That one is actually weird.
People with more education draw higher salaries. That only works because employers make a higher profit with better educated people. Which means that for profit-maximization, you want to have a pool of potential employees that is maximally well-educated on the expense of someone else. Note the push for more STEM graduates.
You’d think businesses would be all for tax-funded education for everyone.
One can argue that we have two kinds of capitalism. And that would be true for the classic, theoretical capitalism.
However, the modern one favors short term profit and stock prices. Which do not care if economies collapse in 20 years due to global warming, as long as the profit is good now.
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Therefore its a systematic failure of modern capitalism. As it is not accounting externalities
That only works because employers make a higher profit with better educated people.
Only to a certain degree. Exxon’s been happy to lay off engineers and programmers by the thousands with the downturn in energy markets. However, they’ve always got a door open for entry level rig workers and cargo ship deck hands, as these jobs are higher risk and lower reward.
Educated professionals have their place, but sometimes you just need someone to turn a wrench. And because these low-skill jobs are more fungible, the businesses have an easier time swapping out younger and less experienced workers for their more expensive veteran peers.
This is what ultimately keeps labor rates in low-skill industries down. As jobs become more formulaic - more assembly-line driven - the wages commanded by the people doing that labor falls, in an unregulated labor market. Education-added-value has far less to do with it than the fungibility of the person doing the job.
b b but it breeds innovation!!!1!1!1
It breeds inbreeds to be realistic
I feel that innovation flow through me when I go down to the supermarket to pick from my selection of 27 brands of cola based soda, and 39 varieties of plain salted chips.
BuT hOw WoUlD yOu PaY fOr It?!
Was much better before capitalism.
Not that I think capitalism is good, but how exactly does any other system solve it? And I’m talking about real-world systems, not the idealized ones. Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
Yeah no system is perfect.
Centrally controlled education. We need 500 doctors this year, assign the seats, nobody else can get it. Also, doctors have the same lifestyle as any other professional.
Anyone can study anything for free, sure, great. How long so you let people study to become doctors for? How do you ration enrollment? (We don’t have infinite teachers), how do you decide who gets to practice? Lots of filter classes? If the country has 1000 doctor vacancies a year, do you produce 3000 doctors? For the 2000 who don’t get to practice, do they maintain their license? Etc… this will increase supply, good thing, which will reduce pay, and reduce student demand. How long do you take to find the equilibrium?
The need for doctors is usually a supply/demand situation, but even then it can be predicted ahead of time, so the universities can open for more students in advance.
There’s never a perfect balance, so certain jobs can also advertised in other countries, creating a sort of job import and export.
“There are no completely healthy people, only underdiagnosed”
I don’t disagree, I just don’t follow how this is relevant in this context?
Oops, I think I responded to wrong comment. It means there is never oversupply of doctors. I can’t find comment that mentioned perfectly healthy nation.
Ah. No problem. Yes you’re right. There’s never an oversupply of doctors.
However, in a fully state controlled healthcare system, there’s still a limit to what patients can request for free. Like, boob jobs or other cosmetical surgery. Unless it’s for a health care reason, it’s for the patients to pay for that operation, so the demand for those kind of doctors are limited to demand, while demand for doctors treating actual illnesses are limited by supply.
“No system is perfect” motherfucker we can see how free/cheap higher education works in several european countries and yeah, they use grades to select students, same way U.S. schools do.
Also, how is the free market any better than your first
strawmanconcept? Only instead of the gubmint telling you you can’t go, it’s exceeding expensive educational facilities and the circumstances of your birth.No need for personal insults.
Uh, grades.
You take Doctor 101 and get a C-, well the number of students who graded A-B filled the Doctor 102 class. Study up, and either retake the class or take a test to prove you know the information. You scored high enough on your test? Rad, welcome to the class. This is actually what we do anyway so, you’re overthinking things there.
Number of jobs is a weird limitation for gatekeeping professionals. If we only need X amount of doctors, then we’re an entirely healthy world with zero illness and no room for new minds to create entirely new methods and further our understanding of medicine? I want anyone driven enough to practice medicine to do so, it’s the only way we’ll have enough doctors to fix the massive healthcare deficit we’re experiencing. Especially through the above grading methods I suggested.
