2009/5/5 Anthony <wikim...@inbox.org>: > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> Education >> has value because of scarcity - someone with a degree can earn more >> than someone without a degree because there are fewer people that can >> do the jobs they can do. > > > So if most people had a degree, people with degrees would earn less than > people without degrees?
No, as long as not everyone has the knowledge, having that knowledge is valuable. It is less valuable if more people have it, but its value never becomes negative (unless people with it are at risk of being tortured for it, I guess!). >> We're not talking about whether it is >> valuable to an individual for them to have certain knowledge (that's a >> pretty easy question to answer - it's clear "yes"), but whether it is >> valuable to society (whatever that means) for that knowledge to exist >> (that's rather more difficult - I doubt you could reasonable argue >> "no", but it is debatable whether the question is well posed). > > > I guess you have to explain the "whatever that means". > > But anyway, I guess you threw me off by mentioning "academia". I go back to > my original answer :). The monetary value of the existence of knowledge is > the amount one is willing to pay someone to create (or discover) that > knowledge. > > As someone who used to work in "research and development", I can attest to > the fact that there are people who are willing to pay for the > creation/discovery of knowledge, even outside of academia and government. Usually when people pay for the creation of knowledge (outside of government, maybe, but to some extent even governments) they want the knowledge for themselves (that's why we have things like patents and copyright). Governments don't fund original research for the sake of it, they do so because they want their country to have a good academic reputation, etc., rather than to increase the amount of knowledge in the world for purely idealistic reasons. Anyway, we are massively off-topic, so I suggest we end this discussion now. (Actually, I suggested it before, but I don't seem to be able to follow my own advice!) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
