"Time to Shut Down All For-profit Institutions"

Stanislav, in the United States, the government does not universally pay for everyone's college education.

Stanislav, if the U.S. government gives a "basic paycheck" to everyone, then it's communism and it's the end of the U.S. Constitution (as we know it).

Stanislav, here are two questions for you:
1. Have you ever been trained in Marxism?
2. When did you first accept the tenants of Marxism?

 

To the original point: I highly doubt the government needs or even is able to shut down "all for-profits". Better regulation is more realistic.

 

Duh.

No it isn't, and again, no it isn't. You seem to use words in your own bizarre way, Humpty Dumpty.

You aren't perceptive, are you? I was born in Kyiv in 1979, in what was then Soviet Union. As such, along with everyone else, I've been a member of youth organizations with names one can translate as "October Cubs" and, briefly, "Young Pioneers". Both organizations were dedicated to Marxism-Leninism. I was not a member of the "Vladimir Lenin Communist Union of Youth", or "Comsomol", because thankfully the whole edifice fell down in the 90ies. So yeah, I did receive a bit of Marxist-Leninist indoctrination, although it was not as intense as in the past (my childhood is the time of Zastoy, or "stagnation", and Perestroyka, a period of reform that ended the system). By the time I left secondary school, though, it became clear to most that most of this stuff is false, and Marxism training is largely based on manipulation and direct lies to astonishing degree (see George Orwell's 1984 for a concise allegory). Still, I know what these mantras mean - and you don't.

BTW, selectively editing quotes is academic misconduct, and replacing [government] with [socialism and communism] is shockingly ignorant. I don't know how either is compatible with graduate studies in Theology.

 

It seems to me that education is a service and I don't understand why education provision should be conceptualized differently than provision of other services.

When people want or need something and are willing to pay for it, other people will enter the market in hopes of making money by satisfying those needs and desires. We see it with food, clothing, entertainment, dentistry and everything else.

So why is education any different?

 

Because educated populace is a public good. Because access to educational opportunities is closely linked to equality of opportunities. Because it's good for democracy. You don't have to agree to any of this, but let's not pretend that you didn't hear these arguments, as a literate adult in the First World, before.

 

Hell, yes! Public education should be free for everyone. Your taxpayers dollars is already paying for the biggest bureaucracy, Medicare, defense, police, Mediaid, churches, roads, healthcare, disaster relief, welfare, bailing out corporations, farming subsidies, biggest entitlements programs of any country,biggest prison system, just to name a few. So stop the pretending. The USA is the greatest country that means it can still do more for its people.

 

A tenet of Marxism is the withering of the state but that is laughable. Every communist state becomes totalitarian and socialism is but a stepping stone on the path to totalitarianism.

 

Tenants? [sic] Hell, If I'd uv knowed they wuz Marxists, I'd never have rented to 'em in the first place. :smile:

I think you mean tenets. Oops, looks like decimon beat me to it by 60 seconds...

J.

 

That public good was realized voluntarily before there were government schools.

 

Yes, it does become totalitarian. Quickly, too. What is not "stepping stone to totalitarianism", though, is better access to education. And healthcare.

 

There was mass voluntary education before government schools? Really? AFAIK the closest to this is the Catholic Church system, but it had its obvious limitations.

 

I won't say anything more about Canadian health care - for fear of getting free treatment for a GSW... But yeah - education. Ontario just started a program - free tuition at Community Colleges for young people from families with less than - IIRC about $52,000 income. I think it goes to $60K if there are 3 or more children. Over the cutoff, it's not free, but there's a sliding income scale, until the full rate kicks in.

Can we afford it? Probably not, unless we give up some other things - Ontario is the most indebted place in the world, other than sovereign nations. Still, I believe it's a good idea and maybe, to facilitate it, stop some Government waste - plenty of opportunity for that. One thing it will NOT do - make us a totalitarian state.

Once again, I'm with Stanislav on this. My feelings about Bohdan Khmelnitsky don't matter, here.

J.

 

The existence of k-12 education does not mean that government provided "free" education for the masses from the inception of the nation. Prior to the establishment of the DOE, the k-12 educational system did a better job, when it was left to the locals to run and operate the "local" educational system. In the early days, graduating from High School was a big achievement and graduates could conjugate verbs. However, now that k-12 is fully owned, operated and run by the government, how many 12th grade graduates can actually conjugate a verb? How many graduates even know what the word "conjugate" means?

Socialists, Communists and Democrats all want bigger government. It may be that the United States can never return to smaller government, unless the currency printing presses are stopped, which is unlikely to happen. The reverse will inevitably happen i..e. printing presses will print more paper currency to keep the gigantic federal government solvent.

Bigger government is not better government. It should be quality (the Constitution) over quantity (government).

 

Ontario? State of New York passed a version of this. Still no Totalitarian nightmare

 

Because it was a rare thing. In other words, not every child had opportunity to attend high school.

As to how many children can conjugate a verb now, I bet the number is higher than the number of students participated in FIRST Robotics competitions in 1800ies. These comparisons across vastly different eras are dumb.

All these banalities, when just saying "I don't want poor people to get an education" is so much quicker.

 

This is a fair response, we are on the same page here.

My understanding is that students in their IT programs gain decent knowledge of the subject, which makes them employable. It is also my understanding that employers don't necessarily frown upon DerVry on a resume. I'very heard the same about their accounting programs offered thru Keller.

I can't say I've heard the same about UoP.

 

So are food, clothing, housing, transportation, book publishing and most of the other things people want. Noting that things are of benefit to the wider community isn't an argument that supply of those things be removed from the market.

The market is the purest expression of democracy that there is. Removing something from the market makes it less democratic almost by definition. Removing something from the market renders it under the control of powers (typically the government) that proceed to control its provision. They can typically only fund its provision by threat of violence as in taxation (pay or we'll hurt you).

Here's how it works:

Dollars are votes. People cast votes on the allocation of resources whenever they spend money. They spend money on whatever they judge is of most value to them. Millions of people are constantly making those decisions, in real time. And where do people get dollars? By being of value to others, by helping others satisfy their needs and desires.

Far from being the fount of all evil, money is our most important source of social cohesion, holding together large-scale societies that have outgrown family, clan and village loyalties where social instinct might be a stronger motivator. Money is probably the primary thing in large urban societies that motivates people to act in the interest of strangers.

 

Very passionate, but not reality. Social security is quite possibly the biggest socialist program in the world. It gives people the money to do all those free market things that make you so passionate.

 

It has been fascinating to come back to this discussion after a few days and see how robust it has become. Dr. Ubell wrote a biased piece that displayed either that he is ignorant about the subject in which he has written (i.e. he did not do his homework) or that he is too strongly entrenched in anti-private-sector philosophy to consider anything beyond the simple "not-for-profit=good; for-profit=bad." Having worked in both sectors (21 years within not-for-profit and 9 years within for-profit), it is remarkable to me how often Dr. Ubell misses the mark.