Should People be Paid to Study, like Jobs?
There is infinite knowledge to acquire and discover out there. Even from a solipsistic or nihilistic perspective, pursuing occupation doesn't make sense other than the fact that we humans must pursue subsistence.
So, if I wish to pursue a postpostpostpostpostpostpostpostpostdoc study, I'll likely live starving, not to mention having no family to provide for.
The only logical thing a sane, educated, and enlightened society can do is pay people for both study and jobs and let them choose what they wish.
So, if I wish to pursue a postpostpostpostpostpostpostpostpostdoc study, I'll likely live starving, not to mention having no family to provide for.
The only logical thing a sane, educated, and enlightened society can do is pay people for both study and jobs and let them choose what they wish.
Comments (70)
This is actually an interesting idea. Seems impractical, of course, but it makes sense. We need scholars. We need people out there simply thinking about things. It leads to a better world, but in ways we cant predict.
I think a more practical approach is making education free, so at least those that do dedicate thelmselves to study arent turned into debt slaves.
On the other hand, there should be some requirements not all areas of study are equal. Attached should be some pro bono work, whether in your area of expertise (teaching or tutoring, using skills in specific domains to help build or fix things) or in an unrelated area with pressing needs (if the neighborhood is full of trash, volunteer to clean it up; if the local library or food bank needs help, dedicate some time there).
Personally I think we have a preponderance of bullshit jobs in the sense we could get rid of them without much changes in terms of economic output: Rather, the structure of jobs is there to create a moral caste system of the deserving and the undeserving based upon how much money one has so we continue to make up new occupations to have a chance at survival when we could just limit the economy to the necessities -- which we've already done before in a practical way during the pandemic -- and let people live as they want while distributing out the hours of necessary labor.
Comparing Eastern thinking with Western thinking is a wonderful thing, but unless one is going to be a professor, a writer, or a public speaker/video producer, there isn't much use for that knowledge. Jefferson was quoting Cicero when he wrote of the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of knowledge. That is a lifelong pursuit, and different from learning for the purpose of earning a living.
In the past, before education for technology for military and industrial purposes, teachers understood their job was helping children discover their talents and interest. This education was for everyone even those who had a hard time learning. Unlike education for technology, which is pretty useless education for everyone who is not going to go to college and then hopefully have a career.
Yes, looks acceptable and even logical. Teaching your researched findings works as peer reviews and also helps you strengthen them.
Who is doing the paying, and where does the money come from?
Should a person be paid for all learning, or for selected subjects of learning? How is this decision justified? This is actually a real debate and not all scientific or mathematical efforts are appreciated.
Here are some things being debated..
https://www.google.com/search?q=debated+science+that+should+be+paid+for&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS990US990&oq=debated+science+that+should+be+paid+for&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRirAjIHCAYQIRirAjIHCAcQIRirAtIBCjI3OTUwajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBamkFKRiAFbl&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
To keep social cohesion strong in a society, there needs to be a contract that the vast majority of people accept. The idea of free education until university-level masters degrees is that then these educated young people will then contribute to the society, create wealth and pay taxes. The idea of having an extensive library network and seminars etc. for the public is that it's a service the population is actually very willing to pay. That's where the contract is.
This contract breaks up when some people or a segment of the people are seen to be free riders. The obvious and far more clear example is how societies deal and think of foreigners. If foreigners contribute to the society, they are universally accepted. If someone hates tourists and publicly declares hostility towards tourists, you can be well assured that other people will angrily reply to this person and tell that their family's whole income is dependent on tourists and the bigoted person should shut up. In the other extreme are the foreigners who are intent on draining the wealth from the society and have no intention of friendly cooperation, these foreigners are universally rejected. We call them invaders, foreign occupiers or the enemy and the society sends it's young men to fight these foreigners. We give medals to people that have killed these foreigners.
And in the middle are migrants who some in the society feel are free riders and don't contribute anything to the society while others disagree with this. Enter the normal discourse around immigration... actually everywhere.
