My understanding of the issue is they are a private non-profit and in exchange for the tax benefits of non-profit status they agree to not discriminate.
You're right in that pure meritocracy without bias doesn't exist. It never has, and probably never will. However, the post you replied to argued that we should strive for a more meritocratic society, and I think we can all agree that some societies are more meritocratic than others. That's what I take issue with on your point.
I challenge you to name a perfect system in the universe that was created by a human. Just because perfection doesn't truly exist doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it anyway. Or else what's the point in even being here?
I agree. Just because you accept some tax breaks should not, in my opinion, mean that you stop being a private organization. If a university's standard is lowered because the rich, not the best are admitted, that will be reflected in the academic standards of the university and would make it less attractive.
Can I reword that to: "Just because I receive public funding I shouldn't have to act like a publicly funded organization?"
Also, I totally reject this on the basis that education is a public service that allows economic mobility - restricting it to the rich, whether in a public or private setting - is immoral.
"Also, I totally reject this on the basis that education is a public service that allows economic mobility - restricting it to the rich, whether in a public or private setting - is immoral."
So because you have to pay for something, only the rich will afford it? Just like only the rich surf the internet, because AT&T charges a subscription?
I grew up thinking our world was egalitarian, but as an adult I see how untrue that is. I long for a society where privilege is not so pronounced. Where no one is so wealthy while others starve. We don’t live in that world yet, but I do believe it’s possible. We need to grow in to something better. The old ways aren’t working for all but a few of us.
I don't believe all people are equal but we should certainly aim to progress in incremental steps to a society which is more inline with the principles of meritocracy and equality of opportunity.
This may sound beyond the pale, but I think nothing will happen along these lines until banks (at least) are allowed to fail. There's too much socialism among the privileged and too little among the less so. Society is way behind the people who have figured out how to externalize risks, such that equalization is criticized as oppression.
There is no logical way to dispute your obviously-correct suggestion, and yet it will never come to pass in USA. Therefore, USA itself doesn't have a great deal of time remaining.
You're right! If only we had voted harder, a single investment banker who caused the "financial crisis" might have gone to prison for a couple of days. Better luck next time!
(Because all the bankers got rich instead of incarcerated, "next time" is inevitable.)
You can't have “socialism among he privileged”; that doesn't make any sense. If you want to say cronyism, say cronyism, and leave socialism, which has nothing to do with it, out of the description.
The main point of socialism -- broadly construed -- is to secure self-determination for the working class by ending the dominance of the capitalist class. Redistribution of money is just one possible mechanism that might be employed to that end. In that sense, it's no more "socialist" to bail out or give generous tax incentives to powerful corporations or wealthy people than it is "open source" (let alone "free software") to release source code under a restrictive license.
> There’s an old saying that in America we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
Yes, and it's an extremely dumb saying that only makes sense within a particular misunderstanding of what “socialism” means that derives from hostile mischaracterization by capitalists.
(Socialism about collective, rather than private, ownership of the means of production, whereas capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production. The rich in America very much enjoy the benefits of private ownership of the means of production.)
That's the exact misunderstanding of socialism that derives from hostile capitalist mischaracterization. If true that socialists believe that socialism has that effect, but “socialism” is not, outside of capitalist propaganda, a general term for any system which has or seeks that effect, any more than “capitalism” is a generic term for any system which has or seeks the effect of enslavement of the mass of the population to a narrow elite (even though socialists believe that capitalism has—and seeks—that effect.)
The appearance of a meritocracy is necessary so that people don't get discouraged and stop working hard. Almost every large organization acts as if things are fair, otherwise morale would plummet.
The thread hypothesis is that egalitarianism is a merely instrumental value, which we pursue (or perhaps pretend to pursue) in order to keep the workers working. If this theatre dissolution led to less egalitarianism but workers working yet more mindlessly, then that would be fine. You might disagree, but in that case your disagreement should be lodged further upthread.
Unfortunately, all the proposed routes for a better reality start off by heading through a worse one, and no one's really made the trip successfully yet. But people still talk about the utopia just a little bit farther than the previous group went...
That's not realistic for most people. If you don't participate, you go broke. If you're broke, you have no power or voice of real consequence in our society.
It’s easy to find people who want to exit capitalism. I find them all the time. But I want to work to build institutions that will help people do that, at least to a large degree even if not entirely.
To fix the problem of capitalism, you would have to fix the problem of pricing (=efficient allocation of) goods into supply chains, which problem grows as the fourth power of the number of goods available.
It's probably better to keep making our current system more transparent and work for prices to better reflect society's values than to "exit capitalism".
Maybe I'm a pessimist but I don't think it's as possible as you do. The money taken from billionaires/millionaires would eventually dry up. Also, with the incentive to acrue wealth removed, bank accounts are not a renewable resource. Simply too many mouths to feed worldwide.
Does that mean don't try anything? Of course not. Life isn't black and white. I don't believe involuntary taking from those who have to give to those who do not is a sustainable plan. Rather, somehow incentivize those who have to help voluntarily. My suggestion: more proliferation of employee-owned companies.
> Also, with the incentive to accrue wealth removed, bank accounts are not a renewable resource.
