Romulox

The typical student debt load is getting quite ridiculous, and kids graduating high school are not given even the slightest indication as to what the impact on their future might be. Not to say that it isn't worth it in some circumstances, but here are a few questions that may be useful, assuming you were to pursue an economics degree in a university: - Are you willing to bet tens of thousands of euros that an economics degree will actually land you a job in the field of economics? Although it seems you like economics in theory, are you willing to bet that sum of money that you will enjoy economics in real-world practice? - Assuming you get a job relevant to economics, if you find out being an economist in the real world isn't what you imagined or were told in school, would you be financially able to switch to a lower paying but more enjoyable career outside of your area of study while still paying off your debt? Will you have a broad enough skillset and enough experience relevant to the real world to be able to switch to another career? - If you are planning to have a family, would you be able to financially support a stay at home parent and one or more children on one income while paying off your student debt? Would you be able to save money in advance to prepare for this stage of your life? - If you have a family, and you decide to be a stay at home parent, will your degree have any value if you are out of the workforce for several years and decide to go back to work when the kids are grown? In addition to what Stefan has to say, check out the School Sucks podcast; especially this one which I just listened to today that discusses, among other things, apprenticeship programs. 40 Alternatives to College by James Altucher is a short read that could spark some ideas for you as well.

This is pretty consistent with what I've seen as well. My friends from college who graduated with engineering degrees and married someone else with a good paying job also have their kids in daycare and claim the student debt excuse as well. I acknowledge that the student loan payments are considerable and would be difficult to work around on one income; but I think you are spot on with your guess. They would have to come to terms with the fact that the ideal lifestyle that they were pushed into by their parents and the rest of society was not in their or their children's best interests, and that all that money they spent on the degree could have otherwise been spent to support her and her child instead. I agree that she is conflicted, but disagree as to what her true desire is. The true self sees what is happening to her child, and sadness would be the expected result, as I'm sure she would be picking up on the sadness of her child every time she walks out the front door. The false self that has been created through the expectations of everyone else tells her that her child needs a big house and a mountain of toys to be happy, and that an educated woman needs a greater purpose in her life than raising children. I don't think anyone here would say to not do what you want to do, as long as it's not at the expense of others; especially those who are helpless to escape the situation. I would love to sleep and drive to work at the same time, but I realize doing both of those things simultaneously would be a danger to other drivers as well as to myself. Just try reversing the roles in your sister's situation; say she went to her boss and said that since she was raising a child she could no longer perform her job. She hired a random person off the street to perform her job for minimum wage for the next five years, but still expects to be paid by her employer. We would expect her to be fired in pretty short notice; since her child can't fire her and has no power to escape or change their situation, the tables are usually turned the other way. Not to say that there would be a problem working when your kids are teenagers. They are far from helpless at that point and do not need your constant attention like a newborn, and will likely benefit from being on their own for short periods of time.

I've had a bit of a wake up call as to how bad the daycare epidemic really is as well. Having just made a career shift to the financial services industry in September, I've been talking to my friends and family about planning for various financial goals, such as retirement and college. A few months in, I stumbled upon Stef's Philosophical Parenting Series (FDR 1570, 71, 73, 74); at this point, his daughter is just over a year old and he is reviewing what he learned during his first year of parenthood. At part 3, he ponders what a living hell it must be for both parents to be working full time and only experience the worst aspects of child care and few of the joys, and in part 4 he offers a solution; encourage people to save money in advance so that at least one parent is able to stay home with their kids during their formative years. Ten minutes into Part 4, my newfound career path went from a job to a mission; after a few minutes of research it became obvious that NO ONE was helping people formulate a strategy to save for parenthood. The strategy that was the most feasible in my mind is for parents to start saving when their kids are born (like they are already encouraged to do for college), and when grandkids arrive 20 or 30 years later, the grandparents can gift a portion of that account to the parents every year (up to $28,000 tax free right now) so that at least one parent can stay home for a few years. I started bouncing this idea off some friends to see if it had any appeal; one thing every interaction had in common was that no one had ever heard of the concept before, and most were at least curious. I thought for sure that families that currently have a stay at home parent would love the idea, as they have already experienced the benefits. When sitting down with one family, after praising them for taking the time and effort to raise their own children, the immediate response from the mother was “Well, day care was just so expensive”. I presented the idea to my good friend, who is working while his wife is at home full time with their 1 year old and has #2 on the way; he was initially the most receptive of them all. When I later sat down with him and his wife, I learned to my horror that the wife was back to work again! Working while 7 months pregnant!! “It’s ok because grandma will watch the kids. And if she can’t do it, this neighborhood has a great daycare program…that’s part of the reason we moved here.” I’ve come to realize that my mission to get people to save for parenthood has a great chance to backfire if not implemented with care. I may be inadvertently helping people save to put their grandkids in daycare!! It seems that the only thing keeping parents at home is that they can’t afford to do otherwise. Though the silver lining is that I’ve come to realize how lucky I really am, as the only person I know who chose to be a parent because they actually WANTED to was my own mother. Any thoughts on this strategy or how to approach people on the subject are very welcome.