Free life long education should be also viewed from this viewpoint on how the society and parts of it think about this. Are there free riders? Are there people depicted in the above cartoon shown by @Copernicus? Is there a thought that this is entitlement for a small crowd that don't want to actually work? Does the society have money for this? If it has income to pay for this, why not? Perceptions are very important, especially if taxes are high and the education isn't free for everybody as likely there will be entrance bars to get into higher level education.
Here everybody can go to the university lectures and get the books from the university library, but they cannot go to the exams and finish the courses. Which is totally understandable, starting from the fact that professors simply cannot have thousands of people attending their courses and then have the time to read all of their exams, for starters. There still is that exclusivity on university education, if it has been for a long time been diminishing as many university level degrees lead to lousy and low income.
At this point, humans need to develop advanced robotics to let them do all the physical and mental labour and let humans enjoy the fruits of production in their own bubbles (libraries, vacations, drug addiction, etc).
The obvious answer is of course not, if there indeed is NO use for anybody.
Obviously we can trace where the checks arrive for the artist. Is it simply social-welfare benefits for an unemployed person or is he or she getting grants or money from the government as an artist?
The question for many smaller societies, just like mine, having any artists, authors or poets around is crucial for our own language and identity. Without them there's no Finnish culture. Without culture, then next in line is the survival of your language and with it the whole existence of your people. In these kind of cases it's totally understandable that the government itself sees a healthy culture. And we have a lot of Fenno-Ugric people as clear examples what happens when that language and culture isn't upheld, but transformed to be Russian.
Would you personally be willing to pay money out of your pocket for someone else to study while you work? You can do that today. Plenty of people trying to go to college who need money. You can find them online fairly easily. So the question is not one of theory, but of practice. You do it, or you don't.
Or do you mean, "Other people should pay for my life so I can study." No. I believe we all have an obligation to care of our basic needs for ourselves and that is not the responsibility of other people if we are physically and mentally able to.
Or do you mean, "We have a pool of tax money. I believe the tax money should fund less of X, and instead be used to fund some people to simply study." In which case, we have a discussion of what as a nation we feel people should actively study and what we expect to get in return for our investment. in that studying instead of other services like feeding the poor, lowering our tax burden, or funding the military.
Oh, if it would be like in Star-Trek. But I think it won't for several reasons.
It starts from things like I do like to engage with actual people when I need a service and I'm pretty confident that I'm not alone with this need. I already hate talking to bots on the phone that cannot understand anything but the most obvious words when trying to connect to an actual employee. If there's an actual human operator, oh the easiness. And why on Earth would this need for human contact change? Or how about having a meaning in life? Do work, not just play and recreation and all that hedonistic stuff. And it doesn't end just there with this issue.
In my view it's extremely naive, simplistic and basically degrading idea to think that with tech humans will come obsolete and we will have masses of people that are just enjoying themselves with the tittytainment and virtual realities they live in. These are based on simple extrapolations that don't take into account real economics and real politics in our world. We will likely manage our current large problems somehow, but we won't solve them. Not with tech. Starting with things like income inequality and there being rich and poor countries. No amount of tech will solve these issue, which cannot be solved by technology. Manufacturing is just a part of the whole society, not everything.
Besides, you just need one great economic depression (which could be starting now with the Trump-slump) and these ideas are as whimsical if fascinating fantasies as Star Trek itself was. In the 1960's the creators of 2001-A Space Odyssey genuinely believed that the world in 2001, now a quarter of a Century ago, would be like what was shown on film. Perfect example of this is that passenger-spaceplane taking Dr Heywood Floyd to the lunar outpost was run by Pan Am. Well, Pan Am might have been the largest international airliner of the day in the 1960's, but the company didn't live to see 2001 as it ended operations in 1991.
A sane, educated, and enlightened society wouldnt steal from the fruits of one mans labor in order to fund the labor of another. Thats what a society of criminals does.
It would have to be a voluntary, perhaps unpaid effort, as these things often are.