I don't think that people will stop trying to accrue wealth, it's more likely they will just do more to get around whatever regulations you propose. For example, Ireland and tech companies.
Except that wealth is quite sticky in the modern world - when you have wealth it's trivial to retain and grow it, it is hard to acquire.
I'd prefer to see a silly non-sense good for parting fools from their wealth, like BMWs and Lambos or the custom cars that run up to a few million a luxury car is a great way to attach a big price tag, get the rich's money - and not deprive anyone of anything useful.
I’m not sure if you’re replying to me, but I’m not advocating for taking money from millionaires and billionaires really. I mean that may be part of an effective strategy but I’m talking about building a world where regular people no longer have to work for billionaires whose pockets those working people are constantly filling via their labor. If the people worked for themselves in a collective model, there wouldn’t be a person at the top skimming all the wealth off the business.
This is such a popular sentiment lately, and I really have no idea where it comes from. The world is getting better by basically any objective metric at an incredible pace. Far fewer people are starving than at any time in history, and even that number only looks to be shrinking as we gaze out into the immediate future.
There are problems to be sure. But if your goal is eliminating poverty...well..we're already doing that quite rapidly. It seems more like this sentiment comes from envy of the super-rich, rather than compassion for the extremely poor. And that I understand, but it doesn't seem to me to be a very good reason to reshape civilization.
Look deeper. I may at times experience envy for the super rich, but that is not what motivates me. What motivates me is the obvious unfairness of a system where wealth determines your influence and where most everything in our world is controlled by a small percentage of the people. That leads to all kinds of problems in society and that’s what motivates me. The poor deserve more than a Walmart full of stuff. They deserve democratic representation in our society.
That's a ridiculously narrow view of what democratic representation means. Is it still democratic representation when some people are barred from voting for no good reason? Subjected to undue burdens or intimidation? Is it still democratic representation when some people's votes count for less, either because of gerrymandering or because of extra seats in the senate and electoral college for thinly populated states? Is it still democratic representation when we can't verify that our voting systems are secure, but can verify that one party is doing everything they can to block improvement? How bad do these distortions have to get before we conclude that we're no more "democratic" than the old USSR? They had elections too, so it's all good, right?
> That's a ridiculously narrow view of what democratic representation means
I don't think the literal meaning of democracy is a "ridiculous narrow representation of democracy". We may agree that the right to vote does not, on its own, in all cases, entirely embody all aspects of the democratic ideal. But it is certainly not a "ridiculously narrow interpretation".
> Is it still democratic representation when some people are barred from voting for no good reason? Subjected to undue burdens or intimidation?
I'd say it is still democracy, but imperfectly implemented. The overwhelming majority of Americans are able to vote. Should it be better? Of course. But the idea that the poor in aggregate are unrepresented politically is ludicrous.
> How bad do these distortions have to get before we conclude that we're no more "democratic" than the old USSR? They had elections too, so it's all good, right?
We're a lot more democratic than the USSR. To suggest otherwise is the height of privileged conceit. Modern Russia is more democratic than the USSR, and if you think our democracy is equivalent to theirs, take a trip over there and try running against Putin in the next election. See how that works out for you.
They vote every couple of years for candidates that are also accepting millions in donations from wealthy donors. No public airtime is provided so they only hear about candidates who can raise money. They go to their workplace where the owners make all the decisions. Collectively most decisions in our economy are made by the capital owners or the political candidates who could raise the most funds from capital owners.
Regular non capital owning people in America have significantly less political power than those with money. That is not democratic representation.
> that are also accepting millions in donations from wealthy donors. No public airtime is provided so they only hear about candidates who can raise money.
Candidates that the wealthy don't like raise money all the time, though. Most rich people didn't like Trump. They certainly don't like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. If your assertion is that money in politics systematically disenfranchises the poor, then you may want to re-examine the current democratic field.
> They go to their workplace where the owners make all the decisions. Collectively most decisions in our economy are made by the capital owners or the political candidates who could raise the most funds from capital owners.
Except that they choose to go to those workplaces. They may choose to do whatever they wish with their own time and labor.
> Except that they choose to go to those workplaces. They may choose to do whatever they wish with their own time and labor.
I’m reminded of the factory workers in other countries whose indigenous land was stolen by the government so they could no longer farm. The one fertile farming land land was used to build factories. And the indigenes people, who no longer had any land to farm on, finally “chose” to work in the factory.
I disagree with you strongly that voting every few years is the definition of democracy if you mean to say it is the entire definition of democracy. There’s been thousands of years of history and philosophy as it relates to democracy and voting every few years is far from the only idea people have had about it. In particular voting for representatives is participation in a representative democracy, which is one kind of democracy. There are others.
> I’m reminded of the factory workers in other countries whose indigenous land was stolen by the government so they could no longer farm. The one fertile farming land land was used to build factories. And the indigenes people, who no longer had any land to farm on, finally “chose” to work in the factory.
Sure, primitive accumulation is a real problem. But you can also follow that chain arbitrarily far back in history and it doesn't really get you anywhere. If you want to go live off the land, that's certainly fine with me, i'm just saying: don't expect to receive the fruits of modern civilization if you aren't participating in it.
