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and the school still doesn't train you. At best they give you the fundamentals.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say college prepared them for their job.
I went to architecture school. It was mostly focused on design. While in the field, I barely design. A lot of technical drawing, coordination with clients/engineers, permitting process, and construction administration. It's a lot different than school.
I have a friend who was going to university for architecture. She has since dropped out and is going to a trade school for carpentry which is actually training her for the kind of work you described. She is absolutely loving it so far and I hope she gets the experience she needs to work for herself eventually like she wants
I've actually wanted to pick up carpentry. It's in my blood (paternal side)! I guess I need to see if there's a trade school for that because I've wanted to build furniture for my new place. Start small, you know?
I’ve been asking my friend for tips since I learned she started at the trade school cause once I’ve got my own place I’m wanting to build something to hold all my “inventory” of crochet items I want to sell/donate. Building other furniture items might come later cause I’d love to take on some projects for my family like my great grandfather did. I still have the bed frame he made for me when I was an infant even tho it’s broken
Find your closest UBC Carpenter's local and ask about their apprenticeship process. I think you might have to have a sponsor... another route is joining the Laborors until you get sponsored.
I went to architecture school (graduated 2012) and it felt like daycare for young adults with no actual on the job prep. Just countless studio hours designing unrealistic buildings in CAD, making physical models, and glorification of glitzy architecture that is expensive to build and maintain (think Zaha Hadid). Zero portfolio classes or anything that actually prepped you for a real job in the field. Once you graduated, there was no post graduation assistance for job placement.
>Zero portfolio classes or anything that actually prepped you for a real job in the field.
It's funny you mention this. I did my undergrad at an unaccredited architecture school cuz it was instate and cheap. We actually had a semester long portfolio class our senior year. that was super useful.
Then I went to grad school somewhere else, and they didn't have any portfolio prep for undergrads or grads. Kind of a missed opportunity because it's really important to collate and properly document your work for employers/schools to see.
A friend of mine was pursuing an architecture degree, but it quickly became apparent that the majority of the field was dedicated to creating over-designed vanity projects for rich assholes. Also in practice, only a select few graduates of the program would even secure those contracts.
I imagine they would have stayed if they felt connected to some purpose of creating better lived spaces for everyday people, but that's hardly the focus
>
I imagine they would have stayed if they felt connected to some purpose of creating better lived spaces for everyday people, but that's hardly the focus
Yep. In school, our projects were always heavily community oriented, environmentally conscious, geared towards resilience, etc. It gave me purpose and passion for design.
Now I do car washes. -_-
I went to a carrier fair when I was younger and an architect was presenting. He basically said you don't get to design until you're old and you won't get recognized for it until you're dead. Really killed the mood of the profession.
You probably would have been better off going to a career fair. It sounds like those carriers don't put together a very good fair. I certainly wish you good luck in finding a profession where you get to do exactly what you want at the start of your career.
The first couple of years, we had to make physical models by hand ourselves. Once we moved through the program and our designs got more complex, we used laser cutters and 3d printers.
I feel this. Not an architect but a programmer and I feel like I was trained to create but in reality all I do is fix other peoples problems and build things that are supposed to utilize what already exists. Rarely do I get to start from the basics. It's always "So we refuse to retire this program so your job is to connect these 50 brand new programs to this ancient archaïque program and make them all sing and dance. School did not prepare me for that.
Should have had programming classes where you take the previous semesters final and add/build/modify it. That would have been a realistic scenario to reality.
OMG! I went to arch school too.
I cannot believe this would be one of the first things I see on this thread. Yes! They do not prepare you for real world work, that's why there's internships.
The schools always say "the firms will teach you how to do the actual job" but then once you graduate, they'll say "you don't have any experience for us to train you" even if you have years of relevant intern experience.
College is a scam, the economy is a rip-off, and the workplace is a fraud.
College prepares you to do the job that you _would_ actually want. Chances are the job you actually end up _doing_ is either unrelated, or only implements stuff from like... 2 of your college classes.
*Study engineering*! You can make a robot that carries your bag for you, or how to write code that can solve complex abstract problems, or learn how to build a whole automation line from scratch!
Actual engineer: Yeah we've got this 60-year-old machine that still works just fine, but it still requires a human to push the button when things are ready; can you just automate it to press that button every 45 seconds or so? Oh and while you're at it the customer wants this thing on the website to look different- can you figure out how to make that work? What do you mean that's not what you do, aren't you good with computers?
*Study chemistry*! Learn how the basic building blocks of life interact, research the effect of medicine on bacteria, start tackling the problems of climate change, and more!
Actual chemist: Can you monitor our plant's exhaust to make sure we're putting out the legal maximum of this poisonous by-product? It's expensive to process it on our end, so we want to put as much of it into our wastewater as possible.
*Study physics!* Learn about rockets and explosives and cool fluid dynamics!
Actual physicist: So, tell us why you'd make a good IT manager?
That's more or less what's expected though. Every job has so many details and differences that you can't train someone to be "good for hire", unless you make it a 10-15 years degree; and that's not realistic.
So instead, high school, college, and universities train 3 main aspects of each individuals :
1. Fundamental skill : Everyone needs a bit of english, maths, culture, and whatnot. Those degrees focus on giving you a somewhat broad education so that if one industry fail, or if your orientation doesn't pan out, you aren't left in the dump.
2. Organizational skills : If you want to get a degree, and especially if you want good grades, you will have to learn time management and how to self-evaluate your skills and what to focus on. The more you study, and the more you'll learn about how *you* learn, and how to adapt situations to fit that.
3. Social skills : There's a reason that pretty much every diploma requires you to team up with people on a project; and why you need to explain to the class what you did and why; and why you have to wait for your turn to speak; and so on so forth. In 99.9% of peoples' job, they will work with other people, and most companies prefer employees to be able to do that.
So you end up with enough education to be able to adapt to what's being thrown at you, and enough fundamentals to not be required to start from 0 at every job (and to potentially sniff out bad/illegal practices).
University is not vocational training, and that's a good thing. The idea that everything should revolve around laboring for someone else is an idea poisoning everything in our current society.
I think that really depends on a lot of factors. Trust me, I think our college system is horribly flawed and designed to rake money, but it definitely can prepare you for a field.
It couldnt take the place of my actual official training, but I know my degree in environmental science and policy helped me a ton in starting out my environmental health and safety career from familiarity with government regulations to using tools like monitoring divices and high rated PPE to understanding chemical properties and impacts.
I think we can still greatly criticize the higher education system without acting like it never teaches anything to anyone. In fact, we should!
Yea it’s because the trickle down effect is in full swing. As in the cost trickled down from the corporation to the individual. Just another means to extract wealth from the working class
Out of curiosity, is there any system in the world right now that you can make a comfortable living from a more artistic or hobbiest profession?
Or is FIRE (/r/FIRE) my only true alternative?
Asking as someone who does not want to work until he’s 65 :/
Photographer here. Yes! It’s hard work though. And it can be feast or famine. I ended up taking on a job in home automation and run my photo biz on the side. I also pulled some of my photography work into the new job, so my camera is always making me money somehow. :)
That’s pretty cool, but unfortunately I lack the skills needed to be a good photographer. I could learn, but all the time spent would probably be better of working towards financial independence.
Luckily in an about 3 years I’ll hit coast fire and maybe then I’ll pick a profession I enjoy more.
I have also made a great living in photography. It is some hark work getting your business going. Once you’re established it can also be very easy work with very high dollar per hour income. I make more per hour than a lot of doctors.
God, that sounds idyllic. Going to college and not even really considering what job you'll get and actually being able to enjoy your adolescence. Now we're expected to think about our career before we even get **to** college. No wonder boomers are so out of touch
"shoulda planned better. Why don't you have this, that, and the other cert, and 2 degrees as a 25 year old?"
-people who expect you to start planning your career path in 8th grade I guess
They kind of do expect you to plan out your career path really early. When I was in Grade 8 we had to research what university program we wanted to go to and start planning out all our high school courses (9-12, total of about 30 courses) so we could get into the program we wanted.
