That's not the online material I was referring to. Many universities have their course materials available for free online. Not to mention other online learning sites.
I think the point is that if you’re going to get a degree in mechanical engineering, you need to study differential equation, and if you’re going to have a well-rounded education, you need to study some history. Both were a requirement in the past, but we’re moving more towards only the former being considered important.
The claim I was responding to was that one needs to go to college to get a "well-rounded education". I don't see why: the information is available for free online, and the value add of getting it by paying college professors to "teach" it to you is, IMO, highly questionable.
most teachers these days use google (or another AI) and before AI they just used google. few exceptions of course but on the large you are imagining some utopia education which no longer exists. I pay insane amount of money to send me kid to private school and she still gets more education at home by wide margin than at school
The issue isn't teaching, it's learning. I don't think it's at all obvious that being taught by college professors is the best way to learn that material.
It started during WW II when the US government put wage and price controls in place so that companies could not compete for employees by offering higher wages. So they competed for employees instead by offering employer-paid healthcare as a benefit. Then after the war, when the wage and price controls were repealed, the employer-paid healthcare system, instead of going away, kept getting more elaborate.
As with a lot of things, such as vacation time, Americans seem to prefer to provide certain social goods as employer benefits because that way it seems more like a reward for competitive merit, which one can show off as a status symbol, than like a universal social good.
Maybe some psychos think of it that way, but no one I have ever met, at least not regarding insurance. Some fringe benefits like unlimited vacation, free lunch, etc, maybe I can agree.
Another way to see it is to ask why a company should be able to reap the labour benefits of their workers and then force other people to pay for their basic needs?
So if the pricing hadn't been "scandalous" by your definition, would it still have been profitable? You do realize that the profits are there because of the pricing, right?
Some clearable people simple don’t want to bother with the process, understandably. This discretion exists in part to allow the government to make a risk/benefit judgment for people they deem critical in these cases.
Big companies make these kinds of exceptions for important hires all the time. This is no different.
You may not like it but that’s how it works and why. It has been this way as long as I can remember. Same deal when they need to read in someone who is “unclearable”. The process doesn’t exist for its own sake.
The other reality is that no one needs to fill out an SF-86 to enable them to do a thorough background check.
To not have to go through the polygraph process at all.
In the case of Bongino, at least, he was in the Secret Service before, and might well have already gone through the TS clearance process once, including a polygraph, which would be a reason to waive it this time to expedite his clearance.
So you think that, for example, every single person who uses LibreOffice is morally obligated to contribute code to the project? Even though the vast majority of them don't even know how to code?
No. Not obviously not every person is obliged to give back to every project they ever remotely used.
But in general, yes. One receives and one can give back.
And contributions can be way more than code. Documentation, testing, good bug reports, moderating forums, hosting events for a coding session, ... or just money.
> It's arguable it never would have been rush approved if it had been someone else in the White House!
I don't think so. Biden pushed the Covid vaccines even harder than Trump did. If Trump had been in the White House I don't think Covid vaccines would have been mandated.
