Author Topic: Small Government, Big Government: A Mature Conversation Herein Awaits  (Read 6152 times)

Hadriel

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Well, now you know how I feel every time someone assumes I want to let the poor rot in a gutter.

You can't honestly tell me that everyone who shares your viewpoints actually does it for any substantive reason.  But be that as it may, I'd like to know how free education for all is feasible.  I know that public universities in several other countries are free; how do they make it work?  Near as I can tell, the only countries that can do that are relatively small.
« Last Edit: May 29, 2007, 05:51:06 pm by Hadriel »

Kyronea

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Well, now you know how I feel every time someone assumes I want to let the poor rot in a gutter.
It's this kind of stereotyping people really need to stop doing on the whole, all of us.
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You can't honestly tell me that everyone who shares your viewpoints actually does it for any substantive reason.
I wasn't trying to.
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But be that as it may, I'd like to know how free education for all is feasible.  I know that public universities in several other countries are free; how do they make it work?  Near as I can tell, the only countries that can do that are relatively small.
To be honest? I am not entirely certain, as I am unfamiliar with serious administrative duties such as managing a federal educational system.

But if you're talking about affordability, we have the money, in spades no less. We'd simply take some from the military, as we spend almost 50% of our yearly budget on the military, and at least twenty times more than the next closest competitor, spending wise. Most of that money is spent on wasteful hardware for all sorts of various extra-technological purposes that never end up actually serving us very well, as seen in Iraq. We could easily slash the military budget in half and keep up the same number of troops and the same general level of technology, and if we spent half of the yearly military budget on education...I guarentee you, we will once again have the smartest, most intelligent, most educated people in the world.

Radical_Dreamer

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Throwing more money at schools isn't going to give us a more educated society. We need a culture that respects learning, reason, and science. When we have that, we'll find the money for proper education. How do we get such a culture you ask? Well, we're going to need some more money to reform the education system...

Kyronea

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Throwing more money at schools isn't going to give us a more educated society. We need a culture that respects learning, reason, and science. When we have that, we'll find the money for proper education. How do we get such a culture you ask? Well, we're going to need some more money to reform the education system...
You know, I actually did point this out previously, that we would need to influence the culture and the media more towards learning. We could just sit on our hands and watch our educational system rot, or we could do something about it. To do something about it, you need money. Just throwing money obviously won't do something, but as I said, we're not just throwing money at random. Get top-notch researchers in the dealie and figure out what needs to change, how we need to fix things, then get it done. The longer we just sit here whining about the expense and money, the longer our educational system goes on failing.

ZeaLitY

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Sometimes, entire systems of problems seem to perpetuate one big headache. But I think there's something easier than sidetracking the entire culture of the United States towards education. One can start with teachers. Teachers in Finland are respected on the same level as lawyers and doctors, and must go through the same collegiate programs (and will command the same salaries!).

Kyronea

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Sometimes, entire systems of problems seem to perpetuate one big headache. But I think there's something easier than sidetracking the entire culture of the United States towards education. One can start with teachers. Teachers in Finland are respected on the same level as lawyers and doctors, and must go through the same collegiate programs (and will command the same salaries!).
Which would probably be a better idea than I had. There you go, people...don't sit on your hands! Think about the situation and do your best to fix it rather than complain about it! Well done for proving my point, Zeality.

I'll tell you this much...teachers ought to be a lot more qualified than they are, and ought to be paid a lot more as well. There are very few decent teachers anymore, anywhere in the American public educational system, and that's one of the big flaws. Of course, to have qualified teachers...you do need money.

Hadriel

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Raising teacher salaries would be the absolute first thing I'd do to alter our course.  As soon as the position becomes prestigious, you'll have to become very well-qualified to teach it, unlike the sorry state of today's system.  That alone will do wonders, but it still won't fix the problem.  Kids today just don't really care about learning.  And at the moment, what real justification is there for them to pay attention in school when money or athletic ability can buy grades, or when scholarship is almost a non-factor in being accepted by society?  The simple act of being attractive allows you to get nearly any kind of job whether you're qualified or not, and as long as you don't absolutely FUBAR it they'll probably let you stay.  Our entire culture is obsessed with image.

Kyronea

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Once again, that is why I emphasize that the government work with the media to slowly influence people more towards education. The media knows how to sell things, and can sell pretty much anything to the masses that it wishes. As such, if the government works with them and lets them use their skills, we can work some magic on people. We're going to need to in order to compete technologically anyway.

And another thing: we need to drop this odd obsession we have with allowing religion to determine policies. We are years behind other nations in many areas of medical research--the largest being stem cell research, of course--due to allowing religious beliefs to affect policy. We also keep allowing certain areas of the country to teach Intelligent Design, which is nothing but Creationism with a vaguely scientific mask that doesn't fool anyone with any real amount of sense, but will fool impresionable children. (And since we're born extremely impressionable as an evolutionary trait to help us learn swiftly, that's a really bad thing.) We're a laughing stock amongst the world when it comes to just how backwards we are.

Lord J Esq

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Well, now you know how I feel every time someone assumes I want to let the poor rot in a gutter.

Point taken. But you yourself pulled the old "communism versus capitalism" trick a few posts back, which is just as bad. To be entitled to an opinion, one ought to be aware of, and affirmative toward, the necessary consistencies of principle required by taking a given position.

You can't honestly tell me that everyone who shares your viewpoints actually does it for any substantive reason.