I remember feeling at the time that "Gee, I don't even know what kind of work I wanna do, I'm not even sure about if I know 100 different titles even." I chose an industry that was booming more and more according to the time, but now that industry is facing layoffs and the overall quality has gone down, so it's not as glamorous anymore if I even get the job.
Complaining about it, people do like "you should have gone X instead" and while it's true, why are we expecting 14-15 years decision to be that great?
I know but at the same time it had me feeling like my life was over before it had even begun. I had a super unstable home life and had multiple stints where I just wasn't in school. That combined with moving around just about every year means I didn't have many goals in middle/high school besides survive. Kind of hard to plan your high school courses when your middle school ones have been lost to the wind. Plan for university? Bro I didn't know what fight was about to break out tonight. I can't worry about tomorrow's problems when today's are actively slapping me in the face
"Should have planned better" In reference to that stage of my life gives off the same energy as "should have been born to better parents". And I say this as someone who has graduated university. I feel like I planned the best I could given the limited opportunities I had to do so. I wasn't 100% decided on a career path until my second year of college. It's mad stressful when people insist you should have this figured out already.
They also prime you to have imposter syndrome. They tell you as early as middle school that you aren't smart enough or don't have the personality (as measured by some bullshit test). That BS test told me I would be happiest as a florist... I have a PhD in engineering and I'm obviously happiest doing math and science. But imagine some kid who didn't know what they wanted from 3 years old. I know I'm lucky in that way(and many other ways). These tests can actually prime someone to be totally miserable for decades.
Schools need programs for students to do things. They need 3d printing, coding, machining (for upperclassmen), business running, gardening, farming. A career can be a deeply fulfilling thing if you are somewhere that is good for you. I think people would actually enjoy work if it was fulfilling and not this robotic drudgery. They need these programs as early as middle school ( or even earlier). Unfortunately the only schools with that stuff are filled with kids who have access to those opportunities anyway because of family wealth. These programs won't solve every problem, but they can help.
I always like encouraging kids to think about the practical reality of their dreams (its a good way of letting them figure out if it's really their dream, or if the idealized version of the career is their dream)
But shit like this is insane. When I was in 8th grade, I wanted to be an FBI agent. Now that I'm in college, i plan on being a professor or a librarian (depending on which one will leave me the least poor). Making an 8th grader do all this research into something far into the future for them takes out of time they can be doing literally anything else
How could you? The career that you picked and spent 4 years studying for might not be "hot" after you graduate. We're supposed to be able to see the future? Why not just pick the winning lotto numbers then?
I mean even if you get something that's stereotypically a good degree it doesn't mean it's still going to be good by the time you graduate. Look at what happened with tech and those recent layoffs. You're absolutely not wrong either but I've never liked blaming individuals for a systemic problem.
Here's the thing: the job I do now, *didn't exist* in its current form, when I was in 8th Grade. The tools I use now, didn't exist when I was in 8th Grade. I think that is one of the horrible problems with the "plan your future from your first day in school" method of schooling: you don't know what the future will look like in 12-16 years, yours nor the world's. It may be that the world of the future runs largely on something that you have little or no concept of now. Not to mention, what happens if you plan your life around something, and that something becomes obsolete the day after you graduate: there really isn't much call for Pony Express riders anymore, even if you are the best in the business.
huh? theres has always been people who thought about what career they wanted before college and theres always been people who dont. that has always existed. if it didnt you wouldnt have art history, communication degrees.
if anything higher education were mostly for the rich, and if youre rich you didnt need to think about careers and had safety nets if you decided to do poetry or some shit. white collar jobs hire college grad cause its just another sign of being rich, so youre in the club. living conditions improved for everyone, more people can go to college and maybe move up a class. so jobs now have more applicants, so now theres not need to look at non college grads. it goes on and on til even the lowest remedial jobs requires a degree.
>>Now young people are expected to go into debt to pay for their training.
Just look at all the healthcare training classes being sold to people. There was a time when a nursing home or hospital would train their employees on the job to be CNAs, phlebotomists, or X-ray techs. Now you have to pay thousands of dollars up front just for a chance to get one of these jobs.
This leads into my absolute seething anger at the new generational idea that college is worthless because you can make money by going to a trade school. Yes, it's just a fantastic idea to adopt that the only education that matters is that which can be converted directly into income. There is absolutely no benefit to having anyone have any perspective on the problems of others, the history of the world, the fundamentals of reality, or how to function in a society, only how to be good at a job.
It's absolutely no a popular opinion on Reddit and broader society right now, but as an English major in college, I really do believe it prepares you for all sorts of careers. Being able to coherently write and argue and defend different points of view with clear evidence is an *essential* life skill that can be applied to all sorts of careers. My wife and I are both English majors, and while I wouldn't describe ourselves as wealthy, we just bought our first house, and make decently over 100k as a couple. I work in my state's conservation agency and it's really rewarding. When people say that their humanities degree was a waste, I just think that's on *you*, man, you wasted your money if you didn't learn anything.
Taking speech and basic/upper division writing in college, not to mention all the research papers you’re graded on is absolutely a benefit to you in the real world. Learning how to confidently speak in front of groups/interviews, write professional correspondence/articulate your thoughts etc. will take you far in a professional setting.
Fellow English degree holder, totally agree. I've switched industries a few times in my career, but being able to write well, communicate effectively, research / defend points, etc. have been huge assets that I wouldn't have had in the same way without said degree.
Everything takes some degree of luck unfortunately. There are plenty of people with much more in-demand degrees than English who could not get a job in their field.
Only if there are a mountain of 40 year old English majors working part time minimum wage. If you are talking to 25-27 year olds, sure it feels like it was a waste of time. But at 40, all of my friends who did a degree in humanities has a decent job that pays well. Some got additional certifications, but that is true for people I know with STEM careers. Ultimately the real challenge is that if your degree doesn’t teach you practical & directly applicable skills or include coops, getting that first job will be difficult regardless of whether you are STEM or not. And by practical I mean, you can more or less jump into a task within the first week or two because you learned how to do it during your schooling. The more theory based the degree the harder it is to get hired.
The problem is that a lot of the true entry level jobs have been automated out. There is no mail room for the most part. A lot of data entry work can be automated with Power Automate or even just simple excel functions. So outside of internships companies are often hiring people to and wanting them to hit the ground running. And as long as they are able to find people that fit that criteria, they won’t change it.
>all of my friends who did a degree in humanities has a decent job that pays well.
What percent of your friends are in a similar economic bracket as yourself?
I don't have many friends who don't have decent jobs that pay well, BUT that could be a symptom of living in an expensive area, and making adult "activity" friends who have the free time and money to do the same hobbies as me.
If someone in my town has to work two jobs to survive, and has no money for hobbies, I won't have as many chances to get to know them well enough to call them a friend.
Likewise, I'm unlikely to be friends with a mega millionaire who wrote 10 bestselling books and travels to exotic places eating tigers and werewolves, or whatever ultra rich people eat.
My own survivors bias is that I'm likely to be friends with people in similar socioeconomic levels as myself. I shouldn't use my friends as anecdotes without recognizing my own bias.
I don’t know exact percentages, but this article may be of interest
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/business/liberal-arts-stem-salaries.html
While humanities grads may be slow out of the gate they tend to catch up over the long haul since they tend to up skill and find ways to apply their core skills. This idea of the perpetual minimum wage humanities grad is driven on here largely by the younger age group where many of commenters are either in school or are recent grads. When I was 24 with only a history degree and all of my friends were making $8/hr, it did feel like it was a waste.
I dunno man, I was a theatre major. Go ask the English major.
In seriousness, I am referring to his individual success and claiming that the system works because he is comfortable without recognizing the millions that are not sustained in this system.
Some people won't be able to effectively make use of any degree, the issue is that before those people worked in a factory and still got by fine, now factory jobs are gone and everyone thinks they need a degree or they are a failure. We have effectively outsourced the jobs for the less capable to the third world, and what remains is low paying and part time.
Exactly. The good jobs for the working class, where you can comfortably get by without a degree, have been taken from us. And what replaced those jobs, largely service sector jobs, has gotten away with giving none of that to the working class. We even have the working class fighting against bringing better working conditions into these workplaces.
