I proposed something similar to this as a way to handle fraud or non-performance in Federal contracts:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+StevenFlaeck/posts/BNzLK4wwwPY

I would think that certs would be useful in signaling commitment for people wanting to join that workforce.

I'm about to say negative things. I don't like saying negative things, particularly because someone could misread them as having personal animus behind them, which I don't have.

There's a particular type of college student who is not ready to work in a real job. They believe themselves incapable of working in real jobs, they signal this incapability, and employers generally hate working with them because they're needy and unprofessional. They don't thrive unless they have someone telling them "Do X then Y then Z" and then providing constant positive feedback ("100 points for X!"), which is a teacher-student relationship, not an employer-employee relationship.

Someone getting a certification is signaling a desire to continue being a student. Someone desiring to be an employee signals this desire by putting down the books and getting a job.

Whatever marginal value they have as a signal of commitment is swamped by their negative signaling. Top caliber talent won't usually be certified; why waste the time getting "certified" by organizations that are probably less competent than you?

Successive rounds of adverse selection produce a "certified" pool of candidates who are unwilling or unable to achieve a basic level of facility in their field on their own, which is its own negative signal.

I agree with that basically. I've spent the last 10 years kinda being a "fixer" but mostly a network engineer. I haven't had time for any certs, I'm too busy working... When I have time for certs, who knows what'll be going on.

Possible but sortof irrelevant, some of the WORST engineers I've ever hired/seen have had certs in their chosen field.

You say you're committed, I say you're desperate.

(Not you personally)

There is no real difference. The term "capitalism" is felt to be dissimilar from "free market", but no one is usually able to articulate a coherent difference. The central problem is that "capitalism" took on negative connotations over time and became deeply connected to Marxist/anti-Marxist rhetoric. At its core, though, it's still largely about ownership, even in Marxist critique or anti-Marxist defense. "Free market" is also a loaded term, it seems to signal being a libertarian, but generally refers to exchange restrictions; libertarians usually use "property rights" with respect to ownership issues. "Market" is fairly neutral, I think.

To take a stab at it, "capitalism" emphasizes the ownership elements of markets; "free market" emphasizes the exchange elements of markets; "markets" is just a neutral term, there aren't markets without ownership (rightful or not) and exchange (good or not). Neither "capitalism" nor "free market" deny exchange or ownership, it is merely a rhetorical emphasis; both specify the same set of objects, they just signal which features the author intends to dwell on.

Groups tend to have fewer free speech rights than individuals. A person can usually shout whatever he wants from a street corner; 100 people will probably need a permit and relatively few people see this as problematic.

That would be beyond awesome if they could tack down karma weighting.

They don't need to generate a profit and it would be preferable if there was no profitable business model for it. Donations to both MIT and Harvard are considered charitable; making more of their classes freely available online would justify that.

To say it would be preferable if there were no profitable business model is short-sighted. It would mean that the only entities capable of undertaking something like this would be existing universities (and the wave of private companies offering a wide curriculum of online courses would end). Those universities that attempted something similar would at best be able to merely recoup costs. In short, the higher education revolution would amount to existing universities putting classes online. Why in the world is that preferable?

New charitable organizations would also be able to enter the market.

Well... there's also a right to asylum (14), group rights for families, to some form of social maintenance (22), limitation of working hours and minimum wage (24), full and free education (26), to copyright (27). Lastly there are vague duties to your "community" and it has power to determine what justly fulfills a grab-bag of ethical and legal concepts (29).

So... Not the best document in the world to quote on this front.

Yes and article 16 doesn't explicitly give the rights for same sex marriage.

Viewing the UNDHR as anything more than what should be minimally aspired to strikes me as... well... evil.

Except that's how this is usually done. Federal loans can be deferred and payments scale to income. The counterargument to the high cost of college is that she, or her parents, should have looked at how much it would all cost and chose a cheaper school. More aggressively, it really sounds like "by good fit" she meant "incredibly expensive facilities" or even "fits how I view myself as a high status person".

There are college where in-state tuition runs far cheaper and many states give free rides if you get a good SAT score. So it's incredibly hard for me to have much pity.

Or "macho cultures" have a lower percentage of male college graduates, creating more opportunities for women at the top. Or they correspond to fast-growing underdeveloped countries which, because they are developing in an equal(er) rights environment, aren't replicating the male-dominated model elsewhere. But who knows? There's not any data to back p explanations in the article anyway.

Housing doesn't need to disappear. If we tried to move everyone in California closer to the center of its major cities, we'd see prices increase dramatically.