in your country? Surely you're not proposing them to be able to use more dangerous chemicals and dispose them however they want, or other types of de-regulation? It would reduce the barriers to entry and help semiconductor companies, but with negative externalities. Messing with regulations always has this potential for unpredictable secondary effects. I'm not convinced regulation/deregulation is in principle superior to just allocating money pools with fair rules to access them. I'm obviously against nepotism and influence peddling as part of the money allocation process and I'm not defending the injection into Intel specifically, which probably suffered from a big amount of influence peddling.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

Regulations is one of the major reason semiconductor industry shifted overseas. US used to be the undisputed leader in semiconductor manufacturing. If you think Intel will stay regardless of US regulation, you are definitely wrong. China will always allow manufacturing with minimal regulations.

wakawaka28 3y ago

Tuition has only exploded because of unlimited government-backed student loans. They created this problem with the "good intentions" of providing everyone an opportunity to study any subject at any price regardless of job prospects. The problem isn't credentialism per se, although a large number of people were advised to go to college for the most generic stuff on the theory that "any" college degree doubles your lifetime earnings no matter what you study.