HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

overtone

12 karma · joined January 24, 2019

submissionscomments
overtone··on A Debt to Education
> You sound like the Church from days of old.

Certainly that was not my intention.

> ... but my dad went to divinity school

Out of curiosity, did the bill for that come up to anything near 40,000$?

> ... it’s basically a combination of logic/philosophy, ethics, history, and psychology, wrapped in metaphor

... that is also worth fourty thousand dollars?

> I wish all pastors had to be so well informed before they were allowed in front of a brainwashed congregation.

I wish pastors who are teaching all their reassuring hogwash wouldn't have to be required to go into five figures of debt for the privilege.

> So they pay for it with personal debt; I don’t see the problem.

I'll tell you about the problem. US student loan debt isn't just personal debt. No sane credit institution would bankroll a 40,000$ degree in divinity unless graduates were regularly raking in six figures (which I doubt).

What makes it all work is the government guarantee. This, in turn, has caused massive price inflation for all degrees, whether they are bullshit or not. You have a whole generation of students who are either not going to be able to pay back the debt, or who are going to have to give up on a significant amount of other spending, which is a drain on the economy.

overtone··on Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite
> Where will the future unemployed be redeployed?

Pay attention to which jobs currently pay well, those jobs are the most likely to get pressure from surplus labor.

There's also a big and growing demand for health care and care for the elderly.

I doubt that automation will truly replace such a massive amount of labor as some predict, but even if it does, that will cause an equally strong lowering of the cost of living, requiring less labor to live, cheapening welfare, etc.

overtone··on Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite
> People don’t work a coal face because it’s fun, but because it’s what they know how to do, and it brings home the bacon.

Far more than that, coal workers take pride in their work, it's part of their identity and it commands a certain degree of respect as being "hard labor". If it was just about "bringing home the bacon" they might as well take any other job.

This is in contrast to working for Wal-Mart or McDonalds, there's no pride in it, it's not part of people's identity. People want to move on from these jobs, but there are less and less opportunities to move on to.

> So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away.

A safety net is well and good, but if people lose their jobs and get stuck in the net, it destroys them. Again, it's about pride and identity.