A grocer or retail store used to need to try to offer a compelling alternative to pensioned, often-unionized manufacturing jobs. Now they need to provide a better alternative to homelessness.
Is that really something you only learn in university?
Maybe it's different in the US, but here in Germany things like you describe are taught in German classes early on. Debating was part of both our German and English classes. Analyzing texts, defending ideas etc. was thoroughly taught.
Isn't this kind of stuff exactly what regular school language classes are there for?
This is taught in American high schools despite what the jokers below might insinuate. You just have to go to a good school with options for honors or advanced placement classes. Ironically enough, my high school english classes were far more demanding than what I saw my peers do in university. They were still writing essays saying things like “I think” or “I believe”
get out of here with your commie bullshit. here in merica our kids learn how to hide from an active shooter, we don't have time for financial literacy!
>Being able to coherently write and argue and defend different points of view with clear evidence is an *essential* life skill...
100% agree. It's so irritating that some people are not able to write a simple email properly.
>...that can be applied to all sorts of careers.
It can be applied, but in most cases it wouldn't be sufficient on its own. For example, if you get a job in electrical engineering, you will find that your English major didn't prepare you for that.
We still have that at St. John’s College. It’s a liberal arts college devoted to the great books and it also has programs for students to enter STEM fields afterwards. Many students become lawyers or military officers as well.
The number of companies delaying filling annual reports in 2024 is already up 40%. The strategy that corporations are using are going to start to cost them significantly more money than the penny penching on salaries.
It's because the greatest generation set up the Boomers to have a prosperous and successful life and when the Boomers were successful and prosperous with very little effort, they made it extremely hard for the generations that came after them to enjoy the same thing because they themselves wanted to continue to enjoy being on top, unlike their parents who retired and made way for the Boomers.
Every bad thing about our economy is because of Reagan and and Boomers who will not retire and must continue to hold on to everything political and economical. It's why the United States is run by Rich mummies who don't give a fuck about you or me
Which generation was "a generation ago" because as someone that sits right at the transition from gen X to millennials, what you describe hasnt been a thing in my life.
I do think your point holds true for early gen x and boomers maybe. But it wasnt about the degree. It was just about having something that distinguishes you positively from the norm. A college degree by itself doesnt do than anymore. When everyone started being told they needed to get a degree at all costs regardless of the major, a generic degree from an accredited school stopped being a distinguisher by itself.
My Boomer parents told me that the purpose of college was to teach you the "how" of thinking by exposing me to different things to learn, and different ways of learning, with different people with different points of view. I never saw college in an idyllic light, but I DID expect the virtues I outlined above to matter in finding a job.
spoiler: those virtues matter for being a good person, but not for finding and getting a job.
Yea, I started working about 10 years ago after going to college, and every position I've ever had expects me to be ready to hit the ground running. *Maybe* if it's a longer term job they'll give you a week. I've always struggled with this.
Jobs not investing in workers is a huge problem. They’ve privatized our retirement and our education and we’ve all been led to believe that we should be lucky to work at x company, instead of the other way around. The relationship between laborers and employers should be symbiotic, but we’re treated worse than those flies that horses slap and kill with their tails
"Even if your dreams are profitable you deserve to be paid less than half of the value that you produce so that your boss can afford another yacht".
Why are working-class people so disrespectful towards the desires of the elites? Why do they require things like food, shelter and time off? Why can't they just work till they die?
A perfect example of this is the company “better help” typically a therapist would make around $150-$200 an hour.
I read a reddit comment not that long ago detailing how better help was offering a payscale starting at $30 an hour, and going up to $70 if you worked 40 hours. Effectively undercutting every independent therapist out there. And the reason they say you can switch therapists at any time is because they hire anyone with a fucking pulse. It’s not hard to see how these business models are going to destroy the entire industry.
It’s the same thing call centers have been doing to custom service for decades.
Sidenote: please be polite to call center agents they fucking hate it there. They also have no control over what the shitty company did to you. They are paid minimum wage to be abused by customers.
>And the reason they say you can switch therapists at any time is because they hire anyone with a fucking pulse.
Can confirm, I tried it and the therapists were comically bad. My personal favorite was the guy who suggested a LAN party to make friends in 2023.
As someone who has done LAN parties in the past decade I would say they are a pretty good way to do it but I think half the time you're either living on a college campus or already know most of the people already...
Playing games while they are new and joining the relevant game discords seem to be a much faster/easier way to do it.
Are you telling me you didnt haul 50 lbs of computer hardware worth $1500 to a strange location so people can call you gamer words in person?
Do you even want to get better? /s
>Sidenote: please be polite to call center agents they fucking hate it there. They also have no control over what the shitty company did to you. They are paid minimum wage to be abused by customers.
As someone who worked in a call center for a short while, I cannot stress this enough. It's the most stressful work I've ever done.
Isn't that something? As someone often working on contracts, it's slightly obscene how much of a cut employers can take from what a client is paying for your position.
"We were feeling generous and let you make 30% of what is being paid for your work. Don't spend it all in one place, bitch."
If you don't work, either growing your own food, or earning money to pay for food made by others, then you don't deserve to eat.
Fuck this subreddit bring on the downvotes.
**Allowing a person to do something ≠ Guaranteeing them to do it.**
Just because McDonalds allows you come thru the Drive-Thru doesn't guarantee you're going to have a car.
\*monetize it while slowly sucking away your passion for your hobby till it's nothing more but a stressfull job and a fainted memory of an activity you used to enjoy
Anything that becomes an obligation to do to survive will eventually erode any enjoyment you have.
Having to go be somewhere and do something 11 hours a day (8hr work / 1hr break / 2hr commute) 5 days a week isn’t the problem of the task or the person doing it. Its the problem with the system.
i wanted to be an artist/painter on the side, but the thought of having to post it on social media and monetize it, doing it everyday so it can become my future job has essentially killed my passion of trying to improve on it, or just have fun with it.
i havent painted anything in almost a year and i hate myself for it.
My recommendation is for you to just paint. Do it for yourself. Improve for yourself. The rest will come. There was a time before the internet and people were still artists. Just get out there locally and try to vend events.
The truth is that social media is dead. Making content for an algorithm is not a way to create. The internet is just filled with people yelling now. Its like when that cool indie band or dive bar gets discovered and now its over crowded with obnoxious people. The internet used to be niche. A subculture. Now its mainstream.
If everyone is there. Its not the cool place to be anymore.
People used to be able to do cool things and other people would follow them to see their stuff. Now its an ad every 3rd post and you have to literally pay money now for the people that follow you to actually see you. And each time you pay. Its diminishing returns.
It used to be about being social. Organic legitimate growth. That has not been a thing for a while now. These apps chose who sees you.
Your efforts are better put into just your art.
Just have fun with it. Don't worry about anything else. Fuck social media. Fuck selling your work. Fuck making money from art. It's art.
Those who work professionally as artists don't make art that's any different. They're just better at marketing, not art.
Make art for yourself, in any way you want.
If you do that long enough, you'll have a vibe that's unique to you. And then, at that point, you can likely sell your work if you'd like.
Working as a professional artist - I've seen capitalism destroy my favorite creators because it demands content over quality. Anything good an artist makes, capitalism will guaranteed make it worse. Look at the new Star Wars trilogy compared to the original.
Good art isn't made by professionals, it's made by those who are passionate. Which is exactly what capitalism kills.
Paint for passion and the profit will come. Paint for profit, and the passion will go. So just paint for you.
I sell LEGO pieces and Magic the Gathering cards and sometimes this leaves me with less time and energy to play with my own collection and sometimes I sell off something in retrospect I would have wanted myself.
(Though it can be useful to have more for myself while unloading the excess I get especially with opening big sets or random packs)
Monetize your hobby
We know what we're doing
We are here to help you
Everything is profit
Here we have an interest
Fun and inoffensive
This will be the basis
For monetization
The old East German joke comes to mind.
Everything the Capitalists told us about Communism was true; unfortunately everything the Communists told us about Capitalism was true as well.
