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Comment by maym86 | Hacker News Reader

Sure, reappropriate some of the US military budget ($717 billion).

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-approves-717b-defense-s...

Not a bad idea. There are 1.6M professors (including part time, but let's just assume they're full time). If we paid them 100K each, it would only cost $160B per year. So we can definitely afford to continue with a smaller military.

Obviously the amount of people enrolling and therefore the number of professors will have to increase. However some of that can be addressed by using more internet based lectures, etc..

Also, to backfill the loss to the military, they could require a significant portion of the degrees be in robotics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj1MCjeFxrM

We're going to really need that military when China, when we make degrees in underwater basketweaving free for everyone and China (which has a sensible approach to what education is and is not valuable) overtakes us economically and technologically.

Sure. Those invisible fighter jets that don't work were a great investment.

The US military is a publicly funded socialist entity. Interesting how that's ok for war but not for education.

By that definition, isn't every military a socialist entity?

Yes

That's the point, isn't it?

The US right holds the contradictory opinions that socialized government can't accomplish anything effective, and that the US military (which is fundamentally a socialized entity) is amazing and awesome and supremely capable.

Can something be socialist when a private version could never exist?

Yes. That's not what defines it.

The U.S. military accepts something like 20% of its walk-in recruits. [0] When you imagine education as a "socialized entity," I strongly suspect you're not picturing an institution that rejects 80% of the population (for reasons like, say, being too fat).

[0] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/13/uncle-sam-d...

I don't think you understand. It's a thing we all pay for. It's a publicly funded service that defends the country. It's not about who gets in, it's about how it's paid for. We all pay together for something that is not explicitly for profit that we believe to be for the good of the country. This is socialism.

But also, to your point, colleges would still reject students based on grades. This happens in countries with free college education. Standards are still maintained but it doesn't depend on how much money you have. We would get the best candidates based on merit instead of their parents income.

On the contrary, I don't think you understand how college admissions work. When you're rejected by the military, there's no second- or third-tier back-up plan. But anybody who wants to go to college can go to college and they can get it paid for, no matter how unproductive or frivolous their major.

When Stanford rejects you, you try a state school; when the state school rejects you, you go to one of the state's less prestigious satellite campuses. If they reject you (which is extremely unlikely), you go to community college.

Federal aid is available at each strata.

Ok, sounds good, let's increase that federal aid and take the money from the military budget.

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