It's a shame that one brilliant Turkmen who was born in the lower classes can't afford the chance you're having, a chance that's apparently been wasted on a would-be Seljuk sultan who studies only to further his own prejudices and his own - unfairly - exalted social position.
That is life, some remain herders others own the flocks.
the distinction between classical liberalism and classical conservatism is whether one sees this as a good thing worth preserving
e: and Central Asia is busy being pushed around by every power and superpower in the world; you have readily complained as such. That doesn't seem terribly strong...
Maybe this is difficult for you to accept, but whatever heritage you are part of is largely insignificant(beyond possible cultural curiosity) to the posters here and in the majority of the world.
I notice he spends a lot of time talking about the glory days of the pasts and ignoring everything about the crappy present.
What crappy present may I ask? Central Asia is strong, I don't see any reason to think its crappy. Besides you want to continue this debate, take it on PMs.
I want to continue this debate, and, as I'm not your servant, I'm going to point out, publically, that, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), Kazakhstan has the highest HDI in Central Asia. Which is lower than Trindad and Tobago's. The lowest-ranking "-stan" countries are Kyrgystan and Tadjkistan, which rank just above Guatemala and Nicaragua. If you want to say Trindad and Tobago, Guatemala and Nicaragua are strong...
Besides, I didn't know you were hot for communists, as the aforementioned richest country in Central Asia is ruled by a dictatorship - wherein the dictator is the former Communist Party boss for the region during the old USSR.
I find the notion of an immigrant studying in Canada, of all places, invoking the glory days of Chinggis Khan and Alp Arslan completely laughable. I dare you to tread upon the streets of Montreal, riding a horse and carrying a composite bow. I also find the notion that the Seljuks weren't statesmen quite bizarre; what's next, the sultans of Iconium were toddlers, and the Ottoman rulers ignorant buffoons?
Here is an idea that provides real "skin in the game." Why not require anyone who accepts state aid to provide some sort of civil service for a couple of years after graduation. Then the state could see a direct return on its investment by guaranteeing that it will have educated people available for beaurocratic positions. You could even pay less than you would pay to "real" government workers to reflect the money the government already laid out towards school. Best of all, when they entered the private jobs market, they would have their degree plus two years of experience on their resume.
That idea is so much more progressive than your earlier position that I'm pretty sure I saw it proposed on an episode of West Wing. I don't mean that to sound critical; I'm just trying to acknowledge that you're obviously trying to approach this with an open mind.
I would generally be down with that on a philosophical level. I think there would probably be some implementation hurdles which may or may not be surmountable; I don't know if we have enough civil service jobs to go around for everyone who accepts financial aid. I don't know what impact that would have on people who wanted to try and get a civil service job who were ineligible for financial aid initially. The biggest hurdle I see, though, is that states can barely afford to offer the financial aid in the first place; I'm not sure where they'll find the money to pay all of those graduates even the most basic cost-of-living wage while they're putting in their service.
If the various governments decided to spend money on it, there would be tons of opening in mental health and other social services that require a whole lot of job specific education before-hand. Of course, spending on social programs...
Two of my friends from college were a business and a music major, and both have spent the last couple years working for the county with kids who have behavioral problems.
That's what my wife does, though she works for a private non-profit and not the municipal government.
She also studied psychology and child development for six years so that she could become a professional at it. I think it's awesome that both of your friends wanted to take jobs where they could work with troubled or at-risk children, but after listening to her "how was work today, honey?" stories for a few years, I always feel little bit sketchy about special needs kids being matched up with service providers with no professional or academic background in child development or special education. It's astounding, for instance, what a trained clinician can accomplish with a non-verbal, non-toilet trained 8-year old autistic child that his untrained parents hadn't been able to teach him after working with him every day for the preceding eight years of his life.
I'd be especially leery about expanding that to the point where tens of thousands of kids were being matched with clinicians or service providers who not only hadn't been trained in that field, but who were also slotted into those jobs compulsorily because they hadn't been able to pay for college out of pocket.
Well, one's quitting in a couple months because it 1.) isn't what he wants to do with his life and 2.) lack of budget and parents who don't care are incredibly discouraging. I was just bringing it up as an example of something that someone can do for a couple years out of college that only requires you to care, have a certain level of general competency instead of highly specific training, and isn't just pushing paper in some bureaucracy. There are a ton of different avenues for civil service. My grandfather was a conscientious objector, so during the war he lived in a camp with a bunch of other COs in CO (lol) maintaining construction equipment. Walt Whitman drove an ambulance.