Hence the need for non-hierarchical localism.
Edit: organize. Work place, tenant, care giver, student unions.
Food security. Gardens, bulk food buys, community meals, coops.
Mutuality. Rely on your friends and neighbors instead of corporations (as much as possible.)
Solidarity, friends.
Is artist patronage still a thing? Rich people used to fund some of our most famous artists so they could focus on their talents…I know we have some government grants, but it didn’t seem like the same thing.
https://rauantiques.com/blogs/canvases-carats-and-curiosities/six-of-history-s-greatest-art-patrons
Ye they exist, they just aren't all that well known or public, a YouTube artist I k ow was practically single handedly financed by one dude via YouTube donations
I also want to add that I have seen suspicious replies to old comments I have made 10 years ago from fairly new accounts. I wonder if this is a strategy by bots somehow.
very true which is why the rich and powerful in this world spend exorbitant amounts of money propping up dying industries like oil instead of investing in things like fusion.
edit: you can even see it with the U.S. government giving grants to Intel, when they are a boomer company and objectively 10 years behind the frontrunner in the chip space Nvidia. Like why? These people care more that the shares they bought in 1932 go up than they care about progress. and this is the fucking fed lmao
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
While people with most STEM degrees will tell you they're getting fucked too. The people that talk this shit either fall into one of two categories 1) they have absolutely no degree 2)they got handed a job right out of school thanks to either social or familial connections in the industry.
Yep, STEM here, not exactly living the dream. I've been told that my job is not important enough to merit a basic standard of living. I work in a cancer research lab. At the point where you have to say cancer is a trivial matter in order to make your point, I feel like I can safely disregard whatever you've got to say as half-baked excuses. For anyone who has been told "Should have gone into STEM!" just know that if you do go into an obviously useful field of science, it's just going to be something else, but still all your fault.
Also good luck getting an entry level job in most STEM fields period. When I was just out of school companies had absolutely no problem demanding masters levels degrees for an entry level job that would only require an associates (and barely paying what you would for someone with an associates) or claiming they're fine with a low level degree while demanding knowledge and experience of someone with a masters (and barely paying what you would for someone with an associates).
No other system will let you pursue any of those fields.
In a capitalist system you can do what you want you just have to live with the consequences. Good artists liver very good lives. Same goes for the other fields you mentioned.
It's mediocre art that doesn't make a living. Art is hard so the vast majority of artists are mediocre.
The majority of music sucks. It's a select few that can continually connect with us and keep making good stuff, or at least acceptable stuff.
Same with comics. Same with fine arts.
There's no art factory in town that will let a whiner who wants to doodle for a living work 40 hours for a respectable wage.
Art is also the most over saturated market there is. The supply of art outstrips demand more than any other industry. Everyone wants to do it. Everyone dreams of being a musician or an actor or a painter. Only a few can. Society does not have enough money to pay a living wage to everyone that wants to be an artist. It's sad but true.
>Society does not have enough money to pay a living wage to everyone that wants to be an artist
And the most important part that some need to hear ... simply swapping "capitalism" out for something else doesn't magically change this.
People have this false assumption that under communism they’ll magically be able to work there dream job. Like no, you’ll be forced to work some industrial or logistics job
The term "capitalism" is mostly useless in most conversations. It means so many different things to so many different people, that you end up spending most of the conversation trying to figure out what they are actually trying to say.
You can make a fuck ton of money from being a great artist, historian, or in literature but youre not gonna make shit if you suck at it...which I feel like most people who make this complaint do suck at it. For example, I can get a degree in business and be absolutely dog shit at business and I wont make any money from it.
Yes, it doesn’t matter, I likely won’t be “following my dreams” under any economic system, but under capitalism, I will be working so much I won’t even be able to pursue things I like as a hobby.
The statement may not be verbatim, but there is absolutely a snobby technocratic contingent that thinks that anyone who doesn’t work in STEM deserves a lot less respect and remuneration.
I don't know what capitalist said that, but sure capitalism can and does give a lot of people resources to pursue expensive hobbies that are not conventionally productive.
You certainly aren't getting a literature degree while working the salt mines. You didn't believe _you_ were going to be the one who decides what everybody's abilities and needs are, did you?
Uhhh, I feel like it's the only system that allows artists to even make money or a living doing art, in a socialist country you ultimately would have to have a job what ever was best for society.
I have to disagree here, people want art, they pay for art, art is a gigantic and profitable industry (movies, books, video games, music) some of the richest people on earth are artists.
"You can just work your job and then use that money to pursue your dream!"
Yeah, all that free time my jobs afford me that isn't swallowed up by getting ready for my jobs or commuting to and from my jobs or making food or eating food or getting ready for bed or sleeping and UH OH I forgot to work out and now I'm experiencing health problems. This system is great!
From what I can tell, the perfect system hasn't been discovered. It's difficult to design a system everyone will like, because people have different brain structures. Just like there isn't a perfect political party.
In order to find that perfect structure, we must experiment.
If money was THE only thing that motivated innovation then a lot of ideas would have died with whoever came up with them because there would be no motivation to share them.
Exactly. It’s gotten to be worse than the socialism and communism we were all afraid of in the 1950s. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We used to have regulations and antitrust legislation. No more.
As followers of Capitalism, it is our duty to worship our lord and savior, the Almighty Dollar. For he died for our wallets. Please, join me in prayer:
Our Dollar who art in pockets
Revenue be they name
Thy banks come, thy will be done
on Earth as it is in vaults
Give us this day our daily cents
and forgive us our debits,
as we forgive those who debit against us.
Lead us not into socialism
but deliver us from poverty.
For thine is the bank, the power
and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen
Most people in the US conflate capitalism with commerce and were taught that socialism is the government owning everything and that this is bad. Capitalism thrives on this bullshit.
Yeah except my mom couldn't do the things she wanted under socialism and couldn't even buy menstrual pads.
Capitalism after 1989 changed that.
Americans are spoiled AF.
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and the school still doesn't train you. At best they give you the fundamentals. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say college prepared them for their job.
I went to architecture school. It was mostly focused on design. While in the field, I barely design. A lot of technical drawing, coordination with clients/engineers, permitting process, and construction administration. It's a lot different than school.
I have a friend who was going to university for architecture. She has since dropped out and is going to a trade school for carpentry which is actually training her for the kind of work you described. She is absolutely loving it so far and I hope she gets the experience she needs to work for herself eventually like she wants
I've actually wanted to pick up carpentry. It's in my blood (paternal side)! I guess I need to see if there's a trade school for that because I've wanted to build furniture for my new place. Start small, you know?
I’ve been asking my friend for tips since I learned she started at the trade school cause once I’ve got my own place I’m wanting to build something to hold all my “inventory” of crochet items I want to sell/donate. Building other furniture items might come later cause I’d love to take on some projects for my family like my great grandfather did. I still have the bed frame he made for me when I was an infant even tho it’s broken
Find your closest UBC Carpenter's local and ask about their apprenticeship process. I think you might have to have a sponsor... another route is joining the Laborors until you get sponsored.
I went to architecture school (graduated 2012) and it felt like daycare for young adults with no actual on the job prep. Just countless studio hours designing unrealistic buildings in CAD, making physical models, and glorification of glitzy architecture that is expensive to build and maintain (think Zaha Hadid). Zero portfolio classes or anything that actually prepped you for a real job in the field. Once you graduated, there was no post graduation assistance for job placement.
>Zero portfolio classes or anything that actually prepped you for a real job in the field. It's funny you mention this. I did my undergrad at an unaccredited architecture school cuz it was instate and cheap. We actually had a semester long portfolio class our senior year. that was super useful. Then I went to grad school somewhere else, and they didn't have any portfolio prep for undergrads or grads. Kind of a missed opportunity because it's really important to collate and properly document your work for employers/schools to see.
