On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have viable career paths that are NOT being selected because the income simply won’t be enough. We miss out on a lot of talented and motivated individuals that would love to get into a particular field, but it just doesn’t pay as well. Teachers and corrections officers come to mind. The career I’m in was not my first choice, but it pays better than what I wanted to do.
To be fair the correctional system in its current form in North America is primarily constructed and controlled by capitalist interests.
Idk, I’ve never made enough money to live on and at this point never expect to. I’d rather do something I’m passionate about while I die under capitalism, than sit here feeling useless while I die under capitalism. Shit is depressing and unsustainable.
Fully agree with this. Anything in the arts immediately comes to mind. Not just performing arts either - history, literature, and philosophy fields have a lot more uncertainty with income than others.
This is one of the reasons why I favor UBI and universal health care. I think there’s a growing deficit in overall creativity, leisure, and social engagement that the arts and other so-called lower-income jobs provide to society. And its not that people care more about money. You just dont have the option to pursue these jobs when your income level affects life or death decisions for you and your loves ones.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
I had a friend as a kid who made straight A’s the first semester in school every year, then straight F’s to the last semester where he’d pick it up just enough to pass. I remember a teacher laughing at him because his cousin blacked his eye while he was fighting his mother, “Oh, you mean a girl did that?”
Once he got to high school he couldn’t pass the 9th grade because the strategy of passing the first and last semester didn’t work anymore. He dropped out and got his GED. He took the test one time, scored 90% higher than average.
He slept in class every day because he spent his nights prepared to fight his dad when his dad attacked his mom.
I remember in middle school when the regular teacher was out long term for surgery, he handed a test to the substitute and she cried and apologized for not paying closer attention to him. She worked with him after that and he passed her class.
The last time I seen him, he was strung out on heroin and doing nothing. We went to school together from the 3rd grade until he dropped out and I only ever seen two teachers really try to help him. Police came to the school one time to photograph his bruise covered body and nothing ever came of it.
He used to write stories and give them to me on the bus. I asked him if he kept writing. He told me he hadn’t since his early 20s.
I can’t stand to think about how many kids out there have so much potential, only they’re stranded on an island with nowhere to put it.
Fuck man, that’s so sad. You tell it really well, too. I can’t imagine hanging on if the adults in your life kept letting you down that consistently. Poor guy… And like you said, he’s just one person. 0 doubt there are others out there there who’ve got it way worse (not that it’s a contest).
Reminds us to try and be kind when we come across someone who’s struggling. We don’t know their story but guaranteed they have one.
Damn, this was so hard to read and felt so close to me…
I used to be the kid that got the best grades and didn’t care to study in the last semester too. I had severe family problems, and my father also tried to attack my mom.
I grew up left behind and with no one to ever support or guide me. I ended up isolating myself from society to such a degree that my life went downhill and I messed up everything to become a disfunctional adult who can’t evem get a job. I didn’t get into drugs, but isolation and depression did a similar thing to me… I ended up losing all my dreams, stopping doing all tbe things i was good at, and kinda losing even my cognition with time.
I can’t express in words how painful reading about your friend’s story was to me. I feel so sorry for him.
Trust me, it feels very close to me too. I get it. I really do.
I hope things improve for you. We only live once, so make the most of whatever you have. That’s what I do. That’s all we can do.
I try not to resent the world myself. None of us asked to be here, so we’re all kind of winging it.
I believe that beauty is everywhere. I believe that if we spend as much of our time as we can focusing on that beauty and not our own situation, we can be happy. Sure, we have to pretend a bit to cover up the things that aren’t beautiful, but we can find beauty and we can make beauty.
I was a “gifted program” kid with problems at home and undiagnosed adhd. I went from A’s to failing and dropping out and nobody cared. Nobody wanted to know what was wrong. All they wanted to do was punish me.
My daughter just started high school this year. It has became very clear to me that she’s dealing with that. I’m standing outside at her first mental health appointment now.
I’m hoping she gets what she needs here. I’m sorry you got missed. I did too, big time. So did my mother though, and her mother.
Maybe today breaks the chain.
deleted by creator
Honestly, it’s not just capitalism. Education is anywhere from free to really cheap in Germany, and we still don’t get many people from poorer families into uni.
I see the main problem here as a sort of class divide between people with university degrees and people without. For example: if you work in a public library and don’t have a uni degree you will never get more money than salary level 9 (4k/mo) just having a degree and not doing any more/different work more or less instantly puts you on 12 or higher (6k+)
This I think understandably makes people without uni degrees kind of resentful of those who do have them. And if you grow up resenting a certain group of people you are much less likely to join them.