> I disagree with you strongly that voting every few years is the definition of democracy if you mean to say it is the entire definition of democracy. There’s been thousands of years of history and philosophy as it relates to democracy and voting every few years is far from the only idea people have had about it. In particular voting for representatives is participation in a representative democracy, which is one kind of democracy. There are others.
Of course, there are many reasonable reifications of the 'democracy' abstraction. However, voting for representatives every few years is very reasonable one, and the idea that it is "not democracy" is simply wrong.
While that's true...if you were to redistribute the wealth of the world's richest people to the world's poorest, you would accelerate climate change by at least an order of magnitude over night.
Except that as I said, things are getting better for the world's poorest at an incredible rate. So, if your concern is the world's poorest, you probably don't want to mess with the current system too much.
If you do still want to mess with the current system, you probably aren't actually concerned with helping the poor.
> That's a false equivalence, because you're assuming that this system is the only one which benefits the poor.
I'm not assuming that, i'm merely stating that this one does. If your goal is to benefit the poor, and you have a system that does so, you should be happy. If you are not happy, it is not because you are upset about poverty.
> The worlds poorest will suffer from climate change the most and this system is only making it worse.
Yes, and unfortunately mitigating climate change is directly at odds with alleviating their poverty. It's a tricky problem.
> If your goal is to benefit the poor, and you have a system that does so, you should be happy.
Problem is these benefits are superficial. On one hand you get cell phones and cheap flights, on the other rivers of plastic and land devastated by mining.
And it isn't even worth it, because a large part of the profit inevitably goes to those responsible for this devastation, so wealth is actually extracted from these places.
> Yes, and unfortunately mitigating climate change is directly at odds with alleviating their poverty.
It is in this system only, which allows it in the name of profits for the powerful.
> Problem is these benefits are superficial. On one hand you get cell phones and cheap flights, on the other rivers of plastic and land devastated by mining.
It's not superficial to the people that are no longer starving and dying of preventable diseases.
> And it isn't even worth it, because a large part of the profit inevitably goes to those responsible for this devastation, so wealth is actually extracted from these places.
So, it's not worth lifting people out of poverty if some other people also get rich?
> It is in this system only, which allows it in the name of profits for the powerful.
You think you've got a design for a social system that would lift more people out of poverty while harming the environment less? I'm all ears.
> You think you've got a design for a social system that would lift more people out of poverty while harming the environment less? I'm all ears.
If you’re actually serious, look up Communalism or Murray Bookchin. There are in fact real and detailed ideas about alternatives that would still lift people out of poverty without a wealthy class extracting wealth from those places and people.
Ok. I looked this up a bit, it seems to essentially be a variant of anarcho-syndicalism. The essential conceit of which appears to be "we're going to do centralized planning, but local, so it'll be good instead of bad". It's unclear to me why this would substantially resolve any of the serious criticisms of central planning (calculation problem, local knowledge problem, etc.)
> Climate change is hard to overlook, for example.
Yes, climate change is a significant exception.
> Income inequality is rising. That leads to more of the kind of statements you’re objecting to.
Income inequality is not a bad thing on its own, though. It is bad when the people at the bottom are struggling to get by, though. And it's the struggling-to-get-by people that are disappearing at an incredible rate.
Your argument would work a lot better without the foul attribution of motive (envy). No, it's not envy, it's disgust - both at a system perceived to be unjust and at a perceived misrepresentation of that system as meritocracy. There's plenty of debate to be had about whether those perceptions are accurate, but none while the "envy" talking point is foremost in anyone's approach to the conversation.
Let's dispense with the emotional imputation, then. The point is: this person is concerned about rich people being rich, not poor people being poor. Anyone actually concerned with helping the poor would look at the current system, and notice the tremendous job it's doing lifting the entire world out of poverty, and do everything they could to keep it going. So whatever the emotion, it's abundantly clear that the only thing this person actually cares about is tearing down wealthy people. To me, the emotion that best explains that fact is envy, but feel free to fill in the one that you prefer.
> Let's dispense with the emotional imputation, then.
Yes, let's. You're the one pretending to read minds and attribute emotion. Stick to facts, bub.
Here's another hint: just because someone's not talking about the global poor doesn't mean they don't care. That's just not the conversation they're trying to have right now. The current topic is inequality in US college admissions. Insisting that people talk about something else is just concern trolling. It's deflection from the fact that those admissions claim to be meritocratic but clearly aren't, thus a defense of both inequity and misrepresentation. Why are you so soft on things that disgust others?
> Yes, let's. You're the one pretending to read minds and attribute emotion. Stick to facts, bub.
Like I said, feel free to insert any other emotion that explains the facts.
> Here's another hint: just because someone's not talking about the global poor doesn't mean they don't care. That's just not the conversation they're trying to have right now. The current topic is inequality in US college admissions.
Which current topic? Did you read the comment I was originally responding to? It was making statements much broader than college admissions.