You can effectively cut this "slack" by allowing those who have the means or the capacity to succeed and not just let every Tom, Dick and Harry go.
Or you could make college acceptance strictly merit-based, since there's no real social benefit to providing a college education to everyone with parents wealthy enough to afford tuition.
I am not sure this is true. For example, if a family has a vast fortune and owns companies, estates with lots of staff, etc. then it is probably a good thing to make sure that the heir to the fortune is educated enough to run the whole empire, otherwise the while thing may fall apart and lots of people may lose their jobs.
These cases are, by definition, pretty rare.
Happily developed economies tend to have fewer situations where inheritance has a possibly massive detrimental impact on the lives of many, in part because publicly-run corporations with dispersed shareholdership have better management on average than family-run ones.
And in addition to the points I made above, I have a feeling that the heirs to the fortune 500 aren't going to be going to state schools anytime soon.
Well, that is the winning argument right there!
I do recognize that this kind of private dynastic wealth is extremely rare, and I do generally want companies which are inefficient to go under, but it just seems like letting the kid with his name on the building into your "pure merit" school so that the family business doesn't go under (assuming it otherwise runs well and at a profit) is so low cost to society that it isn't neccessarily a bad thing. This is not the most principled argument, but sometimes you have to just accept that a course of action may be beneficial to society, even though you can't base it on a broadly derived normative principle.
Why doesn't the hypothetical kid learn how the company works by spending several years working at different levels in the company? Why do they have to go to get a college education, when the business itself and the years of experience of it's employees are entirely accessible to them? Why wouldn't that be better for the business, the hypothetical kid and society as a whole?
I agree that these are all good reasons that the heir should just hire someone to do the job, but that solution may not always be available in practice, since families are not always comfortable putting someone else in charge of the family business. This is clearly irrational behaviour, but since we have to accept this reality in at least some cases, in those cases I think we are better off educating the heir as well as we can, both through formal education and through getting on the job experience.
I didn't suggest that the heir should hire someone to do the job. What I'm asking is why a college education is far better for learning how to run a business than actually working in the business? Alternatively, if you want to advocate a mixture of college and experience as the best way to train people for business, why not advocate it for everyone, why only scions?
I think it's ironic that the hypothetical student you have created didn't work hard enough to get into college, without a college education the family business goes bust and when it goes bust the workers who have put so much effort into the company all get fired; so the only possible solution is that the person with absolutely no 'skin in the game' should get a college education.
Alternatively, if you want to advocate a mixture of college and experience as the best way to train people for business, why not advocate it for everyone, why only scions?
They want to "keep it in the family". This allows a family running the business having a permanent monopoly on power. It's very similar to dynasties in political regimes.
Alternatively, if you want to advocate a mixture of college and experience as the best way to train people for business, why not advocate it for everyone, why only scions?
They want to "keep it in the family". This allows a family running the business having a permanent monopoly on power. It's very similar to dynasties in political regimes.
Well, one's quitting in a couple months because it 1.) isn't what he wants to do with his life and 2.) lack of budget and parents who don't care are incredibly discouraging. I was just bringing it up as an example of something that someone can do for a couple years out of college that only requires you to care, have a certain level of general competency instead of highly specific training, and isn't just pushing paper in some bureaucracy. There are a ton of different avenues for civil service. My grandfather was a conscientious objector, so during the war he lived in a camp with a bunch of other COs in CO (lol) maintaining construction equipment. Walt Whitman drove an ambulance.
As someone who is working as an americorps volunteer till 2013 in the summer (i've started since graduating this past spring), I would really like to see the government overhaul and add to the funding and infrastructure of the organization to the point where everyone will start approaching it as the civilian alternative to the military (this would also involve an increase in advertising/awareness). Your options as a volunteer can be diverse (and its NCCC and VISTA programs are continuations of things begun by FDR and LBJ respectively) however it has recently become extremely competitive to get placed into programs, due to the economy with lotsa unemployed people with degrees, unless you apply to some far flung part of the country that not many people look at to begin with. Also while you technically get paid, and receive a limited amount of benefits, it can get incredibly difficult working as a full time volunteer, on a stipend smaller than what most grad students receive, unless you have outside/familial support (which im lucky enough to have).
