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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

I never understood the sentiment of valuing babies over all else. To me it always seemed obvious that fresh college graduates are most valuable to society, since we just finished investing a ton of money into them. Babies on the other hand are easily replaced.

I get this is mainly an emotional argument, but it's still startling to me how opposite it is to the purely economic argument I made above. In fact usually people think I'm just trolling when I'm stating my opinion on the matter but I'm dead serious.

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> fresh college graduates are most valuable to society

This seems to be a popular opinion on here and I really don't understand that. In fact its kinda fucked up. I can only guess there's a lot of fresh college grads on HN.

It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. I certainly don't want a society made up of fresh college grads who think they know it all.

Those fresh college graduates now are the very kids the article talks about, unable to make the adjustment to not being the center of someone's universe. When they were kids, kids were the most valuable. When they're fresh college graduates, fresh college graduates are the most valuable. I think we all know what tune they'll be playing when they hit 30.

College grads are babies, they're just a bit older.

Valuable maybe not but they do represent the peak of societal sunk cost which we won't be recouping.

20 years into your career we've recovered a lot of that invested value, whereas right out of college is near or at the point that the handover of civilization between generations actually happens.

You're right that we don't want the world running around full of fresh college grads however since they are college grads we can say with much greater certainty that they'll be successful as opposed to having no idea with a baby or toddler.

I strongly agree that we need a healthy mix. However, for fresh college graduates there is more time left to pay off the investment we made in them as a society. In fact I believe they will be at their most productive a little later than that. But they get there as they get older.

Edit: Typos

Meh... I don't think there is really much difference from your average fresh college grad and your average non-college educated 22 year old.

I guess from an economical sense college is expensive but... I don't know... how many college grads actually use their degree?

I think the more important question is how many college grads actually benefit from their education (modified words italicized). A degree in, say, forestry should still be useful for someone working in sales because of the experience dealing with diverse opinions, processing new information, and studying a range of subjects.

This is anecdotal, and not a very controversial opinion, but many people in my family and group of friends are sociology majors. After watching them grow and knowing them pre and post degree, I can without a doubt say that education is beneficial. What you learn is unimportant. Becoming acquainted with the process of learning is the true benefit of education.

I agree that the college angle adds unnecessary assumptions to the argument. It would probably be easier to agree on "young adults ready to enter the work force". Especially given the tremendous value many drop outs are adding.

Well, they're probably the broadest group with the most quantifiable potential for adding economic value to society.

The purely economic argument is not about which is the bigger sunk cost. It's not about which will create the most total economic value, either. It's about the delta in economic value from additional investment. College grads are already on an upward trajectory. Statistically and as a group, they're likely to create significant value without any additional investment. Babies, on the other hand, are entirely unrealized potential. Significant investment is still necessary.

In a way, your argument works against your conclusion. The more you've already spent, the less remains to be spent before the person takes off on their own trajectory. Fresh grads don't scale like startups do. They don't need ever-increasing investment to keep up with growth. They're (ideally) more like established companies, already capable of generating their own income and no longer in need of infusions from outside. They don't need our attention as much as babies do. That's why we call them incubators. ;)

I couldn't quite follow. Are you disagreeing with anything OP said?

Yes, I disagree with the "obvious" conclusion that college graduates are most valuable. Additionally, I think the argument put forward supposedly in support of that conclusion - i.e. that we've invested more in graduates - actually leads to the exact opposite conclusion. As others have pointed out, it's not valid economics but pure sunk-cost fallacy.

I think all he's getting at is recent college grads have the highest Net Present Value. It's not a matter of sunk cost.

In terms of a single society it would make more economic sense to stop having children, import foreign collage graduates, and execute people once they reach retirement age.

But society, luckily, isn't some autonomous macro-organism that can treat people like individual cells in your body. So when we say that we value babies above all else that's a projection of the individual aspirations of the members of that society.

An average member of society will care much more about the health of their family and children than maximizing the GDP of their country, and government policy and rhetoric luckily at least partially reflects this.

The sentiment is correct, but even an average member of society who has to choose between two children is better off with the college grad than the incessant consumer whose cortex hasn't folded yet.