So, no. “Just” getting rid of the cost won’t magically get these people into higher education.
Usually when people are in favour of getting rid of capitalism, they’re also in favour of getting rid of hierarchies such as class divide.
Sure, but one does not inherently include the other.
Capitalism does inherently include a class divide.
How so? In particular how would you compare it to apartheid or India’s old caste system?
Making big jumps in income is mostly luck based (building a company and getting funding for it), but is not inherently bound to some external property, like where you live or who your parents are.
Disagree about librerians because it is skilled profession and good librerian needs to be very educated, but yes,
“Just” getting rid of the cost won’t magically get these people into higher education.
Sure very skilled and such. But I’m not talking about librarians. Just library workers with and without a degree
Well, I don’t know why not librarians library workers would need a degree and it doesn’t make sense for them to have any.
My point exactly. They don’t do anything more than normal library workers, but get significantly more money
Education is anywhere from free to really cheap in Germany, and we still don’t get many people from poorer families into uni.
I am not German myself, but I am familiar with the system. Please correct me if things have evolved, but…
I thought the post-elementary education system in Germany was a tiered system. University admission requires completing the Abitur exams, but one can only feasibly do this if they’ve attended Gymnasium, or the “highest” tier of high school. It may be possible to do if one gets very high marks in Realschule (mid tier), along with Abitur preparation courses, but it’s virtually impossible if one attends Hauptschule (lowest tier). These schools are not intended to provide university preparation, but instead provide a general education to prepare students for trades/vocational careers.
Whether a child attends Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium is decided at 9 or 10 years old, and is dependent on performance in elementary classes and teacher recommendations.
And when one considers that a child’s educational performance is directly related to both familial socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment, it’s not surprising that poorer people are less likely to attend or complete university.
Capitalists’ dominant position within the class hierarchy necessitates exploitation of the working class, and this is maintained by fomenting division. This tiered system is just one manifestation of how society can be stratefied and divided.
It is absolutely possible to get to university after only finishing Hauptschule. You just need to go to BOS after finishing your apprenticeship and then you can achieve a fachgebundene Hochschulreife (maybe even allgemeine, im not sure) and attend University. Few people do it, because the desire is not there, or maybe not the tenacity to study further after already having trained for a job. Also you get Kindergeld and Bafög while studying.
And when one considers that a child’s educational performance is directly related to both familial socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment,
This is true and criticized by PISA every time.
I think it has a lot to do with how much the parents value education. east asian immigrants are famous for how much emphasis they place on education and as a result get into university. The only thing that would help immediately (i.e. does not require behavioral change for a large portion of the population) would be to separate kids more from their families via Ganztagsschulen, to weaken this influence.
Do you know Aladin El-Mafaalani? I think this Interview (in german) with Jung&Naiv is totally worth to watch for everyone that is just slightly interested in that topic of the german educational system, its flaws and how to improve it.
Not being able to afford education isn’t limited to the cost of the education either. If I have to take time to study it means I have to spend every hour of every day either working, in class, studying or working on school projects to also afford to eat and have shelter, and even then I think I’d have to choose between the two.
Not that I think capitalism is good, but how exactly does any other system solve it? And I’m talking about real-world systems, not the idealized ones. Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
Yeah no system is perfect.
Centrally controlled education. We need 500 doctors this year, assign the seats, nobody else can get it. Also, doctors have the same lifestyle as any other professional.
Anyone can study anything for free, sure, great. How long so you let people study to become doctors for? How do you ration enrollment? (We don’t have infinite teachers), how do you decide who gets to practice? Lots of filter classes? If the country has 1000 doctor vacancies a year, do you produce 3000 doctors? For the 2000 who don’t get to practice, do they maintain their license? Etc… this will increase supply, good thing, which will reduce pay, and reduce student demand. How long do you take to find the equilibrium?
Uh, grades.
You take Doctor 101 and get a C-, well the number of students who graded A-B filled the Doctor 102 class. Study up, and either retake the class or take a test to prove you know the information. You scored high enough on your test? Rad, welcome to the class. This is actually what we do anyway so, you’re overthinking things there.
Number of jobs is a weird limitation for gatekeeping professionals. If we only need X amount of doctors, then we’re an entirely healthy world with zero illness and no room for new minds to create entirely new methods and further our understanding of medicine? I want anyone driven enough to practice medicine to do so, it’s the only way we’ll have enough doctors to fix the massive healthcare deficit we’re experiencing. Especially through the above grading methods I suggested.