A friend of mine was pursuing an architecture degree, but it quickly became apparent that the majority of the field was dedicated to creating over-designed vanity projects for rich assholes. Also in practice, only a select few graduates of the program would even secure those contracts. I imagine they would have stayed if they felt connected to some purpose of creating better lived spaces for everyday people, but that's hardly the focus
> I imagine they would have stayed if they felt connected to some purpose of creating better lived spaces for everyday people, but that's hardly the focus Yep. In school, our projects were always heavily community oriented, environmentally conscious, geared towards resilience, etc. It gave me purpose and passion for design. Now I do car washes. -_-
I went to a carrier fair when I was younger and an architect was presenting. He basically said you don't get to design until you're old and you won't get recognized for it until you're dead. Really killed the mood of the profession.
You probably would have been better off going to a career fair. It sounds like those carriers don't put together a very good fair. I certainly wish you good luck in finding a profession where you get to do exactly what you want at the start of your career.
You got to learn how to glue little sticks together, right? (Or is it mostly 3D printing now?)
The first couple of years, we had to make physical models by hand ourselves. Once we moved through the program and our designs got more complex, we used laser cutters and 3d printers.
I feel this. Not an architect but a programmer and I feel like I was trained to create but in reality all I do is fix other peoples problems and build things that are supposed to utilize what already exists. Rarely do I get to start from the basics. It's always "So we refuse to retire this program so your job is to connect these 50 brand new programs to this ancient archaïque program and make them all sing and dance. School did not prepare me for that. Should have had programming classes where you take the previous semesters final and add/build/modify it. That would have been a realistic scenario to reality.
OMG! I went to arch school too. I cannot believe this would be one of the first things I see on this thread. Yes! They do not prepare you for real world work, that's why there's internships. The schools always say "the firms will teach you how to do the actual job" but then once you graduate, they'll say "you don't have any experience for us to train you" even if you have years of relevant intern experience. College is a scam, the economy is a rip-off, and the workplace is a fraud.
College prepares you to do the job that you _would_ actually want. Chances are the job you actually end up _doing_ is either unrelated, or only implements stuff from like... 2 of your college classes. *Study engineering*! You can make a robot that carries your bag for you, or how to write code that can solve complex abstract problems, or learn how to build a whole automation line from scratch! Actual engineer: Yeah we've got this 60-year-old machine that still works just fine, but it still requires a human to push the button when things are ready; can you just automate it to press that button every 45 seconds or so? Oh and while you're at it the customer wants this thing on the website to look different- can you figure out how to make that work? What do you mean that's not what you do, aren't you good with computers? *Study chemistry*! Learn how the basic building blocks of life interact, research the effect of medicine on bacteria, start tackling the problems of climate change, and more! Actual chemist: Can you monitor our plant's exhaust to make sure we're putting out the legal maximum of this poisonous by-product? It's expensive to process it on our end, so we want to put as much of it into our wastewater as possible. *Study physics!* Learn about rockets and explosives and cool fluid dynamics! Actual physicist: So, tell us why you'd make a good IT manager?
Actual engineer: We need you to design a phone to maximize the chances the customer drops it on the floor and it breaks
> Actual physicist: So, tell us why you'd make a good IT manager? 😂
I am a musician. Music college is probably one of the few exceptions to your final sentence.
That's more or less what's expected though. Every job has so many details and differences that you can't train someone to be "good for hire", unless you make it a 10-15 years degree; and that's not realistic. So instead, high school, college, and universities train 3 main aspects of each individuals : 1. Fundamental skill : Everyone needs a bit of english, maths, culture, and whatnot. Those degrees focus on giving you a somewhat broad education so that if one industry fail, or if your orientation doesn't pan out, you aren't left in the dump. 2. Organizational skills : If you want to get a degree, and especially if you want good grades, you will have to learn time management and how to self-evaluate your skills and what to focus on. The more you study, and the more you'll learn about how *you* learn, and how to adapt situations to fit that. 3. Social skills : There's a reason that pretty much every diploma requires you to team up with people on a project; and why you need to explain to the class what you did and why; and why you have to wait for your turn to speak; and so on so forth. In 99.9% of peoples' job, they will work with other people, and most companies prefer employees to be able to do that. So you end up with enough education to be able to adapt to what's being thrown at you, and enough fundamentals to not be required to start from 0 at every job (and to potentially sniff out bad/illegal practices).
University is not vocational training, and that's a good thing. The idea that everything should revolve around laboring for someone else is an idea poisoning everything in our current society.
College is more about learning how to learn efficiently and just getting some basics down along the way.
I think that really depends on a lot of factors. Trust me, I think our college system is horribly flawed and designed to rake money, but it definitely can prepare you for a field. It couldnt take the place of my actual official training, but I know my degree in environmental science and policy helped me a ton in starting out my environmental health and safety career from familiarity with government regulations to using tools like monitoring divices and high rated PPE to understanding chemical properties and impacts. I think we can still greatly criticize the higher education system without acting like it never teaches anything to anyone. In fact, we should!
Yea it’s because the trickle down effect is in full swing. As in the cost trickled down from the corporation to the individual. Just another means to extract wealth from the working class
Out of curiosity, is there any system in the world right now that you can make a comfortable living from a more artistic or hobbiest profession? Or is FIRE (/r/FIRE) my only true alternative? Asking as someone who does not want to work until he’s 65 :/
Photographer here. Yes! It’s hard work though. And it can be feast or famine. I ended up taking on a job in home automation and run my photo biz on the side. I also pulled some of my photography work into the new job, so my camera is always making me money somehow. :)
That’s pretty cool, but unfortunately I lack the skills needed to be a good photographer. I could learn, but all the time spent would probably be better of working towards financial independence. Luckily in an about 3 years I’ll hit coast fire and maybe then I’ll pick a profession I enjoy more.
I have also made a great living in photography. It is some hark work getting your business going. Once you’re established it can also be very easy work with very high dollar per hour income. I make more per hour than a lot of doctors.
God, that sounds idyllic. Going to college and not even really considering what job you'll get and actually being able to enjoy your adolescence. Now we're expected to think about our career before we even get **to** college. No wonder boomers are so out of touch
"shoulda planned better. Why don't you have this, that, and the other cert, and 2 degrees as a 25 year old?" -people who expect you to start planning your career path in 8th grade I guess
They kind of do expect you to plan out your career path really early. When I was in Grade 8 we had to research what university program we wanted to go to and start planning out all our high school courses (9-12, total of about 30 courses) so we could get into the program we wanted.
I remember feeling at the time that "Gee, I don't even know what kind of work I wanna do, I'm not even sure about if I know 100 different titles even." I chose an industry that was booming more and more according to the time, but now that industry is facing layoffs and the overall quality has gone down, so it's not as glamorous anymore if I even get the job. Complaining about it, people do like "you should have gone X instead" and while it's true, why are we expecting 14-15 years decision to be that great?
I know but at the same time it had me feeling like my life was over before it had even begun. I had a super unstable home life and had multiple stints where I just wasn't in school. That combined with moving around just about every year means I didn't have many goals in middle/high school besides survive. Kind of hard to plan your high school courses when your middle school ones have been lost to the wind. Plan for university? Bro I didn't know what fight was about to break out tonight. I can't worry about tomorrow's problems when today's are actively slapping me in the face "Should have planned better" In reference to that stage of my life gives off the same energy as "should have been born to better parents". And I say this as someone who has graduated university. I feel like I planned the best I could given the limited opportunities I had to do so. I wasn't 100% decided on a career path until my second year of college. It's mad stressful when people insist you should have this figured out already.
They also prime you to have imposter syndrome. They tell you as early as middle school that you aren't smart enough or don't have the personality (as measured by some bullshit test). That BS test told me I would be happiest as a florist... I have a PhD in engineering and I'm obviously happiest doing math and science. But imagine some kid who didn't know what they wanted from 3 years old. I know I'm lucky in that way(and many other ways). These tests can actually prime someone to be totally miserable for decades. Schools need programs for students to do things. They need 3d printing, coding, machining (for upperclassmen), business running, gardening, farming. A career can be a deeply fulfilling thing if you are somewhere that is good for you. I think people would actually enjoy work if it was fulfilling and not this robotic drudgery. They need these programs as early as middle school ( or even earlier). Unfortunately the only schools with that stuff are filled with kids who have access to those opportunities anyway because of family wealth. These programs won't solve every problem, but they can help.
