Our republic, and the California state government, is based on rule of law. One group makes the laws, another enforces it, and a third interprets the conflicts. This works. What we have here is a 'no rules' set of actions.
How about rules that say "we will take any student for $200K/year". This is enough money to supply extra supervision and also give a full scholarship to another student.
Are we are starting to see similarly different sets of rules for each class in the United States? Is such privilege in accordance with our ideals of liberty and justice for all?
https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rend...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
How can you fail out Timmy Upperclass, if 10 students lose their funding next year with him gone?
The limiting factor for elite universities usually isn't dollars, but the quantity of qualified tenure-track faculty and physical space. Not at the university, but overall. The number of postdocs and graduating PhD students each year with the credentials that Cal wants to accept isn't huge. Similarly, the number of rooms that the university has is limited, and both of those numbers take time to change.
A certain ticket for 4x the price of Harvard is still a really, really good deal for lots of wealthy people.
Imagine there are 10 students for 5 spots, and there is an objective ranking from most-qualified (#1) to least-qualified (#10).
Now let's assume student #10 can pay that $200k. That funds their spot plus another spot. So instead of admitting:
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
You can now admit:
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10}
Doesn't this seem unfair to candidates #7 to #9, who are more qualified than #10, but will end up with a less valuable credential?
The question you should ask is whether being able to admit #6 is worth it.
If #10 is some trust fund baby who couldn't study himself out of a wet paper bag, then probably not.
But if #10 is merely 'good' it might be worth it to be able to admit just-0.1-GPA-short-of-great #6.
If you admit #10, then they will beat out #7-#9 in the job market, increasing lifetime earnings at the expense of the others.
If you don't admit #10, then #6-#10 will compete on an equal footing.
The latter may be the outcome you want.
The economy travellers make it possible to travel first class. First class travel is for the moderately wealthy. The very wealthy have their own transport.
Economist article on decline of 1st class travellers: http://archive.vn/OQPt2 (2019).
The idea that we have to "tear it all down" and institute Marxism is backward and self-contradictory.
As you said, we need to identify where and how rule of law is lacking and fix it, making sure that representative government and separation of powers remains intact (or is put in place again).
That's the point -- rule of law means everyone is subject to the same rules, without partiality.
Rule of law is not sufficient, power also needs to be distributed correctly for rule of law to lead to good outcomes.
Not if a law exists to the contrary. And that was the point I was agreeing with -- the solution should be to write a law if one doesn't already exist; or to enforce it if it does.
> power also needs to be distributed correctly for rule of law to lead to good outcomes
Agreed, though distribution isn't the word I'd use, as it implies the existence of another human authority to determine how it should be distributed (thus granting that person or group of people improper power).
But if the placement of power is determined by duly enacted law, that's acceptable.
So by having a guaranteed ratio of very wealthy mixed into your student pool, it's hugely beneficial to everyone else. It's practically the reason people chase after prestigious MBA educations.
The practice might be distasteful philosophically, but the results are apparently great.
It's a fine view that nobody should be denied great education, but if an entire country's annual cohort of high school diploma recipients all applies to the public college considered to be the best one they obviously couldn't all attend that one.
Do people really favor Marxism, or is something else wrong?
a) It's not uncommon these days for the term "Marxism" to be used as a brush to paint anyone "too left wing" (despite not being close to actual Marxists)
b) "Cultural Marxism" has become an antisemitic term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
Plus, yes there are still some people in the world who believe in Marxism, although often just in a broad sense rather than thinking everything about it is right. But I doubt many on HN.
And while complaining about downvoted may be against the rules, personally I think it's completely fine in the context of wanting to understand something like your question, rather than "this shouldn't be downvoted".