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Thank you for calling this out. This is not only a profound failure of the imagination, but it's the terrible source of the problem that we find ourselves in. I

Thank you for calling this out. This is not only a profound failure of the imagination, but it's the terrible source of the problem that we find ourselves in. In many ways it is the box itself, just take another pull at the slot machines of casino capitalism, and remember nothing was every promised to you, not through your education, nor through the debt that you accumulated - it's all on you, and your inability to scale fro 10 to 1000, see where I'm going?

bsbechtel 11y ago
Both of you complain about a lack of imagination and then fail to offer any sort of alternative, just further complaining. Figuring out how to make someone else's life better and make a living off of it isn't a roll of the dice. It's a process of observing and learning about the world around you, coming up with ideas of how to improve something (using what you learned in your education), and offering to take action on those ideas in exchange for money. This doesn't have to be done at scale or by starting your own business. It can easily be done anywhere, but instead of scaling (starting your own business), just continuing to come up with new ways to make your boss's life easier. This doesn't have to be super innovative or use technology either. Sometimes just simple words of encouragement are all a stressed out boss may need. Higher education is an investment and comes with risk, it's not a promise to a better life. And on the other side of that coin, accumulation of debt is a promise that you are going to earn more money in the future to pay the money you borrowed back. You don't need to make more money, and you don't need to pay back your debt, just your standard of living will go down because you can't buy nice things, but you can live the life of leisure you so desire then. edit: I should have clarified, you don't need to pay back your debt by going through the process of filing bankruptcy. Yes, this affects your ability to secure further debt and buy stuff, but if you want a life of leisure earning a low income and having lots of time off, then theoretically bankruptcy is a path to your land of milk and honey.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >Higher education is an investment and comes with risk What you have said here is not an inevitable truth of the universe. It is a component of the way your society has chosen to write its current social contract. If people do not like the social contract, it will be renegotiated: either with words or with blows.
- rquantz 11y ago
  Head -> desk Figuring out how to make someone else's life better and make a living off of it isn't a roll of the dice. It's a process of observing and learning about the world around you, coming up with ideas... etc. It is all the things you list and a roll of the dice. It is working very very hard and also getting lucky. just continuing to come up with new ways to make your boss's life easier. This is getting back to my original point: you are thinking incredibly small. We are talking about a societal problem. The GP wrote: your two options are to be perpetually poor (basically limiting you to a life of indentured servitude), or to out-compete your rivals and achieve an upper-middle class to upper class income You do realize that what you're describing falls on the "out-compete your rivals" side of that scale, right? It isn't a rebuttal to what GP was saying, because it's just an example of it. Higher education is an investment and comes with risk And who is making that investment? In most developed countries, the state has determined it has an interest in an educated populace, and pays for people to go to college. Young people graduate debt-free, and are able to do all this innovating you're talking about. For some reason in the United States, we look to private institutions to fund education. you don't need to pay back your debt by going through the process of filing bankruptcy You realize that student loan debt is incredibly hard to discharge through bankruptcy? And Congress has made it even more difficult in the last decade. So, to clarify, in most developed countries, the state takes on the risk from education (just like health care!). In the US, who takes on the risk? Not the bank that does the lending - the government guarantees the debt! But not the government, either, because they've made it nearly impossible to discharge the debt. No, the risk falls almost entirely on the borrower, the individual in that trio that is least able to absorb the risk. but you can live the life of leisure you so desire then. This is not about leisure, it's about having the freedom to have a role as a human being separate from your role in the capitalist system. It's about not having to live your life in fear of losing what little you have, and being able to make choices that maximize factors that have nothing to do with capital. Both of you complain about a lack of imagination and then fail to offer any sort of alternative, just further complaining. This is the same argument I heard from people who supported the Iraq war during the worst of its quagmire phase. My response was that there were no good options (other than not having gone there in the first place), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the problem. In this case, there isn't much an individual can do to change a society that has been withered and corrupted by corporate control. We have to live in it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't also point out that there are better ways to live.

bsbechtel 11y ago

Both of you complain about a lack of imagination and then fail to offer any sort of alternative, just further complaining. Figuring out how to make someone else's life better and make a living off of it isn't a roll of the dice. It's a process of observing and learning about the world around you, coming up with ideas of how to improve something (using what you learned in your education), and offering to take action on those ideas in exchange for money. This doesn't have to be done at scale or by starting your own business. It can easily be done anywhere, but instead of scaling (starting your own business), just continuing to come up with new ways to make your boss's life easier. This doesn't have to be super innovative or use technology either. Sometimes just simple words of encouragement are all a stressed out boss may need. Higher education is an investment and comes with risk, it's not a promise to a better life. And on the other side of that coin, accumulation of debt is a promise that you are going to earn more money in the future to pay the money you borrowed back. You don't need to make more money, and you don't need to pay back your debt, just your standard of living will go down because you can't buy nice things, but you can live the life of leisure you so desire then. edit: I should have clarified, you don't need to pay back your debt by going through the process of filing bankruptcy. Yes, this affects your ability to secure further debt and buy stuff, but if you want a life of leisure earning a low income and having lots of time off, then theoretically bankruptcy is a path to your land of milk and honey.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>Higher education is an investment and comes with risk What you have said here is not an inevitable truth of the universe. It is a component of the way your society has chosen to write its current social contract. If people do not like the social contract, it will be renegotiated: either with words or with blows.
rquantz 11y ago
Head -> desk Figuring out how to make someone else's life better and make a living off of it isn't a roll of the dice. It's a process of observing and learning about the world around you, coming up with ideas... etc. It is all the things you list and a roll of the dice. It is working very very hard and also getting lucky. just continuing to come up with new ways to make your boss's life easier. This is getting back to my original point: you are thinking incredibly small. We are talking about a societal problem. The GP wrote: your two options are to be perpetually poor (basically limiting you to a life of indentured servitude), or to out-compete your rivals and achieve an upper-middle class to upper class income You do realize that what you're describing falls on the "out-compete your rivals" side of that scale, right? It isn't a rebuttal to what GP was saying, because it's just an example of it. Higher education is an investment and comes with risk And who is making that investment? In most developed countries, the state has determined it has an interest in an educated populace, and pays for people to go to college. Young people graduate debt-free, and are able to do all this innovating you're talking about. For some reason in the United States, we look to private institutions to fund education. you don't need to pay back your debt by going through the process of filing bankruptcy You realize that student loan debt is incredibly hard to discharge through bankruptcy? And Congress has made it even more difficult in the last decade. So, to clarify, in most developed countries, the state takes on the risk from education (just like health care!). In the US, who takes on the risk? Not the bank that does the lending - the government guarantees the debt! But not the government, either, because they've made it nearly impossible to discharge the debt. No, the risk falls almost entirely on the borrower, the individual in that trio that is least able to absorb the risk. but you can live the life of leisure you so desire then. This is not about leisure, it's about having the freedom to have a role as a human being separate from your role in the capitalist system. It's about not having to live your life in fear of losing what little you have, and being able to make choices that maximize factors that have nothing to do with capital. Both of you complain about a lack of imagination and then fail to offer any sort of alternative, just further complaining. This is the same argument I heard from people who supported the Iraq war during the worst of its quagmire phase. My response was that there were no good options (other than not having gone there in the first place), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the problem. In this case, there isn't much an individual can do to change a society that has been withered and corrupted by corporate control. We have to live in it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't also point out that there are better ways to live.