As for the pay decreases, hard to say really without doing it. If an employer believes your education is less valuable because more people can achieve the same, they’re a shitty place to work and they’ll get what they pay for. There’s also the possibility of those doctors being more affordable actually expanding the availability of healthcare overall.
I get why it’s worth questioning, but it’s broken now so why can’t we try to fix it? What if the fix works? Awesome right? What if the fix doesn’t work? Good thing the current broken system could act as a fallback, right?
Yeah absolutely. We should always be thinking about how to improve systems. I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at it. But we shouldn’t say this system is totally broken. Which seems to have been the overall thesis of the original post
Oh, no the system is absolutely broken. I’m just trying to give you a rational explanation to the concerns you raised. I’ve worked hard my entire life and been screwed over every step of the way. I’m unemployed, living with family, and can’t afford to see a doctor. I apply for jobs but never hear back. I learned Python and Linux just because I felt like it, so I’m not unskilled. Ruined my spine unloading trucks in my early 20’s, so I can’t really do anything manual labor. But like, shit I feel worthless, and I don’t think a functional system would put anyone through that. I can’t even get assistance because I’m “too young and healthy” so like, fuck me for existing I guess.
“No system is perfect” motherfucker we can see how free/cheap higher education works in several european countries and yeah, they use grades to select students, same way U.S. schools do.
Also, how is the free market any better than your first
strawmanconcept? Only instead of the gubmint telling you you can’t go, it’s exceeding expensive educational facilities and the circumstances of your birth.No need for personal insults.
The need for doctors is usually a supply/demand situation, but even then it can be predicted ahead of time, so the universities can open for more students in advance.
There’s never a perfect balance, so certain jobs can also advertised in other countries, creating a sort of job import and export.
“There are no completely healthy people, only underdiagnosed”
I don’t disagree, I just don’t follow how this is relevant in this context?
Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
Also, this isn’t true - capitalism has inequality and unrealised potential built into it.
What do you mean by “real, not idealised”? All such things are ideals until put into practice.
I mean that if your argument is communism, let’s talk about the real world one, not the ideal one that doesn’t exist and will never actually be put into practice. Because comparing a real, existing system against an idea is unfair. So either let’s compare real communism with real capitalism, or let’s compare the idea of capitalism with the idea of communism.
As I said, capitalism sucks, but I’m tired of people making comparisons between the real, actually used capitalism and some made up version of communism.
Real existing forms of socialism kind of solve the problem by offering free education and programs to support poorer individuals so they can participate in society and enjoy their lives. There isn’t a fully democratic socialist country yet but having parts of socialism already kind of solves these issues.
IIRC, in former east Germany you couldn’t just study whatever you want (topic of this entire post). If your parents went to uni, you can’t. Oversimplified, because of course there were options if you were part of the party, but I’m not sure that strengthens the point.
I don’t know how that worked in Russia.
Again, all things are only “made up” until put into practice. You can’t ask for a better idea, then balk at it, saying “it’s just an idea”. Is your position really to never try anything new?
Is your position really to put words in my mouth? If you rephrase it, I’ll answer.
Do you object to trying ideas simply because they are ideas? Understand that this thinking is anti-progress.
No, I don’t, I’m just saying that it’s unfair to compare the actual capitalism with (for example) the textbook communism.
I’m comparing textbook capitalism with textboox communism. It is built into the very system of capitalism.
Not only that, but the people that DO go into those fields nowadays are largely doing so not because of their passion or calling in that field but rather because they want to get rich.
The cliche is Asian parents bullying their kids into it “because money”
Sad.
A fancy car does not equal any respect from me.
Generally reduces respect from me.
It really is ridiculous - I’m in the higher income bracket in my country but drive an almost 15 year old tiny car that uses less gas than most modern cars and people keep asking me if I only got my girlfriend’s car today if I show up with that…
In my limited observation, everything in capitalist societies revolve around money (power) and appearances (illusion).
I hope you are not talking about medicine as the example lists. In a capitalist society these roles remain undervalued and most people struggle for much of their career to pay debts. If you are going into medicine to get rich you are ill advised and foolish.
Actually, I am SPECIFICALLY talking about the medical field though it applies to other fields where you can print money if you have a degree…and your defense of them is that medical school is EXPENSIVE?!? Of course it is. American society has commodified everything that even remotely can improve one’s lot in life. I should excuse the greedy people that are quite literally part of the problem because they pay middlemen too? That’s a logical fallacy and it clearly shows that you are definitely one of these people. The only people who excuse this behavior are in the medical field. Let me guess, you are vehemently against Single Payer healthcare?
