6 ms·

I wish the debate focused less on cost-benefit analysis and on ways to engineer a just "chargeback" using loans or taxes and more about the idea that maybe peop

by saool 12y ago

I wish the debate focused less on cost-benefit analysis and on ways to engineer a just "chargeback" using loans or taxes and more about the idea that maybe people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers, regardless of whether they'd be economically better off by taking electricity at trade school just to quickly join the assembly line at Volkswagen so that they can make money to buy a bigger plasma TV. /rant

acadien 12y ago
I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?
- rthomas6 12y ago
  If you believe some people, one day all those jobs will be automated away.
  - meentsbk 12y ago
    This video by C.G.P. Grey is, at least for me, thought-provoking on this matter: http://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU http://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
    - iammyIP 12y ago
      nice video, i think its pretty much spot-on.
  - VBprogrammer 12y ago
    Garbage collection could be automated tomorrow if we wanted. Fast food is just a matter of us not trying hard enough but plumbers is a difficult one. Not saying it couldn't happen. Two scenarios I could see are everyone lives in a prefab home, when things start to go wrong you just replace it. That leaves all the plumbing to just cutting and bending pipes to pre-built designs and installing it in prearranged steps. I could see that being possible. Another interesting case could be that all houses are 3d printed, with cavities for plumbing printed right into the fabric of the building, and possibly sealed in someway.
    - justinlloyd 12y ago
      "Two scenarios I could see are everyone lives in a prefab home, when things start to go wrong you just replace it. That leaves all the plumbing to just cutting and bending pipes to pre-built designs and installing it in prearranged steps. I could see that being possible." Currently we live in Microsoft houses, eventually we might live in Apple houses. That is a terrifying thought either way...
- saool 12y ago
  That's what The Market should be for, to make those jobs compensated attractively. Plus, people will be more likely to take a part-time job flipping burgers to fund their writing/music/open source project/whatever if they don't have pressure to pay back debt or don't have to worry about health insurance (another can of worms).
  - acadien 12y ago
    I suppose this is the challenge all societies are grappling with; how to compensate fairly so everyone is comfortable while still better compensating jobs that require more skill or 'contribute more' to maintain demand.
  - coryrc 12y ago
    Why do they deserve the broadly desired services of doctors, nurses, professors, etc for free while doing very little for those doctors, nurses, or professors in return?
    - nekopa 12y ago
      I would say they deserve them because we want to live in a 'society'. If they are contributing to society - even just by serving lattes or creating poetry to someone like me who desires caffeine and art, and I in return contribute something that doctors, nurses and professors want, then I think they deserve it.
      - coryrc 12y ago
        Then you should pay them enough to afford the things you want them to have. I don't want lattes nor poetry, so if they want money from me they should do something I want them to do, not get the government to confiscate it from me and redistribute to themselves.
    - saool 12y ago
      Because by incurring in certain costs up front as a group, society benefits from blurry but tangible externalities.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Why can't a plumber be also a free thinker?
  - acadien 12y ago
    Yes that is exactly the point I am trying to raise with my previous question. Is this sustainable? Certainly not in the US where a student must take on massive amounts of debt to complete a degree only to make near minimum wage after graduation.
  - iammyIP 12y ago
    I am sure he can be, but why must some free thinkers be plumbers?
    - JetSpiegel 12y ago
      That's...a great rebuttal.
  - saool 12y ago
    She can, but it's more unlikely that she will have the time and the energy to get there if she's preoccupied by riding the conveyor belt of our schooling system followed by the worries of the 9-5 world.
- endtime 12y ago
  > the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc. Is that a fact? I'm sure plenty of people would once have said society will always need human "computers" (now so entirely replaced by machines that the original meaning of the word is a historical factoid). Or that society will always need assembly line workers (now well into the process of being replaced by robots). When I check out at CVS I use a machine, not a human cashier. I bet there are restaurants in Japan/Korea with no human serving staff - just use the touch screen at the table to place your order and it pops out of a slot in the wall when it's ready. Cab drivers will be replaced by self-driving cars in the next 20 years. Et cetera. So I think that part of your comment is quite short-sighted. On the other hand, the question of what all those folks will/should do once their economic value plummets (which, arguably, has already started happening) is a tricky one.
  - jobu 12y ago
    > On the other hand, the question of what all those folks will/should do once their economic value plummets... We as a society need to figure this out quickly. There's a video called Humans Need Not Apply that everyone should see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
- iammyIP 12y ago
  plumbing, garbage collection, food serving and many more things can be done by machines.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    So you have a robot that can perform as well as a human plumber and work in extremely variable environments with installed plant that may go back 100's if not thousands (London still has some roman pipe work) of years. Even Mr Finch isn't that good at building AI's
- usrusr 12y ago
