Gomer1800

I hear you, I took umbrage with that comment as well. But I think it’s fair to consider whether we are doing enough for Americans just as we are welcoming newcomers to settle here at the same time? My experience as a native born Californian, raised by a single immigrant mother living in urban poverty is no, we do not. Granted I escaped poverty by self-funding my engineering education (Federal Loans and working full time) but it took the better part of my 20s to do so, at great personal cost and risk. In many ways that experience taught me just how unfairly stacked the odds are against the working poor, let alone their children.

You make a good point about China. It’s still an ethnostate, and I don’t see how it can reconcile such a strong ethnic nationalist identity with its own demographic crisis and competition for labor from abroad.

I think your explanation about large numbers of motivated students pursuing lucrative Non-STEM degrees is incomplete without mentioning the cost of an undergraduate and graduate STEM education in the USA.

The most critical shortages of STEM graduates are in roles requiring advanced degrees. Your median undergraduate education (~$40k) and median graduate education (~$60k) saddles students with approximately $100k in unforgivable student debt! Never mind the years lost that one could otherwise be working. So it’s no wonder students are motivated by the ROI of their degrees, it’s why I chose Computer Engineering over Electrical Engineering.

These are expensive STEM degrees which students on visas are all too willing to pay for a chance at a residency and a pathway to citizenship. So no wonder the majority of undergraduate and graduate STEM students are foreign born in the US. The ROI is not worth it for the debt. We don’t have enough need based scholarships available to finance the STEM graduates this country claims it needs.

Your entry point is a masters and probably Phd in Electrical Engineering, specializing in some aspect of semiconductor manufacturing. It’s definitely not CS.

Yes, thats my suspicion. The department's unofficial mandate is rather open ended so I am trying to make sense of this with limited information.

Ehh, I think you’re projecting quite a bit here. From my experience, side projects are what sets sets students apart in undergraduate. I frequently show around my side projects at career fairs and get lots of interviews as a result.

I think you have a very cynical view of things and expect anybody short of being a saint to be a hypocrite. Sure people care about some things while ignoring others, but that doesnt make them indifferent, there is only so much moral bandwidth a person can handle.

We all certainly have the capacity for it, but by no means can you say each and every person on Earth gives into it. Rise above it or not, its your choice.

Youre a assuming a lot about me. Who says I dont care about drone strikes? You dont know me.

“ most people don't really care about the places you care about”

Youre right, cause we’ve each got our lives to worry about and the world is huge.

But what are you hoping to accomplish by telling me this?

What do I mean by financing violence and corruption?

I mean that the money these organizations make is then used to strengthen the power and reach of these organizations through violence and corruption, the means of coercion. Mexico is a perfect example of how criminal organizations destabilize a country through both.

About moral responsibility...

If carrots were the only food around and the choice were between starvation and buying them, then of course it wouldnt be the consumers fault.

But were not talking about foodstuffs or basic needs here, I’m mainly concerned with recreational drugs whose consumption is not a prerequisite for survival. In this case I think that consumers have some kind of responsibility here to exercise discretion. I just find it deeply ironic that people in 1st world countries are paying for fun times, while their money goes on to destabilize other countries. I’m not sure what it is, but it just feels wrong to me.

Cool, you do you then. But Ive got family in some of these places you seem to care so little about.

Indifference to evil is all the same to me.

I really don't care if people consume/purchase/make/sell drugs if the money isn't financing terrible things someplace in the world. I think the first step to making these kind of guarantees for consumers is legalizing the market for drugs.

I've got friends who grow weed and Ill smoke their stuff anyday cause I know where it comes from.

Hell I would too! So long as I could go to sleep at night knowing my money didnt help finance violence and corruption.

Thats why I really hope we legalize recreational drugs. Tackling supply and the demand just doesnt work, people want them.