Topic: De-monetization of basic life requirements and beyond. (Read 639 times)

That is actually a really good point. The quality of life has increased SO MUCH because of technological innovation brought about by free market competition. We have gone from struggling every day to do simple things like eat and travel, to making them so inexpensive, available, and taken for granted that the same effort needed to live now is demanded by some people to be completely free. Some times it amazes me how little people appreciate what they have. Unfortunately everyone is going to learn soon the hard way...

Demonitization has occurred hugely; if you take the right time spans. A person used to have to travel hundreds of miles walking or on horse to get to a library. There might have been a few street performers playing music, but the fancy music was only for the wealthy.

Even in the 1990s, if you wanted to look up patents, you had to go to a library with the repository.

All of Wikipedia can be put on a computer or card < 100 gb, and freely given out.

You're suspicions are correct, I was indeed using the word "demonetization" as a socialist might; code for "taxing the shit out of you giving you very little in return."

I agree there are so many ways to educate one's self available for free on the internet these days, it's really a marvelous time if you are able to take advantage of it.  Coding, astronomy, science, mathematics, language, all can be learned for free.

why dont you first try to establish this "demonetisation of basic life requirement in venezuela or other poor countries?

the truth is that no one that runs the infrastructure that provide those goods, will continue to work.

As for the de-monetization of basic life requirements--when we get to the point when actual labor is no longer required we'll be nearing the end of scarcity.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson <---one of the few relatively current authors who reference Adam Smith except that he get's him right.


Wish more people with "strong opinions" would read this book
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt



There is value in attending university beyond learning and degrees---you create a network, friends ect.

Udemy and Coursera offer online courses for free with the option to pay for course completion certificates.

Actually I see some promising open source educational systems. I am going to wager a guess you are referring to state subsidized "free" education, not literal lesson plans available for use for all on the internet. Now as far as certifications go, I agree there needs to be some kind of standard setting authority to weed the incompetent people out. We should not however confuse free with government funded, and education with a certification or a degree. They are not always the same thing.

Demonetizing education would be a disaster, in my opinion.  It's already been hijacked by leftest who use it as an opportunity to indoctrinate our youth.  There's little incentive for a success driven individual to pursue a career in education.  As it is it attracts the those we gen-Xers termed as "slackers."  Providing the best service, or good value is rarely within the capabilities of government agencies.  It's almost exclusively limited to private enterprise steeped in healthy competition.




Or they expect you to be the sucker.  Remember when they used to give away pneumatic nail guns?  They charged so much for the nail strips that the nails cost almost $0.25 each.

If it is free, you are the product.

No it's not "Free." So let's not call it "free," if it is actually more enslaving.

OP started with concept of free entertainment (though I do not think it free when your habits and data getting collected and there is huge market of data) . Companies are willing to provide so many things for free  like Maps ( Google Maps) , email I'd, VoIP phones  etc.
If you look closely , whatever  you see free is generally digital goods or related to digital product.
I did not see anything physical that is free . Actually cost of physical good is increasing and cost of digital goods is decreasing.
I do not think you will be going to get free car or  house , although education can be cheaper in future.

With that in mind though, the only reason that education is really needed is because employers deem it necessary. As it's an easy way to be able to weed out employees that aren't qualified -- that's the same reason that colleges and universities make prospective students take the SAT/ACT, as it's an easy and cheap way for them to weed out students without having to develop a model to 'standardize' grade from around the entire country.

Education could be changed INSTANTLY and FOREVER, through the people in business saying the simple words of 'fuck that' lets just hire people based on character and whatever other criteria they deem appropriate compared to a degree on a piece of paper. Though -- I doubt that's going to change that quickly, unless the people in business start to notice a degradation in quality in the workforce of those that have degrees.

Those in all sectors benefit from the current bloated education system. Those in government are able to promise large amounts of benefits for those going to college, such as guaranteed loans from the federal government, TO EVEN A POTENTIAL FOR FREE COLLEGE (Bernie). Government officials are able to say that they're getting more and more people into college, the general population then keeps voting these people into power.

But wait, there's more people that are benefiting from the current (screwed up) system. Colleges! They've become more and more top-heavy in the past couple decades. In simple terms, this means that they've been increasing the amount of administrators at their schools  while barely increasing the amount of professors and other teaching staff. They've also been able to increase prices for education, as guaranteed loans from the federal government mean they're going to get paid no matter what.

But that's not all, the banks who are sending out these loans are also able to make a good amount of money on the interest payments on these kids that are going to colleges for absorbiant amounts of money. Don't forget, GUARANTEED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

People forget that in the real world, (most likely) those that are going into college with no income aren't going to be able to get a loan for 40k a year with no proof of future income -- though the Federal Government guarantees loans (which is popular with the voters, so EVERYONE can go to college) so the banks don't care about what they're signing off on as they know they're getting paid either way.

But who gets fucked in this situation, the taxpayer, and the kids that are left in gross amounts of debt. Taxpayers are paying for these people to go to college before they're able to pay (as you don't make one payment before you actually leave college) and the future grads (or maybe they won't even graduate) are stuck in an exorbitant amount of debt for an education that is necessary to get a job but probably wasn't 'worth it' if you look at the amount they paid. What a crazy world we live in.

Everyone makes money, and there's no reason to change. I think I may make a individual thread where we can talk about education and policy surrounding it, seems interesting.