You have a second point here, but again you are off the bullseye. Why? Because you presume that "my viewpoints" are shared by a mass audience. At the level of specific issues, there are plenty of people who take a similar position as mine, but on the whole there are very few people who have put enough thinking power into their worldview to arrive at viewpoints most of which similar to mine. Those people tend to be well-reasoned, contrary to your assertion.

The reason I give you partial credit is that you were probably talking about "liberals," or, maybe a shade more specific, such movements as the "feminists" and "environmentalists," and the people who adopt ideology from these communities without thinking it through on their own to a sufficient degree. And, sure enough, these people are a problem.

But be that as it may, I'd like to know how free education for all is feasible.  I know that public universities in several other countries are free; how do they make it work?  Near as I can tell, the only countries that can do that are relatively small.

Many countries, from Canada to Australia, have either subsidized, deferred, or totally free tuition for higher education. It's no mystery how they do it. No new infrastructure has to be built, nothing has to change about the way schools are run (sans the bursar's office), and nobody gets squashed by the system. The way to fund it is to make it a spending priority, at the expense of other, less worthy programs, and to raise taxes to make up the rest.

Kyronea

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The reason I give you partial credit is that you were probably talking about "liberals," or, maybe a shade more specific, such movements as the "feminists" and "environmentalists," and the people who adopt ideology from these communities without thinking it through on their own to a sufficient degree. And, sure enough, these people are a problem.
Part of this problem is, again, education, not to mention the way the media enjoys prioritizing distractions like American Idol and similiar programs over politics, and what little politics it does emphasize, it usually tries to turn into an us or them, only two sides type of dealie like CNN's old program Crossfire, which was thankfully cancelled.

It doesn't help that most politicians tend to play right into this and use it to their advantage to gain power rather than to truly try and change things for the better. Case in point: most of the Republican nominees for President--despite the fact that several of them are pro-choice, pro-gay, and so on--immediately started playing to the Republican base and saying exactly what those bigoted idiots were desparate to hear: racism, bigotry towards homosexuals and immigrants illegal or no, as well as acceptance of torture, a completely reversed position on abortion, and so on and so forth. It was disgusting, really.

But then the system itself has several problems that encourage this from the start. The system is set up so that only two super parties are able to control all three branches of government while smaller parties and Independents who do not choose a party--such as myself--are left out enitrely. The biggest problem of it all is the first past the post system, where the one who is the majority or reaches a certain position takes it all. The electoral college definitely does not help either, as it is a system that was no longer necessary sixty years ago, let alone in today's world of the Internet.

Thing is, none of this is going to change unless the educational system improves. Without education, there simply will not be enough people to truly give a damn to change it, and the cycle will go on. It's almost enough to make me consider--once again--going into politics, but my odds of success are at best limited. I would probably go no higher than State Congressional Representative, if that.

Lord J Esq

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Some unsolicited advice? You shouldn't go into politics if you aren't willing to write fiction.

Kyronea

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Some unsolicited advice? You shouldn't go into politics if you aren't willing to write fiction.
One of the many, many reasons I decided against it, certainly. I'm too honest. I couldn't stand lying to the American people about anything, or fudging the truth.

Oh, and I'd be running as an Indepedent in anything I go into anyway, so I wouldn't make it regardless.

Hadriel

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Well, now you know how I feel every time someone assumes I want to let the poor rot in a gutter.

Point taken. But you yourself pulled the old "communism versus capitalism" trick a few posts back, which is just as bad. To be entitled to an opinion, one ought to be aware of, and affirmative toward, the necessary consistencies of principle required by taking a given position.

It wasn't so much a trick as the fact that I don't really see very many other viable ways to look at it.

You can't honestly tell me that everyone who shares your viewpoints actually does it for any substantive reason.

You have a second point here, but again you are off the bullseye. Why? Because you presume that "my viewpoints" are shared by a mass audience. At the level of specific issues, there are plenty of people who take a similar position as mine, but on the whole there are very few people who have put enough thinking power into their worldview to arrive at viewpoints most of which similar to mine. Those people tend to be well-reasoned, contrary to your assertion.

The reason I give you partial credit is that you were probably talking about "liberals," or, maybe a shade more specific, such movements as the "feminists" and "environmentalists," and the people who adopt ideology from these communities without thinking it through on their own to a sufficient degree. And, sure enough, these people are a problem.[/quote]

The latter are the types of people I was referring to.  They're the ones with the most obviously inconsistent positions.

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Many countries, from Canada to Australia, have either subsidized, deferred, or totally free tuition for higher education. It's no mystery how they do it. No new infrastructure has to be built, nothing has to change about the way schools are run (sans the bursar's office), and nobody gets squashed by the system. The way to fund it is to make it a spending priority, at the expense of other, less worthy programs, and to raise taxes to make up the rest.

OK.  We've got the war in Iraq and the war on drugs that we know need to be slashed.  What else?

ZeaLitY

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Is this some kind of call for a state-controlled culture police to influence film, television, and music towards education?

cupn00dles

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Well, now you know how I feel every time someone assumes I want to let the poor rot in a gutter.

You can't honestly tell me that everyone who shares your viewpoints actually does it for any substantive reason.  But be that as it may, I'd like to know how free education for all is feasible.  I know that public universities in several other countries are free; how do they make it work?  Near as I can tell, the only countries that can do that are relatively small.

Well, Brazil is an enormous subdeveloped country and still our public universities are free and work just fine.