I think the biggest lie told to me as a child was that if I studied hard and did well in school, I would easily be able to get a good job and be successful. In the real world quickly became clear that connections and relationships have an oversized influence on hiring and promotion decisions. For example, I couldn't even get a phone screen at my current employer when I applied through their standard jobs site. I found a way to get an employee referral a week or so later and went from being just another auto-reject to not only being hired, but being a high performer (for 5+ years and going). I'm sure that merit plays a large role, but I feel that relationships and connections are vastly under-emphasized when adults talk to children, including college students, about how things work. I wish I had known how this all worked much earlier in life.
> "I would easily be able to get a good job and be successful"
I think the misconception is on 'easily'. It took me a lot of work at every possible part of the chain to get to where I am. While it wasn't easy for me to get into a role I am very happy with, I wouldn't have gotten here without a lot of studying and hard work.
going to your lack of phone screen issue, do not rely solely on applying to websites. I don't know what all the best things to do are, but you do need to approach it smarter. For example, try introducing yourself to the recruiters on linkedIn. The reply rate (for me, and for many others that I saw) is about 1/50 - harsh.
I guess the curious question is when you reflecting on it - does this constitute using your network and connections unfairly to get your job?
Should you have insisted on not using those connections and used only the standard job sites? Is this unfair to people who might not have those connections that you did? Are you perpetuating the problems with "the system"?
Definitely I could see it either way. For sure you were smart, entrepreneurial and motivated and successfully figured out how to navigate "the system".
In fact my main thought is that your comment seems like a great example of how it gets very grey about what the right thing to do is awfully quickly.
We are all perpetuating this system every day. That’s not in itself a sign that we’re doing something wrong, as most of us have little power to change it. But I think it’s time we form collectives that have enough power to serve as alternatives to the unfair system we have today.
Agreed - I think the two ways to lessen the unfairness of "the system" are:
- Encourage the growth of multiple "systems" so that the monopoly power of "the system" are distributed
- Face the reality that there will always be some sort of concept of "the system" and address it by teaching people how to navigate "the system" or "systems" in school
I grew up for a while in a non-US country (military brat), and one of the takeaways I got from growing up in a different culture was the expectations that your family, your ties to people, and your ability to "work the community connections" were resources as much as education.
To be considered successful in Italy you had to have those, on top of doing well in school and working hard -- and part of working hard was building those connections.
The US meanwhile has done a great job of eradicating a lot of those ties in a Jihad Vs. McWorld sense, and leaving you as an individualist consumer.
imo That can only be possible if you can change human nature itself. Governments are just hacks for the worse aspects of humanity. There are limits to all known forms of government. Historically, humanity always finds some loophole to cheat.
How do you do that when corruption eventually seeps into everything given time? We’ve already seen it happen. You create regulatory bodies. At first they work. Fast forward a few decades: the people the regulatory bodies were supposed to watch are now in control of those reg bodies either directly or through heavy lobbying
I don't have the link, but it's like how reporting of crime, especially local crime, has gone up like 400% despite the average crime rate dropping considerably. It's doom and gloom on the TV when, in all likelihood, you're safer than ever.
Also, Goodhart's Law. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
There's people who spend their whole adolescence studying for the SATs and their parents pay for every possible tutor and advantage they can find. Side note, my friend's mom got him diagnosed with ADHD so that he could get extra time on SAT (spoiler: he never had ADHD).
Current research shows a 20~30 point SAT1 improvement from specialized coaching [1]:
> From 1981 to 1990, three separate analyses of all the prior studies were published in peer-reviewed journals. They found a coaching effect of 9 to 25 points on the SAT Verbal and of 15 to 25 points on the SAT Math. In 2004, Derek Briggs, using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, found effects of 3 to 20 points for the SAT Verbal and 10 to 28 points for the SAT Math. Donald Powers and Donald Rock, using a nationally representative sample of students who took the SAT after its revisions in the mid-1990s, found an average coaching effect of 6 to 12 points on the SAT Verbal and 13 to 18 points on the SAT Math.
I have not seen any studies on
the effect of accomodations, though.
I think the amount parents will pay for those relatively meagre extra points, and the fact that the parents in this case had to resort open bribery, speaks relatively well for the meritocraticness of the current system.
Open the books, show us that nothing is being swept under the rug, and just let the undeserving children of millionaires go to third tier schools.
it's not a horrible idea. it's at least an interesting one. it's completely doable, but rich folk gonna find a bill sized hole to jam money thru no matter what.
That seems worse - reducing them to raw data rather than giving them a chance to explain where they’re coming from and what they want to get out of the course?
Interviews tend to favor wealthy, white applicants. Who do you think is going to leave a better impression on the interviewer: someone from an upper class family that has been coached in manners most of their life, knows what to wear, and has practiced these interviews? Or someone from a very different cultural background?
Furthermore, the Harvard case has also demonstrated that interviews are used as a tool to suppress the chances of Asian applicants. While it may seem cold to reduce candidates to their applications, if the goal is to provide a consistent admissions process interviews are not a good choice.
As long as we're willing to expand standardized testing, I agree. So much effort goes towards eliminating bias in hiring, especially for white collar jobs, yet the portal to those jobs is couched in bias.
The only way to beat corruption is by shining a huge spotlight on it and remove every spot people have to hide.
