Oh yes, I heard of food with gold in it. Stuff like that really should be illegal in my opinion. That, or if you really want to do it, at least donade double the price to charity.

So, Gaddafi gave money to Sarcozy so he’d be elected. Then Sarcozy attacked Libya to take out Gaddafi.

That sounds like bad investment. I know they say you should only invest what you’re willing to lose, didn’t think that could include your own life.

Textbooks on any subject are easily retrievable for free. You could previously go to a library, but the internet makes it much easier to retrieve that kind of information.

On the first part, do not worry; I understand the perspective. I just meant to show how a degree may not be as relevant as other things with my personal experience.

If you want information regarding Spain, feel free to text me. I’m new in Lemmy and never had private messages, but I guess I should get a notification and figure it out.

We clearly misunderstood each other, I did not mean to say in the majority of jobs you need a degree. I was initially just pointing out there is a significant amount of careers in which a degree is in fact required. We do indeed agree on all points as far as I can see.

Now, regarding this supposed privatisation of job opportunities. I am very much aware of the problems with student debt in the US. It is something extremely sad. What is unclear to me is why would this be a privatisation?

I’d rather imagine this leads to further division in social classes i.e. rich people who can afford degrees can access more “palatable” jobs. But I say this without really knowing much of how jobs work now in the US. I’d imagine this would lead to only a small percentage of the US population having a degree, but as far as I can see over 50% of US population has one. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment)

As such I can imagine in the US as well the degree would be treated as something cheap and common. I’d imagine this would lead to many jobs in many sectors favouring people with a degree over people who do not have one. As such I can imagine that paying for education in the US could probably lead to better job opportunities. This would be regardless the fact that a degree is required for a certain job or not. It is unclear to me whether people who had to take debt for a degree and get an unspecialised job are able to pay back the debt.

Now, it is a bit sad to talk about degrees and education only under the aspect of job seeking. A degree is a wonderful way to learn things and improve ones thinking skills. Free education is amazing because of this: we all benefit from everyone around being more informed and able to improve things. Widespread education does significantly improve the lives of everyone in a country, regardless of the fact that what one studies is actually useful for a job or not.

Sure, I’m a chemist. I know lots of these uses. I tell you, gold could completely disappear tomorrow and we’d barely feel the effects. Sure, some things would have to be reworked, but we’d be fine in a year.

The discussion was about the importance of a degree into finding a job. I hire people to work in research to develop novel drugs. I generally do not care whether they have a degree or not, but the degree does generally come with a level of preparation on the subject and a level of reasoning skills which are not easy to develop without formal training/working in the field. I did some times favor people without a degree over people with a PhD because they felt better candidates to me. Sometimes this is not possible due to bureaucracy. If you prefer, I do not actually hire people; I select people that should be hired with grant money I obtained to conduct certain research jobs.

I don’t know how it works in the US, but to get a job in sales or as a project manager a degree is not required where I live. Candidates with a degree may be favoured by a company, but there is no law enforcing the requirement for a degree. And I do know many people working those jobs without a degree.

Regarding the fact that you don’t need to go to university in Europe. I’m not really sure if I understand, I guess you mean it is not compulsory to attend lectures. I studied in Italy, there this was the case: all lectures were absolutely discretionary and you could finish your degree without attending a single one. That is except experimental stuff, which indeed you’d need to attend. You could theoretically just study from the books and pass all the exams and get your degree. However, lectures are very good for understanding what you’re studying, most people were attending all lectures anyway. The fact that those are optional is useful if some days you can not attend for whatever reason, whether you’re working or busy in some other way. This, however, is not the case throughout Europe. I live in Spain now, where attendance of lectures is compulsory. You do not get a degree unless you attend a specified percentage of the lectures. Many other countries in Europe follow this system.

In some countries in Europe you do not pay to attend university. In others you do have to pay, it’s generally a few thousand euros per year. In most countries you can get scholarships and not have to pay such fees or even get a salary for studying.

