The college experience is unnatural, inhuman, childish, depressing, and insulting. Free tuition misses the point It still punishes 18 to 22-year-olds by forcing them to live miserably on part-time jobs. This is not the way to treat talent, so the people who choose to go to college are no more talented than those who don't. This indentured servitude promotes mediocre people to responsible positions. The economy totally depends on getting the most talented in those positions, so all this talk about economic decline ignores the cause. It even proposes expanding this dysfunctional and unappealing apprenticeship as the solution. The discussion, led by college graduates, will go nowhere as long as it ignores this basic fact about the dysfunction of going four years without a job in order to get a job. Amoong many other symptoms, the uneducated English of college graduates proves how untalented and uneducated they are. Those who have been successful in a failed economy should not be looked up to for advice on how to make it a successful economy. Those in positions of power to mandate this worthless slave education know perfectly well that its failure to do its job and do its duty to society is caused by the fact that not being paid limits the talent pool to those with no self-respect. If someone has so little pride that he submits to this humiliating experience, it is because he has no talent to be proud of. Except for their own children, the rulers only want obedient drones to get ahead. The fact that the rulers pay their own children high allowances proves that every student should be paid. But this will get graduates with self-respect. People like that will not put up with the supremacy of their idle-rich Masters. The rulers demand flunkies who should have flunked out and will if they ever have to compete with the total talent pool that highly paid professional training will motivate to study. As long as students aren't paid, society is sending a message that they aren't worth very much. Until we pay students a high salary in college, we'll get what we pay for: ambitious imbecile class-climbers and spoiled rich brats. Since the parent-financed children didn't get crippled psychologically like everyone else, they will have the unearned pride to push the others out of the way in their rise to the top. Putting people up there based on birth and not worth will cause a race to the bottom.
Not sure I'd agree with that, it depends on an issue by issue basis. Most left wingers tend to be advocates of gun control, most right wingers tend to be advocates of the wars and oppression of homosexuals. I don't consider these people to agree with me. They do not desire liberty in itself but as a means to economic prosperity. That is why they tend to support social totalitarianism: they like to push their views onto society. My position is utterly incompatible with such social tyranny because it is formed along the non-aggression principle which prohibits all initiated coercion on sentient beings. If you don't want me to argue as if you're in the two party dichotomy then I would ask that you show me the same
Gonna have to agree and disagree with parts of this post. University I have found is useful only if your degree is career specific. For example, if you want to do law then you should usually go to university. If you're going to do Arts with a Philosophy major then you probably shouldn't. I've found that mixing non-career interests with university leads to you hating that interest because the courses are taught to get you a degree, not to stimulate you intellectually. ie: what you're getting is a piece of paper. Don't expect any knowledge or understanding to come with it. The paper is what you are paying for and studying for. That's the sad reality. If the paper is useless to you then the college experience is also. You're better off working on it in your spare time.
As far as socialist thought is concerned, all capitalism it a type of authoritarianism because there is no rejection of hierarchy. You can't say you reject coercion but not hierarchical systems, whether physically enforced or not. The definition of coercion is not restricted to the threat of violence.
Coercion within the labour contract will inform us of the source of many of the inefficiencies associated with capitalism. These inefficiencies are also quite different to the standard market failures. Government interventionism cannot be used as a solution.
In my opinion, Capitalism must always be less efficient than Socialism due to the externalities involved in the several and "anarchic" markets that may comprise any given political-economy.
How so? Our differences in abilities lead to a hierarchy without coercion and it requires coercion to prevent one from developing.
Division of labour is a quite different concept. Hierarchy is used instead to increase economic rent; leading to other social ills too such as labour market discrimination
Externalities are usually the result failing to protect individual rights. Rights that can be protected with appropriate legislation. And there is nothing inherent within socialism that alleviates these externalities.
You can factor in moral hazard, with the profit motive in capitalism leading to greater costs (all enabled by asymmetric information such that the Coase Theorem can't be used to suggest straight forward property rights protection is a possibility)
Same concept as it is the differing individual abilities that lead to the division of labor where a structural engineer's labor that is more highly valued than the box stackers labor. Unless you have a coercive authority that dictates their value.
Can you elaborate? In my opinion, better infrastructure that provides for industrial waste management would do more to help our environment, even on a not for profit basis.
Public has a right to not have the water they drink and the air they breathe to not be polluted by industry. Its not capitalism that fails to protect those rights, its a failure of the people and government to protect those rights. Doesn't make any difference if it is publicly owned industry or private, pollution is pollution
The internal labour market is obviously not the same as division of labour; the important point is how its used: it ranges from efficiency criteria (in particular, reducing labour turnover) to coercive use of steeper hierarchy to eliminate the risk of solidarity
Already demonstrated how inefficient hierarchy is adopted, with that hierarchy zilch to do with division of labour
That's absurd. Hierarchies are fine if they're voluntarily entered into. If you don't want to be under one then don't sign an employment contract with a corporation - work for a small business or for yourself. If someone consents to be in a hierarchy, what possible mode of thinking counts this as coercive conduct. I'm not saying it has to be physical, just that if someone agrees to be ordered around that it's not a bad thing.
The labour contract is, by definition, characterised in both exchange and coercion terms. You'd need socialism to support that conclusion. Once we have inequality of opportunity, folk are forced into paid employment (given a semi-guaranteed income is vital for the well-being of one's family) The most visible sign of coercion is how certain socio-economic groups are 'crowded' into lower elements of the hierarchy (i.e. discrimination)
Disagree. Anytime taxation is so low that it causes the markets to overheat (think Bush, tax cuts, Greenspan, irrational exhuberance), we need more cash taken out of the system, not less.
If that were the case we would expect to see irrational exuberance across all investments, not just real-estate. Fannie and Freddy provided the flood of investment money into the US real estate market. Artificially low interest rates set by the Fed made things even worse.
We DID see it across all investments. Real estate hit the skids, but the Dow was under 8000. Greenspan was referring to the markets when he was talking about irrational exhuberance.