Quoting Copernicus
An ideal society wouldn't require or demand humans to do labour or pay taxes. It would let the robots do those tasks while humans focus on their interests and arts.
Similar schemes are apparently run now in Norway, Germany and Denmark.
Skim a little off that ridiculous trillion-dollar pay package and it could be done in your neck of the woods.
It's not economics, it's a choice.
Free education should be easy to justify what with the massive productivity that is possible now with machines of various kinds. Just have to get the means of production under collective control so that it doesn't all get funnelled to private interests. Apparently I've just turned into a socialist. Maybe I always was.
:scream:
However, the logical issue with doing this is that payment tends to be reserved for the fallowing two things:
a) favors that simply can't be done by the client
b) favors that nobody really wants to do
being a student is kinda a grey are; as you've expressed, you'd like to study, college life is an admirable and fairly idealistic type of experience. What the banks and customers want from you though...is for you to complete college, so that you can learn how to perform the a and b type of services i described...the a type of services (done by experts and specialists) are the kind that tend to pay a higher amount and require higher education or loads of previous professional experience.
it is a fairly vicous system, even though i wouldn't be surprised if there's already various schemes to directly pay students. There are certainly "front me my education" schemes beyond high interest loans.
I don't think it's socialistic because then taxes would also be.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
Yes. Should be regarded as more divine than government (federal) jobs.
Would it go so in reality ever? And you seem not to like work. What's wrong with working? And what's wrong in contributing to the society?
Quoting Banno
Actually, the US has a very dismal record in implementing such welfare-state politics. Usually the end result is a system far more expensive and far less effective than it's European counterparts.
Now I think the US puts per capita third most money into education (only such well-off countries as Luxembourg and Norway put more), but it's results are quite moderate. Again, it's up to the few Ivy-league universities attracting the best in the world that makes the US education system look good. But if we look at average education let's say in New Mexico and West Virginia...
Basically the US always creates systems that are inefficient and very costly compared to any other country.
Opportunity cost of studying/learning/researching/following hobbies or passions.
I do not see how the second paragraph follows from the first. If you merely study the universe and everything, what do you bring to the table other than development of your own knowledge of the world? Your knowledge, though is not mine, so why would I, through taxes, fund you? I am all for free education, but why should that be beyond the level at which you, with your talents and abilities, can make yourself useful?
The hidden assumption is here that knowledge is the supreme good in itself. It may well be, but then, why should such a good be personal? What you can do is pursue a career as an academic. When you succeed you get paid to think of all kinds of things, design your own research, get funding for it and off you go :starstruck:
Quoting Copernicus I beg to differ... why would it not be?
Right. I would suggest that should think about why anyone would want to pay him to study simply for the sake of studying, whether that payment occurs through individuals or through groups.
For example, he says:
Quoting Copernicus
The idea here is that robots will handle productive labor, and robots will essentially pay humans. It's a form of slavery, where the robot provides everything the human needs and the human is devoted to leisure (except without the moral problem of enslaving a free being).
The problem is that the robot slave is always someone's robot slave. Therefore it is not the robot slave who "pays" you to study, go on vacation, etc. It is the owner of the robot slave who effectively "pays" you to [do nothing especially productive].
So the same question persists: Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in any way? The whole notion of "payment" is thrown into question if the one "paying" does not receive anything in return.
Well, during the Great Depression, Roosevelt's way of getting the economy going was to create jobs. There were many different kinds of jobs, including art. Our university library building was one of the results, and we can enjoy the amazing works of art. The huge doors are works of art. Going up a stairwell is a huge mural. Around the top of the building are the heads of the great intellectual leaders, starting with the Greeks and Romans, and more. It makes me proud to see what can be accomplished with a good president and the American people.
Art and music go with math and science, and should be part of every child's education.
Because you're an enlightened being, not a motoric unicell organism.
Quoting Tobias
- What do you do for a living?
- I'm a student.
Because in an enlightened society humans don't search for selfish material gains but the sacred things like education and knowledge.
