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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
We already went over this, but the Iraq war was blatantly illegal in my opinion, even under Bush's claimed CB. It's hardly the only example of a modern great power and certainly not the only case of the United States acting in that manner, but that doesn't make it right, nor should we excuse or even forgive those responsible for making that call, even if it's practically all of congress at the time.
edited 23rd May '16 4:06:17 PM by CaptainCapsase
Wrote something for myself, then I realized how much it fit here.
You know how some jobs demand a degree in a certain field? A piece of paper for which you pay thousands of dollars to attend a hundred hours of classes over several years of your life...and they don't necessarily care to see you demonstrate any skills you might have gained working toward that degree. Because if you were able to pour so much of your attention and your wealth into getting that piece of paper, surely you must deserve it.
Never mind any study you did on your own. If you didn't pay all of that money and spend so much time doing the work in those classes, no degree means no job.
I've always found it stupid that you have to pay to learn to get more money.
Or is that how the system is meant to work? The upper class can afford how to learn how to stay upper class. The lower class has to scrape and starve to learn how to get out of the lower class, working through school, putting themselves further in debt, and then paying that off as they try to climb out of lower class.
But darn, now I sound like such a Berniebro...
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stay
You aren't wrong. Throughout most of history, higher education has been a way to help enshrine privilege, by giving those with enough wealth to afford university the ability to freeze their "lessers" out of high status jobs because those jobs needed a piece of paper that you could only get by going to university.
For just about ever, this was considered the natural, moral order of things. The sensibility that the muck-dwelling peons deserve an equal shot at climbing the ladder of privilege (aside from a few symbolic individuals that are plucked from the pack to give people a faint sense of hope that it could happen to them) is a faint few centuries old and has only become economically feasible in the mid-20th century.
edited 23rd May '16 5:13:47 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's so cruel! I only figured it out after graduating, once I realized that my degree wasn't going to get me enough money, and I'd have to pay even MORE money to get another one. ;/
But this is the Internet age. Everything is online. The only problem is that people don't want to tell you what the "right" information is for free.
Colleges know. Or they say they know. They keep all the best info under wraps and make you pay to find it out. And a degree indicates that you have the "right" information.
Any schmuck could read through the Official Harvard Law School Website and educate themselves on legal jargon if it was there. But that wouldn't be profitable, would it...?
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stayThat makes more sense. I still think that's cruel though.
Isn't that nepotism?
Well it probably depends on the job. If it requires being around people, it would help to have a good rapport with your professor. But if it's a more technical job that just depends on having the right answers, then what your teacher thought of you shouldn't matter.
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stayNetworks of privilege are very real. You might have gotten that teaching job as part of a chain of favors based on how chummy you were with those in power, and you return the favor by acting as a gateway to those networks, passing only those students who satisfy the sensibilities of the members.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"CRUELTY! >:O
Fortunately I don't want to teach. The best thing about numbers is that they don't lie. The people giving them might lie, but 2+2 will always equal 4 so long as 4 still means the number between 3 and 5.
So as much as he wonks on it, I like Bernie's talk of percentages.
Even if they aren't all accurate, you can see the trends in how the rich stay rich and the poor don't get much better.
Yes, that's just sad...
Money is kept by humans after all. If there were like work boxes on the side of the street that would dispense money after you did enough work on them...
Well that'd be a fun-looking future.
But work isn't wholly merit-based, it's largely dependent on who's willing to give it to you.
Well, the reason why you can't generally just self-educate yourself online into a degree is for two reasons:
1) You need to be able to prove you know things.
2) While the internet has increased access to information, it has also increased access to misinformation.
Leviticus 19:34Self-educate yourself!
Prove you know things...well that comes in assignments and tests. I've seen a lot of online quizzes. And special tests that lock down your browser so you can't access any other sites.
Though they can't take your textbook away from you...
And I mentioned the thing about official college sites. If there were more authoritative websites that always had what are considered the "right" answers, like nasa.gov, then people would never even have to buy textbooks.
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stayRelatedly, I just found out that my town's American Commercial College campus closed down a couple years ago because they stole federal student aid funds from the government.
Bad college! It wasn't enough that you were taking money from us!
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stayEh, I've done both online courses and in class courses and quite frankly the online courses left me flailing in a way that having someone to talk to didn't. And then there's the problem that a LOT of those online only colleges are poorly regulated scam machines.
There's a skill to teaching effectively, and some people just can't learn effectively from just reading things online.
I feel like this is getting off topic, though.
The topic was that genuine colleges are already scams. Or at least the way you pay for them.
At least all of the candidates have plans to make it more affordable. Though Trump says he won't forgive loans...
Hillary will.
At least partially.
And of course Bernie will kill debt.
;p
Fixed.
edited 23rd May '16 6:28:45 PM by Keybreak
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stayI don't think it's necessarily even intentional. If there is someone costly that can be done to improve your offspring's chances in life, most well-off parents are going to do it. It's only natural.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayDNC agrees to give Sanders greater influence over party platform
Basically, while it is not exactly what he wanted, Sanders gets to have influence on the Democratic Party's platform befitting the fact that he had done well in the primaries even if Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee. Obviously, it is an olive branch to the Sanders supporters, but one that Sanders himself seems to have accepted.
Wizard Needs Food BadlyThing is, very few businesses are going to be willing to personally test and evaluate all their prospective employees to see if they have the necessary skills and knowledge base to do the job. It's much easier for them if someone can just vouch for the applicants' abilities. That's where diplomas come in.
Being self-taught is mainly useful if you're planning to go into business for yourself.

I wouldn't. Iraq was bad, of that there is no doubt, but it was a vote in which pretty much the whole of Congress got suckered by the Bush administration's lies. Now, if you wanna give Sanders credit for seeing through that and not voting for it, go ahead, but calling Clinton out on it is not something that strikes me as especially fair, especially since Sanders' legislative mistakes were not the result of getting lied to. To continue with the gun example, the only way he could not have known what that was going to end up doing is if he's a) very naive or b) not particularly bright. Since I don't happen to think either of things is true, I'm going to have to assume he could figure it out.