Hey I'm also from Pittsburgh, born and raised. Living out near the airport at the moment, but I'm in town quite often and would love to meet up sometime out in your neighborhood. Frick Park is one of my favorite places to hike/run, and Biddle's escape is my favorite coffee/tea place in town; I don't get to either of those places nearly enough. I have the next few weekends freed up, so let me know if you would like to meet up sometime (my schedule is very flexible if given a day or two notice). Also, I keep in touch with Matt D pretty regularly, and I'm sure he would love to meet up as well. Could be the beginning of the Pittsburgh FDR meetup group...

First things first, welcome to the boards! I'm thrilled to hear we have an addition to the peaceful parenting community, and that you have already realized that peaceful parenting and daycare are incompatible. Given the ratio of adults to children at a typical daycare, prolonged periods of individual attention between the adults each child are pretty much impossible, so regardless of how peaceful the adults are, your child would for the most part be raised by the other children, who I would be willing to bet were not peacefully parented. I would agree that working from home or at a job with flexible hours would be your best bet. I personally just made a huge career shift a few months ago for that very reason, though I am still at least a few years from having kids of my own. Do you have a rough estimate as to the timeframe for when you expect to have children? What is your current job/career path? How long have you been working at your current job? What do you feel are your skill sets?

Thank you for the clarification, that makes your position much more clear. Now we can argue when a human or potential human initially garners rights. I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment but that exact argument seems to be moving along quite well here in the last few posts. Just wanted to say this thread has been the biggest challenge to my pro-life position to date. My original exposure to the issue was "Life begins at conception cause Jesus" and has been drilled into my head since the age of 10, so I want to make sure my philosophical position that comes to the same conclusion is based in reality and not emotional attachment.

That seems to be because those who are against your point of view don't see your argument as relevant. The nanosecond that something achieves the consciousness of a moral agent means nothing to someone who believes it is immoral to kill something that has a personal identity and will likely achieve the status of a moral agent in the future. How you reach your conclusions regarding the moral difference between a coma patient and an embryo is unclear. Both are living beings that do not currently have the neural capacity for conscious thought. Both will likely gain the ability to achieve consciousness in the future. Whether the physical structure is currently present or not seems irrelevant; the amygdala and thalamus of a coma patient are non-functional might as well not exist at present, but are healing and developing the ability to become functional in the future. If you can please explain why these two beings sharing very similar circumstances belong in opposing moral categories, we can move on to addressing your arguments.

It seems to me that the essential question is whether the non-aggression principle applies to a developing moral actor, one that is assumed to be capable of moral actions in the future if left to develop without disruption. In other words, is it immoral to initiate an action that prevents the formation of a human consciousness that otherwise would have formed in the absence of that action?

I agree that this is becoming a big issue today, that many people are being put out of work by automation and are not finding their skill set to be particularly useful to employers. But perhaps the problem isn't that robots are taking over jobs, as this should lead to greater production and lower prices, but rather that we have been and are still continuing to educate people to perform those obsolete jobs. In a libertarian/anarchist society, do you envision that parents will support an education system that prepares children to work on an assembly line? Do you see parents who are raising their children by the ideals repeatedly advocated by this website voluntarily sending their children to a school that actively seeks to destroy a child's ability to empathize with the needs of others? Perhaps the problem is that our ability to adapt to a changing economy and identify the needs and desires of other people has been crushed and replaced with a mentality that says I am entitled to work because I have a piece of paper that says so. Also, given the ever accelerating pace of change in technology today, how can anyone possibly think they will have any clue what the jobs of 20 years in the future will look like? If someone told me 20 years ago that a job called "Internet Philosopher" was a viable way to earn a living, I would have been laughing all the way until 2007 when I could see it with my own eyes.