  In Germany, the liberal arts programmes are mocked as "taxi driver courses" all the time, ranging from libertarian hate for any form of public spending all the way to happy self-deprecation by those who elect to be taught in a field they like at the risk of not benefitting from their education economically. But aside from a few outliers in the most extreme corners of conservativism, antiintellectualism and leftism most people tend to consider the general availability of those programmes to people who are willing to take that economic risk (high enough even without student loan debt) as an important piece of freedom. Of course it helps that educating in those fields isn't terribly expensive: you basically pay infrastructure and a few greybeards, the lower ranks are nearly working for free due to the low market value of their education and the resulting attractivity of maybe becoming one of the greybeards themselves. Also, some people might even understand that the greatest thinkers, just like the greatest sportsmen, are unlikely to be produced by focused training of a tiny elite selected by circumstances or a superficial entry test. Talent is rarely visible before a considerable amount of training has been applied.
rthomas6 12y ago
But then they wouldn't buy the bigger TV because they'd realize it wouldn't make them happier, and the TV makers would suffer. /s
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Or they see Network[1] and they just never watch TV anymore. 1: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
- crusso 12y ago
  I love my big TV. Playing games on it on a Saturday evening after my kids have gone to sleep puts an ear-to-ear grin on my face.
  - rthomas6 12y ago
    Then why not buy an even bigger TV to make you even more happy?
    - sosborn 12y ago
      Diminishing returns.
virtue3 12y ago
This was the case at one point in time. But only the independently wealthy could afford to do this. As much as I wish your sentiment could be true, it's just not realistic in an economically driven world :/
- iammyIP 12y ago
  Yes, how do we get the focus off the all-is-economics and refocus on the bigger picture of humanity which also includes all the "useless" non-profit activities that contribute to our culture and humanity, arts, free programming, literature. How is it possible that corporations use free software without giving anything back, or that a local arts scene which enriches the places where we live in a hard to quantifieable way starves out because of insufficient funding.
  - virtue3 12y ago
    Don't even get me started on the abusing free software stuff. It's the main reason I left my last company (they wouldn't even let me put out changes/ports to new mobile platforms I made to our originally opened source code). The whole idea requires us to move away from placing value on things arbitrarily. Or at least having the basics put down as important. I think we're getting close. There's a big reverse urban flight movement going on. We're moving back away from the suburbs. Unfortunately most of it just goes into bullshit lifestyle choices and unsustainable spending on high end foodie/hipster lifestyles that I've seen. It's sad but it really seems like in order to have a thriving art scene you need the cheap affordable housing and everything that comes with it. Once you lose that your artists all slowly leave and get replaced with entrepreneurs and people looking to make it big on a plan instead of just trying to make themselves. tl;dr - assigning value is a bitch when it no longer becomes a "transaction" between two individuals.
ahomescu1 12y ago
> [...] just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers [...] You're assuming that one can only be a free thinker or a free man after 4 years of university, as opposed to the ignorant slaves that are the rest. What makes you believe this?
- iammyIP 12y ago
  "people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it" - You´re assuming an assumption out of the blue.
  - saool 12y ago
    I'm not assuming anything, I was just laying down my thesis, which is exactly that maybe we'd benefit more from education as a society if more people got some time to reflect on life as a whole before they get busy worrying about "real life". There are definitely arguments against this thesis, mostly economic, but I think the non-maximizing side of the problem is still worth entertaining.
- andrewfong 12y ago
  He didn't say that 4 years of university was a prerequisite to being a "free thinker", but I think it's probably useful. You get to live and work with fellow students who hail from sorts of backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations from you. Most universities offer classes in a wide range of subject areas, and many even require you to take classes outside of your specialization. There's a high concentration of intellectuals to interact with. And you get a lot of time to think about life, the universe, and everything. There are certainly substitutes for all of those things outside university (albeit scattered about), and it's questionable whether a full four years if needed. But, all else equal, I think the liberal arts education is conducive to "free thought", if not necessarily economic earning power.
  - ahomescu1 12y ago
    > conducive to "free thought" "Conducive to" is the same as "required for". > He didn't say that 4 years of university was a prerequisite to being a "free thinker", but I think it's probably useful. You get to live and work with fellow students who hail from sorts of backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations from you. Most universities offer classes in a wide range of subject areas, and many even require you to take classes outside of your specialization. There's a high concentration of intellectuals to interact with. And you get a lot of time to think about life, the universe, and everything. My point is that none of those are required to be a "free thinker" or a "free man". To be a free thinker, one only needs a brain. To be a free man, one only needs to live in a free society.
tormeh 12y ago
That's what high school is for.

