Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Don’t Ruin College by Making It Free

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

One way you can tell that the rich are lobbying against government providing free *anything* is that they complain that the benefit will be given to rich people as well as poor people. They also complain that the quality will in some way be reduced, often by the recipients themselves. They complain public funding will "stifle innovation" and "distort the market". And, of course, it will always cost too much (there's usually a zero-sum argument about how the money could be used to fund some other subsidy for the people). All of these argument tropes are found in this article. And you can tell the article comes from a rich-person perspective because poor people who don't have access to these services raise none of these objections. Generally other people don't get a platform to make their case at all, ever. But when they do get a platform, their concerns are about access, removing barriers, support systems, and how the service can help them get ahead.

Today: 0 Total: 18 [Direct link] [Share]


Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

Copyright 2024
Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:22 a.m.

Canadian Flag Creative Commons License.

Force:yes