I'll say the opposite - all college donations and income should be publicly available as soon as the ACH transaction clears. Questionable sources immediately flagged. Make every single dollar within the education system completely transparent. Then if some kid gets admitted, and we also see their parents made a $5 million donation, we can go ahead and appropriately stain that kid's admission.
What about the kids who really earned that admittance and their parents made a sizable donation? Then the parents donate their funds to another educational institution. Or the kid attends another institution. Wherever these two actions overlap - immediately assume fraud over anything else.
On bribes directly to individuals - their funds are all publicly available as well. If that's a problem, there are millions of other jobs they could pursue rather than being a useless parasite on the education system.
I found it difficult to get upset over the original scandal knowing that this was considered the "correct" way to buy an admission. In my view, either both of these should be considered fraud/bribery and outlawed, or neither of them should be.
The difference is with public donations, it benefits the entire student body. It subsidizes the cost of attending the university for everyone at the expense of a few people. With the scandal of bribing officials, it only enriches the officials.
It's not completely egalitarian, insider influence plays an out-sized role in many areas of society, but that doesn't mean it is the only thing that matters. In the US at least, we still live in a society that has historically unprecedented (though unfortunately dwindling) class mobility. It's easy to look at the college scandal and think that's the only way anyone gets in, but in reality that only represents a fraction (perhaps a sizable one, but not the majority) of things.
I'm not trying to claim that this is a huge problem, I'm trying to make a principled argument: I don't think there is a big difference between donating to a school and bribing a coach. Both of these things are bribery.
The reason the former is considered acceptable is because the universities have spent decades making us think that this is a normal, reasonable thing. And telling us not to worry, because they would never allow themselves to be influenced by a donation when making admissions decisions. This is plainly false. University administrators are fucking hypocrites.
I can't disagree with any of what you wrote. I agree with it all. I just want to avoid the generalization that that's how everything works or how everyone "gets ahead" in life.
This isn’t even in the same ballpark as the Rick Singer stuff. Bribing a coach to use his influence to get you admitted is waaaaaay worse than donating money to a school with the (universal!) understanding that this will help your kid’s chances.
Donating to a university presumably benefits all students (in the form of a new building or whatever). Bribing a coach only benefits that single individual.
Because when you donate to a university, that money goes into either improving the university (new buildings or renovations and updated equipment) or helping with university expenses such as maintenance. i.e. it subsidizes the cost of attending the university for everyone at the expense of a very few wealthy families.
When you just bribe the coach, it helps no one but the coach.
Again, whether "it benefits everyone" or "private universities should be allowed to use whatever criteria they want" -- I don't care for arguments about whether the ends justify the means. I'm arguing that the act itself is immoral.
You are paying money to {univeristy|coach}, with the expectation that (a) the payment will help your kid's admissions prospects, and (b) {university|coach} will maintain the facade that money did not have any influence.
I don't disagree with you. At the same time, I don't feel that we should ignore the outcome, since they are consistent, and donations are pragmatic for everyone. The real world isn't fair, but public bribes to a uni are a lot more fair than private bribes to individuals.
> {university|coach} will maintain the facade that money did not have any influence
That's not really true though. For the coach, sure, as the payments happen is secret. But for the school? If I buy Harvard a new building and get my name put on it, everybody knows about it, and nobody is surprised when my kid gets admitted.
Donations paid to the university are used to fund generous scholarships to students that would otherwise not have been able to attend. Stanford doesn't charge tuition for families making less than $125,000. And ~30% of their undergraduate population are first generation college students. Would the university be able to afford this if the donations-for-easier-admissions scheme didn't exist? Maybe, maybe not, but the reality is that the resources of universities does come in large part from the patronage of wealthy people.
I don't agree. Both of these things are bribery. You are using money to buy an advantage. The only difference is who gets paid.
Donations are currently considered an acceptable form of bribery because the universities have spent decades crafting the narrative that a donation doesn't actually affect an applicant's prospects. But this is plainly not true.
If you want to have a moral leg to stand on with your distinction, we should require universities to be transparent about which donations are buying spots for which students.
In a state school, it's obvious that this is wrong since this would be a violation of equal protection. However, I'm not sure I understand what is wrong about buying an advantage at a private school. Does a private school have some statutory responsibility to be "fair?" Does anyone have an inherent right to go to a private school? Sure, we're supposed to be outraged and pretend we are angry about a rich person getting accepted to Harvard because their mom donated $10 million towards a new medical library -- but is that really unfair or unjust? Is the rich kid going to Harvard preventing the poor kid from going to UMass? If you donate millions to a school, shouldn't that earn you the right to go there? You're literally paying for the school to exist.
We could make this more fair though by ending tax exemptions for universities (specifically their endowments.) If they are to benefit from public subsidization, then there is at least some moral obligation to serve society a bit more fairly than they do now. It is quite unfair that one can donate $10 million to Harvard, enjoy the tax deduction from the charitable donation and, at the same time, receive a financially valuable benefit of your child's admission into the school. It would be like me donating a tax-deductible $10 million to an airport and my child getting free Gulfstream flights for four years as an untaxed benefit. If we eliminate the tax exemption, then there's no conflict of interest -- now, it's just a business transaction rather than a business transaction masquerading as philanthropy.
