
Eight Years of College Lets Finns Hide from Labor Market - T-A
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-20/eight-years-of-college-lets-finns-hide-from-labor-market.html
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freyrs3
If I recall from Linus Torvald's biography, he took advantage of his 8 years
at university to write his first prototype of what would later become the
Linux kernel. Sounds like the Finnish system liberated him to work to pursue
important work without having to worry about basic economic concerns.

~~~
chrismeller
I think we can all agree that Torvalds is the exception, not the rule.

Plenty of people, especially those who are younger and don't have families,
spend their evenings and weekends working on side projects after work. I don't
really see a compelling argument in your point...

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DickingAround
I don't currently hold this opinion but I'll argue it for the sake of
discovery: But what if all we need is the exceptions? Torvald's contribution
is many times greater than a single regular person working. Perhaps the total
value generated goes up as long as we find and win the exceptional cases like
him?

~~~
chrismeller
Likewise, I don't know that I believe this, you just triggered a half-formed
thought:

The basis of this discussion was that everyone should be provided as much free
education as they want with no qualifications. If we acknowledge that
Torvalds' contribution is greater than that of a regular working person,
aren't we shooting ourselves in the foot?

If that's the case, then what argument can we make for subsidizing, say, a
History degree? I know several people who have them and none of them are doing
anything remotely related to the field. In that case it would seem that the
education was unimportant (given the vaguely quantifiable criteria we've
established), so why should we have paid for it?

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Scoundreller
"The state also provides grants of as much as 500 euros ($670) a month plus
meal support and loans of as much as 400 euros a month. While education is a
safe haven for students, the economy suffers when they put off joining the job
market and don’t have skills the labor market needs, said Hannu Kaseva, an
economist at ETLA research institute in Helsinki."

The first part sounds like classic labour market whining about having to
compete for employees. Improve your working conditions and compensation and
individuals will choose your organization instead of education. If
organizations require a particular skill, why do they not develop it
themselves, why should the individual take the risk for their benefit?

I too reside in a jurisdiction that fails to train a sufficient number of its
own health care workers, a problem that the Finns have. I suspect the Finnish
schools are full, as are ours, they and we just failed to create enough seats.

I consider not having to work to survive to be a pinnacle of humanity. Health
care is already free of charge in most of the modern world without having to
prove one's worth to anyone, why not extend that to
food/water/shelter/tertiary education?

~~~
snitko
_> Health care is already free of charge in most of the modern world_

This is completely and utterly incorrect. It's not free. Doctors and nurses
are getting paid. Equipment is purchased. Drugs are prescribed. Who is paying
for it? Taxpayers. Therefore it's not free. What you meant to say is that now
everyone has an _access_ to healthcare.

But when you think about it, is it truly a pinnacle of humanity if good things
(treating people) are achieved by doing bad things (stealing from people by
threatening them with jail time and confiscation if they refuse to pay taxes)?
Is it truly a pinnacle of humanity that we treat people yet simultaneously we
also kill thousands of people in wars using the same tax money? Is it really
okay that I have to subsidize a treatment of a smoker who ignored health
advice for a number of years? Or a fast food consumer who ate at McDonalds
every day and now has diabetes? Why should I subsidize their treatment and not
spend more money on my kids, for example? You have no moral right to claim I
OWE these people money. You can kindly ask me to help them out, but if I
refuse, you shall not be able to jail me and confiscate my property.

~~~
rayiner
> But when you think about it, is it truly a pinnacle of humanity if good
> things (treating people) are achieved by doing bad things (stealing from
> people by threatening them with jail time and confiscation if they refuse to
> pay taxes)?

Calling taxation "stealing" is an odd bit of cognitive dissonance. On one
hand, you embrace the law's distinction between mere dispossession and
"stealing" but reject the law's distinction between "stealing" and taxation.
You embrace the right of the collective to create property rights but not
their right to subject those property rights to taxation.

~~~
logicchains
I believe the idea is that the "wrongness" of stealing is based on some moral
principle, not on whether or not people and the legal system consider it
wrong. Many people who believe firmly in property rights believe them to be
moral rights, not rights in the sense of legislatively granted rights (rights
created by the collective).

It's hence not necessarily moral dissonance. It's quite possible for someone
to believe that property rights are 'natural rights', ergo stealing is wrong,
but not believe people have any rights to things they didn't acquire by work
or exchange, hence not view 'dispossession' as wrong.

~~~
tptacek
You can only believe that if you believe you have a natural right not to be
clubbed over the head and robbed blind. For that right to exist _practically_
, somebody else has must work to provide it for you. Now you see, it is the
"taxation is theft" person making the claim on someone else's labor.

