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Comment by cynical_sheet | Hacker News Reader

Americans are living way above their means with rampant entitlement mentality. You see a lot of these paper-shuffling office jobs where nothing of value is produced; people studying worthless subjects(sociology, political science, gender studies etc.) plus there is an assumption that everyone needs to go to college; trades are looked down upon; push for $15/hour minimum wage; entitlement mentality with welfare etc.

You have very little of that in China + some other countries and that is their appeal.

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I would say the opposite: too many people are stuck in the wage-slave mentality. To focus the best parts of your life on competing tooth and claw in a zero-sum game of finding employment, with the consequence of failing being homelessness and begging at the side of the road: that's such a waste.

Society has achieved the capacity to keep every single person healthy and safe, but selectively denies it in order to keep them motivated by the fear. Do you really think that's a giood thing?

I'm not advocating communism, I'm just saying that maybe it's time to step back and look at the bigger picture. It's not a sense of entitlement, it's trying to make human life a grander thing than just getting by.

I don't want to live in a world where people only study what "the market" considers valuable.

Any reasonable definition of the market includes the people making choices about what to study.

If people are buying whatever degrees, economics says that those people are buying a degree that they consider valuable. They are paying 'the market' price for the degrees, they can't be separated from it.

It's easy to observe that other actors place far less value on the degrees than the people buying them, but those people are not setting the market price for the degrees.

We should be careful when talking about market characteristics of the market for college degrees, at least in the US. It is one of the markets that is most heavily skewed by government subsidies.

The US approach to Government subsidies on the consumer side of privately supplied markets in college and health care mostly seems to accomplish raising the prices of college and healthcare as market providers raise prices to what the relatively hotter markets will bear.

Yeah, I think the structures that make buyers less price sensitive are a pretty terrible idea, but the government incentives/subsidies/etc don't change the fact that students are part of the market and are the ones setting prices (it just screws up the prices they set).

You mean you don't want to live in a world where you actually have to learn useful skills, so that you can trade with other people who have learned to do something you find useful?

I've already addressed that when I mentioned 'rampant entitlement mentality'. It's people thinking that others owe them something just because they happen to be members of homo sapiens species. Entitlement 101.

It's not a coincidence that most of the people studying philosophy, sociology, gender studies etc. are leftists, many even radicalized (e.g. anarcho-syndicalism in philosophy departments).

That's why the leftists need a powerful state. Since they are useless parasites, they have to make money by working in government or non-profit or government-inspired jobs.

You should probably go spout this crap on a site where the average user doesn't make six figures.

What is your point? What does people making 6 figures on this site or 7 figures on some other site matter?

Is what I'm writing true or not?

No. You're being at the least inconsistent when you on the one hand claim that it's wrong to push for a higher minimum wage (because the free market should decide what low skill jobs are "worth") and on the other hand deride sociology and gender studies as worthless when people are willing to pay a lot of money for those courses. In other words, you're not a capitalist, you're just co-opting the language of capitalism to spout a particular brand of conservative moralism.

> people are willing to pay a lot of money for those courses.

No, people are willing to have the government pay a lot of money for those courses, in the form of financial aid. People who actually have to pay for the courses themselves are far more likely to study something with actual practical value.

"Far more likely"? That's quite an assertion to make. Do you have a link? I'm genuinely curious. Also, as Apocryphon mentioned, "actual practical value" is a problematic phrase. If you mean "economic value" then just say that. But on the face of it, if you are applying for work for which the minimum qualification is a degree from an accredited college/university, then any course which gets you closer to fulfilling that qualification has some economic value.

> if you are applying for work for which the minimum qualification is a degree from an accredited college/university, then any course which gets you closer to fulfilling that qualification has some economic value.

This is true. But why is the minimum qualification a degree? For some jobs that qualification makes sense; but there are many for which it doesn't, yet it is still considered a minimum qualification. The assertion that this state of affairs is largely due to the fact that college degrees are subsidized--many people can get them without having to pay for them themselves--is certainly not original with me; economists have been making it for decades.

I am not inconsistent.

Where exactly did I write that it is (morally) wrong to push for a higher minimum wage? I am not writing that it is wrong to push for $15/hour. I'm writing on why American workers have a hard time competing with people in Asia or South America, many of whom work for $15/day. That's why, among other things, companies are leaving for Mexico or Vietnam.

Students are taking huge government-backed student loans, so that they can go to college and study sociology/gender studies(or some other worthless field) and then get a job in the government or non-profit. Do you see the circular nature of that?

My point is that most people(except some spoiled & stupid rich kids) who are studying sociology now would NOT do it in a truly free market environment, because:

a) There wouldn't be many government jobs or government-inspired jobs waiting for them. b) 18 yo couldn't get student loans to study these subjects. Why? For the same reason homeless drug addicts aren't getting $10 million loans from banks. It's a bad investment for a bank to give unreliable people money. Likewise, sociology(or some other worthless field) majors couldn't get a loan, since their earning potential is very low. c) No welfare. Since there wouldn't be welfare checks to fall back on, most people would think twice about what to study and their choice would not be sociology.

You seem to have intense negativity towards what you label "worthless fields." What is your definition of a non-worthless field? Not to mention, a lot of graduates in those fields end up working in other fields anyway (I've met a good amount of tech recruiters who were polisci or communications majors on LinkedIn). That seems to contradict your point of considering these people as inherently unreliable and unemployable.

How are you even defining "useful skill"?

Especially since, when that market is inevitably disrupted, all those workers are fucked.

Without a proper social safety net, diversification is hedging against downturns...

Besides, right now where I live, it's geologists and engineers that are unemployed. Supposedly 'safe' jobs.

And finally, if everyone piles into the same industry, it drives wages down, and you'll still have plenty of grads who are unable to get a job.

The problem in the end, is that, because a degree is the new HS diploma, everyone needs one, in any subject, and unemployment is the inability of the economy to absorb workers, it has nothing to do with those people choosing the 'wrong' degree anyway.

> people studying worthless subjects(sociology, political science, gender studies etc.)

College isn't trade school, its purpose isn't to study profitable subjects, its purpose is to produce well rounded well educated people, not to produce workers.

Sociology and political science, which you term useless, are exactly the sorts of study focused on the issues you are addressing in your complaint. They may not be valued by capital; do not confuse that with uselessness.

Why does it matter if sociology or political science are focused on what I wrote above? It's not like they're going to solve the problem of parasitic people with worthless degrees, since they are one of them. They won't eliminate entitlement mentality. They won't promote trades, because if they did, then why didn't they study trades if they're so great?

They won't do anything, except enrich themselves with high-paying parasitic office jobs in the government or some non-profit.

> You have very little of that in China + some other countries and that is their appeal.

China is busy building stuff that no one will use, it's the equivalent of paper-shuffling and is quite literally the product of a giant stimulus plan by the state:

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/kai-caemmerer-unborn-cities/

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