This is a bit tautological, but the definition of bribery includes doing something that’s illegal. If donations to a school—along with the expectation of advantage—aren’t illegal, then it isn’t bribery.
I'm not sure that the defense, "But other people were doing it, even with the school's approval!" Is much of a defense here. Other people doing bad things generally doesn't exempt a person from prosecution for their own bad actions. That the school was soliciting such bribes just means they may have their own criminal liability.
Nothing is wrong, by definition, with legal exchanges. The crux of the argument here is specifically that this quid-pro-quo was not legal, that it was obtained or solicited fraudulently.
Did anyone else notice the reframing the article ends on? It spends every paragraph on 7-figure donations, then concludes with a quote that no one cares about families that make $100k donations.
Clearly Mr. Brunold wants people to focus on the $50k to $100k donation range that doesn't grant an admissions advantage, but no one seems to care about those other than him (and maybe the WSJ).
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadI challenge you to name a perfect system in the universe that was created by a human. Just because perfection doesn't truly exist doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it anyway. Or else what's the point in even being here?
Also, I totally reject this on the basis that education is a public service that allows economic mobility - restricting it to the rich, whether in a public or private setting - is immoral.
So because you have to pay for something, only the rich will afford it? Just like only the rich surf the internet, because AT&T charges a subscription?
Not with that attitude it won't!
(Because all the bankers got rich instead of incarcerated, "next time" is inevitable.)
You can't have “socialism among he privileged”; that doesn't make any sense. If you want to say cronyism, say cronyism, and leave socialism, which has nothing to do with it, out of the description.
Maybe cronyism is a more correct term, but I don’t see why it’s such a problem to use the above phrasing.
Yes, and it's an extremely dumb saying that only makes sense within a particular misunderstanding of what “socialism” means that derives from hostile mischaracterization by capitalists.
(Socialism about collective, rather than private, ownership of the means of production, whereas capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production. The rich in America very much enjoy the benefits of private ownership of the means of production.)
However, if you had to prognosticate, how will admissions at elite institutions look like 12-15 years from now, after all the dust had settled?
More of the same (since people have short memories & outrage is short-lived)? or genuine change for the better?
edit: grammar
For example, the Web pretends to be secure. Universities pretend to be different than for-profit corporations. And so on...
Sad.
We want people to participate in this unfair system, so we tell them the system is fair.
I understand what you’re saying, but to me the obvious answer is to stop supporting this old unfair system.
But less glibly, I bet you would find many such people in this thread.
It's probably better to keep making our current system more transparent and work for prices to better reflect society's values than to "exit capitalism".
Does that mean don't try anything? Of course not. Life isn't black and white. I don't believe involuntary taking from those who have to give to those who do not is a sustainable plan. Rather, somehow incentivize those who have to help voluntarily. My suggestion: more proliferation of employee-owned companies.
The Pareto principle remains. Wealth is measured. Ergo, there will always be people who maintain a network of wealth that far exceeds the norm.
I don't think that people will stop trying to accrue wealth, it's more likely they will just do more to get around whatever regulations you propose. For example, Ireland and tech companies.
I'd prefer to see a silly non-sense good for parting fools from their wealth, like BMWs and Lambos or the custom cars that run up to a few million a luxury car is a great way to attach a big price tag, get the rich's money - and not deprive anyone of anything useful.
I want to make billionaires obsolete.
There are problems to be sure. But if your goal is eliminating poverty...well..we're already doing that quite rapidly. It seems more like this sentiment comes from envy of the super-rich, rather than compassion for the extremely poor. And that I understand, but it doesn't seem to me to be a very good reason to reshape civilization.
I don't think the literal meaning of democracy is a "ridiculous narrow representation of democracy". We may agree that the right to vote does not, on its own, in all cases, entirely embody all aspects of the democratic ideal. But it is certainly not a "ridiculously narrow interpretation".
> Is it still democratic representation when some people are barred from voting for no good reason? Subjected to undue burdens or intimidation?
I'd say it is still democracy, but imperfectly implemented. The overwhelming majority of Americans are able to vote. Should it be better? Of course. But the idea that the poor in aggregate are unrepresented politically is ludicrous.
> How bad do these distortions have to get before we conclude that we're no more "democratic" than the old USSR? They had elections too, so it's all good, right?
We're a lot more democratic than the USSR. To suggest otherwise is the height of privileged conceit. Modern Russia is more democratic than the USSR, and if you think our democracy is equivalent to theirs, take a trip over there and try running against Putin in the next election. See how that works out for you.
They vote every couple of years for candidates that are also accepting millions in donations from wealthy donors. No public airtime is provided so they only hear about candidates who can raise money. They go to their workplace where the owners make all the decisions. Collectively most decisions in our economy are made by the capital owners or the political candidates who could raise the most funds from capital owners.
Regular non capital owning people in America have significantly less political power than those with money. That is not democratic representation.
Aka the definition of democracy, yes.
> that are also accepting millions in donations from wealthy donors. No public airtime is provided so they only hear about candidates who can raise money.
Candidates that the wealthy don't like raise money all the time, though. Most rich people didn't like Trump. They certainly don't like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. If your assertion is that money in politics systematically disenfranchises the poor, then you may want to re-examine the current democratic field.
