value

Doug Casey on the Morality of Money | The Market Oracle

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… Louis: People say money makes the world go around, and they are right. Or as I tell my students, there are two basic ways to motivate and coordinate human behavior on a large scale: coercion and persuasion. Government is the human institution based on coercion. The market is the one based on persuasion. Individuals can sometimes persuade others to do things for love, charity, or other reasons, but to coordinate voluntary cooperation society-wide, you need the price system of a profit-driven market economy.

Doug Casey: And that’s why it doesn’t matter how smart or well-intended politicians may be. Political solutions are always detrimental to society over the long run, because they are based on coercion. If governments lacked the power to compel obedience, they would cease to be governments. No matter how liberal, there’s always a point at which it comes down to force – especially if anyone tries to opt out and live by their own rules.

Even if people try that in the most peaceful and harmonious way with regard to their neighbors, the state cannot allow separatists to secede. The moment the state grants that right, every different religious, political, social, or even artistic group might move to form its own enclave, and the state disintegrates. That’s wonderful – for everybody but the parasites who rely on the state (which is why secession movements always become violent).

I’m actually mystified at why most people not only just tolerate the state but seem to love it. They’re enthusiastic about it. Sometimes that makes me pessimistic about the future…

via Doug Casey on the Morality of Money :: The Market Oracle

Bachelor’s degree: Has it lost its edge and its value? | CSMonitor.com

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… Once the hallmark of an educated and readily employable adult, the bachelor’s degree is losing its edge. Quicker, cheaper programs offer attractive career route alternatives while the more prestigious master’s is trumping it, making it a mere steppingstone.

Studies show that people with four-year college degrees earn more money than those without over their lifetime, that they are more likely to find jobs and, once employed, are almost twice as likely to be selected for on-the-job training.

This has prompted a stampede through college and university gates.

But studies are like photographs: They record the past. They say nothing about the clear and present danger that the bachelor’s degree is losing value… via Bachelor’s degree: Has it lost its edge and its value? – CSMonitor.com.

Number of PhDs receiving federal aid more than tripled from 2007 to 2010 | Daily Caller

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At some point, the question must be asked:  Is that useless degree worth it?? GE.

… According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, between 2007 and 2010, the percentage of people with a graduate degree who were on food stamps or were receiving another kind of federal aid more than doubled, reaching 360,000… In 2007, 9,776 people with PhD’s were receiving some kind of aid. In 2010, that number had more than tripled to 33,655. For people with master’s degrees, the number spiked from 101,683 to 293,029. Austin Nichols of the Urban Institute crunched those numbers for The Chronicle using census data…. via The Daily Caller.

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