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I disagree with you. "The rich guy can buy a harvard education, and the poor guy can buy a cheap but effective online education" And what is the outcome of ha

I disagree with you. "The rich guy can buy a harvard education, and the poor guy can buy a cheap but effective online education" And what is the outcome of having Harvard education against having cheap online degree? I am sure Harvard graduates come way ahead of graduates of online universities, both in private job market as well as in influential government positions due to "cliques" and "networking". But the problem is much deeper than whether you can afford high quality commodities or not. Those with excess capital can accumulate assets, and then rent out those assets to those without capital. If this sounds too abstract, consider a concrete example - bay area housing market. Only those with capital can afford houses. Those with excess capital can buy additional houses and rent them out to those who cannot afford housing. Net result? The ones who cannot afford houses now have to keep paying rent to those who could, thus making homeowners richer. Piketty has elaborated this in detail. But the most salient question he raised was that inequality, per se, is neither bad or good, but whether it is justified? Today, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg have billions more than I do. But I am OK with that because they took risks, invested their efforts (and yes, also got lucky). But I am don't think someone like Alice Walton or Paris Hilton deserve their billions - in their case, all they did was just to be born to rich parents. And they and their heirs are going to have a better life (education, nutrition, accommodation, entertainment, connections...) than almost everyone else. Why? Doesn't seem "justified" to me. Edit: Why the downvote? And while I respect your freedom of speech (to downvote), I am sincerely interested in knowing your counterarguments.

tptacek 13y ago
You're missing his point a little bit. He acknowledges that the rich will keep getting richer, and places like Harvard will continue to act as gatekeepers. But the intrinsic value of education will largely be available both to the rich and the non-rich. The credential and social signal of Harvard won't be, but the actual learning of things will.
- RestlessMind 13y ago
  Actual learning is only one of the multiple aims of college degree. One aim is also to improve career prospects in terms of better job opportunities and networking. And for that, Harvard has vast advantage over cheap online education.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    It seems tautological to say that one of the benefits exclusively allocated to the rich is an ability to be rich. Stipulate that the rich are going to stay rich, or even get richer. How are you rebutting the comment upthread, which argues that regardless of income gaps, the quality of life gap is narrowing? Isn't the quality of life gap the more meaningful of the two gaps?
    - RestlessMind 13y ago
      Rather than income gap or quality of life gap, I personally find "opportunity gap" to be more important. And I believe that gap is proportional to wealth disparity, i.e. rich people have a lot more opportunities than poor people. Basic safety net in the rich societies may ensure a decent quality of life even for the poor folks. But does that mean they have opportunities to escape poverty, and have means to pursue whatever they are interested in pursuing? Since you asked for concrete evidence in one of the other comments, here is one example showcasing opportunity gap - a child in Atlanta raised in the bottom fifth of the quintile has only 4% chance to rose to the top fifth. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-incom... EDIT: tptacek, seems I cannot reply to you here as well. But you are right - the biggest advantages of being rich today is that you have better life today and you have better chances to be rich tomorrow, which means you (and your heirs) will keep having better life than others.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I responded to your appeal to opportunity downthread. It seems tautological. The benefit you're reduced to allocating exclusively to the rich is "becoming rich".
- midas007 13y ago
  That's all well and good. Learnings don't matter one bit when it comes to what an HR department or venture capitalist will look for on a resume or pedigree in a slide deck respectively, or the social network of having been present at said institution. Pedigree might be for suckers as PG put it, but it's still a signal of being selected and completing an expensive hazing ritual. So it will continue to function for people that value expense and exclusivity.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Tautology. You can't say that a benefit of being rich is being rich, or having ways to be rich. What are the intrinsic benefits of education? Do the poor in capitalist societies have more access to those intrinsic benefits, or less? (For what it's worth, I dropped out of college after a single semester).
    - midas007 13y ago