With my experiences thus far, most volunteers have been people like me who are fresh out of college in a shit economy and are willing to do work that pays slightly less than food service/retail, but looks better on a resume, or people doing a year of service as a stepping-stone to a change in career focus (i/e the paycut isn't drastic enough to turn them away), who tend to be placed in higher-level volunteer positions. I have seen some people who are out of high school volunteering (before heading to something else), but I want to say that demographic has been diminishing with the number of college grads applying. It would be nice to see high school students have a substantial alternative for a federal service program other than the military if they're still directionless college/career wise.
Granted this would require republican congresscritters aboard, and since Americorps doesn't involve blowing things up or killing brown people in faraway countries, i don't see them getting on board in the near future. Also they're too busy mud-slinging americorps volunteers as walking contradictions ("you can't be paying for volunteers!!").
Posts
the distinction between classical liberalism and classical conservatism is whether one sees this as a good thing worth preserving
e: and Central Asia is busy being pushed around by every power and superpower in the world; you have readily complained as such. That doesn't seem terribly strong...
Maybe this is difficult for you to accept, but whatever heritage you are part of is largely insignificant(beyond possible cultural curiosity) to the posters here and in the majority of the world.
I want to continue this debate, and, as I'm not your servant, I'm going to point out, publically, that, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), Kazakhstan has the highest HDI in Central Asia. Which is lower than Trindad and Tobago's. The lowest-ranking "-stan" countries are Kyrgystan and Tadjkistan, which rank just above Guatemala and Nicaragua. If you want to say Trindad and Tobago, Guatemala and Nicaragua are strong...
Besides, I didn't know you were hot for communists, as the aforementioned richest country in Central Asia is ruled by a dictatorship - wherein the dictator is the former Communist Party boss for the region during the old USSR.
I find the notion of an immigrant studying in Canada, of all places, invoking the glory days of Chinggis Khan and Alp Arslan completely laughable. I dare you to tread upon the streets of Montreal, riding a horse and carrying a composite bow. I also find the notion that the Seljuks weren't statesmen quite bizarre; what's next, the sultans of Iconium were toddlers, and the Ottoman rulers ignorant buffoons?
I didn't suggest that the heir should hire someone to do the job. What I'm asking is why a college education is far better for learning how to run a business than actually working in the business? Alternatively, if you want to advocate a mixture of college and experience as the best way to train people for business, why not advocate it for everyone, why only scions?
I think it's ironic that the hypothetical student you have created didn't work hard enough to get into college, without a college education the family business goes bust and when it goes bust the workers who have put so much effort into the company all get fired; so the only possible solution is that the person with absolutely no 'skin in the game' should get a college education.
They want to "keep it in the family". This allows a family running the business having a permanent monopoly on power. It's very similar to dynasties in political regimes.
Or commonly referred to as royalty
As someone who is working as an americorps volunteer till 2013 in the summer (i've started since graduating this past spring), I would really like to see the government overhaul and add to the funding and infrastructure of the organization to the point where everyone will start approaching it as the civilian alternative to the military (this would also involve an increase in advertising/awareness). Your options as a volunteer can be diverse (and its NCCC and VISTA programs are continuations of things begun by FDR and LBJ respectively) however it has recently become extremely competitive to get placed into programs, due to the economy with lotsa unemployed people with degrees, unless you apply to some far flung part of the country that not many people look at to begin with. Also while you technically get paid, and receive a limited amount of benefits, it can get incredibly difficult working as a full time volunteer, on a stipend smaller than what most grad students receive, unless you have outside/familial support (which im lucky enough to have).
With my experiences thus far, most volunteers have been people like me who are fresh out of college in a shit economy and are willing to do work that pays slightly less than food service/retail, but looks better on a resume, or people doing a year of service as a stepping-stone to a change in career focus (i/e the paycut isn't drastic enough to turn them away), who tend to be placed in higher-level volunteer positions. I have seen some people who are out of high school volunteering (before heading to something else), but I want to say that demographic has been diminishing with the number of college grads applying. It would be nice to see high school students have a substantial alternative for a federal service program other than the military if they're still directionless college/career wise.
Granted this would require republican congresscritters aboard, and since Americorps doesn't involve blowing things up or killing brown people in faraway countries, i don't see them getting on board in the near future. Also they're too busy mud-slinging americorps volunteers as walking contradictions ("you can't be paying for volunteers!!").
news on this possibly
Of course those user comments on that article is making me want to boil my brain.