How many doctors have you visited that DON’T GIVE A SHIT about their job and just go through the motions after they get their own practice? Personally, 80% of the doctors I’ve visited would fall into this category, clearly only taking the job because it meant MONEY. They don’t bother keeping up with science after school, an overwhelming majority drive a $80,000-$250,000 car and live in the richest towns in the US, are in the pocket of a dozen pharmaceutical reps, prescribing expensive drugs when there are MANY alternatives with equal or comparable results, and treat the nurses and orderlies around them like stray dogs.
Sorry someone hurt you, but this is just a very skewed view. Medicine is one of only a few fields requiring high degrees of training and investment that isn’t keeping up with inflammation year after year. If you just against an upper middle class in general that’s a bigger issue that you aren’t going to solve anytime soon. If you think people aren’t entering the field for it’s payoff, don’t take my word for it look at all the alternatives with better pay and less debt. Sure there are some bad seeds out there, but they are also fools and a minority. I hope you find better healthcare in the future, and I’m all for healthcare reform and you guessed wrong (for Christs sake, I’m on Lemmy - why are you betting against obvious statistics).
Save your bullshit.
Someone didn’t hurt ME. Someone prioritized profits over saving 70,000 lives a year in the United States alone.
We estimated that on an annual basis, universal coverage would save the lives of 68,531 Americans.
Someone (literally anyone who financially benefits from private healthcare) hurt every single person in the United States by killing roughly 68,531 of their countrymen needlessly.
I shouldn’t say it’s all bad: Healthcare is what ripped the mask off of our society once and for all, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that a society built on the fiction of free market capitalism is one that at its foundation, relies on the death and suffering of millions to sustain itself.
Someone once said how many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in Ethiopia?
This is way more the problem than people missing out on going to medical school when they really wanted to.
Most people who are in the United States and want to go to a high paying career, can take out student loans and achieve something close, assuming good grades. Not that there aren’t problems with that scenario, but everyone wants kids to get high paying jobs, society is organized around helping those kids.
Meanwhile, some people would be great authors or philosophers or artists if they didn’t have to spend time making the money to survive. Those are valid goals that are being oppressed by the system.
And in the same way the global system is oppressing billions of people who are born as the rural poor and just not able to do much beyond subsistence farming.
How many Einsteins have we missed out on because they were born in America to a working class or poor family or as a person in a marginalized group?
Less than in Ethiopia
Probably, I didn’t mean to make it a competition. In both cases it’s a nonzero number and every one is a tragedy.
I don’t think the comment was necessarily to dunk on Ethiopia per se as much as to make a point.
E.g. The person who worked out at least a theoretical model for faster than light travel was Mexican. So we are obviously not dealing with this situation in which the most intellectual necessarily are born into western society.
there are lots of capitalst countries in europe where education is pretty much free. what you are talking about is neo-liberalism
Nah, it’s Capitalism as well. Capitalism depends on the global orphan crushing machine, not just insular countries. There are many, many Einstein level talents that have died without access to necessary education to fully take advantage of their talents simply to keep the orphan crushing machine going.
Yes, in South America too, as long as you pass entrance exams which are difficult af.
yep
deleted by creator
I think about this all the time with everything from professions to entertainment. I watch a lot of F1 and those guys are always called the best/most talented drivers in the world, and all I can think of is how the most talented driver in the world is probably a poor kid in India or China who’s starving to death that will never have the chance to develop that talent let alone drive a car.
We are missing out on so many brilliant minds because capitalism requires them to be at the bottom. Meritocracy isn’t real and never will be.
Just watched a Bad Sports episode where a champion race driver couldn’t break into the sport without become a drug trafficker to pay for it. So yeah that’s already happened, just in Florida.
Justice in general doesn’t exist in nature. That is a human construct. You will have more inner peace the fast you accept this reality. What we can do is do our best with the resources we have, and be grateful if we were lucky. Our call for justice is because we are in a privilege position.
I do t care about justice existing in nature. Humanity has always aimed to dominate nature. Let’s do that but in a way that lifts all boats, yea?
How is this good for certain things and not for others? What is the line?
That’s not a problem with capitalism, just deregulated capitalism. In Norway higher education is essentially free
So is in Czechia, public universities are free unless you repeat a year (and even then it is not very expensive and IIRC you pay a single fee, 2500$ Bachelor’s, 3200$ Master’s, and 20$ (yes 20) Doctor’s, all per year - taken from my university). Textbooks are freely available in 99% of cases, the rest costs about 20$ printed but can be obtained for free in electronicformat, IIRC legally.
The quality is not perfect all the time, some curriculums are outdated or taught in strange ways, but it’s ever-changing.
Of course, dorms and food are not free. But there are programs to at least partially accommodate that.