That is a marvelous argument. I sent your argument to myself so I can easily find it. I think what you said is one of the most important things ever said.
I have my concerns about recent political decisions. This might fit in a forum for philosophy if we speak of the importance of attitudes. What I saw in your post was a valuable human sentiment. It is the kind of sentiment that makes people feel good about working together and, therefore, good about their national/tribal identity and the beautiful results that are possible. I don't think those positives are part of what is happening in the US today.
Cutting off grants to colleges that are needed for medical research, because someone uses money to force others to comply with his demands, could be damaging to the US status and its future. I think to some extent, this kind of self-serving behavior of people in high places played into the fall of Rome.
Plato wrote of the importance of having philosopher-leaders who are not self-serving. Funding liberal education and colleges is essential to a healthy civilization, and comparing the progress the US has made with what is happening today might lead a person to think about what Plato's argument.
Perhaps attitude is not the right word, but this is not just about logic; there is an important emotional component. One might even say an evil component. I hope someone can say this better. A leader who is okay with denying people medical care and argues for letting people, including children, starve is a heinous power play. I don't think the leadership of the US today is compatible with Plato's understanding of good leadership.
Quoting Copernicus
But you've answered a different question, namely the question, "Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in a selfish, material way?" The question I asked was this: "Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in any way?" For example, people will fund university scholarships, but only if they believe in the mission of the university.
We have a word for giving people things for their own benefit, and that word is not "payment." It is "charity" or "almsgiving."
If we think about the sort of knowledge that is good in itself (and not as a means to an end), then by that very fact it makes no sense to pay people to pursue such knowledge. Payment is a way of incentivizing someone as a means to an end. An end in itself is not susceptible to payment. This is precisely why Socrates objected to the Sophists.
It is my understanding that when civilizations had money, their governments put a tax on the property that was the source of income. Associating a machine with a human slave seems excessive. A machine is not a human, and I think it makes sense to tax them, as we have a history of taxing the source of income. As we replace tax-paying citizens with machines, we need to adjust.
When I was in high school, and a liberal education (starting when a child is 6) was replaced with education for technology, a teacher who explained this change in the purpose of education, told us to prepare for a time when we would not work 40-hour weeks because our labor would not be needed.
The obvious is happening, and we seem to be blind to it. We aren't making any progress in adjusting to a radically changed reality. How intelligent is that? :brow:
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I do not know if I can be called enlightened. But still, just like motoric unicell organisms, enlightened beings need to eat. Still, you assume that knowledge is the highest good. It may be, and it is in any case reiterating a frequent assumption in both philosophy and religion, but two questions remain: a. Why do you think the pursuit of knowledge is the highest goal? Isn't the pursuit of love perhaps greater? b. Why do you think someone else should fund your pursuit of knowledge? I very much agree that we should make space for knowledge, but we simply cannot afford to have everyone lead lives in pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake.
Quoting Copernicus
Even if that were possible, then you might unwittingly deprive people of a great source of knowledge. Practical skill, getting to know the world through work, may well be a source of knowledge. Not only are you prioritizing knowledge, but also a specific kind of knowledge. Your preference is for theoretical knowledge, not practical.
Quoting Copernicus
I teach students and I am a researcher. It comes as a package deal.
A government could implement a robot tax, but the person responsible for paying such a tax is the robot's owner, not the robot (just as the property tax you speak of is paid by the owner of the property, not the property itself).
The problem could be seen by understanding that no one is paid to, "push back the frontiers of ignorance." Modern research along with the modern research university that it comes from are not oriented to truth per se. They are oriented to advances in particular fields for particular ends. For example, the reason STEM institutions (such as universities) receive so much funding from the government is because the government wants technological advances for the sake of security, industry, warfare, etc.
No one is paying for the end of, "pushing back the frontiers of ignorance." Ignorance is in a very real sense infinite. We could redirect all intellectual effort in the world towards studying ants, and we would never learn all there is to know about ants. The aim is not to, "push back the frontiers of ignorance," but rather to learn some specific thing for some specific reason, such as developing technology for the sake of human prosperity, national security, etc.
