One of capitalisms biggest tragedies

To be fair the correctional system in its current form in North America is primarily constructed and controlled by capitalist interests.

Idk, I've never made enough money to live on and at this point never expect to. I'd rather do something I'm passionate about while I die under capitalism, than sit here feeling useless while I die under capitalism. Shit is depressing and unsustainable.

Fully agree with this. Anything in the arts immediately comes to mind. Not just performing arts either - history, literature, and philosophy fields have a lot more uncertainty with income than others.

This is one of the reasons why I favor UBI and universal health care. I think there's a growing deficit in overall creativity, leisure, and social engagement that the arts and other so-called lower-income jobs provide to society. And its not that people care more about money. You just dont have the option to pursue these jobs when your income level affects life or death decisions for you and your loves ones.

Yeah, try being a nurse these days if you want to play life in hard mode

I had a friend as a kid who made straight A’s the first semester in school every year, then straight F’s to the last semester where he’d pick it up just enough to pass. I remember a teacher laughing at him because his cousin blacked his eye while he was fighting his mother, “Oh, you mean a girl did that?”

Once he got to high school he couldn’t pass the 9th grade because the strategy of passing the first and last semester didn’t work anymore. He dropped out and got his GED. He took the test one time, scored 90% higher than average.

He slept in class every day because he spent his nights prepared to fight his dad when his dad attacked his mom.

I remember in middle school when the regular teacher was out long term for surgery, he handed a test to the substitute and she cried and apologized for not paying closer attention to him. She worked with him after that and he passed her class.

The last time I seen him, he was strung out on heroin and doing nothing. We went to school together from the 3rd grade until he dropped out and I only ever seen two teachers really try to help him. Police came to the school one time to photograph his bruise covered body and nothing ever came of it.

He used to write stories and give them to me on the bus. I asked him if he kept writing. He told me he hadn’t since his early 20s.

I can’t stand to think about how many kids out there have so much potential, only they’re stranded on an island with nowhere to put it.

Usually when people are in favour of getting rid of capitalism, they’re also in favour of getting rid of hierarchies such as class divide.

Education is anywhere from free to really cheap in Germany, and we still don't get many people from poorer families into uni.

I am not German myself, but I am familiar with the system. Please correct me if things have evolved, but...

I thought the post-elementary education system in Germany was a tiered system. University admission requires completing the Abitur exams, but one can only feasibly do this if they've attended Gymnasium, or the "highest" tier of high school. It may be possible to do if one gets very high marks in Realschule (mid tier), along with Abitur preparation courses, but it's virtually impossible if one attends Hauptschule (lowest tier). These schools are not intended to provide university preparation, but instead provide a general education to prepare students for trades/vocational careers.

Whether a child attends Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium is decided at 9 or 10 years old, and is dependent on performance in elementary classes and teacher recommendations.

And when one considers that a child's educational performance is directly related to both familial socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment, it's not surprising that poorer people are less likely to attend or complete university.

Capitalists' dominant position within the class hierarchy necessitates exploitation of the working class, and this is maintained by fomenting division. This tiered system is just one manifestation of how society can be stratefied and divided.

Disagree about librerians because it is skilled profession and good librerian needs to be very educated, but yes,

"Just" getting rid of the cost won't magically get these people into higher education.

Do you know Aladin El-Mafaalani? I think this Interview (in german) with Jung&Naiv is totally worth to watch for everyone that is just slightly interested in that topic of the german educational system, its flaws and how to improve it.

Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.

Also, this isn't true - capitalism has inequality and unrealised potential built into it.

Yeah no system is perfect.

Centrally controlled education. We need 500 doctors this year, assign the seats, nobody else can get it. Also, doctors have the same lifestyle as any other professional.

Anyone can study anything for free, sure, great. How long so you let people study to become doctors for? How do you ration enrollment? (We don't have infinite teachers), how do you decide who gets to practice? Lots of filter classes? If the country has 1000 doctor vacancies a year, do you produce 3000 doctors? For the 2000 who don't get to practice, do they maintain their license? Etc... this will increase supply, good thing, which will reduce pay, and reduce student demand. How long do you take to find the equilibrium?