by saool 12y ago

acadien 12y ago

I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?

rthomas6 12y ago
If you believe some people, one day all those jobs will be automated away.
- meentsbk 12y ago
  This video by C.G.P. Grey is, at least for me, thought-provoking on this matter: http://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU http://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
  - iammyIP 12y ago
    nice video, i think its pretty much spot-on.
- VBprogrammer 12y ago
  Garbage collection could be automated tomorrow if we wanted. Fast food is just a matter of us not trying hard enough but plumbers is a difficult one. Not saying it couldn't happen. Two scenarios I could see are everyone lives in a prefab home, when things start to go wrong you just replace it. That leaves all the plumbing to just cutting and bending pipes to pre-built designs and installing it in prearranged steps. I could see that being possible. Another interesting case could be that all houses are 3d printed, with cavities for plumbing printed right into the fabric of the building, and possibly sealed in someway.
  - justinlloyd 12y ago
    "Two scenarios I could see are everyone lives in a prefab home, when things start to go wrong you just replace it. That leaves all the plumbing to just cutting and bending pipes to pre-built designs and installing it in prearranged steps. I could see that being possible." Currently we live in Microsoft houses, eventually we might live in Apple houses. That is a terrifying thought either way...
saool 12y ago
That's what The Market should be for, to make those jobs compensated attractively. Plus, people will be more likely to take a part-time job flipping burgers to fund their writing/music/open source project/whatever if they don't have pressure to pay back debt or don't have to worry about health insurance (another can of worms).
- acadien 12y ago
  I suppose this is the challenge all societies are grappling with; how to compensate fairly so everyone is comfortable while still better compensating jobs that require more skill or 'contribute more' to maintain demand.
- coryrc 12y ago
  Why do they deserve the broadly desired services of doctors, nurses, professors, etc for free while doing very little for those doctors, nurses, or professors in return?
  - nekopa 12y ago
    I would say they deserve them because we want to live in a 'society'. If they are contributing to society - even just by serving lattes or creating poetry to someone like me who desires caffeine and art, and I in return contribute something that doctors, nurses and professors want, then I think they deserve it.
    - coryrc 12y ago
      Then you should pay them enough to afford the things you want them to have. I don't want lattes nor poetry, so if they want money from me they should do something I want them to do, not get the government to confiscate it from me and redistribute to themselves.
  - saool 12y ago
    Because by incurring in certain costs up front as a group, society benefits from blurry but tangible externalities.
JetSpiegel 12y ago
Why can't a plumber be also a free thinker?
- acadien 12y ago
  Yes that is exactly the point I am trying to raise with my previous question. Is this sustainable? Certainly not in the US where a student must take on massive amounts of debt to complete a degree only to make near minimum wage after graduation.
- iammyIP 12y ago
  I am sure he can be, but why must some free thinkers be plumbers?
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    That's...a great rebuttal.
- saool 12y ago
  She can, but it's more unlikely that she will have the time and the energy to get there if she's preoccupied by riding the conveyor belt of our schooling system followed by the worries of the 9-5 world.
endtime 12y ago
> the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc. Is that a fact? I'm sure plenty of people would once have said society will always need human "computers" (now so entirely replaced by machines that the original meaning of the word is a historical factoid). Or that society will always need assembly line workers (now well into the process of being replaced by robots). When I check out at CVS I use a machine, not a human cashier. I bet there are restaurants in Japan/Korea with no human serving staff - just use the touch screen at the table to place your order and it pops out of a slot in the wall when it's ready. Cab drivers will be replaced by self-driving cars in the next 20 years. Et cetera. So I think that part of your comment is quite short-sighted. On the other hand, the question of what all those folks will/should do once their economic value plummets (which, arguably, has already started happening) is a tricky one.
- jobu 12y ago
  > On the other hand, the question of what all those folks will/should do once their economic value plummets... We as a society need to figure this out quickly. There's a video called Humans Need Not Apply that everyone should see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
iammyIP 12y ago
plumbing, garbage collection, food serving and many more things can be done by machines.
- walshemj 12y ago
  So you have a robot that can perform as well as a human plumber and work in extremely variable environments with installed plant that may go back 100's if not thousands (London still has some roman pipe work) of years. Even Mr Finch isn't that good at building AI's
usrusr 12y ago
In Germany, the liberal arts programmes are mocked as "taxi driver courses" all the time, ranging from libertarian hate for any form of public spending all the way to happy self-deprecation by those who elect to be taught in a field they like at the risk of not benefitting from their education economically. But aside from a few outliers in the most extreme corners of conservativism, antiintellectualism and leftism most people tend to consider the general availability of those programmes to people who are willing to take that economic risk (high enough even without student loan debt) as an important piece of freedom. Of course it helps that educating in those fields isn't terribly expensive: you basically pay infrastructure and a few greybeards, the lower ranks are nearly working for free due to the low market value of their education and the resulting attractivity of maybe becoming one of the greybeards themselves. Also, some people might even understand that the greatest thinkers, just like the greatest sportsmen, are unlikely to be produced by focused training of a tiny elite selected by circumstances or a superficial entry test. Talent is rarely visible before a considerable amount of training has been applied.