> They go to their workplace where the owners make all the decisions. Collectively most decisions in our economy are made by the capital owners or the political candidates who could raise the most funds from capital owners.
Except that they choose to go to those workplaces. They may choose to do whatever they wish with their own time and labor.
I’m reminded of the factory workers in other countries whose indigenous land was stolen by the government so they could no longer farm. The one fertile farming land land was used to build factories. And the indigenes people, who no longer had any land to farm on, finally “chose” to work in the factory.
I disagree with you strongly that voting every few years is the definition of democracy if you mean to say it is the entire definition of democracy. There’s been thousands of years of history and philosophy as it relates to democracy and voting every few years is far from the only idea people have had about it. In particular voting for representatives is participation in a representative democracy, which is one kind of democracy. There are others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_assemblies
Sure, primitive accumulation is a real problem. But you can also follow that chain arbitrarily far back in history and it doesn't really get you anywhere. If you want to go live off the land, that's certainly fine with me, i'm just saying: don't expect to receive the fruits of modern civilization if you aren't participating in it.
> I disagree with you strongly that voting every few years is the definition of democracy if you mean to say it is the entire definition of democracy. There’s been thousands of years of history and philosophy as it relates to democracy and voting every few years is far from the only idea people have had about it. In particular voting for representatives is participation in a representative democracy, which is one kind of democracy. There are others.
Of course, there are many reasonable reifications of the 'democracy' abstraction. However, voting for representatives every few years is very reasonable one, and the idea that it is "not democracy" is simply wrong.
I think “basically any” is overselling it (particularly when combined with “incredible pace”)
Climate change is hard to overlook, for example.
Income inequality is rising. That leads to more of the kind of statements you’re objecting to.
It's not inequality per se that's at fault, but a system that serves the powerful thus increasing it.
As long as such a system is in place the powerful will exploit it for their gain disregarding casualties like the environment.
If you do still want to mess with the current system, you probably aren't actually concerned with helping the poor.
The worlds poorest will suffer from climate change the most and this system is only making it worse.
They may be (ostensibly) better off now, but their children certainly won't.
I'm not assuming that, i'm merely stating that this one does. If your goal is to benefit the poor, and you have a system that does so, you should be happy. If you are not happy, it is not because you are upset about poverty.
> The worlds poorest will suffer from climate change the most and this system is only making it worse.
Yes, and unfortunately mitigating climate change is directly at odds with alleviating their poverty. It's a tricky problem.
Problem is these benefits are superficial. On one hand you get cell phones and cheap flights, on the other rivers of plastic and land devastated by mining.
And it isn't even worth it, because a large part of the profit inevitably goes to those responsible for this devastation, so wealth is actually extracted from these places.
> Yes, and unfortunately mitigating climate change is directly at odds with alleviating their poverty.
It is in this system only, which allows it in the name of profits for the powerful.
It's not superficial to the people that are no longer starving and dying of preventable diseases.
> And it isn't even worth it, because a large part of the profit inevitably goes to those responsible for this devastation, so wealth is actually extracted from these places.
So, it's not worth lifting people out of poverty if some other people also get rich?
> It is in this system only, which allows it in the name of profits for the powerful.
You think you've got a design for a social system that would lift more people out of poverty while harming the environment less? I'm all ears.
If you’re actually serious, look up Communalism or Murray Bookchin. There are in fact real and detailed ideas about alternatives that would still lift people out of poverty without a wealthy class extracting wealth from those places and people.
Yes, climate change is a significant exception.
> Income inequality is rising. That leads to more of the kind of statements you’re objecting to.
Income inequality is not a bad thing on its own, though. It is bad when the people at the bottom are struggling to get by, though. And it's the struggling-to-get-by people that are disappearing at an incredible rate.
Yes, let's. You're the one pretending to read minds and attribute emotion. Stick to facts, bub.
Here's another hint: just because someone's not talking about the global poor doesn't mean they don't care. That's just not the conversation they're trying to have right now. The current topic is inequality in US college admissions. Insisting that people talk about something else is just concern trolling. It's deflection from the fact that those admissions claim to be meritocratic but clearly aren't, thus a defense of both inequity and misrepresentation. Why are you so soft on things that disgust others?
Like I said, feel free to insert any other emotion that explains the facts.
> Here's another hint: just because someone's not talking about the global poor doesn't mean they don't care. That's just not the conversation they're trying to have right now. The current topic is inequality in US college admissions.
Which current topic? Did you read the comment I was originally responding to? It was making statements much broader than college admissions.
I think the misconception is on 'easily'. It took me a lot of work at every possible part of the chain to get to where I am. While it wasn't easy for me to get into a role I am very happy with, I wouldn't have gotten here without a lot of studying and hard work.
going to your lack of phone screen issue, do not rely solely on applying to websites. I don't know what all the best things to do are, but you do need to approach it smarter. For example, try introducing yourself to the recruiters on linkedIn. The reply rate (for me, and for many others that I saw) is about 1/50 - harsh.
Should you have insisted on not using those connections and used only the standard job sites? Is this unfair to people who might not have those connections that you did? Are you perpetuating the problems with "the system"?