Not just education, but profitability as well. Doctors and Engineers are incentivized more than educators.
’ Deregulated capitalism’ is capitalism so it’s 100% a problem with capitalism. And running things for profit with private ownership is the basic definition of capitalism… so it sure doesn’t sound like Norway’s free education is ‘for profit’ unless I’m grossly misunderstanding.
don’t be obtuse of the sake of it
Norway is actually a good example of this – where pro-social regulatory policies (i.e. beneficial not from the perspective of capital, but from the perspective of actual societal conditions) are used to help mitigate some of the BS that capitalism produces.
Regardless… Yeah, it’s a problem with capitalism. It’s a problem that stems from the literal core of the ‘system’: utilizing ‘capital’ to find opportunities for the creation and extraction of ‘surplus’ from labor and its products.
It’s great that regulation is able to reign in, in some cases, the deeply criminal BS that such a system naturally produces… But it seems like a huge overreach to assume this is possible “globally” (as it would need to be for a blanket statement like that to be true).
Not real capitalism is just as much capitalism as not real socialism is socialism…
just deregulated capitalism
The line between “well-regulated capitalism” and “socialism” is entirely subjective. One man’s big government job killing mandate is another’s sensible growth-oriented reform.
This is one reason why I advocate for free and open source software, this same exact reason. So many poor people/kids can’t afford to pay for software they need that could help them achieve something.
The last barrier we have to destroy is the formal certification institutions such as colleges and universities. Their career are not equivalent to knowledge a lot of occasions, even Musk said that in the past.
That’s an America problem, not a capitalism problem. Free, or at least highly subsidised, higher education isn’t exactly limited to communist countries.
Capitalism can keep people from studying because they need to work instead, or maybe they were in a low-income area and didn’t get the chance to go to a good school to get the grades or knowledge they needed before higher education, etc.
Capitalism effects every facet of our lives, even in developed countries where we try to spend money to counter it’s damages.
That’s a fair point, especially about the low income areas which is definitely also a big issue here in Germany.
Sure, but that’s kind of what Bafög is for. Sure that’s also a loan, but one with very favourable terms.
Doesn’t really help if you never make it to uni because your parents weren’t able and/or willing to help you out with schoolwork and couldn’t afford/didn’t care to get someone else to help you.
Bildungsferne is, sadly, often passed along from parents to children.
To be fair, it’s not just an America problem.
Even just free higher education is not enough under capitalism. You need to live somewhere and eat something while you learn. Also reminds me about one comment I wrote. Here’s copy-pasta:
American “left”: maybe we shold do some student debth relif? Just a tini-tiny. If you don’t mind.
Rest of the world right: universal education, more funding!
Rest of the world center: universal education, state must provide students with everything(including housing and food) so they don’t worry about anything else other than learning, state must provide teachers with everything(including decent salary) so they don’t wory about anything else other than teaching, state must provide universities with all necessary equipment, buildings must be maintained in good condition(so ceiling wouldn’t fall on students’ and teachers’ heads)!
Not everyone can be doctors or engineers or lawyers. We need operational personnel that work in retail, in construction, plumbers, electricians, etc. But this is not bad at all, we all need better work conditions. Since the beginning of humanity wealth has been inherited.
You can still gate these professions like we do today by selecting the bests based on grades (and remove that bullshit nepotism in the US universities). However, if you remove the financial barrier, people that come from poor backgrounds have a chance to try their luck on an education of their choosing and excel at it if they have the skills to do it.
Lots of people still like trade jobs for various reasons, and that will still be true if we remove the financial barrier.
Even then I feel it could be unfair, because not everyone could be great geniuses in their studies and works. Not everyone can be Messi or Bolt
No, but you make sure that the people that could become a genius in their field have access to the right education regardless of their economic status. It would solve a lot of poverty, because right now, it’s a vicious circle.
And what about the people that didn’t born with that gift? those can GTFO?
They can still choose a fullfilling career? Are you against removing the financial barrier for school because not everyone can a be a top candidate in their field?
I really don’t know what you are mad about.
There arent enough top tier positions. Someone should do the dirty work. Clean the shit from old asses, clean the sewers, retail, etc…
I thought capitalism had something to do with capitalists owning the means of production and alienating labor from their work. Where I live most universities are public entities.
You probably live in a social democracy, universities being public means there’s some flavor of socialism (as in social democracy, not communism) in your country, with a regulated free market and capitalism.
capitalists owning the means of production and alienating labor from their workers.
Here. I fixed it for you.
Not to nitpick but I think both of sentences are correct. Labor can mean both the people who do work or the work itself.
