waf said:
Evidence? Examples of the most liberalised markets which have seen a gradual transition to this state (i.e. Singapore and Hong Kong) show a better standard of living for almost everyone when compared to a) how they were before such reforms and b) other countries around them with much more interventionalist governments.
As an aside in other ways singapore is a very protective as opposed to liberal state..
Brucemaster said:
1) An individual whose desired career in life is not in demand will not have access to this course, as it is not beneficial to society at the time (as far as i can tell. Thus he/she will be forced in to a course that is not of his/her choosing and/or to his/her liking. This is most likely going to result in a lack of prductivity within both the course and the following career.
This is the very point of wafs suggestion, as currently we as tax payers fund people to study things which are not in demand. As a result they graduate and can't find a job meaning they cant pay us back. Or they have to retrain and do something else etc.
As far as satisfaction goes we are such that when we are paid we feel good and so when we do something that pays us we feel good. People who work solely for satisfaction are few and far between. And furthermore the labour market is diverse just because graduates will be more in tune with the market does not mean that everyone will have to become an accountant. There will still be choice.
Not only that but i cant comprehend how the market plans to place a value on everything. Business/commerce etc. have monetary value, yes but what about the arts, social sciences, humanities etc? You need to explain in more detail how this value will be ascribed.
This is you basically not understanding how the market works. The value of someone who studies arts/social sciences/humanities is determined just like eco/comm students by how much the market is willing to pay them because of their qualifications.
2) Many, if not all, facets of the education system, like the market in fact, rely on competition to increase their skills output. Take the example of the musician. If there are only five musicians in the class who are competing for four positions in a band then competition isnt going to be very hard and as such the talent of the musicians isnt going to develop as much as it would if say 30 musicians were competing for the same amount of spots.
From what i can see, if places in university courses were only offered based on "market demand" then this competition would be completely eradicated thus affecting the quality of students undertaking each course.
The competition would actually be
increased eg if there were a more limited number of places available in performing arts (because of limited interest by investors) the competition for these places would be fiercer. Where previously the top 100 got in now the top 50 get in and so the mean quality increases.
3) If society is only producing what is necessary for it to meet "demand" then society does not develop culturally or socially, only economically. This is only as far as i can tell from your argument.
Competition spurs developement hence society continues to develop, also refer to the better grade of muscians previously mentioned - because of this we have lost street buskers but kept successful muscians hence society still progresses culturally
4) How are you going to define market demand? Who will be the authoritative body that oversees this system and how will demand be decided?
Thats just it there is
no authoritative body in a free market, there would be no central determinant of demand, rather the 'invisible hand' of the market. Demand would be
measured by what areas investors were backing eg if investors bought 10,000 places in engineering and only 50 in gender studies then we could conclude that demand for engineers is high and gender studies low.
erawami said:
The market doesn't give a fuck about your emotions or how you feel. It generally has no way of measuring or taking that into account. You are a unit within the market. I wasn't making a comment on whether this is bad or good.
I disagree the market does take emotion into consideration as much as we as consumers do. It is measured by such things what we give up to work in more ethically rewarding roles eg social worker and how much more we pay for emotional reasons like 'australian made'.
In part why people are not perfect utilitarians because they allow emotions to cloud market participation.
waf said:
Such things would be up to the individual to negotiate with the company. If they choose to keep all profits from ideas generated and developed during the period when the profits are taken after the period, perhaps they'd have a higher percentage of their income garnished. Similarly, if you wanted to negotiate something based on them getting royalties from new concepts you develop, then you'll get a lower percetage of your income taken.
This seems in contrast to the idea of investors buying bulk lots of places, eg the original idea seems to remove any contact between the two parties whereas this suggests a personal contract between student and investor.
I prefer the former arbitrated through a central body as this reduces possibility for exploitation of students by investors and more pertinently it prevents students being uncompetitively bound to a company.
My idea would see people graduate work for whomever and pay back the investor - even if this meant working for a competitor etc. This prevents a company attaining an uncompetitive monopoly on graduates.
Heavy penalties could be written into the contract to discourage such practices.
Given the power discrepancy it could be difficult for students to individually negotiate such clauses hence my interest in a liason between the two which much like a stockmarket organises two anonymous participants to buy/sell shares.
I never said funding through taxes was perfect, and it's next to impossible to come up with an airtight solution without deconstructing medicare.
I second xaymas call to tackle medicare.
Moonlight said:
On that point, the government is supposed to make decisions and laws for public wellbeing. A corporation or other private bodies act according to the imperative of profit and the interests of private shareholders. While their desires or interests may fall in line with public wellbeing from time to time, do we really want to be placing the ultimate choices of what is best for people in the hands of an unelected private sector with different interests to the individual?
Is the private system really unelected though, in some ways they are more accountable than government. Those that make up the private sector exist solely because of our patronage.
On the share system of education. As has been hinted at, areas that are important yet not of practical use to the market, are likely to be neglected or fall into desuetude. In leaving it to the market to determine what is most beneficial and needed for society, it would fail to take into account intangible areas of knowledge that are still very valuable yet have little economic import. Learning history, music or philosophy may not be in demand. But these disciplines have no currency visible to the market. As the old saying goes, not everything that counts can be counted.
Out of interest does anybody know if NIDA is HECS funded or a private full-fee establishment?
waf said:
Then there are two options, of which the cheapest will be chosen:
1. Offer higher pay to caterpillar experts, so that such a course becomes justified;
2. Use capital instead of labour, and develop machinery to do the job instead.
I can't see the second being feasible capital and labour being typically imperfect substitutes and also that I daresay a caterpillar expert would be needed to create a caterpillar expert machine.
Why is our unemployment double what Singapore's is now? Or nearly five times what Hong Kong's was prior to the handover?
It is abit unfair to compare us to these economies because they are (or were recently) developing economies.