      You're completely wrong and missing the boat. If someone is a child of a farmer and hangs out in a tiny farm town without internet access, doesn't complete high-school, their odds of creating great wealth are zilch. They may start a hardware store but don't get your hopes up that they'll be the next Sam Walton. Whatever they hope do, it will be much harder. Some of the doors are closed, some doors don't matter. If someone where a Ruby developer and wanted to work for a startup, a degree probably wouldn't matter as much as say MegaCorp. But if someone goes to an exclusive university, graduates and then lives in a large city and has lots of friends, their odds of wealth dramatically improve versus the former... if they were ambitious, many more doors would be open to them (vendors, partners, investors, customers, etc.). Being close to the action with the right contacts is a world of difference from being a random person without successful, helpful friends and pedigree. Furthermore, it is valid to be self-reinforcing because it is. Without wealth, it's impossible to capitalize on opportunities to make smart investments which one would otherwise have to pass on while others with more wealth may have the chance to make more money on them. Also, people with wealth have plenty of pseudo-"friends" pitching them opportunities to make wealth, whereas someone without wealth is unlikely to have a full calendar of people trying to get investment from them. Think of how many deals Mark Cuban can pass on just because he doesn't like the terms, and how good he's gotten good at negotiating favorable equity terms and knowing which deals are good/bad. Someone that's totally new is likely to be totally inept at some part of the business dance and will likely get rooked. Someone with the right friends is far more likely to get good advice from them about what to do or not do in a business setting to make fewer mistakes. It's harder to get from zero to having VC's for friends that send you sweetheart deals to invest in, but that usually requires proving oneself (rich) first. In conclusion, rich does not assure itself but it tends to be self-reinforcing. (I took the ten-year plan and barely finished because I subconsciously resisted due to the conscious futility of it. Box checked, not about to start Dr. ... PhD)
- jbooth 13y ago
  I feel like this conversation is sidestepping the fact that "cheap online education" is synonymous with "we'll take a bunch of your money under unique loan conditions and operate as a paper mill". Not to say anything else about the political economy, I'm a believer in capitalism as the 'least bad system', but in the education sector, those 'cheap online schools' are actually a point in favor of the exploitation narrative.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The "paper mill" refers to credentials, which refers to the wealth-enhancing effect of education. But this subthread stipulates that the rich will keep getting richer. Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? If you had to plot a line representing this (admittedly abstract) concept starting in 1950 and running to 2020, what would that line look like? It needs to capture the Internet, Wikipedia, the digitization of books, citeseer and scholar.google.com, open source software, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, and Coursera.
    - jbooth 13y ago
      > Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? Yeah, that's what I'm arguing if you're going to point to online certificate programs that get advertised on the subway as evidence for equal opportunity. You could make a better case for online self-directed research, probably, but I don't think there's a substitute for 19yos being exposed to great minds with tough expectations -- that only happens at good/decent universities [1]. And that's without even getting into the whole 'learning starts really young' thing with good school districts compared to lousy ones, etc. [1] If you want to take that point and argue for investment in good state universities, I'm entirely with you, but the current power structures seem to disagree[2] as evidenced by funding decisions. [2] I realize it's silly to term an emergent outcome as 'disagreement'
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I don't know. My 19 year old self went to a decent state research university. The lectures I sat through were much less effective than watching Gilbert Strang on Youtube at 3x speed with arrow keys to get him to repeat himself when I miss something and a pause button so I can work out problems after he writes them on the board but before he explains them. There was 1-on-1 time at "real" school, but it was with TAs and a room full of 19 year olds. I feel like the Internet addresses that use case better as well. (Fair warning: I've been pretty successful in my career, but I dropped out of school after a single semester).
judk 13y ago
Paris Hilton earned her money as an entertainer. You may not like her, but she didn't flop into a career. She took some seed money (just like Bill Gates) and used it to build her bizarre but profitable little industry.

