The level of pushback you're receiving to this honestly makes me weep for the society we find ourselves in.

I grew up expecting the future would be much like what Captain Jean-Luc Picard described in First Contact: "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

Somehow, that vision of the future seems farther away than ever. We're actively becoming LESS Federation, more Ferengi. That's not a world which holds any appeal for me.

> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being.

That was the goal maybe in the past when only rich people could afford an education.

I actually had this very same discussion/argument with my mother on Mother’s Day regarding my young child. I want a well rounded, full childhood of experiences of all sorts, exposing them to a vast variety of things in an attempt to establish a broad understanding while allowing their interests to flourish broadly rather than singularly focusing their “Primary” talents with a narrower focus.

Her argument is to capitalize on their primary gift(s) while I, while recognizing those particular gifts, want to expose them to a vast variety of experiences and challenges in a broad way. The world changes fast and most recently I have found that the broader experiences and different challenges I have faced in my life give me a distinct advantage over others in my ability to think critically.

Now, there is a bit of truth to pushing a student sometimes, and a parent/guardian will need to understand when those instances are called for, but I see too many parent pushing certain academics or the obvious one - sports - to the point that life is not experienced to a detriment

> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being.

This is the goal of a primary education.

But society need us to hand down collective knowledge. Economic output is one way to measure that. But more generally, if everyone only consumed education for their personal edification, we'd lose the ability to financially support education in the first place.

I mean this is a nice sentiment but it's both not only unrealistic for the vast majority of people, it's something that only a privilege few can actually achieve.

People go to school because they want a better life, the only path to a truly better life in the USA is money. It's really hard to blame students when they've been brought up in a society that has been extremely rotten for their entire lives.

Sounds nice but resources are limited for many people. Getting an employment focused education using their limited resources is the more likely way to put them in stable orbit so that maybe theyll be able to broaden with less employment focused education later.

> a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being

What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Is there any institution today that teaches you to be a “well-rounded human being?” Do students graduate being able to hunt for food, grow crops, or build a house?

There might be great value in whatever type of “education” you’re talking about. But “education” as a public, taxpayer supported activity is about the economy.

No, it should help a person achieve their purpose and be happy.

>No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being.

That's been the refrain for longer than either of us have been alive. But free, thoughtful, well-rounded humans tend to starve when they can't find gainful employment and start paying rent. If your first concern isn't practical, no one should even listen to you.

>But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education?

Allow me to translate: I'm rich enough that I don't personally have to be concerned with earning a living, so why don't you enroll in advanced underwater basket-weaving with me at $3400/credit-hour? You can get a student loan for it, and since you'll pay it back it doesn't really matter that it's not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Sorry, but that’s some ivory tower wishful thinking.

This 100x. It's like outsourcing call-centers to the third world. Did that improve service? Is there anyone at all daring to make that claim? It did not. It was slightly cheaper. Not even that much.

AI is like that. It gives a much worse service, even to the companies that are buying it, at a slightly lower cost.

It's the AI companies' fault for boasting that their products are becoming an additional developer.

AI agent is not a developer. It won't answer you questions why your database has been removed. This is sadly far from management's point of concern. They are focused on excel columns

> Perhaps rather it is management that is wiping out those jobs

As a manager I’d direct you to the actual decision makers for things like this, company leadership teams. They’d blame the market, yet most of the big tech companies laying off or freezing hiring are doing quite well financially so it makes you wonder.

unpaid internships aren't legal here. but we do use a lot of (and retain) interns

That's not how the market works. Management can't do anything if another company drives the whole business under. And companies are more often than not insanely pressed for resources. There's just a comfortable buffer to that pressure for a lot of people on a payroll from higher up.

As an instructor at a university, this is basically all we talk about now. We're (currently) agreed that fundamentals are still important, fundamentals being good problem solving skills delivered within the framework of classic computer science instruction. But we also agree that students need to take a bigger picture, view of projects, and learn AI skills.

(A lot of this is informed by feedback from students who have entered the workforce recently and work heavily with AI.)

Basically we have to replicate as much of the junior developer workplace pipeline as we can sensibly do. There will certainly be loss of certain skills since we only have 4 years, but all we can ever do is try to maximize overall gain.

It's no longer 4 years of school plus 2 years of experience to reach modest proficiency; it's 4 years of school, period.

But I think as the workforce dwindles, hiring managers will get more enthusiastic about hiring juniors. The smart ones already are. The strong students pick up agentic coding in no time, after all. It's not rocket science... if you know how to code.

>but at some point jobs evolve to meet new market demands.

Possibly. If you believe in the economic equivalent of directed evolution, then no matter what humans do, the economy will tip itself towards creating employment opportunities within the broader circumstances.

But if AI plays out the way some hope (and there's no reason to suppose this is impossible), then it will become a substitute (and likely a cheaper one) for every human employment there is. The economy will not evolve to make more jobs "somehow". We actually see this in evolution too, where some species or another without seeing any particular catastrophe just sort of withers away because bad evolutionary decisions made previously make it impossible to reach new environmental niches which might support the population. The so called "path dependence".

> A long time ago, a client and a friend were both subjects of some inaccurate speculation in a Gawker story. One of them emailed Mr. Daulerio to deny it and was told by a surprisingly honest Mr. Daulerio that he “could give a fuck” about the actual truth of the story—and that my client and friend were welcome to cover their asses how they liked. And then he dropped a line that now drips with irony considering how things have ended up. “I don’t know, man,“ he said, “It’s all professional wrestling.”

https://observer.com/2016/03/goodbye-and-good-riddance-gawke...

Whatever gets them clicks

PS I love AI, but it's whose hands AI is in that determines its use and benefits.

> if nobody has any money?

This is clearly false, the K shaped economy framing does ring true to me and you are describing the lower half of the K. Those millenials (and younger) with crippling student loans, no savings, and unmarketable skills are a major voting block and will definitely have an impact on policy. The size of the impact will be determined by their level of anger and ability to essentially convince the upper half of the K to go along with wealth transfers (traditionally not easy to do).

Not a problem, LLMs can be very efficient at controlling social unrest.

I don’t think it was a key factor in the 2016 election. It’s mostly older people (older than millennials in 2016) who vote.

Back to the barter system

It is funny I was a dishwasher for a while $20K income somehow living on that. Then get into tech 5x it and now more poor/in a lot more debt, my own dumb decisions but yeah.

Like the people that win the lottery and end up broke that's me.

GFC? Gordon Food Service?

No it doesn’t. Judging by a few of your other comments, you probably just don’t like the flavor of this particular kool-aid. This kind of low-effort, ad hominem comment is typical human-generated slop.