What do you mean by "real, not idealised"? All such things are ideals until put into practice.

Just watched a Bad Sports episode where a champion race driver couldn't break into the sport without become a drug trafficker to pay for it. So yeah that's already happened, just in Florida.

Justice in general doesn't exist in nature. That is a human construct. You will have more inner peace the fast you accept this reality. What we can do is do our best with the resources we have, and be grateful if we were lucky. Our call for justice is because we are in a privilege position.

Nah, it's Capitalism as well. Capitalism depends on the global orphan crushing machine, not just insular countries. There are many, many Einstein level talents that have died without access to necessary education to fully take advantage of their talents simply to keep the orphan crushing machine going.

yep

Yes, in South America too, as long as you pass entrance exams which are difficult af.

This is way more the problem than people missing out on going to medical school when they really wanted to.

Most people who are in the United States and want to go to a high paying career, can take out student loans and achieve something close, assuming good grades. Not that there aren't problems with that scenario, but everyone wants kids to get high paying jobs, society is organized around helping those kids.

Meanwhile, some people would be great authors or philosophers or artists if they didn't have to spend time making the money to survive. Those are valid goals that are being oppressed by the system.

And in the same way the global system is oppressing billions of people who are born as the rural poor and just not able to do much beyond subsistence farming.

How many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in America to a working class or poor family or as a person in a marginalized group?

Or real estate, advertising, etc.

Capitalism wastes talent.

So is in Czechia, public universities are free unless you repeat a year (and even then it is not very expensive and IIRC you pay a single fee, 2500$ Bachelor's, 3200$ Master's, and 20$ (yes 20) Doctor's, all per year - taken from my university). Textbooks are freely available in 99% of cases, the rest costs about 20$ printed but can be obtained for free in electronicformat, IIRC legally.

The quality is not perfect all the time, some curriculums are outdated or taught in strange ways, but it's ever-changing.

Of course, dorms and food are not free. But there are programs to at least partially accommodate that.

Norway is actually a good example of this -- where pro-social regulatory policies (i.e. beneficial not from the perspective of capital, but from the perspective of actual societal conditions) are used to help mitigate some of the BS that capitalism produces.

Regardless... Yeah, it's a problem with capitalism. It's a problem that stems from the literal core of the 'system': utilizing 'capital' to find opportunities for the creation and extraction of 'surplus' from labor and its products.

It's great that regulation is able to reign in, in some cases, the deeply criminal BS that such a system naturally produces... But it seems like a huge overreach to assume this is possible "globally" (as it would need to be for a blanket statement like that to be true).

' Deregulated capitalism' is capitalism so it's 100% a problem with capitalism. And running things for profit with private ownership is the basic definition of capitalism...... so it sure doesn't sound like Norway's free education is 'for profit' unless I'm grossly misunderstanding.

Not just education, but profitability as well. Doctors and Engineers are incentivized more than educators.

Not real capitalism is just as much capitalism as not real socialism is socialism...

just deregulated capitalism

The line between "well-regulated capitalism" and "socialism" is entirely subjective. One man's big government job killing mandate is another's sensible growth-oriented reform.

The last barrier we have to destroy is the formal certification institutions such as colleges and universities. Their careers are not equivalent to knowledge a lot of occasions, even Musk said that in the past. Its more like a social club to meet people...

Yeah we need to increase the size of our medical schools, but investing in education isn't a political priority. The "Why should I pay for sometimes education?" group is loud. "Who cares if it improves the country, I want lower taxes!"

In some other countries-turned-shitholes the reason is shit working conditions and shit salary. By salary I mean 500€/mo

You probably live in a social democracy, universities being public means there's some flavor of socialism (as in social democracy, not communism) in your country, with a regulated free market and capitalism.

capitalists owning the means of production and alienating labor from their workers.

Here. I fixed it for you.

You can still gate these professions like we do today by selecting the bests based on grades (and remove that bullshit nepotism in the US universities). However, if you remove the financial barrier, people that come from poor backgrounds have a chance to try their luck on an education of their choosing and excel at it if they have the skills to do it.

Lots of people still like trade jobs for various reasons, and that will still be true if we remove the financial barrier.