As for the pay decreases, hard to say really without doing it. If an employer believes your education is less valuable because more people can achieve the same, they’re a shitty place to work and they’ll get what they pay for. There’s also the possibility of those doctors being more affordable actually expanding the availability of healthcare overall.
I get why it’s worth questioning, but it’s broken now so why can’t we try to fix it? What if the fix works? Awesome right? What if the fix doesn’t work? Good thing the current broken system could act as a fallback, right?
Yeah absolutely. We should always be thinking about how to improve systems. I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at it. But we shouldn’t say this system is totally broken. Which seems to have been the overall thesis of the original post
Oh, no the system is absolutely broken. I’m just trying to give you a rational explanation to the concerns you raised. I’ve worked hard my entire life and been screwed over every step of the way. I’m unemployed, living with family, and can’t afford to see a doctor. I apply for jobs but never hear back. I learned Python and Linux just because I felt like it, so I’m not unskilled. Ruined my spine unloading trucks in my early 20’s, so I can’t really do anything manual labor. But like, shit I feel worthless, and I don’t think a functional system would put anyone through that. I can’t even get assistance because I’m “too young and healthy” so like, fuck me for existing I guess.
What do you mean by “real, not idealised”? All such things are ideals until put into practice.
I mean that if your argument is communism, let’s talk about the real world one, not the ideal one that doesn’t exist and will never actually be put into practice. Because comparing a real, existing system against an idea is unfair. So either let’s compare real communism with real capitalism, or let’s compare the idea of capitalism with the idea of communism.
As I said, capitalism sucks, but I’m tired of people making comparisons between the real, actually used capitalism and some made up version of communism.
Real existing forms of socialism kind of solve the problem by offering free education and programs to support poorer individuals so they can participate in society and enjoy their lives. There isn’t a fully democratic socialist country yet but having parts of socialism already kind of solves these issues.
IIRC, in former east Germany you couldn’t just study whatever you want (topic of this entire post). If your parents went to uni, you can’t. Oversimplified, because of course there were options if you were part of the party, but I’m not sure that strengthens the point.
I don’t know how that worked in Russia.
The GDR was way too authoritative and I don’t really know about russia either. I was tlaking about modern day germany
Again, all things are only “made up” until put into practice. You can’t ask for a better idea, then balk at it, saying “it’s just an idea”. Is your position really to never try anything new?
Is your position really to put words in my mouth? If you rephrase it, I’ll answer.
Do you object to trying ideas simply because they are ideas? Understand that this thinking is anti-progress. We can’t reject everything that’s “made up”, otherwise nothing will ever become real. Planes were “made up” until someone actually made planes that worked. Imagine if someone just said, “you can’t make a flying machine. Flying machines don’t exist!”
No, I don’t, I’m just saying that it’s unfair to compare the actual capitalism with (for example) the textbook communism.
Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
Also, this isn’t true - capitalism has inequality and unrealised potential built into it.
Same deal as sexism. Even if you get in, your work will probably be stolen or you will be pushed out.
There’s a few problems with this. Two I can identify right off the bat:
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Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you’re good at it. I don’t want the William Hung of medicine doing my surgery.
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By artificially limiting the supply of doctors you are increasing demand and salaries (I agree this seems morally wrong a priori/prima facie, especially for something like health care that is a public good). However when the salaries drop then you reduce incentive for smart people going into the field, which has already been happening in medicine for decades. The top of the class that would’ve become the brilliant physician in the 20th century is your 21st century finance bro. AKA brain drain. (See also point 1.)
I do agree that it is wrong for people to be unable to pursue careers due to the misfortune of their station of birth. I don’t know how to fix it other than funding public education.
Also, there are mechanisms in place(assuming this is an American post). I know because I’m taking advantage of them.
I’m poor, at a respected university, and about graduate with a Bachelors. Might have spent 3k overall on school. Pell Grant was amazing.
Aint a perfect system, but still works a lot of the time
Jup it is just an American/British thing that you can only study if you have the money. In Germany it is all about your grades and even then you can just wait until you study medicine. Also there are Stipendia, if you are really good and passionate.
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All that pokemon has made Jaiden pretty smart.
Someone once said how many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in Ethiopia?
