Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
What’s the Point of College?
Too many people are going to college. In response, colleges have trivialized their curricula, introducing vacuous and pointless programs like Gender Studies, Popular Culture, and Journalism. No one needs to major in these things, and the world isn’t made a better place because these majors exist.
The reality is that only a minority of us are really equipped to think deeply about abstract things. The rest of us would be better served, would be better providers and better people if we simply learned to do something of value and to do it well. Then college could do what college was originally intended to do: teach people complex ideas that require a depth of study and commitment beyond what most people are interested in pursuing.
Instead, college has dumbed itself down to provide something for everyone, while growing ever more expensive and ever less useful.
Published in Education
That could be true — about arranged marriages favoring pairing very bright people — but I don’t know that there’s any compelling reason to believe so. There are a lot of reasons people might choose mates for their children, and I don’t know that intelligence has historically been a big consideration. Put differently, I’m not sure that, historically, the best and the brightest have also been the most successful and the most powerful, and marrying into wealth and social standing has, I’m guessing, always been a high priority.
I think the modern mobility that tends to segregate and concentrate people based significantly on intellectual horsepower is probably new. I think — though it’s been years since I read it — that that might have been something Murray said.
The USG has no unfunded SS liabilities because it has no SS legal liabilities. The question of paying future benefits is purely a political decision, not a legal requirement. If it did have SS liabilities, then by definition it would be legally required to pay future benefits; if it failed to pay them, beneficiaries could take them to court. SS benefits are really essentially just welfare payments, like food stamps, except with some meaningless statutory window-dressing and accounting sleight of hand.
It would face political opposition if it didn’t pay the amount in handouts that the voters demand in any given year.
The better thing is probably to not do things that make it more difficult – less affordable, etc – for people to have children, since having children is necessary to the continuation of civilization, including – perhaps especially – our own. (And I think history shows that people tend to have children if it’s not made too difficult/expensive.) For that matter, Americans not having children in order to help “save the planet” while Zimbabweans etc continue to have lots, doesn’t help ANYONE, since Zimbabweans etc are worse for the environment than Americans, and Americans sometimes end up feeding Zimbabweans etc as well as producing the medical advances and other technology that helps improve the lives – and reduce the planet-destruction – of Zimbabweans etc.
Maybe it was non-Mormons taking the pills, because they were depressed about not being Mormons?
I believe there’s also a moral hazard component to lots of people not having children. I think people tend to be more responsible when they have skin in the game. People without children will, I believe, be less inclined (as a general rule) to be concerned about the future beyond their own tenure here.
A related moral hazard stems from being so rich that you never have to worry about your children or grandchildren or anyone else you love going without, no matter how foolish and misguided the policies you choose to implement. I think that’s a big part of why moguls and politicians advocate such ultimately destructive policies: their children will never live in poverty.
Everything is a scam.
Actually, Utah seems like a hell of a good place to live.
What should be done?
This is what is actually going on. The government and the Fed are stealing from the future. You need to get in on the action. There is no changing this situation in time.
We’re Living in the Age of Capital Consumption
https://mises.org/wire/were-living-age-capital-consumption
Also part of the great Mark Steyn interview.
You forgot the TM. :-)
I’ve worked with a lot of LDS (Mormon) folk, and count several among my good friends, and have found them to be responsible and decent people. I have… opinions… about their theology and its origins, but find the people themselves to be generally wonderful. And do you want to talk about patriotism? Do you want to talk about sheer, deep-seated commitment to Constitutional principles?
Well pull up a chair, son, and I’ll explain to you about the birds and the bees. ;)
I liked all of the ones I had to work with. I’m just reporting some facts. They really did consume a lot more depression pills, SSRIs for quite a while. I don’t know if it’s still true. I’d kill myself if I couldn’t drink coffee and beer.
I think Utah is a pretty well run state.
I get the imperative coming from God. I find anywhere else ridiculous, but people talk like that all of the time.
In my opinion the government is set up to need people to procreate more while at the same time it interferes with expand families. It’s idiotic.
Yeah, I think government is most of our problems. As for children…
I’m a dad, first and foremost. I’m of the opinion that most people don’t mature properly unless they have children; that they get mired in a kind of adolescence. I think it’s generally bad for the human spirit to not have obligations that transcend personal comfort and satiation.
Children are expensive, they rob you of your time and freedom, they’re an enormous emotional vulnerability, and they consume a good portion of your life. Little bastards are just a pain in the neck.
Maybe I’ve lived a stilted and shallow life — I’ll never cure cancer or create a work of art — but I don’t think there’s anything I’m going to look back on from my deathbed and think, yeah, that made the whole damned trip worthwhile: at least I got that done.
Children are an intrinsic good, because people are an intrinsic good.
This is a lot better pitch than you should procreate to keep the country going or something.
My problem is I have personality disorders on both sides of my family tree, so I sort of generally don’t see that much merit in people as you are saying. I’m not really sure people are an intrinsic good unless there is generational cultivation of good people.
Because politicians tell you that they have done good things on your behalf. So you are a good person.
Good for you. I am not necessarily a pro-natalist person but I approve of intelligent people with a minimum of physical and mental illnesses having kids.
Why?
Exactly. Without a religious imperative, it’s just an ordinary “should”. I can tell you from personal experience some people shouldn’t have children.
LBJ set up a system that requires probably even more procreation than before Medicare but the government is doing everything wrong so it discourages it, except for the sociological areas that you don’t need it in.
Um…I think you took my comment backwards. I resolve, once again, nevermore to indulge my obscure sense of humor.
I am not following this.
Rufus,
As near as I can tell, this is what happened.
That is what I originally understood.
Yeah, that’s how I saw it unfolding. Dry humor is always a gamble. But don’t stop.
It’s axiomatic, Henry.
Well I question your axioms so there!
It didn’t need to be explicitly about intelligence. The intelligence was a side thing.
There is compelling evidence that 15-17 century upper classes had very brilliant minds. Just because it wasn’t the goal doesn’t mean it didn’t produce it.
And that’s your right, Henry. I’m a humanist in the broad sense, and the axiomatic assumption of the positive worth of a human life is, at least for me, part of that. That doesn’t mean that I believe that every human will make a net positive contribution to the world: that’s pretty obviously not true. But my assumption, in each instance — and I’ll confess that there’s some optimism being expressed here — is that every human begins with that potential. Our challenge is to create the conditions that incline more and more people toward realizing that potential.