Glad you found my perspective to be useful. I appreciate the rather unexpected +1 and returned the favor. Don't think anyone on this site will disagree with you there! There are certainly no shortage of media and state lies that we can all see eye to eye on.

Perhaps you can show us a reason why anyone on this message board should care. Understand you are trying to convince an anarchist message board of the corruption of the state, using one of the least convincing methods imaginable. In what way will adopting your point of view change my opinion of the state, or my life for that matter? If NASA faked the moon landings, then one can conclude that the state lies to its people to further achieve its own corrupt ends. If NASA didn't fake the moon landings, then the state still lies to its people to further achieve its own corrupt ends; I can just look to one of the many thousands of other, provable examples. How does this conclusion about the state change in any way? If my conclusion doesn't change, then please help me understand why I should take time out of my already busy schedule to devote one minute of thought to this argument?

I agree that if everyone stopped voting this year, the State would continue to exist and would continue to initiate force against people. However, the state could no longer perpetuate the myth that it is carrying out the "will of the people" or rules by "the consent of the governed". What percentage of voter turnout could the state continue to successfully make these claims? Each drop in the voter turnout makes it that much easier to dispel these myths and expose the gun in the room. While I don't believe that people will stop voting any time in the near future, a practical goal for the US system would be to have voter turnout reduced to a point where they have to institute mandatory voting, which is already done in 22 countries. What better way to point out that "consent of the governed" is false than to show that you will be shot for not consenting.

Myself and Matt D will be meeting up at Deluca's in the Strip District this Friday (Nov. 27th) at 10:00 AM. All are welcome and encouraged to join; if anyone else is interested, post on the board or feel free to send me a PM.

The socialists and communists will be few and far between if you decide to move to Texas or Tennessee. You'll likely have to deal with the other end of the spectrum though; the right wing patriot types who proclaim to love "freedom" probably won't be on board with disbanding the military or police. I couldn't recall the Lee Rigby case and did a quick search; that's absolutely terrible and I'm so sorry you have to live in that type of neighborhood! I'm glad to hear you will be removing yourself from the toxic and dangerous environment. Despite what the news around here tells us everyday, Muslim beheadings are definitely not on the list of concerns in the US. In many cases it is cheaper, but with a conventional 30 year mortgage you have to live there for several years for that to be true. Right after you buy the house, most of your monthly payment is interest, taxes, and insurance, but relatively little principal. For example, for my first $770 mortgage payment, only $134 of that goes to reducing the loan balance, even with a rock bottom 4.5% interest rate. So if you end up reselling the house in a few years, you might have trouble breaking even when you account for the closing costs and other fees required to initially buy and then later sell the house. Don't forget the opportunity cost of not investing your down payment in a more productive financial asset. The recommendation I give to people who are buying a house is that if your reason is "I'm buying a house because it will improve my quality of life" then go for it. But if your reason is that "I want a house because it is cheaper than renting", then you may want to reconsider unless you are comfortable in staying in one place for at least 5 years. Depending on what you can afford, another option is to become the guy who has someone else pay his mortgage. Perhaps consider buying a duplex and renting out the unit you aren't living in, or if you get a single family home, you could rent out a spare bedroom. Whatever you decide, I wish you the best of luck, and am glad to hear you are taking a huge step to improve your situation. Keep us posted!

I'm glad to hear that you have the option of moving back to your homeland. This will certainly lower or eliminate the difficulty of starting your life from scratch. Although if you do move to the US, there are plenty of ways to quickly develop a social circle of people who share your interests over the internet, such as meetup.com, or through the FDR site. May I ask why you feel such a strong need to own a home? For someone who is unsure of what part of the world to live in, there is no better way to get stuck in one location than purchasing a home and getting locked into a mortgage. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good reasons to own a home, and you certainly may have them, but the only reason you mentioned in your original post is because you are entering your 30's. As someone who has just past 30 not too long ago, I can think of some reasons why I regret purchasing a house and may go back to renting in the not too distant future.