tptacek 13y ago

You're missing his point a little bit. He acknowledges that the rich will keep getting richer, and places like Harvard will continue to act as gatekeepers. But the intrinsic value of education will largely be available both to the rich and the non-rich. The credential and social signal of Harvard won't be, but the actual learning of things will.

RestlessMind 13y ago
Actual learning is only one of the multiple aims of college degree. One aim is also to improve career prospects in terms of better job opportunities and networking. And for that, Harvard has vast advantage over cheap online education.
- tptacek 13y ago
  It seems tautological to say that one of the benefits exclusively allocated to the rich is an ability to be rich. Stipulate that the rich are going to stay rich, or even get richer. How are you rebutting the comment upthread, which argues that regardless of income gaps, the quality of life gap is narrowing? Isn't the quality of life gap the more meaningful of the two gaps?
  - RestlessMind 13y ago
    Rather than income gap or quality of life gap, I personally find "opportunity gap" to be more important. And I believe that gap is proportional to wealth disparity, i.e. rich people have a lot more opportunities than poor people. Basic safety net in the rich societies may ensure a decent quality of life even for the poor folks. But does that mean they have opportunities to escape poverty, and have means to pursue whatever they are interested in pursuing? Since you asked for concrete evidence in one of the other comments, here is one example showcasing opportunity gap - a child in Atlanta raised in the bottom fifth of the quintile has only 4% chance to rose to the top fifth. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-incom... EDIT: tptacek, seems I cannot reply to you here as well. But you are right - the biggest advantages of being rich today is that you have better life today and you have better chances to be rich tomorrow, which means you (and your heirs) will keep having better life than others.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I responded to your appeal to opportunity downthread. It seems tautological. The benefit you're reduced to allocating exclusively to the rich is "becoming rich".
midas007 13y ago
That's all well and good. Learnings don't matter one bit when it comes to what an HR department or venture capitalist will look for on a resume or pedigree in a slide deck respectively, or the social network of having been present at said institution. Pedigree might be for suckers as PG put it, but it's still a signal of being selected and completing an expensive hazing ritual. So it will continue to function for people that value expense and exclusivity.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Tautology. You can't say that a benefit of being rich is being rich, or having ways to be rich. What are the intrinsic benefits of education? Do the poor in capitalist societies have more access to those intrinsic benefits, or less? (For what it's worth, I dropped out of college after a single semester).
  - midas007 13y ago
    You're completely wrong and missing the boat. If someone is a child of a farmer and hangs out in a tiny farm town without internet access, doesn't complete high-school, their odds of creating great wealth are zilch. They may start a hardware store but don't get your hopes up that they'll be the next Sam Walton. Whatever they hope do, it will be much harder. Some of the doors are closed, some doors don't matter. If someone where a Ruby developer and wanted to work for a startup, a degree probably wouldn't matter as much as say MegaCorp. But if someone goes to an exclusive university, graduates and then lives in a large city and has lots of friends, their odds of wealth dramatically improve versus the former... if they were ambitious, many more doors would be open to them (vendors, partners, investors, customers, etc.). Being close to the action with the right contacts is a world of difference from being a random person without successful, helpful friends and pedigree. Furthermore, it is valid to be self-reinforcing because it is. Without wealth, it's impossible to capitalize on opportunities to make smart investments which one would otherwise have to pass on while others with more wealth may have the chance to make more money on them. Also, people with wealth have plenty of pseudo-"friends" pitching them opportunities to make wealth, whereas someone without wealth is unlikely to have a full calendar of people trying to get investment from them. Think of how many deals Mark Cuban can pass on just because he doesn't like the terms, and how good he's gotten good at negotiating favorable equity terms and knowing which deals are good/bad. Someone that's totally new is likely to be totally inept at some part of the business dance and will likely get rooked. Someone with the right friends is far more likely to get good advice from them about what to do or not do in a business setting to make fewer mistakes. It's harder to get from zero to having VC's for friends that send you sweetheart deals to invest in, but that usually requires proving oneself (rich) first. In conclusion, rich does not assure itself but it tends to be self-reinforcing. (I took the ten-year plan and barely finished because I subconsciously resisted due to the conscious futility of it. Box checked, not about to start Dr. ... PhD)
jbooth 13y ago
I feel like this conversation is sidestepping the fact that "cheap online education" is synonymous with "we'll take a bunch of your money under unique loan conditions and operate as a paper mill". Not to say anything else about the political economy, I'm a believer in capitalism as the 'least bad system', but in the education sector, those 'cheap online schools' are actually a point in favor of the exploitation narrative.
- tptacek 13y ago
  The "paper mill" refers to credentials, which refers to the wealth-enhancing effect of education. But this subthread stipulates that the rich will keep getting richer. Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? If you had to plot a line representing this (admittedly abstract) concept starting in 1950 and running to 2020, what would that line look like? It needs to capture the Internet, Wikipedia, the digitization of books, citeseer and scholar.google.com, open source software, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, and Coursera.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    > Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? Yeah, that's what I'm arguing if you're going to point to online certificate programs that get advertised on the subway as evidence for equal opportunity. You could make a better case for online self-directed research, probably, but I don't think there's a substitute for 19yos being exposed to great minds with tough expectations -- that only happens at good/decent universities [1]. And that's without even getting into the whole 'learning starts really young' thing with good school districts compared to lousy ones, etc. [1] If you want to take that point and argue for investment in good state universities, I'm entirely with you, but the current power structures seem to disagree[2] as evidenced by funding decisions. [2] I realize it's silly to term an emergent outcome as 'disagreement'
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I don't know. My 19 year old self went to a decent state research university. The lectures I sat through were much less effective than watching Gilbert Strang on Youtube at 3x speed with arrow keys to get him to repeat himself when I miss something and a pause button so I can work out problems after he writes them on the board but before he explains them. There was 1-on-1 time at "real" school, but it was with TAs and a room full of 19 year olds. I feel like the Internet addresses that use case better as well. (Fair warning: I've been pretty successful in my career, but I dropped out of school after a single semester).

judk 13y ago

Paris Hilton earned her money as an entertainer. You may not like her, but she didn't flop into a career. She took some seed money (just like Bill Gates) and used it to build her bizarre but profitable little industry.