The only valid explanation I can think of for our obsession with babies is evolutionary - you need some overkill hormonal persuasion to bond with babies. So every individual who has gone through such a period has some understanding of other individuals' love for babies - they're being empathetic when they hear someone say "I love my baby more than anything".

I think both you and the parent I was replying to are guilty of the same fallacy: transposing economic value on the individual level to society at large.

People at large want to have kids, they want to not die from treatable illnesses. Even when those two goals are at odds with optimal economic realities societies will still try to attain them, because we build societies and economies as a means to an end to attain our goals, we don't live our lives purely to satisfy economic efficiencies.

We're an organism that's the product of billions of years of evolution, all organisms try to spread their genes to the next generation. To say that you're better off with one child who's a collage graduate than two who aren't might be true economically, but ignores what's fundamentally driving us all forward as an organism.

Does anyone really think the primacy of reproduction can be superseded by some clever economic theories?

In many "isolated" cultures, elderlies are actually considered more valuable than babies because of all their knowledge. When an old person passes away it is considered a great damage to the tribe, while losing a baby is meaningless since the baby didn't know anything.

This might have been true in Western civilization up until 18th century. Since industrial revolution started the pace at which the world is changing is so fast that by the time you reach your 70s most of your knowledge and life experience is already obsolete. That's why we leave elderly alone in nursing homes instead of keeping them close to use their wisdom.

In other words: "Children are special, but not particularly important"

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/01/children-ar...

Babies are full of potential. Fresh college graduates...let's be honest...are less so.

Well, most babies will become fresh college graduates (or not even that), so I'm not sure I really follow your line of thought.

When your kid is still a baby, you can dream that he/she will become a neurosurgeon or an astronaut. By the time the child has actually grown up and graduated with a degree in French poetry, your best hopes for them are dead.

If your best hopes for your children are their career path you are doing it wrong.

Sounds like you shouldn't have children. If all that matters to you is being an astronaut or neurosurgeon or some other high-prestige but low-happiness job then you should do it yourself and stop talking about it on the internet: don't impose your twisted moral system where you judge human worth based on wealth on an innocent child who might create beautiful art or invent something new some day.

It's the same "logic" that values a startup without a product more highly than one with a product because if the product hasn't been developed yet, it could be amazing, but if it has, then we already know its not.

Yeah, but a baby hasn't chosen a major, developed any mental illnesses, experienced any crippling trauma, or really done anything at all yet. A fresh college graduate is very often set for life when it comes to their career, brand preferences, political beliefs, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, etc. but babies have a lot more variability in terms of possible outcome.

>Yeah, but a baby hasn't chosen a major, developed any mental illnesses, experienced any crippling trauma, or really done anything at all yet.

Well, they will or they will die trying.

Thought the sample of college graduates vs. all 22 year olds are a little different.

All babies will turn into all 22 year olds. Only some babies will turn into college graduates.

Therefore some of a population, if selected artificially (i.e. college graduates) will always be better than the whole population (i.e. all babies.)

College graduates are "better" than the whole population? Wow.

I completely disagree and as a college graduate I would never say something like that.

Oh come on -- that's orthogonal to the point being made. However you define "success," it is true that some subgroup will have a higher potential of being successful than the average, i.e. all babies. Babies have the widest potential, but not the greatest potential.

Are you objecting on the grounds that this speech is offensive to non-graduates or that it's generally not the case given the context?

A test statement may be: A certain population is at the top of the IQ bell curve therefore they are smarter.

The IQ bell curve being the context.

Hate to be that person, but it is true that most babies will turn into all 22 year olds.

You are correct.

Follow the line of thought further.

Most fresh graduates also become retired seniors. All retired seniors eventually become corpses. Can you maybe see potential declining over time now?

A baby could become anyone.

It is delayed onset of buyers remorse. When you have a baby you are still shopping, you don't know what type of adult you have created yet. Sometimes you'll end up producing the person that cures cancer and have no remorse. When you're looking at the college tuition bills for your offspring that has switched their major from Psychology to Philosophy to Art History to Archaeology you start to wonder if you could have made different choices.

