Naïs

sarcasmisdead:

thenationmagazine:

Losers from the Debt Deal: Students

 

Graduate students would be the hardest hit, as the bill proposes an elimination of the interest subsidy on federal student loans for “almost all” of them. This means that beginning July 1, 2012, grad students will be responsible for the interest on their loans while in school and during any subsequent deferment period.

Credit: AP Images

Which means that grad school will simply be out of the question for many people, especially if they come from poor backgrounds.  And if you need at least a master’s degree to get anywhere close to a good job in this country these days (seeing as how “the master’s is the new bachelor’s” and all), well…….you do the math.  =_=

sarcasmisdead:

thenationmagazine:

Losers from the Debt Deal: Students

 

Graduate students would be the hardest hit, as the bill proposes an elimination of the interest subsidy on federal student loans for “almost all” of them. This means that beginning July 1, 2012, grad students will be responsible for the interest on their loans while in school and during any subsequent deferment period.

Credit: AP Images

Which means that grad school will simply be out of the question for many people, especially if they come from poor backgrounds.  And if you need at least a master’s degree to get anywhere close to a good job in this country these days (seeing as how “the master’s is the new bachelor’s” and all), well…….you do the math.  =_=

 Imagine living in a universe where one can purchase a shiny gold badge. The badge, being pure gold, is weighty and expensive. However, it is a distinguishing mark. Certain employers see possession of this badge as a desirable quality in prospective employees, and favor possessors for high level positions. However, the production of such a badge, and, as a result, the consumer price being very high, it is a scarce economic good, meaning only a few possess one, and employers must still hire most of there employees from the stock which lacks this badge.

One day, non-possessors observe the benefit such a badge affords its rightful owners who have earned it, and cry, “Privilege!” They declare the badge not to be a simple article of property useful as a means for affording its owner certain benefits, but as a right, as these masses are ignorant of the meaning of the word “right.” They do not understand the natural law origin of rights, the praxeological roots of natural law, or the epistemological roots of praxeology. They only understand slogans, and declare themselves entitled to something to which no one before them was ever entitled, to something which, indeed, did not even exist a short period ago, a blink of an eye in human history. They vainly attribute natural law to apply to an arbitrary good, destroying its timeless quality—if man is entitled to a gold badge, then the concept of rights were somehow incomplete and unable to be fully logically fleshed out until it existed. Early man, first stepping out of his cage, had a natural right—was ought to be provided by a just universe, before finding food even, (until that is declared to be a right as well,) with something of which he could not even conceive. The very impossibility of such conception in logical minds renders any attempt at epistemological justification of the right also impossible. Such a right does not, and cannot, exist.

So we return to a time when the masses impossibly declare this arbitrary right to a thing, which does not even exist in any philosophical framework. Meaning, by extension, that that thing, a copy of its form (mindscrew time for those who wish to delve deeper into how we categorize all the objects that fit into that exact form necessary to qualify for the right, as categories of objects are an internal mental attribute) must be produced for every person, meaning that each person must now have a right to all of the factors of production and distribution necessary to put one in each person’s hand, including human labor, which labor must then be conscripted and either slave labor or free and paid labor. This now necessitates that the producers of Gold Shields be paid for their labor, which money must be stolen with coercion from people who are concretely entitled the money, for an abstract and false right.

This exertion of force then distorts the economy, because the people investing in Gold Shields are not choosing between that and an equally valid good, e.g. their own new shoes, which money would still have been moved through the economy. Instead of praxeologically necessarily mutually voluntary trade increasing wealth, wealth is only transferred, or even lost, since the very act of paying taxes makes many people unhappy. It is also transferred into a sector of the economy, the mandatory production of Gold Shields, without any mechanism of feedback to display the proper amount of capital that should be allocated to the production of that specific good. This is the problem of distributed economic knowledge—by controlling the system, the state has eliminated the source of knowledge, and must do this blindly. Entitling everyone to a Gold Shield, therefore, causes far too many of these expensive shields to be produced. Plus, since the cost must, as a matter of law, be covered, there is no incentive for the producers to lower the cost of production and innovate: the demand is artificially perfectly inelastic, and the price artificially high.

But the people who get the Gold Shields do not pay, so they all get one on someone else’s dime, which causes another problem. This used to be a mark of distinction, remember? Only a few had one, meaning it was very valuable, and employers hoped and dreamed that they might once see an resume containing one, but usually settled for perfectly adequate non-possessing employees. Now, there is no excuse not to have one. If you don’t, you’re a loser. “Gold Shields are the new Silver Shields,” cry the papers, while failing to adequately explain why. One day, the people of the State attempt to right one of its trillions of wrongs, to perhaps live within their means like everyone else who would not have been able to purchase a Shield for themselves, let alone strangers, and they try to perhaps reduce the horrible deficit they have racked up, by cutting things that they shouldn’t provide. Now, the State shouldn’t provide anything; it shouldn’t exist, but shrinking brings it closer to disappearing than growing does.

Everyone then cries that their made-up “right” is being taken from them. Now, if you replace the hypothetical good in this story with an education, the only problem is that the epistemological problems of identifying exactly what comprises that abstract analytical category worsen.

I, rather, hope that it becomes harder to achieve a PhD or a J.D., so that whichever I go for, while harder to come by, will be more valuable, a greater mark of distinction than in a world where everyone must get one. We’ve already lost the Bachelor’s to academic inflation—the devaluation of such a certificate because of policies that print them out of control—let us perhaps keep the value of higher degrees.

(via theyhaveguns)