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 can’t predict.

I think a more practical approach is making education free, so at least those that do dedicate thelmselves to study aren’t 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).

I'm pretty sure that's what the university is meant to be, though it fails to live up to the ideal.

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.

I don't think paying people to study would work, because unless a person is getting an intrinsic pleasure from learning, at best, the person will have many facts but no sense of purpose and meaning. Unless the job requires a person to know a specific task, such as the steps for making beer or all the things that need to be cleaned and how to do that cleaning, if one is a janitor. Then, paid on-the-job training makes sense.

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.

The young man in the cartoon with disapproving parents behind him needs to know himself. He needs to know what gives him a sense of purpose, what excites him to take action. "Know thyself".

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.

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). — Mikie

Yes, looks acceptable and even logical. Teaching your researched findings works as peer reviews and also helps you strengthen them.

Modern employment market has turned intellectuals into rats in a mindless race.

Education's sole purpose should be learning, not earning. We should be able to earn as a reward of learning.

I'd say that's only because we're all rats in the mindless race. It's just a part of life in the capitalist world.

Should you also be paid to be an artist even if no one has a use for your artwork?

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

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. — Copernicus

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.

You're paving the way for future artists with your work and theories which would be used by academia.

Does the society have money for this? — ssu

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).

Should you also be paid to be an artist even if no one has a use for your artwork?

Who is doing the paying, and where does the money come from? — Athena

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.

Lets rephrase this.

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.

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). — Copernicus

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.

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.

A sane, educated, and enlightened society wouldn’t steal from the fruits of one man’s labor in order to fund the labor of another. That’s what a society of criminals does.

It would have to be a voluntary, perhaps unpaid effort, as these things often are.

Would you personally be willing to pay money out of your pocket for someone else to study while you work? — Philosophim

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). — Copernicus

I believe work should be done and taxes should be paid by robots while all humans live as monarchs in their bubbles.

A sane, educated, and enlightened society wouldn’t steal from the fruits of one man’s labor in order to fund the labor of another. — NOS4A2

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.

For a brief shining time, in the seventies, there was a Commonwealth Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme Downunder that provided means-tested living allowances to students undertaking their first undergraduate degree. The intent was to make higher education accessible regardless of socioeconomic background — students didn’t have to pay tuition, and TEAS helped cover living costs while studying.

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.

I caught the tail end of the good ol' days in the UK. I got out of University only about £3000 in debt in 1996. My parents helped a bit too.

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.

...socialist... — bert1

:scream:

I think this is a very reasonable and socialist type of ideal for a society, that study itself is work, and people should be payed to payed to work instead of starving. This is also why university loans are such a big business: they know that students need living spaces, food, and time to study, so they figure that you can pay them back later (hah...) I personally had a lot of trouble late in university, and given the stress and challenges i put up with for my degree, it is a little baffling that i had to pay for it...even though I'm not mad about it.

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.

socialist type — ProtagoranSocratist

I don't think it's socialistic because then taxes would also be.

study itself is work — ProtagoranSocratist

Yes. Should be regarded as more divine than government (federal) jobs.

I believe work should be done and taxes should be paid by robots while all humans live as monarchs in their bubbles. — Copernicus

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?

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. — 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.

And you seem not to like work. What's wrong with working? — ssu

Opportunity cost of studying/learning/researching/following hobbies or passions.

You mentioned researching. Why wouldn't it be work? Best work is something that you like so much you would do it even voluntary. But if you are paid for it... and get the obvious perk of not being unemployed, why not?

That's not a formal profession like lawyer or doctor.

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. — Copernicus

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:

That's not a formal profession like lawyer or doctor. — Copernicus

I beg to differ... why would it not be?