Not most. Only ~22% of people finish college.

But it takes a baby some 20 years just to get to the lowly college graduate stage, so...

Roughly 34% of Americans go on to complete college. Strictly and mathematically speaking, the fresh college graduates are a much better bet than babies.

College grads are a "better bet" in terms of the probability that they'll succeed, but not in terms of additional investment making a difference. Spend time or money on/with a recent college grad who's already primed to succeed, and neither you nor society will get much that you wouldn't have already. Spend that same time or money on/with a child whose mind is still malleable and whose future is still uncertain . . now you're talking about a real possibility of making a difference.

Any random baby, maybe. Also there's the issue of malleability.

I think we need to coin some new acronyms after this thread:

FCG: fresh college grads (natch) LDE: lame-duck elderlies BMPP: babies; max-potential persons

Yeah and in the meantime they need a ton of investment, might die before they even get to the age to work or turn it idiots.

Actual ability is more valuable than potential ability.

> Babies on the other hand are easily replaced.

Someone has never had a baby.

College graduate is just as difficult in the early stage. But needs additional 20 years of expensive fermentation.

This shouldn't be downvoted, because its part of the argument. eg, still-born babies tend to have lots of emotional reprecussions. But the OP's point is that doesn;t make much sense. eg, the human female is programmed to reproduce every 28 days or whatever... but herein lies the heart of the issue...biology, rationality, and emotion, ane even culture are all (or may be) at cross purposes when it comes to this situation.

> This shouldn't be down voted,

I at least down voted it because, the comment it was quoting from was supposed to be a "purely economic argument" and it acknowledged that most argument come from an emotional view point.

There are valid points that go a long the lines of the comment and your follow ups starts to add them but:

> Someone has never had a baby.

Does not add that detail or those arguments.

I didn't care too much for the comment because it was smug superiority.

Yeah, some people even do it on accident.

Is a college loan that is exempt from bankruptcy protections really the same as an "investment?"

The reason people think you're trolling is because this

> Babies on the other hand are easily replaced

sounds like something a sociopath would say about it.

I mean really, is the answer not obvious? Babies need constant care and attention or they die.

We have more college grads than jobs....we could lose a few.

Life is not limited to economics.

No, but it certainly is limited by economics.

In terms of a 'purely economic argument', you have none. You're referring to a sunk cost:

"are most valuable to society, since we just finished investing a ton of money into them"

"In traditional microeconomic theory, only prospective (future) costs are relevant to an investment decision. Traditional economics proposes that economic actors should not let sunk costs influence their decisions. Doing so would not be rationally assessing a decision exclusively on its own merits." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs

He has a perfectly valid economic argument. He's not saying it's the sunk cost that provides the value, it's the added overall value they provide by having a college education. The cost of getting that education could be a reasonable proxy for the value of the education, though imperfect.

People usually make the sunk cost mistake when they aren't evaluating the immediate potential of the options, just the emotional tie to the money invested. That's not the case here.

"He's not saying it's the sunk cost that provides the value"

Actually, that's exactly what they said and I even quoted them on it.

It should be clear to you that he meant that they are valuable because they have at least an education. You are being pedantic.

What's the future cost of getting a college grad to become productive? Nothing.

Future cost of making a baby productive? ~20 years of varying levels of investment.

The point is that the cost of the college grad is not a basis for economic decision making. Once the cost has been accrued, it's sunk. If we're making a decision based on whether or not we want to sacrifice the baby or the college grad, we can't take into account sunk cost of the college grad (if we're using economics as the basis of our argument).

> The point is that the cost of the college grad is not a basis for economic decision making.

The common assumption that ajmurmann and vasiliys are likely working form is that value has been retained during the ~20 years of investment and the cost is proportional to the value and there cost is a reasonable proxy for value.

It is an assumption that does not always hold, but is common enough to do as a first order approximation.

But because we are not making an investment decision, there is no sunk cost fallacy. If we have two widgets and invest a lot of money into making the first widget better, and indeed it becomes better, it is not a sunk cost fallacy to call the first one more valuable.

You are citing things but your argument is nonsensical.

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