rthomas6 12y ago

But then they wouldn't buy the bigger TV because they'd realize it wouldn't make them happier, and the TV makers would suffer. /s

JetSpiegel 12y ago
Or they see Network[1] and they just never watch TV anymore. 1: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
crusso 12y ago
I love my big TV. Playing games on it on a Saturday evening after my kids have gone to sleep puts an ear-to-ear grin on my face.
- rthomas6 12y ago
  Then why not buy an even bigger TV to make you even more happy?
  - sosborn 12y ago
    Diminishing returns.

virtue3 12y ago

This was the case at one point in time. But only the independently wealthy could afford to do this. As much as I wish your sentiment could be true, it's just not realistic in an economically driven world :/

iammyIP 12y ago
Yes, how do we get the focus off the all-is-economics and refocus on the bigger picture of humanity which also includes all the "useless" non-profit activities that contribute to our culture and humanity, arts, free programming, literature. How is it possible that corporations use free software without giving anything back, or that a local arts scene which enriches the places where we live in a hard to quantifieable way starves out because of insufficient funding.
- virtue3 12y ago
  Don't even get me started on the abusing free software stuff. It's the main reason I left my last company (they wouldn't even let me put out changes/ports to new mobile platforms I made to our originally opened source code). The whole idea requires us to move away from placing value on things arbitrarily. Or at least having the basics put down as important. I think we're getting close. There's a big reverse urban flight movement going on. We're moving back away from the suburbs. Unfortunately most of it just goes into bullshit lifestyle choices and unsustainable spending on high end foodie/hipster lifestyles that I've seen. It's sad but it really seems like in order to have a thriving art scene you need the cheap affordable housing and everything that comes with it. Once you lose that your artists all slowly leave and get replaced with entrepreneurs and people looking to make it big on a plan instead of just trying to make themselves. tl;dr - assigning value is a bitch when it no longer becomes a "transaction" between two individuals.

ahomescu1 12y ago

> [...] just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers [...] You're assuming that one can only be a free thinker or a free man after 4 years of university, as opposed to the ignorant slaves that are the rest. What makes you believe this?

iammyIP 12y ago
"people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it" - You´re assuming an assumption out of the blue.
- saool 12y ago
  I'm not assuming anything, I was just laying down my thesis, which is exactly that maybe we'd benefit more from education as a society if more people got some time to reflect on life as a whole before they get busy worrying about "real life". There are definitely arguments against this thesis, mostly economic, but I think the non-maximizing side of the problem is still worth entertaining.
andrewfong 12y ago
He didn't say that 4 years of university was a prerequisite to being a "free thinker", but I think it's probably useful. You get to live and work with fellow students who hail from sorts of backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations from you. Most universities offer classes in a wide range of subject areas, and many even require you to take classes outside of your specialization. There's a high concentration of intellectuals to interact with. And you get a lot of time to think about life, the universe, and everything. There are certainly substitutes for all of those things outside university (albeit scattered about), and it's questionable whether a full four years if needed. But, all else equal, I think the liberal arts education is conducive to "free thought", if not necessarily economic earning power.
- ahomescu1 12y ago
  > conducive to "free thought" "Conducive to" is the same as "required for". > He didn't say that 4 years of university was a prerequisite to being a "free thinker", but I think it's probably useful. You get to live and work with fellow students who hail from sorts of backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations from you. Most universities offer classes in a wide range of subject areas, and many even require you to take classes outside of your specialization. There's a high concentration of intellectuals to interact with. And you get a lot of time to think about life, the universe, and everything. My point is that none of those are required to be a "free thinker" or a "free man". To be a free thinker, one only needs a brain. To be a free man, one only needs to live in a free society.

tormeh 12y ago

That's what high school is for.