<p>Who determines who are fit to go to college in Germany? I know nothing about this system, but what if I’m borderline? Or what if I haven’t reached my potential yet? Am I doomed to a lifetime of a dead-end job I hate because someone thought I wasn’t good enough for college? If the heads of the government or school system determines who goes where, then I wouldn’t want to be in that system. There are plenty of people who choose to cut hair or be in construction. Why force someone to do it because some outside force deems them not good enough to do something else?</p>
<p>Ignore Dusterbug. He’s just mad because he’s the only one who doesn’t believe in government funded K-12 education, so he’s trying to make us sound ridiculous.</p>
<p>I just hope he realizes that without strong government, those pieces of cotton-fiber paper he cares so much about are worthless.</p>
<p>I love it when people call taxes ‘theft’. You don’t want a police force? You don’t want courts of law? You don’t want your country to have basic military defenses?</p>
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Taxes: Take money to pay for laws.</p>
<p>Money: Pay taxes with it, only has value because of government.</p>
<p>Laws: Make theft illegal.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t get it either.</p>
<p>Our taxes are what made Public Subways cheap (even though the price hiked up alot) in NYC. </p>
<p>Our taxes are what allows public schools. More then a million public school students in NYC, meaning it is THE LARGEST educational system in America. All paid by taxes. </p>
<p>Taxes have a meaning.</p>
<p>well, we kind of do consider food and housing to be a right. That’s why we have food stamps, low-income housing, and why there are so many legal obstacles to impose an eviction.</p>
<p>Dusterbug and DolorousEdd really need to read up on their social contract theory. particularly the part about the Hobbesian state of nature.</p>
<p>No, not everyone is made for college and there is no shame in not going to college. Saying “you can’t do anything without a college degree now” is just plain ignorant. Both of my parents have jobs with a high school diploma and a GED and make around 70,000 a year plus benefits. My mom works from home and gets paid the same to do the same job as someone with a BA or masters would get paid, not because she has years more experience but because she does a very good job.</p>
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Texas, however, does not.</p>
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Hobbes was an ass; just because I don’t agree with him doesn’t mean I haven’t read Leviathan. And social contracts, while a nice idea, are purely imaginary.</p>
<p>Or, you could stop with the philosophical language that only you think makes you sound smarter and get out with what you mean.</p>
<p>Just going to drop in and say I don’t agree that college is a right.</p>
<p>Hobbes was right about at least one thing; life in the state of nature (absence of society) is ‘nasty, brutish, and short.’</p>
<p>When one expects a society which is a certain distance away from a state of nature, each person must be prepared to pay a proportional price in life, liberty, or property, regardless of whether they directly benefit from each dollar, liberty, or life paid. In our society, that price is largely paid in taxes. If you expect a society which avoids the perils and the woeful inefficiency of a widespread lack of basic education, then your society must be willing to pay for it.</p>
<p>The manner in which the price is paid is at the discretion of the government brought into power by the will of a power-giving constituency. The consensus in our government has long been that a progressive tax system is the most reasonable means of collecting our citizenry’s dues.</p>
<p>btw, no need to be testy.</p>
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Actually, given that we have not observed man out of society, this was idle speculation. Unless “society” means “civilization,” in which case many tribes practicing primitive communism did fairly well.</p>
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At this point, I’m not understanding why you lumped me in with the person who thought taxes were wrong, but I’m willing to keep reading.</p>
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Yes, though Hobbes argued for an infallible monarchy, so I won’t be a fan of his anytime soon.</p>
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Telling someone they need to “read up” on something is both vague and arrogant.</p>
<p>Yes it should be a right.</p>
<p>We used to live in a world where you can accomplish things with a high school diploma. </p>
<p>That is not the case anymore. You can’t do ANYTHING without at least a Bachelor’s, a good amount of jobs want Master’s.</p>
<p>And if you can’t do anything without college then why should college not be a right? All of our society encourages us and tells us that college will prepare us to get a good job. So we go to college, and end up in tens of thousands of dollars of debt.</p>
<p>To sum it up: in a society where one NEEDS college in order to have ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS, yes, college should be a right.</p>
<p>DE: Plato’s Socrates asserts that a philosopher kingdom is precisely 729 times better than a tyranny (some of his stuff makes no sense), but he still makes some very salient points about the nature of knowledge and issues with democratic rule. Hence, there are valid truths to be found in the work of pretty much every major philosopher. Personally, my biggest takeaway from Hobbes is the nature of the natural state.</p>
<p>I misread your posts, and I didn’t mean to be condescending. On both counts, my bad.</p>
<p>Numero1: Which is more absurd; the fact that people struggle with access to an education they need to get a job, or the fact that working in data entry now requires a four-year college degree? Personally, I think it’s the latter.</p>
<p>“You can’t do ANYTHING without at least a Bachelor’s”</p>
<p>Do you realize how ridiculous this statement is? Yes, there are many jobs that require Bachelor’s degrees, but to say a person can’t do anything without one is wrong. That just comes from the mindset of a CCer. Most of us have been trained from an early age to believe that we HAVE to go to college, no matter what. That just isn’t true. For certain careers, yes, you do need a degree for job security and advancement. You fail to realize the many jobs that only require specific job training, certification, or less than a Bachelor’s degree.</p>
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Is this turning into a Lincoln-Douglas Debate?</p>
<p>^the problem is that it is very difficult to support a family on those sorts of jobs. It used to be that you could go from highschool to the factory floor and have an expectation that your family would live a comfortable middle class lifestyle. You would spend money on some nice things, be able to feed yourselves comfortably. You could be a substantial contributor of money to your local and national economy, and most importantly, be a net taxpayer.</p>
<p>This is, by and large, no longer the case.</p>
<p>I might just end up working a labor job out of college anyway; I see nothing wrong with labor. I prefer it to such things as business.</p>
<p>DE: lol not at all. simply making the point that there are salient points in most philosopher’s ideas, even if you don’t think all of his/her points are. </p>
<p>Hobbes’ hypothesis about the state of nature can be supported by extrapolating it onto the stage of international affairs. in world politics, there is no ultimately powerful entity which can bindingly impose a social contract on the world. hence, international politics and geopolitics are fundamentally competitive and wrought by war and competition. It is also very inefficient. Personally, I believe it can be no other way, but it serves as a good example of what happens when humans do not have a power restricting their absolute freedom to do whatever they want.</p>
<p>Who said that not having a college degree meant working a dead-end factory job? My father worked in law enforcement with benefits before he retired, and he supported his family with many luxuries. He didn’t go to college. Before my mom went to college, she worked in a hospital and also had a full-time job with benefits where she was happy. We basically just lived off of my dad’s income and saved most of my mom’s.</p>
<p>I think the problem here is that people tend to assume no college degree means working in a factory or in a fast-food restaurant. That just isn’t the case. There are jobs that just don’t require a college degree.</p>
<p>That being said, of course, if you can get a degree, I think you should, but it’s a waste of time and money to go to college if you aspire to be something where a college degree doesn’t even matter.</p>