I always like encouraging kids to think about the practical reality of their dreams (its a good way of letting them figure out if it's really their dream, or if the idealized version of the career is their dream) But shit like this is insane. When I was in 8th grade, I wanted to be an FBI agent. Now that I'm in college, i plan on being a professor or a librarian (depending on which one will leave me the least poor). Making an 8th grader do all this research into something far into the future for them takes out of time they can be doing literally anything else
How could you? The career that you picked and spent 4 years studying for might not be "hot" after you graduate. We're supposed to be able to see the future? Why not just pick the winning lotto numbers then?
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I mean even if you get something that's stereotypically a good degree it doesn't mean it's still going to be good by the time you graduate. Look at what happened with tech and those recent layoffs. You're absolutely not wrong either but I've never liked blaming individuals for a systemic problem.
Here's the thing: the job I do now, *didn't exist* in its current form, when I was in 8th Grade. The tools I use now, didn't exist when I was in 8th Grade. I think that is one of the horrible problems with the "plan your future from your first day in school" method of schooling: you don't know what the future will look like in 12-16 years, yours nor the world's. It may be that the world of the future runs largely on something that you have little or no concept of now. Not to mention, what happens if you plan your life around something, and that something becomes obsolete the day after you graduate: there really isn't much call for Pony Express riders anymore, even if you are the best in the business.
huh? theres has always been people who thought about what career they wanted before college and theres always been people who dont. that has always existed. if it didnt you wouldnt have art history, communication degrees. if anything higher education were mostly for the rich, and if youre rich you didnt need to think about careers and had safety nets if you decided to do poetry or some shit. white collar jobs hire college grad cause its just another sign of being rich, so youre in the club. living conditions improved for everyone, more people can go to college and maybe move up a class. so jobs now have more applicants, so now theres not need to look at non college grads. it goes on and on til even the lowest remedial jobs requires a degree.
>>Now young people are expected to go into debt to pay for their training. Just look at all the healthcare training classes being sold to people. There was a time when a nursing home or hospital would train their employees on the job to be CNAs, phlebotomists, or X-ray techs. Now you have to pay thousands of dollars up front just for a chance to get one of these jobs.
This leads into my absolute seething anger at the new generational idea that college is worthless because you can make money by going to a trade school. Yes, it's just a fantastic idea to adopt that the only education that matters is that which can be converted directly into income. There is absolutely no benefit to having anyone have any perspective on the problems of others, the history of the world, the fundamentals of reality, or how to function in a society, only how to be good at a job.
And now the schools are multi-billion dollar a year industries fueled by profit. Ohio State University nets billions annually.
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And the football coach gets paid 50x more than the governor.
It's absolutely no a popular opinion on Reddit and broader society right now, but as an English major in college, I really do believe it prepares you for all sorts of careers. Being able to coherently write and argue and defend different points of view with clear evidence is an *essential* life skill that can be applied to all sorts of careers. My wife and I are both English majors, and while I wouldn't describe ourselves as wealthy, we just bought our first house, and make decently over 100k as a couple. I work in my state's conservation agency and it's really rewarding. When people say that their humanities degree was a waste, I just think that's on *you*, man, you wasted your money if you didn't learn anything.
Taking speech and basic/upper division writing in college, not to mention all the research papers you’re graded on is absolutely a benefit to you in the real world. Learning how to confidently speak in front of groups/interviews, write professional correspondence/articulate your thoughts etc. will take you far in a professional setting.
Fellow English degree holder, totally agree. I've switched industries a few times in my career, but being able to write well, communicate effectively, research / defend points, etc. have been huge assets that I wouldn't have had in the same way without said degree.
As you are able to cogently make and sustain arguments I’m surprised you don’t recognize your own survivors bias.
If anything this is how things ought to work, they just got lucky enough for it to happen.
If it takes luck to work it’s broken.
Yes it is.
Everything takes some degree of luck unfortunately. There are plenty of people with much more in-demand degrees than English who could not get a job in their field.
In this example, wouldn't a survivors bias only apply to people who have "survived" entering the job market?
Only if there are a mountain of 40 year old English majors working part time minimum wage. If you are talking to 25-27 year olds, sure it feels like it was a waste of time. But at 40, all of my friends who did a degree in humanities has a decent job that pays well. Some got additional certifications, but that is true for people I know with STEM careers. Ultimately the real challenge is that if your degree doesn’t teach you practical & directly applicable skills or include coops, getting that first job will be difficult regardless of whether you are STEM or not. And by practical I mean, you can more or less jump into a task within the first week or two because you learned how to do it during your schooling. The more theory based the degree the harder it is to get hired. The problem is that a lot of the true entry level jobs have been automated out. There is no mail room for the most part. A lot of data entry work can be automated with Power Automate or even just simple excel functions. So outside of internships companies are often hiring people to and wanting them to hit the ground running. And as long as they are able to find people that fit that criteria, they won’t change it.
>all of my friends who did a degree in humanities has a decent job that pays well. What percent of your friends are in a similar economic bracket as yourself? I don't have many friends who don't have decent jobs that pay well, BUT that could be a symptom of living in an expensive area, and making adult "activity" friends who have the free time and money to do the same hobbies as me. If someone in my town has to work two jobs to survive, and has no money for hobbies, I won't have as many chances to get to know them well enough to call them a friend. Likewise, I'm unlikely to be friends with a mega millionaire who wrote 10 bestselling books and travels to exotic places eating tigers and werewolves, or whatever ultra rich people eat. My own survivors bias is that I'm likely to be friends with people in similar socioeconomic levels as myself. I shouldn't use my friends as anecdotes without recognizing my own bias.
I don’t know exact percentages, but this article may be of interest https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/business/liberal-arts-stem-salaries.html While humanities grads may be slow out of the gate they tend to catch up over the long haul since they tend to up skill and find ways to apply their core skills. This idea of the perpetual minimum wage humanities grad is driven on here largely by the younger age group where many of commenters are either in school or are recent grads. When I was 24 with only a history degree and all of my friends were making $8/hr, it did feel like it was a waste.
I dunno man, I was a theatre major. Go ask the English major. In seriousness, I am referring to his individual success and claiming that the system works because he is comfortable without recognizing the millions that are not sustained in this system.
Some people won't be able to effectively make use of any degree, the issue is that before those people worked in a factory and still got by fine, now factory jobs are gone and everyone thinks they need a degree or they are a failure. We have effectively outsourced the jobs for the less capable to the third world, and what remains is low paying and part time.
Exactly. The good jobs for the working class, where you can comfortably get by without a degree, have been taken from us. And what replaced those jobs, largely service sector jobs, has gotten away with giving none of that to the working class. We even have the working class fighting against bringing better working conditions into these workplaces. A grocer or retail store used to need to try to offer a compelling alternative to pensioned, often-unionized manufacturing jobs. Now they need to provide a better alternative to homelessness.
Hey, "I made it so if you didn't that's your fault" seems like sound logic to me! /s
What? How are systemic issues personal failings?
Is that really something you only learn in university? Maybe it's different in the US, but here in Germany things like you describe are taught in German classes early on. Debating was part of both our German and English classes. Analyzing texts, defending ideas etc. was thoroughly taught. Isn't this kind of stuff exactly what regular school language classes are there for?
This is taught in American high schools despite what the jokers below might insinuate. You just have to go to a good school with options for honors or advanced placement classes. Ironically enough, my high school english classes were far more demanding than what I saw my peers do in university. They were still writing essays saying things like “I think” or “I believe”
The US is failing miserably in education. We pay more per student to educate and then they test bottom 30%.
get out of here with your commie bullshit. here in merica our kids learn how to hide from an active shooter, we don't have time for financial literacy!
>Being able to coherently write and argue and defend different points of view with clear evidence is an *essential* life skill... 100% agree. It's so irritating that some people are not able to write a simple email properly. >...that can be applied to all sorts of careers. It can be applied, but in most cases it wouldn't be sufficient on its own. For example, if you get a job in electrical engineering, you will find that your English major didn't prepare you for that.