But sure, if the OP wants to work at a research institute or a think tank, then he could be paid to "study." Presumably he wants to study whatever he wants to study, not what some institution or think tank tells him to study.
Yep. :grin:
The subject of philosophy does come to mind. There are other directions in which one performs research without having a direct practical implication in mind, for instance archeology or history, literature studies and what have you. It is just that society can spend some amount of money for such endeavours, but indeed we also need defense, sewage, court houses and what not. Of course, we could nationalize the field of robotics. Private property in itself is not a necessary institution, though it would entail a lot of restructuring of the economy. If scarcity is thoroughly eliminated than your endeavor might work Copernicus but until then we need to set precious funds aside, no matter the property regime.
So, setting aside the question of what a good capitalistic, socialistic, or even communistic country ideologically might be inclined to do, shouldn't we first decide if need more of X before we produce more of X?
But, if the question is whether I think we ought all get paid for what we do here (research, discuss, learn), then of course. I've been here like 10 years, and still no paycheck. The problem of course is that I keep showing up, and they won't pay me if I'm going to show up anyway. My guess though is that if I said I needed to get paid in order to keep showing up, I'd still not get paid.
The problem is who or what decides what we need? Do we need more content managers? Do we need more diversity officers? Do we need more oil drillers, do we need more art historians? The need for X is defined by the institutional structure of society.
The invisible hand decides and provides.
Yes. Because I believe theoretical knowledge is the purest form of knowledge.
Quoting Tobias
Does it pay enough to never having to get a job?
No. They're federal robots in a socialist type setting.
Quoting Leontiskos
Tax and government spending is charity? Well, if yes, then that's what I'm proposing. Federally funded education (government job).
That should be good, right? Then people won't have to worry about their taxes going to the "wrong" hands.
No one paid Newton to discover gravity. Look where that took us.
Ohhh Copernicus just believes it. Well that takes away any need for the justification of the claim. Great that that is settled!
Quoting Copernicus
In my neck of the woods, that is considered a job. Full-time, I might add. It pays enough to live happily. As you are a student, maybe you should try talking to someone like that since it seems some further edification on the subject is in order.
It's by cultural assimilation, not by some dramatic and brutal action like genocide. Likely those violent attempts fail and only increase the cohesion of the persecuted people as they then have a common history. But children going to school and learning a language that isn't spoken at home doesn't seem as a hostile issue. The state usually has a central role in this assimilation starting from the crucial decision of which is or are the official languages and if education is given in a local language or not. Hence language politics matters.
One good example is the state of France and the French language. During the French Revolution it is estimated that only half of the people in the Kingdom of France could speak actually French. You had many other languages like Occitan in the south, which now less than a million people speak as a native tongue. When you have a centralized and universal education system in France in French and the only official language is French, then that language is a tool for that cultural assimilation. Same thing in Russia. One of the first things that now Putin's Russia has done in the occupied Ukrainian territories starting from Crimea is to replace Ukrainian schoolbooks with Russian ones and start to demand that Russian is used in schools and that Russian curriculum is followed in schools.
Unfortunately, I can not use AI that explains several ways philosophy has been used to understand the behaviors, problems, and resolutions. I don't feel a need to think on this too much because the democratic principle of equality and my grandmother's three rules are enough for me. Beginning with, we respect everyone. We protect the dignity of others, and we do everything with integrity. This is what supposedly separates humans from apes.
Our morality is in question, and capitalism, based on dominating and exploiting others, should get our attention. Should affirmative action and reparations be considered? Can we imagine a more moral world and act on that?
In some countries, education through college is free or at least far more affordable than a college education in the US. The way out of poverty is education. However, next to ignorance is the bad of elitist education that justifies inequality and contributes to the moral problems, such as dominating and exploiting others.
This is a rather confusing statement, especially when later on you mention socialist federal robots...