I think it's the opposite. It seems to me that 13-14 year old children in 2019 are no longer children, they have become consumers. Victims of marketing and social networks. I'm agree with you about "rent instead of buy", but I think it's not because of a lack of money, it's more like the next generation's priorities have changed. Most people do not think about the future, but about what they see in social networks, in the style of "Live fast, here and now!".

I think that today's young people have many more opportunities thanks to the Internet. For most of these young people, the Internet is just a part of life, they perceive it as a thing that should exist on its own.

If we look at the history of the creation of compulsory public schools, we find that the main motive was not abstract altruism, but a specific desire to give the masses of people the qualities that meet the ideas and desires of those in power. Disobedient minorities had to be part of the majority, and the entire population had to be instilled with civic virtues, the most important of which had always been obedience to the apparatus of power. If it is decided that the masses will be educated in public schools, how could these schools not be a powerful tool for building loyalty to public authorities? 

I studied at a bad school, then at a bad university (which then quit). And now I'm studying. I'm studying online, I'm only studying what I'm interested in. But not for the sake of a piece of paper (or plastic) which is called a diploma, but for myself.

Nothing that a nice wall won't solve nicely.

forget what you are dreaming about, we have open financial market now, not constructive communism/socialism,

now the spammers rule it.

economic sabotage and destruction of structures will become the norm

You know what really destroys lands? Communism. Take a walk around China and tell me what you see. In a place where the government runs everything, commonly owned wealth such as land is stripped of any value and abused maximally because that is literally one of the only opportunities they have to make their lives better. They see it and they take it. They waste it and abuse it because it is not their personal responsibility to maintain it. Much like a rental car you have it for a short time and people are free to beat on it and abuse it until it is returned. This is a well known pattern often referred to "the tragedy of the commons".

"People like me do not see intelligence as virtue."

We kind of figured that as much Captain Postmodern. It is just sad that you think logic and intelligence are only for conservatives, but who am I to argue. I never once said "All of psychology is illegitimate.", I said social sciences are BARELY within the realm of science, and Critical Theory is illegitimate being the lowest tier of this lowest form of "science", not actually being science at all but political ideology with a thin superficial veneer of science.

Academia can go fuck itself, they have shown themselves repeatedly to be infested with the enemies of the people and this nation. They will be lucky to be free and breathing in another 10 years once people realize what they have been doing to their children. No one would dare make any of those admissions in academia because they would instantly lose their careers and be blacklisted by the new brown shirts that call themselves academia. You live in an echo chamber. You poo poo at intelligence then proceed to claim to be on the side of science. You claim to want the betterment of the common good but you promote totalitarian policies. If a word challenges your world view, you invent a new definition for it. You don't need debate, you need a therapist.

But if we place everyone in strait-jackets, all our problems will be solved.

 

It's not clear at all what you might be referring to as "destroying the land."

...Recalling fond memories of working in coal strip mining areas....

People destroy the land they own for the same reason they do anything in a capitalist system.  

People like me do not see intelligence as virtue.  That position correlates with conservatism. Signaling intelligence would be of no benefit to someone with my worldview.  For someone like me, none of this is personal, and at end of the day, is all about he greater good.   I am in fact, doing the opposite of being a "know it all".  I am here to show I am ignorant to how this demographic views the world and how you hold on to your opinions despite what I, and the overwhelming majority of people I interact with view as undeniable facts.   I want to learn how you guys think and unpack all of the stereotypes elites in academia hold against you. I'm simply here to learn through discussion.

For example, tecshare thinks all of psychology is illegitimate and I have no idea how someone could arrive at that line of thinking and so far, despite a ton of interactions with him, I lack the social intelligence to understand his thought processes. Most of the people I deal with on a daily would immediately dismiss anyone who denies science as not worth having a discussion with.  Coming on the internet is the rare time I get to interact with people who think the earth is flat, vaccines cause autism, and climate change isn't real.  I know they exist around me but they wouldn't dare admit it in the world of academia.

In the Internet age, "intellectual property" of all kinds is an especially good fit for demonetization because if it's too difficult or expensive to get people will just "pirate" it, delivery is free/cheap anyway, and it's easy to attach ads to it. I'm not so sure that this trend extends to tangible property, at least not in the same way. I have heard that the younger generations are more inclined to live cheaply, rent instead of buy, etc., but I wonder whether this is an actual change in demand or just due to lack of opportunities / purchasing-power. To the extent that people actually are spending less money to achieve the same life-satisfaction, this is a very positive trend which will lead to increased overall productivity.


In my experience, most (not all) university classes are basically taught from the textbook. If you have the discipline to self-study a textbook, then it has roughly the same effectiveness in many cases. For courses which fall into this category, university is mostly a motivational tool to get you to really study the book so that you get decent grades and don't waste your tuition. Considering the high university drop-out rate and student loan debt in the US, better and less expensive motivational tools may exist...

Furthermore, I think that both high schools and universities aren't worthwhile for the vast majority of people who go to them. The exact path which each person would be best-off taking varies, but IMO the average person would be better-off dropping out of high school ASAP and then combining a part-time job with self-study, online courses, community college courses, etc. in their areas of interest. Education is important, but high school especially is 90% babysitting and only 10% education - a big waste of time.

Bingo!

The guy predictably spouts very standardized orthodox modern-day-liberal stuff which bounces around in that echo chamber.  Most of it is absurd and falls to logic easily.  When people do this I sometimes use it as an opportunity to provide counter-arguments.  Of course many of these counter-arguments are pretty standard and pretty worn out as well a lot of times.