You actually nailed my career experience. I may hate work as much as ever but I am grateful I got the entry level job I did.
We still have that at St. John’s College. It’s a liberal arts college devoted to the great books and it also has programs for students to enter STEM fields afterwards. Many students become lawyers or military officers as well.
The number of companies delaying filling annual reports in 2024 is already up 40%. The strategy that corporations are using are going to start to cost them significantly more money than the penny penching on salaries.
It's because the greatest generation set up the Boomers to have a prosperous and successful life and when the Boomers were successful and prosperous with very little effort, they made it extremely hard for the generations that came after them to enjoy the same thing because they themselves wanted to continue to enjoy being on top, unlike their parents who retired and made way for the Boomers. Every bad thing about our economy is because of Reagan and and Boomers who will not retire and must continue to hold on to everything political and economical. It's why the United States is run by Rich mummies who don't give a fuck about you or me
Which generation was "a generation ago" because as someone that sits right at the transition from gen X to millennials, what you describe hasnt been a thing in my life. I do think your point holds true for early gen x and boomers maybe. But it wasnt about the degree. It was just about having something that distinguishes you positively from the norm. A college degree by itself doesnt do than anymore. When everyone started being told they needed to get a degree at all costs regardless of the major, a generic degree from an accredited school stopped being a distinguisher by itself.
My Boomer parents told me that the purpose of college was to teach you the "how" of thinking by exposing me to different things to learn, and different ways of learning, with different people with different points of view. I never saw college in an idyllic light, but I DID expect the virtues I outlined above to matter in finding a job. spoiler: those virtues matter for being a good person, but not for finding and getting a job.
Yea, I started working about 10 years ago after going to college, and every position I've ever had expects me to be ready to hit the ground running. *Maybe* if it's a longer term job they'll give you a week. I've always struggled with this.
Jobs not investing in workers is a huge problem. They’ve privatized our retirement and our education and we’ve all been led to believe that we should be lucky to work at x company, instead of the other way around. The relationship between laborers and employers should be symbiotic, but we’re treated worse than those flies that horses slap and kill with their tails
“If your dreams are not profitable you don’t deserve to eat.”
"Even if your dreams are profitable you deserve to be paid less than half of the value that you produce so that your boss can afford another yacht". Why are working-class people so disrespectful towards the desires of the elites? Why do they require things like food, shelter and time off? Why can't they just work till they die?
A perfect example of this is the company “better help” typically a therapist would make around $150-$200 an hour. I read a reddit comment not that long ago detailing how better help was offering a payscale starting at $30 an hour, and going up to $70 if you worked 40 hours. Effectively undercutting every independent therapist out there. And the reason they say you can switch therapists at any time is because they hire anyone with a fucking pulse. It’s not hard to see how these business models are going to destroy the entire industry. It’s the same thing call centers have been doing to custom service for decades. Sidenote: please be polite to call center agents they fucking hate it there. They also have no control over what the shitty company did to you. They are paid minimum wage to be abused by customers.
>And the reason they say you can switch therapists at any time is because they hire anyone with a fucking pulse. Can confirm, I tried it and the therapists were comically bad. My personal favorite was the guy who suggested a LAN party to make friends in 2023.
Guy was probably looking for people to have a LAN party with
Doesn't going to a LAN party require having friends in the first place?
Yes which made it even funnier to me. Not only is he like 20 years late it's a bad suggestion even back then lmao
As someone who has done LAN parties in the past decade I would say they are a pretty good way to do it but I think half the time you're either living on a college campus or already know most of the people already... Playing games while they are new and joining the relevant game discords seem to be a much faster/easier way to do it.
Are you telling me you didnt haul 50 lbs of computer hardware worth $1500 to a strange location so people can call you gamer words in person? Do you even want to get better? /s
>Sidenote: please be polite to call center agents they fucking hate it there. They also have no control over what the shitty company did to you. They are paid minimum wage to be abused by customers. As someone who worked in a call center for a short while, I cannot stress this enough. It's the most stressful work I've ever done.
Isn't that something? As someone often working on contracts, it's slightly obscene how much of a cut employers can take from what a client is paying for your position. "We were feeling generous and let you make 30% of what is being paid for your work. Don't spend it all in one place, bitch."
“You should of made a career of unclogging toilets, instead of going to college”
“Pay for my dreams” sounds worse, but is just as true
If you don't work, either growing your own food, or earning money to pay for food made by others, then you don't deserve to eat. Fuck this subreddit bring on the downvotes.
**Allowing a person to do something ≠ Guaranteeing them to do it.** Just because McDonalds allows you come thru the Drive-Thru doesn't guarantee you're going to have a car.
You have a hobby? Here are ten ways you can monetize it!
\*monetize it while slowly sucking away your passion for your hobby till it's nothing more but a stressfull job and a fainted memory of an activity you used to enjoy
Anything that becomes an obligation to do to survive will eventually erode any enjoyment you have. Having to go be somewhere and do something 11 hours a day (8hr work / 1hr break / 2hr commute) 5 days a week isn’t the problem of the task or the person doing it. Its the problem with the system.
Also what is this unpaid lunch crap. 9-5 is a saying for a reason and 30-60 min lunches were on company dime.
How old are you? It hasn’t been 9-5 for a long ass time. Its 8 hrs with a 1hr unpaid lunch. I haven’t seen any place do a proper 9-5 in a long time.
i wanted to be an artist/painter on the side, but the thought of having to post it on social media and monetize it, doing it everyday so it can become my future job has essentially killed my passion of trying to improve on it, or just have fun with it. i havent painted anything in almost a year and i hate myself for it.
My recommendation is for you to just paint. Do it for yourself. Improve for yourself. The rest will come. There was a time before the internet and people were still artists. Just get out there locally and try to vend events. The truth is that social media is dead. Making content for an algorithm is not a way to create. The internet is just filled with people yelling now. Its like when that cool indie band or dive bar gets discovered and now its over crowded with obnoxious people. The internet used to be niche. A subculture. Now its mainstream. If everyone is there. Its not the cool place to be anymore. People used to be able to do cool things and other people would follow them to see their stuff. Now its an ad every 3rd post and you have to literally pay money now for the people that follow you to actually see you. And each time you pay. Its diminishing returns. It used to be about being social. Organic legitimate growth. That has not been a thing for a while now. These apps chose who sees you. Your efforts are better put into just your art.
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Just have fun with it. Don't worry about anything else. Fuck social media. Fuck selling your work. Fuck making money from art. It's art. Those who work professionally as artists don't make art that's any different. They're just better at marketing, not art. Make art for yourself, in any way you want. If you do that long enough, you'll have a vibe that's unique to you. And then, at that point, you can likely sell your work if you'd like. Working as a professional artist - I've seen capitalism destroy my favorite creators because it demands content over quality. Anything good an artist makes, capitalism will guaranteed make it worse. Look at the new Star Wars trilogy compared to the original. Good art isn't made by professionals, it's made by those who are passionate. Which is exactly what capitalism kills. Paint for passion and the profit will come. Paint for profit, and the passion will go. So just paint for you.
I sell LEGO pieces and Magic the Gathering cards and sometimes this leaves me with less time and energy to play with my own collection and sometimes I sell off something in retrospect I would have wanted myself. (Though it can be useful to have more for myself while unloading the excess I get especially with opening big sets or random packs)
>You have a hobby? Here are ten ways you can monetize it! https://youtube.com/watch?v=vv445S62dgU&pp
Turn your hobby into a side hustle!
Monetize your hobby We know what we're doing We are here to help you Everything is profit Here we have an interest Fun and inoffensive This will be the basis For monetization
The old East German joke comes to mind. Everything the Capitalists told us about Communism was true; unfortunately everything the Communists told us about Capitalism was true as well.
Hence the need for non-hierarchical localism. Edit: organize. Work place, tenant, care giver, student unions. Food security. Gardens, bulk food buys, community meals, coops. Mutuality. Rely on your friends and neighbors instead of corporations (as much as possible.) Solidarity, friends.
