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Comment by saool | Hacker News Reader

That's what The Market should be for, to make those jobs compensated attractively. Plus, people will be more likely to take a part-time job flipping burgers to fund their writing/music/open source project/whatever if they don't have pressure to pay back debt or don't have to worry about health insurance (another can of worms).

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Why do they deserve the broadly desired services of doctors, nurses, professors, etc for free while doing very little for those doctors, nurses, or professors in return?

I would say they deserve them because we want to live in a 'society'. If they are contributing to society - even just by serving lattes or creating poetry to someone like me who desires caffeine and art, and I in return contribute something that doctors, nurses and professors want, then I think they deserve it.

Then you should pay them enough to afford the things you want them to have. I don't want lattes nor poetry, so if they want money from me they should do something I want them to do, not get the government to confiscate it from me and redistribute to themselves.

Because by incurring in certain costs up front as a group, society benefits from blurry but tangible externalities.

I suppose this is the challenge all societies are grappling with; how to compensate fairly so everyone is comfortable while still better compensating jobs that require more skill or 'contribute more' to maintain demand.

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