[pc_edwin]

The elephant in the room is the modern collectivist initiative of college/higher education for the common man. I don't how people don't see it, especially the HN crowd..

This article is shows only one of the smaller downstream consequences, it gets much worse. We are talking an entire generation indebted by trillions, entire areas of the economy with staff shortages, "highly credentialed" people working unrelated jobs etc etc

Colleges we always meant to a niche entity. Huge inequalities were not just optional downsides, rather they were structurally essential. Most people shouldn't go to college, most phds and professorhips shouldn't exist and most colleges shouldnt..

This is not a luddite take, i think these things actually should 100x but not like the way it is right now. The issue is socialism.

Government/non-profit funded high education should only be afforded to a very small subset of the population. The gifted.

Everything else should be private and amongst them most should be treated like trades/apprenticeship.

These ideas seem radical/ridiculous but most of what we think of high education these days are a consequences of extremely silly post WWII socialist policies.

I don't even have a massive problem with government funding either, this can be effective but not socalism, nothing like what we have now. More like military research during the WWWII and the early period of the cold war.

[steve_gh]

I don't think what uou are describing is socialism. You are talking about a market economy where organisations take risks in giving people loans for education.

Your alternative (restricting the supply of higher education) based on central planning sounds remarkably like the Soviet model.

[pc_edwin]

Thats the thing, there is no risk. No free market entity is going to write off tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on pretty much most 18 year olds.

Its almost entirely backed by the government in most western nations aka socialism.

In my alternative, we will eliminate government assistance for higher education almost entirely with the exception of highly gifted. Yes this is central planning but it is almost nothing compared to the monstrocity we have today.