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Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

guernicamag.com

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Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an ad hominem. I took it more as the reasoning in "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets."

Ok. It sounded pretty harsh over here. Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them. Not all reasons or incentives for actions in a market have to be monetary. IOW: if something is of value to people, it will usually be done. If that doesn't happen, usually people say they want something, but do not really care that much.

I don't really get what you are saying. The book I mentioned has some interesting arguments and anecdotes.

One is also in Predictably Irrational: in short parents were always late picking up the kids from day care. The day care decided to issue a fine for late parents. The unintended consequences of this were that the parents were way more late on average because they felt they were paying for it. It switched the system from one based on social norms to market norms.

At ball games everyone used to be forced into the same shitty seats. Now the well to do get a pass and have luxury seats with better food and views. Instead of fostering community it further alienates the rich and the poor. This leads to a filter bubble of sorts that prevents both groups from empathizing with each other.

Same with courts and the legal system, fasttrak lanes, free shows put on that have secondary markets.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is the very beating heart of the anti-"capitalist" regime, the blueprint by which they would remake the rest of the world. I have never heard any self-proclaimed socialist ever utter these words. Do you get your entire concept of the Left from right-wing strawmen?

It's obviously true that, say, UC Berkley has more socialists per captia than the public at large.

But that doesn't mean UC Berkeley is actually run in a socialist way, particularly if most of the power rests with a Board of Trustees, with the state government, or with administrators rather than with a Faculty Senate.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an ad hominem. I took it more as the reasoning in "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets."

Ok. It sounded pretty harsh over here. Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them. Not all reasons or incentives for actions in a market have to be monetary. IOW: if something is of value to people, it will usually be done. If that doesn't happen, usually people say they want something, but do not really care that much.

>Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them.

No, they're the sum of the constitutive people, minus all the parts that don't deal with property, trade, contracts, and debt, plus distortions added by institutional arrangements.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then I fail to see what the problem is. That's because you're thinking like a market rather than a human being.

Wow. HN really IS the reddit of a few years ago... You can have your opinion, but if you can't behave in public, please bury your ad-hominem s___ in someone else's backyard.

>HN really IS the reddit of a few years ago...

I would say the same damn thing regarding the knee-jerk right-wing proprietarianism, except that rich Bay Area techies have had a tendency towards the less-well-considered forms of "wannabe ubermensch" libertarianism for a long time now.

If you pointed out that leftists cluster on Reddit you wouldn't even be correct, as Reddit was pretty unambiguously rooting for Ron Paul in the past couple of elections.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#235
post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

A lot of it is going to rising labor costs — while wages have largely been stagnant, health care, facilities, and insurance costs have not.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#236
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller governments (i.e. less power, shallower hierarchies), good voting systems, and an informed public are the answer; not avoiding government altogether. Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property) doesn't work, because the markets don't reflect negative externalities like pollution, over-harvesting, misinformation, or antibiotics misuse. States need to exist to manipulate…

>Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property). I espouse libertarianism more under the following: freedom financially and freedom socially. So the former is generally a conservative ideal while the latter is usually a liberal ideal. A practical example is: I believe in small government (freedom from government financially) and I also believe same-sex marriage should be legal (fr…

This is not your libertarianism, it's the standard definition of it.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My primary issue with school vouchers is the poor state of private schools, at least here in GA (outside of the major cities like Atlanta and Savannah). The Catholic schools are decent to good, but often are only K-8. There are few private secular schools. The rest of the private schools are very conservative "Christian Academy" types whose education leaves their students complete morons in some fields (math, science…

Wow, most other places in the US it is the opposite. Private schools are considered superior. They have to be, because there is otherwise no reason to both pay property taxes and also pay tution.

Around here it's largely politics and religion, not the quality of the school. There's one catholic school with a good academic reputation. The other two I know of are ok. The rest of the private schools are bad to mediocre. They may be better in some ways than the public schools, but not enough (IMO) for the tuition costs.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#238
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller governments (i.e. less power, shallower hierarchies), good voting systems, and an informed public are the answer; not avoiding government altogether. Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property) doesn't work, because the markets don't reflect negative externalities like pollution, over-harvesting, misinformation, or antibiotics misuse. States need to exist to manipulate…

>Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property). I espouse libertarianism more under the following: freedom financially and freedom socially. So the former is generally a conservative ideal while the latter is usually a liberal ideal. A practical example is: I believe in small government (freedom from government financially) and I also believe same-sex marriage should be legal (fr…

I apologize: I was using libertarianism in the modern American sense to refer to anarcho-capitalism.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes.

The problem with that is that eventually you run out of other people's money. See: Europe

Reducing the Eurozone crisis to "taxes" is a non-argument. Especially considering that Scandinavia is doing pretty well, and the local tax rate, speaking from personal experience, is one of the highest in the world.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#240
post #216
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overharvesting If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. Either I intend to sell the land, thus making it worthwhile not to destroy it, or I intend to continue using the land…

I have to insist that your references to anarchism are really references to anarcho-capitalism. I approximate my beliefs to anarcho-communism, and I take issue with your presumption of an anarchist's respect for private property. All anarchism refers to is the advocation of stateless society. In these comments, my advocation of a "state" is an advocation of small ( more representation. A capitalist's idea of "ruining…

On a completely unrelated note, I just wanted to point out that not that many people in Japan actually eat whale meat anymore. They tried to get school children to eat and like whale meat, but it didn't happen. The majority of the whale meat actually was used for pet food in the recent years.

http://eia-international.org/iceland-is-killing-fin-whales-f...

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