I wonder what Matt Damon’s profit from making that movie is? Has to be something like $19.9 million. I can’t see his personal expenses that could rightfully be considered costs he incurred to make the movie more than $100,000. The rest if pure profit.

Perhaps he thinks of the millions as wages but really any wages you earn in excess of your working expenses is profit for the worker.

The first quote is from
Marks, Percy, “Under Glass”, Scribner’s Magazine Vol 73, 1923, p 47

A very good article on the purpose of college. Odd how we are still having the same arguments nearly 100 years later.

The second is from Websters (1913) via DICT app I use for my dictionary. I enjoy the old definitions.

The third was taken from the text of

Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1900)

A good argument in support of the inclusion of the manual arts in “education. MIT came out of this late 19th century drive to include expression through the manual arts in addition to the speaking and writing in education. Skip over the chapters particular to the set up the school for a well reasoned discussion of the historical bias against those who create useful things compared to those whose education was more academic.

I feared my wording would be misapprehended. My thought on that statement was that in STEM one must have familiarity with a specific body of knowledge in order to be successful. Even though they may develop very good problem solving skills.

Whereas, in the humanities, studying American history as opposed to French literature is far less critical in a non-academic future. Assuming, of course, the student develops some reasonable level of “critical thinking”.

There is no question that the “bigs” (Big govt, etc.) are in bed with one another—same men, different ties.

I disagree, though, that minimum wages, guild wages (union wages) and price controls are a band-aid. They restrict the economy much the same way that a thin pipe controls a water supply. The pipe might be easily pierced and might leak like crazy, but the bulk of the water is still a controlled flow (note how the economy negatively responded to Nixon’s imposition of price controls).

As for turning one’s back on a capitalist, no one who is a true capitalist would. After all even Lenin said: “When you want to hang a capitalist you can always find another one to sell you the rope!”

Speaking of capitalism, a vignette you might enjoy. Matt Damon’s film Elysium was described thus: Matt Damon took a $20 million dollar payday from a film costing $100 million dollars made to turn a profit by espousing the benefits of socialism. There are no socialist filmmakers, only capitalists who espouse socialism (for others).

“A college education has become necessary as a signal, i.e., shortcut, to exposure to a body of knowledge. Those making decisions as to who is the best risk to take when choosing someone to contribute economically to their enterprise do use it as a proxy.”

Yes, that is true. Not long ago I read a good article on universities by a professor. He made the point that there are two tracks you can take: technical or non-technical. Technical is difficult, but includes knowledge that is relevent to a career in engineering, science, etc. Non-technical has much less career application, and is generally used to springboard to a law degree, which means a very high GPA must be maintained. Hence the non-technical track is set up so that it isn’t all that hard to graduate with a very high GPA.

I’m not disagreeing with you that “free markets” are a bit of a dream. What makes me sick, however, are all those people who get apoplectic about market interference when it comes to things like taxes, but suddenly lose all sense of supply and demand when it comes to labour.

All the interference you talk about is a tiny bandaid on a severed artery. Big Business, Big Labour and Big Govt (amongst others) are in bed with each other. It works out fantastically for them, but comprehensively shafts the ordinary people. So, rather than, y’know, solving the underlying problem, they enact laws. Lots and lots of laws. That has the advantage of kneecapping their small and medium competitors, and it tells the little people that We Listen And We Care (Just Not Enough To Stop Screwing You.)

Besides all this, I’m not seeing a counterargument for how immigration is not a way of avoiding that pesky market.

(And yes, yes I am one of those people who trusts capitalism, but wouldn’t turn my back for a second on capitalists.)

But the inacurrate premise in your logic is that the market is truly “free.” It is not.

For example, when unions negotiate wages and the govt imposes a minimum wage, the wage of which you speak is no longer set by any free market. It is established at a predetermined and capricious level by regulation and fiat.

The importation of cheaper labor is actually an attempt to skirt such regulation and fiat and return to a free market (or at least a free-er market). In theory, it’s not really any different than using a business deduction to legally avoid tax imposed by capricious govt regulation.

Minimum wages artificially regulate the bottom level of the market. There was a time when the upper level of the market was regulated, too.

Back in the 1950s, retail pricing was also controlled; in other words, you had to sell a given prodect at a set retail price (it was called the Fair Market Price. Milk is still like that today as the result of the influence of dairy farmers on legislatures). This was destroyed in a landmark case (White Cross Stores v Sterling Drug) which opened the door for the discount health and beauty industry and eventually for discount retailing in general.

I would add to your list of a devalued education:

3) a whoring of higher education from the search for truth and facts to propaganda in the service of a predetermined narrative.

It’s the same sin committed time and again by the media.

No. No. NO.

I keep seeing this economic illteracy, and it drives me insane. Young people weren’t interested in the work at the wages, benefits, conditions, etc., that were being offered. That is the *Free* *Market* telling them they needed to improve what they were offering and/or innovate so they didn’t need so many workers, or else go out of business. Instead, businesses decided to get bypass that.

A huge proportion of American labour misery is the simple fact that businesses bring in cheap labour because they don’t want to pay the current market value. Then, when the next generations get uppity and decides they want decent wages, conditions, etc., they bypass that and bring in some more cheap, pliable workers. A very brief set of examples:

Slavery came about because the settlers didn’t want to pay the market price for white, male labour. You’re still paying for that one. When the slaves were emancipated, the industrialists decided they didn’t want to pay market wages for uppity workers, and brought in Irish, Scots-Irish, Italians etc. (Remember Booker T Washington’s “Cast your buckets where you are” speech.) You’re still paying for that one, albeit less spectacularly.

And now employers are desperately trying to avoid dealing with those icky blacks and, to a lesser extent, working class whites, by bringing in cheap Latin Americans and Haitians. And, now they’re getting uppity (people willing to work for peanuts in the US, generally do so in the dream that their children and grandchildren won’t have to, oddly enough) they’re bringing in Vietnamese, Ukrainians, Somalis etc.

Just. Sit. Down. And. Sort. It. Out. Free advice from a foreigner. Stop kicking the problem down the road for society to deal with later. (And yes, it is society’s problem when you’re bringing in future generations to be house, educated and often fed by the taxpayer.) The free market does not play nice. It often means paying more than you secretly think, say, waitresses or stoop labourers or irritatingly young graduates are worth. Suck it up.

I for one have sympathy (if not agreement) with the left when I see businesses scream blue murder about the free market when it comes to tax rates, but dodge it when it comes to basic supply and demand. I’ll repeat it: people refusing to work for what you’re offering IS the free market.