How many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in America to a working class or poor family or as a person in a marginalized group?
Less than in Ethiopia
Probably, I didn’t mean to make it a competition. In both cases it’s a nonzero number and every one is a tragedy.
I don’t think the comment was necessarily to dunk on Ethiopia per se as much as to make a point.
E.g. The person who worked out at least a theoretical model for faster than light travel was Mexican. So we are obviously not dealing with this situation in which the most intellectual necessarily are born into western society.
This is way more the problem than people missing out on going to medical school when they really wanted to.
Most people who are in the United States and want to go to a high paying career, can take out student loans and achieve something close, assuming good grades. Not that there aren’t problems with that scenario, but everyone wants kids to get high paying jobs, society is organized around helping those kids.
Meanwhile, some people would be great authors or philosophers or artists if they didn’t have to spend time making the money to survive. Those are valid goals that are being oppressed by the system.
And in the same way the global system is oppressing billions of people who are born as the rural poor and just not able to do much beyond subsistence farming.
This is one reason why I advocate for free and open source software, this same exact reason. So many poor people/kids can’t afford to pay for software they need that could help them achieve something.
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On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have viable career paths that are NOT being selected because the income simply won’t be enough. We miss out on a lot of talented and motivated individuals that would love to get into a particular field, but it just doesn’t pay as well. Teachers and corrections officers come to mind. The career I’m in was not my first choice, but it pays better than what I wanted to do.
Fully agree with this. Anything in the arts immediately comes to mind. Not just performing arts either - history, literature, and philosophy fields have a lot more uncertainty with income than others.
This is one of the reasons why I favor UBI and universal health care. I think there’s a growing deficit in overall creativity, leisure, and social engagement that the arts and other so-called lower-income jobs provide to society. And its not that people care more about money. You just dont have the option to pursue these jobs when your income level affects life or death decisions for you and your loves ones.
To be fair the correctional system in its current form in North America is primarily constructed and controlled by capitalist interests.
Yeah, try being a nurse these days if you want to play life in hard mode
Idk, I’ve never made enough money to live on and at this point never expect to. I’d rather do something I’m passionate about while I die under capitalism, than sit here feeling useless while I die under capitalism. Shit is depressing and unsustainable.
That’s an America problem, not a capitalism problem. Free, or at least highly subsidised, higher education isn’t exactly limited to communist countries.
Capitalism can keep people from studying because they need to work instead, or maybe they were in a low-income area and didn’t get the chance to go to a good school to get the grades or knowledge they needed before higher education, etc.
Capitalism effects every facet of our lives, even in developed countries where we try to spend money to counter it’s damages.
That’s a fair point, especially about the low income areas which is definitely also a big issue here in Germany.
Sure, but that’s kind of what Bafög is for. Sure that’s also a loan, but one with very favourable terms.
Doesn’t really help if you never make it to uni because your parents weren’t able and/or willing to help you out with schoolwork and couldn’t afford/didn’t care to get someone else to help you.
Bildungsferne is, sadly, often passed along from parents to children.
To be fair, it’s not just an America problem.
Even just free higher education is not enough under capitalism. You need to live somewhere and eat something while you learn. Also reminds me about one comment I wrote. Here’s copy-pasta:
American “left”: maybe we shold do some student debth relif? Just a tini-tiny. If you don’t mind.
Rest of the world right: universal education, more funding!
Rest of the world center: universal education, state must provide students with everything(including housing and food) so they don’t worry about anything else other than learning, state must provide teachers with everything(including decent salary) so they don’t wory about anything else other than teaching, state must provide universities with all necessary equipment, buildings must be maintained in good condition(so ceiling wouldn’t fall on students’ and teachers’ heads)!
Not being able to afford education isn’t limited to the cost of the education either. If I have to take time to study it means I have to spend every hour of every day either working, in class, studying or working on school projects to also afford to eat and have shelter, and even then I think I’d have to choose between the two.
It’s ironic that capitalism is missing out on more efficient workers who could maximize production and profit because of this. Who knows where we would be if we actually helped people pursue their goals regardless of current income?
More than this. People from different countries with qualifications are often denied to transfer their qualifications. We are missing out in more than one area here.
