burgessaccount

“Barter” may not be the best term for it, but until the 18th/19th century (varied a lot by location), most people procured the physical goods they needed through their own family’s effort (subsistence); through in-kind payments and mutual exchange (old contracts used to specify that people would be paid in firewood, or candles…); and through favors. The switch from that model to a model of surplus and specialization, where people were paid in cash which could then be exchanged for any number of products, procured from distant places and from strangers, was indeed one of the most dramatic transformations in human history. I think we still don’t appreciate how much it shook up our old systems, and we blame things like divorce rates or child estrangement on newfangled values or bad morals when in fact they are a natural result of structural changes.

I think the article really under-emphasizes the role of capitalism in this. If I need help with my kid, I don’t call my mom, I hire a babysitter. If my mom needs medical help, she won’t call me, she’ll pay a nurse. Goods and services that used to be procured through social bonds are now procured with cash - which creates a feedback loop where people then neglect their social bonds to acquire more cash.

I’m not so sure about blaming social media. I really wish the article had included any sort of concrete data on whether estrangement has actually become more common over time. In my family, my grandfather didn’t talk to his parents because they were alcoholic money-grubbers. My grandma didn’t talk to her dad because he’d left their family to start another family. My aunt didn’t talk to my grandma because my grandma discouraged her from having a career. Reading biographies and history books, it seems like there have always been shitty, “toxic,” or difficult parents, and there have always been disowning, abandonments, and silent treatments. Add to that the fact that our social support structures (babysitting help, end-of-life care) can be paid for in cash, rather than social favors, and you have some pretty normal and understandable dynamics. People barely have time for friends these days. What are the odds that both parents are fun, awesome people you really want to hang out with and spend extra time with? FWIW, I get along great with my parents. But I also recognize that they were better, healthier, more supportive, more present parents than what most of my friends had growing up.

Yeah. I guess my instinct would be this is something platforms have to do while they’re still considered cool? Like Snapchat could have done this seven years ago but couldn't pull it off now?

This feels like when Microsoft pays for TV characters to use Bing instead of Google. It doesn’t make Bing look cooler, it just makes the TV shows look cheap.

No, the test is, does a public high school diploma command more pay than no high school diploma? And the answer is a resounding yes. As I have noted, multiple times, in this discourse, I think there is a role for private education, and I think it can do wonderful things. But It is a costly model whose social and economic benefits depend, in part, in exclusivity. If you hadn’t gone to your “worthless” public school, that doesn’t mean you would have suddenly gone to Dalton. It means you would, most likely, either not have gone to high school, or gone into debt to attend a more expensive school. Presumably you think your option was better? That means that public schools are a net good that should exist.

Or it’s possible that your public school helped make you into the person your professor thought had potential.

Re: Seattle. I didn’t say “the public school system is perfect and never does anything stupid.” I said, “it is a net-good for the government to provide free education, which people can then improve upon with more expensive private or family options.” Surely that distinction will not be lost on a Caltech grad :)

Also, your public high school got you admitted to Caltech, so… worthless??

Okay, well I had the opposite experience, and found that my public high school had made me over-prepared for Yale, to the point that writing 20 page papers was easy. One individual, anecdotal experience proves nothing. That is why I pointed to the overall statistics on high school graduates. Perhaps some public high schools do not make some people fully ready for Caltech (I wouldn’t expect them to??) but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a net economic good. Public schools set a good floor that the best private schools can expensively surpass; public colleges should set a good floor that the best private colleges expensively surpass; public health care should set a good floor that private health care can expensively surpass, etc. that is a more effective system for balancing quality and cost than the current unchecked subsidies for private systems

Of course rising population is at the heart of this. But unless you’re planning to Thanos our way out of the situation, the people in the Western world need to consume less. Less beef, which is hugely polluting. Less sugar, which is toxic and useless. Less paper products. Less air conditioning. And yes, fewer objects. The average American child owns between 70 and 100 toys. The average American woman owns 100+ items of clothing. The average American spends $16,000 on retail items per year. It is too much; it is more than we need. It all takes energy to manufacture, and to ship, and it all ends up in the trash.

I find that statement pretty goofy. I went to an excellent public school - better than many private schools. The overall expansion of public schools since the 19th century has massively benefitted the American economy. Look at the relative lifetime earnings of high school graduates vs high school dropouts. It’s taxpayer money we’ll spent.

Instead of subsidizing the ridiculously inflated cost of these programs through loans, the government should just open a string of bare-bones universities across the country that offer decent job training for free. No fancy dorms, no deluxe athletics, just a free education. Don’t subsidize an over-expensive private market. Force the private market to compete with dirt cheap. (Same goes for health care, too)

That’s exactly right. I work in film and TV, and there are great, high-paid jobs in those fields… if you win the equivalent of a professional lottery. Unfortunately these MFA programs are (of course) not transparent about that. And, unfortunately, the people who can pay to play tend to already be pretty well off.