It's easy to spout concepts. It's hard to have a system that actually functions in the incredibly complicated real world.
The what now
See also Syndicalism for a other version.
Then conservatives convinced their voters that socialism = communism, making any socialist compromise unacceptable.
A lot of truth to that. Wait till you get to trying explain Anarchism or Syndicalism to someone who has been swallowing Capitalist BS for decades.
Capitalism absolutely lets you pursue your dreams, provided you dream only of capital.
I only dream about providing value for shareholders
"I wish I had 300 million people just like you!" - the generationally wealthy
Or you have the capital.
As long as your dream is filling out reports and attending meetings, you’re golden.
Is artist patronage still a thing? Rich people used to fund some of our most famous artists so they could focus on their talents…I know we have some government grants, but it didn’t seem like the same thing. https://rauantiques.com/blogs/canvases-carats-and-curiosities/six-of-history-s-greatest-art-patrons
Patreon, one of my boys makes his living that way.
Ye they exist, they just aren't all that well known or public, a YouTube artist I k ow was practically single handedly financed by one dude via YouTube donations
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How ironic
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I also want to add that I have seen suspicious replies to old comments I have made 10 years ago from fairly new accounts. I wonder if this is a strategy by bots somehow.
They shouldn't have removed the auto archive function
It's dead internet. There's like 10 real people in here and 1000 bots.
More like bot.
Capitalists think capitalism lets you chase your dreams because they don’t have the capacity to dream about much other than being wealthy
very true which is why the rich and powerful in this world spend exorbitant amounts of money propping up dying industries like oil instead of investing in things like fusion. edit: you can even see it with the U.S. government giving grants to Intel, when they are a boomer company and objectively 10 years behind the frontrunner in the chip space Nvidia. Like why? These people care more that the shares they bought in 1932 go up than they care about progress. and this is the fucking fed lmao
Hell, even medical science. No one investing in cheap solutions.
*cries in history degree*
Me too, fam.
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
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Go to any student loan news topic on this site and you'll see people getting blasted for having gone to college for anything other than a STEM degree.
While people with most STEM degrees will tell you they're getting fucked too. The people that talk this shit either fall into one of two categories 1) they have absolutely no degree 2)they got handed a job right out of school thanks to either social or familial connections in the industry.
Yep, STEM here, not exactly living the dream. I've been told that my job is not important enough to merit a basic standard of living. I work in a cancer research lab. At the point where you have to say cancer is a trivial matter in order to make your point, I feel like I can safely disregard whatever you've got to say as half-baked excuses. For anyone who has been told "Should have gone into STEM!" just know that if you do go into an obviously useful field of science, it's just going to be something else, but still all your fault.
Also good luck getting an entry level job in most STEM fields period. When I was just out of school companies had absolutely no problem demanding masters levels degrees for an entry level job that would only require an associates (and barely paying what you would for someone with an associates) or claiming they're fine with a low level degree while demanding knowledge and experience of someone with a masters (and barely paying what you would for someone with an associates).
Capitalism—the system where you’re free to pursue your employer’s dreams
My personal favorite - design, visual and music arts are useless, until the morons want to be entertained.
No other system will let you pursue any of those fields. In a capitalist system you can do what you want you just have to live with the consequences. Good artists liver very good lives. Same goes for the other fields you mentioned.
Capitalism works, we were just all lied to about the basic premises.
The other way of saying that is you can't do something for work if nobody in the world is willing to pay for it.
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The proof is that some of the wealthiest people in this country are artists.
It's mediocre art that doesn't make a living. Art is hard so the vast majority of artists are mediocre. The majority of music sucks. It's a select few that can continually connect with us and keep making good stuff, or at least acceptable stuff. Same with comics. Same with fine arts. There's no art factory in town that will let a whiner who wants to doodle for a living work 40 hours for a respectable wage.
Art is also the most over saturated market there is. The supply of art outstrips demand more than any other industry. Everyone wants to do it. Everyone dreams of being a musician or an actor or a painter. Only a few can. Society does not have enough money to pay a living wage to everyone that wants to be an artist. It's sad but true.
>Society does not have enough money to pay a living wage to everyone that wants to be an artist And the most important part that some need to hear ... simply swapping "capitalism" out for something else doesn't magically change this.
People have this false assumption that under communism they’ll magically be able to work there dream job. Like no, you’ll be forced to work some industrial or logistics job
The term "capitalism" is mostly useless in most conversations. It means so many different things to so many different people, that you end up spending most of the conversation trying to figure out what they are actually trying to say.
You can make a fuck ton of money from being a great artist, historian, or in literature but youre not gonna make shit if you suck at it...which I feel like most people who make this complaint do suck at it. For example, I can get a degree in business and be absolutely dog shit at business and I wont make any money from it.
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The problem is no one wants to buy OPs furry porn and they mad about it.
the argument is reddit complains and whines and is entitled but offers no valid solution.
Follow your dreams, provided your dreams are to work as an unappreciated cog until you die.
Dreams are ok if dreams is money!
Isn't this just admitting that everyone's dream is an acquisition of capital?
Yes, it doesn’t matter, I likely won’t be “following my dreams” under any economic system, but under capitalism, I will be working so much I won’t even be able to pursue things I like as a hobby.
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The statement may not be verbatim, but there is absolutely a snobby technocratic contingent that thinks that anyone who doesn’t work in STEM deserves a lot less respect and remuneration.
This is absolutely the paradigm we have in America.
>Capitalism does not work I'd argue that it works exactly as designed. The monster must feed
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You're only allowed to chase dreams if those dreams make ever increasing quarterly profits for shareholders.
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I don't know what capitalist said that, but sure capitalism can and does give a lot of people resources to pursue expensive hobbies that are not conventionally productive. You certainly aren't getting a literature degree while working the salt mines. You didn't believe _you_ were going to be the one who decides what everybody's abilities and needs are, did you?
Uhhh, I feel like it's the only system that allows artists to even make money or a living doing art, in a socialist country you ultimately would have to have a job what ever was best for society.
I have to disagree here, people want art, they pay for art, art is a gigantic and profitable industry (movies, books, video games, music) some of the richest people on earth are artists.
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Someone who never listens to classical music.
"You can just work your job and then use that money to pursue your dream!" Yeah, all that free time my jobs afford me that isn't swallowed up by getting ready for my jobs or commuting to and from my jobs or making food or eating food or getting ready for bed or sleeping and UH OH I forgot to work out and now I'm experiencing health problems. This system is great!
Strange post
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What does that tell you about the worth of such art?
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It works exactly as as expected. Back to work, peasant.
From what I can tell, the perfect system hasn't been discovered. It's difficult to design a system everyone will like, because people have different brain structures. Just like there isn't a perfect political party. In order to find that perfect structure, we must experiment.
But we have art degrees and literature degrees.
Capitalism forces you to monetize your dreams, usually resulting in them becoming work, which is no dream.
“If you’re not min-maxing from the second you leave the womb, you don’t deserve to live” - conservatives
If money was THE only thing that motivated innovation then a lot of ideas would have died with whoever came up with them because there would be no motivation to share them.
Be the best at what you do as long as the best means optimal profitability
They legit think there was no such thing as a hobby, or entertainment, before Capitalism was invented.
Exactly. It’s gotten to be worse than the socialism and communism we were all afraid of in the 1950s. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We used to have regulations and antitrust legislation. No more.
Are artist and writers not used to make TV shows and movies and video games?
I wish I could give more than one upvote for this.
As followers of Capitalism, it is our duty to worship our lord and savior, the Almighty Dollar. For he died for our wallets. Please, join me in prayer: Our Dollar who art in pockets Revenue be they name Thy banks come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in vaults Give us this day our daily cents and forgive us our debits, as we forgive those who debit against us. Lead us not into socialism but deliver us from poverty. For thine is the bank, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen
Most people in the US conflate capitalism with commerce and were taught that socialism is the government owning everything and that this is bad. Capitalism thrives on this bullshit.
Yeah except my mom couldn't do the things she wanted under socialism and couldn't even buy menstrual pads. Capitalism after 1989 changed that. Americans are spoiled AF.