Definitely I could see it either way. For sure you were smart, entrepreneurial and motivated and successfully figured out how to navigate "the system".
In fact my main thought is that your comment seems like a great example of how it gets very grey about what the right thing to do is awfully quickly.
- Encourage the growth of multiple "systems" so that the monopoly power of "the system" are distributed
- Face the reality that there will always be some sort of concept of "the system" and address it by teaching people how to navigate "the system" or "systems" in school
To be considered successful in Italy you had to have those, on top of doing well in school and working hard -- and part of working hard was building those connections.
The US meanwhile has done a great job of eradicating a lot of those ties in a Jihad Vs. McWorld sense, and leaving you as an individualist consumer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
> shows that the media systematically skew data, trends, and uses selective stories to make people think that the world is getting worse.
There's people who spend their whole adolescence studying for the SATs and their parents pay for every possible tutor and advantage they can find. Side note, my friend's mom got him diagnosed with ADHD so that he could get extra time on SAT (spoiler: he never had ADHD).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
> From 1981 to 1990, three separate analyses of all the prior studies were published in peer-reviewed journals. They found a coaching effect of 9 to 25 points on the SAT Verbal and of 15 to 25 points on the SAT Math. In 2004, Derek Briggs, using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, found effects of 3 to 20 points for the SAT Verbal and 10 to 28 points for the SAT Math. Donald Powers and Donald Rock, using a nationally representative sample of students who took the SAT after its revisions in the mid-1990s, found an average coaching effect of 6 to 12 points on the SAT Verbal and 13 to 18 points on the SAT Math.
I have not seen any studies on the effect of accomodations, though.
I think the amount parents will pay for those relatively meagre extra points, and the fact that the parents in this case had to resort open bribery, speaks relatively well for the meritocraticness of the current system.
Open the books, show us that nothing is being swept under the rug, and just let the undeserving children of millionaires go to third tier schools.
[1] http://www.aei.org/publication/abolish-the-sat-2/
It's a pity accents aren't properly fakeable yet.
Furthermore, the Harvard case has also demonstrated that interviews are used as a tool to suppress the chances of Asian applicants. While it may seem cold to reduce candidates to their applications, if the goal is to provide a consistent admissions process interviews are not a good choice.
I'll say the opposite - all college donations and income should be publicly available as soon as the ACH transaction clears. Questionable sources immediately flagged. Make every single dollar within the education system completely transparent. Then if some kid gets admitted, and we also see their parents made a $5 million donation, we can go ahead and appropriately stain that kid's admission.
What about the kids who really earned that admittance and their parents made a sizable donation? Then the parents donate their funds to another educational institution. Or the kid attends another institution. Wherever these two actions overlap - immediately assume fraud over anything else.
On bribes directly to individuals - their funds are all publicly available as well. If that's a problem, there are millions of other jobs they could pursue rather than being a useless parasite on the education system.
The reason the former is considered acceptable is because the universities have spent decades making us think that this is a normal, reasonable thing. And telling us not to worry, because they would never allow themselves to be influenced by a donation when making admissions decisions. This is plainly false. University administrators are fucking hypocrites.
The rule of law and contracts.
When you just bribe the coach, it helps no one but the coach.
You are paying money to {univeristy|coach}, with the expectation that (a) the payment will help your kid's admissions prospects, and (b) {university|coach} will maintain the facade that money did not have any influence.
That's bribery.
That's not really true though. For the coach, sure, as the payments happen is secret. But for the school? If I buy Harvard a new building and get my name put on it, everybody knows about it, and nobody is surprised when my kid gets admitted.
Donations are currently considered an acceptable form of bribery because the universities have spent decades crafting the narrative that a donation doesn't actually affect an applicant's prospects. But this is plainly not true.
If you want to have a moral leg to stand on with your distinction, we should require universities to be transparent about which donations are buying spots for which students.
In a state school, it's obvious that this is wrong since this would be a violation of equal protection. However, I'm not sure I understand what is wrong about buying an advantage at a private school. Does a private school have some statutory responsibility to be "fair?" Does anyone have an inherent right to go to a private school? Sure, we're supposed to be outraged and pretend we are angry about a rich person getting accepted to Harvard because their mom donated $10 million towards a new medical library -- but is that really unfair or unjust? Is the rich kid going to Harvard preventing the poor kid from going to UMass? If you donate millions to a school, shouldn't that earn you the right to go there? You're literally paying for the school to exist.
We could make this more fair though by ending tax exemptions for universities (specifically their endowments.) If they are to benefit from public subsidization, then there is at least some moral obligation to serve society a bit more fairly than they do now. It is quite unfair that one can donate $10 million to Harvard, enjoy the tax deduction from the charitable donation and, at the same time, receive a financially valuable benefit of your child's admission into the school. It would be like me donating a tax-deductible $10 million to an airport and my child getting free Gulfstream flights for four years as an untaxed benefit. If we eliminate the tax exemption, then there's no conflict of interest -- now, it's just a business transaction rather than a business transaction masquerading as philanthropy.
Clearly Mr. Brunold wants people to focus on the $50k to $100k donation range that doesn't grant an admissions advantage, but no one seems to care about those other than him (and maybe the WSJ).