Capitalism can keep people from studying because they need to work instead, or maybe they were in a low-income area and didn't get the chance to go to a good school to get the grades or knowledge they needed before higher education, etc.

Capitalism effects every facet of our lives, even in developed countries where we try to spend money to counter it's damages.

To be fair, it's not just an America problem.

Even just free higher education is not enough under capitalism. You need to live somewhere and eat something while you learn. Also reminds me about one comment I wrote. Here's copy-pasta:

American "left": maybe we shold do some student debth relif? Just a tini-tiny. If you don't mind.

Rest of the world right: universal education, more funding!

Rest of the world center: universal education, state must provide students with everything(including housing and food) so they don't worry about anything else other than learning, state must provide teachers with everything(including decent salary) so they don't wory about anything else other than teaching, state must provide universities with all necessary equipment, buildings must be maintained in good condition(so ceiling wouldn't fall on students' and teachers' heads)!

I feel that innovation flow through me when I go down to the supermarket to pick from my selection of 27 brands of cola based soda, and 39 varieties of plain salted chips.

It breeds inbreeds to be realistic

This is a super important point. As fucking brutal as capitalism is, any move backward will only make things worse. The only thing we can see with any clarity in the past is the church anyway (which was like a thousand year nightmare) since they took the evidence for everything else and won't let anyone see it.

Also, there are mechanisms in place(assuming this is an American post). I know because I'm taking advantage of them.

I'm poor, at a respected university, and about graduate with a Bachelors. Might have spent 3k overall on school. Pell Grant was amazing.

Aint a perfect system, but still works a lot of the time

One can argue that we have two kinds of capitalism. And that would be true for the classic, theoretical capitalism.

However, the modern one favors short term profit and stock prices. Which do not care if economies collapse in 20 years due to global warming, as long as the profit is good now.

The business of student loans is far too profitable and powerful to just quietly go away in favor of your thesis.

I do like your thought process though.

That only works because employers make a higher profit with better educated people.

Only to a certain degree. Exxon's been happy to lay off engineers and programmers by the thousands with the downturn in energy markets. However, they've always got a door open for entry level rig workers and cargo ship deck hands, as these jobs are higher risk and lower reward.

Educated professionals have their place, but sometimes you just need someone to turn a wrench. And because these low-skill jobs are more fungible, the businesses have an easier time swapping out younger and less experienced workers for their more expensive veteran peers.

This is what ultimately keeps labor rates in low-skill industries down. As jobs become more formulaic - more assembly-line driven - the wages commanded by the people doing that labor falls, in an unregulated labor market. Education-added-value has far less to do with it than the fungibility of the person doing the job.

Development is what increases education abilities, not necessarily wealth or Capitalism. It's correct that a side-effect of Capitalism is development, but it's also true that a side-effect of Capitalism is increased wealth concentration and disparity, rather than equitable distribution of resources.

The fact that education increases in spite of Capitalism, rather than because of it, shouldn't be a point in Capitalism's favor.

Debatable, really.

There's actually a lot of new med schools, both MD and DO, as well as a steady stream of foreign medical graduates every year. The problem is not the number of schools, at least in medicine, but the number of ACGME residency spots that remain artificially limited in the desirable (read: high paying) specialties. Tons of family medicine spots go unmatched every year but nobody wants to pay for 8+ years of post secondary education to make less than 6 figures.

There are also tons of law schools but most graduates take jobs that don't require JDs. It's actually kind of a joke now, even if you make T14 it's not a guarantee of landing a big firm partner track gig. It's not the education that's being limited since they're more than happy to take your money in exchange for a paper diploma; it's the actual desirable job placements. Which is the same in almost every field (academics stuck in post docs or non tenure track adjunct faculty, finance guys not making it to managing director, etc.)

Never stop buying lottery tickets!

I kind of get the point you're trying to make but I very much disagree. This line of thinking is one of the reasons US healthcare is so hellbent on pushing PAs and NPs to fill the doctor gap. And it's not working because there is no substitute for a well trained doctor or specialist.

You, dear reader, could almost certainly do a doctor's job after a couple years of apprenticeship, even if you aren't very bright.

That would be feldsher, not doctor.