Comment by matthewdgreen

It's more like the patient needs some fixed amount of food each day and it doesn't make a lot of sense to create lots more food than they need on the hopes that someday they'll want to eat more than they can.

If the argument is that everyone should focus on the arts at the expense of everything else, it's hard to imagine that's an ideal outcome relative to alternatives. If we're not arguing that everyone should focus 100% on the arts (no other degrees should be available), then it's a matter of degree and certainly some outcomes might end up with more people pursuing the arts than what society needs.

What is your solution? Should the rest of us all consume more art? A lot of people are struggling just to pay for housing and food.

>Your solution is like pointing out that the patient can't tolerate food anymore, so the solution is just not to feed them. It's all true! And also misses the fact that something is causing the patient to starve.

Ironically, with chronic obesity and the related metabolic disorders becoming absolutely epidemic, people might do well to eat less. I can manage 48 hours at a stretch, it's only psychologically discomforting, I wish I could go 72 hours. It's like we have some sort of racial memory of the famines our ancestors suffered tens of thousands of years ago, and now we can't stop gorging ourselves.

>At the same time, a healthy society needs people who are trained in the arts and humanities.

Everyone thinks that the thing that they learned to do is what everyone should learn to do. Car mechanics think that people should be able to do repairs, at least know a little more about what goes wrong. And guess what? Our economy relies on them, and they're right... we do need people who can repair them. Janitors think that people should be able to clean things up. And guess what? We do need people who can clean things up. Shipbuilders, steelworkers, construction workers, farmers... we need people who can do those things.

No one was ever in danger and needed to be able to know Titian's third most famous painting. No one was ever rescued by liberal arts graduate's knowledge of third rate classical composers.

>I would also argue that, not coincidentally, our society is unhealthy, and getting more so.

I would agree. People need gainful employment opportunities, and the training to be able to take advantage of those. They need to enter adulthood debt free, and not just student debt, but to also know that the government isn't mortgaging their future paying for a bloated secondary education system today that is wasting years of their lives and hundreds of billions in fortune setting them up to fail. If academia doesn't want to be the vocational schools that it dreads to be associated with, then it should shut up and quit pretending that it has much to offer the vast majority of people. Maybe it didn't claim that these degrees would set everyone up for life, but it certainly didn't protest when others made that claim for it.

>despite being richer and more able to afford the arts than at any point in history.

We're all actually poor. As a country. (Other countries too, come to that.) We remember having once been rich, and we're in denial about it no longer being true. We can't even afford social security, old people will need to start dying sooner. Even the so-called billionaires for the most part just have a pile of stock certificates in the vault. Even on this very website, we see constant links about making people live in pods because it's no longer possible to build housing anyone can afford. You now rent the things your grandparents used to buy outright, and to buy seconds and thirds when they got bored with the first. You tell yourself it's because it's more convenient, but you couldn't afford to pay for it up front if you wanted.

We're that married couple swimming in credit card debt. They deny that it's a big deal, look here we can juggle this one and use that one to pay the minimum payment on the third card. And don't you think we can't keep doing that, we'll be able to do it next month too! But I'm not even allowed to talk about it, because a full 8 or 9 years ago the people on the left told everyone that credit card analogies don't work for a country as big and rich as the United States.

Fewer than 7% of all high school graduates should even go on to higher education. High school should become more strict, willing to flunk everyone who fails to meet rigorous standards. We need our government to make a true effort to reindustrialize.