In my previous posts, I have connected the existence of nuclear bombs to the fact that the same fission reactions that drive a bomb can be controlled inside a nuclear reactor to the extent where power can be generated in a precise manner. In what way does this evidence involve the state? In what way does this involve academia? This is empirical evidence that continuously observed by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis. If my logic has been flawed, please tell me so I can correct my argument. As a nuclear power worker, the premise is incredibly insulting to me on a personal level. Continuing to argue that nuclear weapons do not exist without addressing my previous arguments implies that I and my hundreds of thousands of nuclear power co-workers worldwide are either: - Completely retarded, as we have somehow been duped into believing that a container full of metal rods is producing electricity when in fact a completely separate and hidden power source right under our eyes is heating the steam that drives the power generation. - Or liars and part of the most elaborate conspiracy in history, as not one of the several hundred thousand nuclear workers has spoken up, while simultaneously generating 370,000,000,000 watts of power in a way that is not visible to the rest of the population. So if there is some aspect of nuclear physics that perhaps you don't understand, I will be more than happy to share my knowledge on the subject. But continuing these video-based arguments is dishonest and insulting, so please take them back to the conspiracy forums. For everyone else, don't forget:

Sounds good to me. Any other Pittsburghers on board for the 22nd?

Aloha to the US: Is Hawai'i an occupied nation? Maybe my dream of living in Hawaii might come true after all...

I am out of town this Sunday, but any Sunday after that could work for me. How about Kelly-O's on Sunday the 15?

Sounds like a great idea; what areas of town are you guys from? I live near the airport but wouldn't mind driving into town to meet up.

I disagree. When you present an argument from neuroscience, your neo-cortex produces a rush of oxytocin that only creates the illusion of you winning the argument. Check-mate

Who needs a carbon tax when you have the EPA. Looks like the energy generation market has plenty of incentive to go around.

I had a similar experience while doing some work in an impoverished mountain village in Ecuador, likely very similar to what your buddy saw in Peru. The houses were basically block walls with corrugated metal roofs and two rooms (kitchen and bedroom). Just like your friend, I noticed that most of the adult males in the town had cell phones. Since the main source of income for the adult males is construction work in the nearby city, it became obvious why every guy in town had a phone; it allowed them to find work and transportation into town infinitely easier than it would be otherwise. While most of the men had basic phones, the leader of the town had a smartphone, email, and a facebook account, which allowed him to easily communicate with our organization, ultimately resulting in a clean water distribution system for his community. So they absolutely had their priorities straight; clean water, shelter from the relentless wind and sun, and then employment. When asked if they were satisfied with their house, they generally responded as if just asked them if the sky was blue (as long as you are out of the wind, you are happy!). So from my experience, I wouldn't say that the poor are necessarily "behind" when it comes to technology, or that they don't have time to adopt it. They just have to pick and choose which technologies to adopt; since their resources are extremely limited, they can't have it all. A cell phone will increase the employment opportunities of the typical mountain villager by orders of magnitude, while a flat screen tv won't do them a damn bit of good. I see organ replacement technology that could achieve immortality as the same situation as the cell phone but taken to an extreme level. A poor person with health issues would likely overlook something like a big screen tv or the latest greatest iPad, but would probably sell all their worldly possessions for a newly grown organ, since death is the alternative. So it would follow that this new organ replacement technology would be widely adopted almost immediately by the poor given the price of the replacement is achievable.

I agree; usually that's the first argument against "love it or leave it". The only person who can legitimately force you to leave an area is the owner; therefore the state owns the country. In that sense, the statist is accurately describing the world we live in today, where every piece of land is "owned" by a state. Usually, when you point this out and relate it back to communism, people think twice. But I find it incredibly odd that this person started with that argument. This argument basically claims that whoever has the most guns is the legitimate owner of the land. Is the person you quoted a friend? If so, next time you go over his house, make sure to take a couple of guns with you and then go raid his fridge, or maybe walk out the door with his tv. If he complains, simply point out that you are applying his standards in a universal manner, and you are the legitimate owner of his property now. Also check out the "But You Can Just Leave" thread from not too long ago. You'll find some similar arguments there.

What do you think about DROs performing this type of work pro bono? It's quite common for lawyers to represent people in our society that may not have the resources available to pay the typical rates for little or no charge in order to boost their public image. The cost would certainly be passed on to the customers, but if the plight of indigenous peoples is a concern for a portion of the population, they would be willing to pay it to ensure less fortunate people are represented. I see no reason to believe that this phenomenon, which is quite common in today's society, wouldn't continue into a free society, especially when people are free from the illusion that the government will protect the rights of the indigenous populations.