I don't think you are taking this proposal very seriously :) The reason why university is so expensive are the teacher's wages.
I guess what you could do is go around your neighborhood, being like "hey! Ill fix your stuff through various experiments, like your cars, like your HVAC, like your plumbing, but you have to let me break it first...just trust me, we can learn this together!", and they would probably just tell you to fuck off and go to trade school.
Yeah. Granted, I think a society does value citizens who care about truth, but I don't think care for truth is incentivized in overtly material ways, such as by giving out money. People who care about truth are valued because they care about truth whether or not they are given money. They are valued because they cannot be bought, and it's pretty hard to give people money for intellectual work without biasing that intellectual work (although we do try, and one example would be university tenure).
Some may find it odd, but there is a direct parallel to the Old Testament prophets, especially when one compares the "employed prophets" to the prophets who are not being employed by the king and must therefore work out their subsistence in some other way.
Of course, professors are given tenure because their work upholds the goals of the institution: a professor will never be given tenure if they play a Socratic role of constant truth seeking. All institutions are fairly political in nature.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
I don't see that as a problem at all.
I actually think that those whose driver is truth aren't incentivized by money anyway, or at least not to the point where that will keep them interested. Managers love those who work for the good of the world because their fulfillment comes from within and they're less interested in keeping score in terms of salaries, bonuses, job titles, corner offices, or whatever. The danger these people pose is that they end up with a disproportionate amount of responsibility and they'll be intolerant of a work environment that lacks respect or otherwise violates some value of theirs, which means they'll be needed but they'll have no loyalty to something perceived lacking virtue and there will be no way to keep them once those values no longer exist at the company.
A company built around those folks will take a massive hit when new management arrives and they'll start filing out the door.
Right, and yet I think it is key to understand that societal values and managerial interests are somewhat different. I want to say that such people are valued by society, and although they pose a liability to a manager that a money-motivated person does not pose, nevertheless I don't think they pose that liability to society.
Well, except when they do pose that liability to society. But I want to say that someone who is interested in truth per se is not the same as someone who is interested in, "working for the good of the world." I think a healthy society does value people who are interested in truth and are motivated to pursue it in itself. Someone who is interested in goodness or love is more complicated insofar as the society is concerned. That's why someone like Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) wrote his encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," which points up the way that truth should always be normative in any endeavor that seeks good/betterment/improvement.
That's true, but the tenured professor is less beholden to the institution than a non-tenured professor. The whole concept of tenure is in part meant to give a professor academic freedom without fear of being fired.
Oh, baloney. I got tenure and a full professorship fairly quickly while periodically publishing on virtually any topic I wished as a mathematician - constant truth-seeking. I suspect you are referring to the Humanities, where political or politico-philosophical cliques abound. And perhaps the elite institutions. I taught in a branch of a state university.
Quoting jgill
jgill, do you even know about socrates? He wasn't a mathematician. So, this is actually expected: you specialized in mathematics, and you didn't read what I said carefully enough to ask yourself what i meant by a "socratic role of constant truth seeking".
Let me help you: legend has it that Socrates conducted his philosophy not by studying quietly, but by questioning people in dialogues. If you don't wait your turn to speak in a university setting, people largely just consider you to be a pain in the ass, and according to the stories about Socrates, that's what happened to him, and apparently he was given a death sentence for it. Part of this was because he didn't succumb to pressures to only speak about and discuss one subject matter, he was interesting in much broader and ephemeral ideas than mathematicians. He was mostly interested in particular ideals, such as justice.
This isn't to say I think that mathematics is worse than philosophy, but you can't accurately accuse someone of missing the mark until you take the plank out of your eye first...philosophy requires study as well.
Of course I know what the Socratic method is. I encouraged dialogue you describe in my classes. But teaching math requires transmitting specific ideas, hopefully encouraging dialogue. This was rarely the case in beginning courses, but more advanced topics available after the student absorbs the basics provide a setting for discussions. And, yes, math is less ephemeral and much more focused than what you must have in mind.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
Or very impolite at best.