I believe we’re just misunderstanding each other. I do agree, for many jobs a degree is not necessary. But for many other jobs it is, or at least some kind of technical training. I believe the amount of jobs who do require some kind of certificate, at least in Europe, is higher than 1%. An electrician will be required a certificate to handle home installations and to ensure he knows what the normative is. A lathe operator will require a certificate which ensures he will not harm himself. A nurse now requires a degree, it used to be just a specific formation. Many other jobs are available who do not require a degree.

I’m not really sure to what you refer to as privatisation of job opportunities.

Several friends of mine lost their mind with extended ketamine use. Still alive, but barely capable of doing things.

Indeed, that is out of question. The matter of discussion is that the value of gold is attributed and not intrinsic, since gold does not really cover any fundamental human need. Besides, gold is not strictly required to make computers.

What other relevant uses does gold have? Which ones of those are relevant to sustaining life needs?

I guess, frankly not much difference. Maybe just less chances of a civil war with Evo.

I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry, I am not American and I do not know who Bannon is. I hope full control of the media won’t be a thing, but how is this related to gold?

How many things relevant in your life are made out of gold? I guess jewellery, computer and phone. Real things that matter to people the most are completely unrelated to gold.

The fact that it is a material that does not degrade makes it a good choice as a vector for value. It is good to be used as money for that reason. If you use iron as money it will eventually rust out and leave you broke.

The other properties of gold are quite irrelevant to the fact that it has been selected (over and over again through history) as a value vector.

There are many other fields that require a degree. Engineering, architecture, chemistry, biology, etc. In some of those fields you can find some jobs which you can do without the degree, but the vast majority do require it.

I hire people and, to be fair, most people with a degree do not qualify as valid for certain jobs. But in that case is lack of knowledge. In my case I’d rather have someone without degree but with a deep knowledge; but those are very hard to find.

Access to books is not the same as access to a structured course with experts explaining the topics. YouTube classes can be very good to learn something specific, but do not achieve the organization of a university program.

In my country, university classes are public a d anyone can attend for free. You pay for the degree only. If it is formation you want, you can attend classes.

That is valid for many other resources: iron, silicon, carbon, carrots whatever. Gold has always been attributed some special value, throughout history. That is ok. I don’t think US civilization is going to collapse, why would you think that?

The value of gold lies in the fact that other men may be disposed to work their ass off in order to have some shiny things to gift to women in order to have sex. As you can imagine, the power of gold amongst married couples drastically decreases.

Besides this… History shows humans always gave value to gold. For some reason we got very used into associating gold with value. As such, it is probably something good to have if economy collapses. But it doesn’t really matter if society collapsed.

The fact that arousing suspicion of something is enough to be condemned is wild.

Hey NATO, could you please send these satellites into space to fuck with America Russia?

Oh well indeed, that’s much more complex to evaluate. It is unclear what the US will get in exchange. I’d imagine lithium would be the main focus. Not sure if this would be going towards Trump associates (probably at least in part) or to relevant sectors of the economy. Will this have a relevant impact on the economy as a whole? Surely not on the whole economy, but it could have a significant impact on parts of it - especially now that they have an economic war going on with China. Does this benefit the average American? Probably some of them, likely many of them will stay in the same conditions as now. But it’s also worth mentioning that if the US stopped doing these kinds of things (without enacting some significant changes in their production and economic system) their influence would decline and citizens would be affected by that. Is this a better way to spend money rather than on public hospitals? This is up for opinions and it is difficult to come up with an answer. From my point of view, a poor man with public healthcare lives better than a rich man without it. But that is my opinion that goes to the individual and does not consider country wide effects.

Will Argentinians benefit from this? Probably there’ll be some relief in the short term, but things really are not going great and I’m sure giving away resources won’t help much.

I don’t really like the action itself. I would not say it is justified by Trump perspective or by people’s perspective. Rather, it is an action which does make sense on an economical and geopolitical level. Now, whether it was a good moment to take this action, whether Americans want this and whether this is morally acceptable - I’m not getting into. I’m not American, you do you and take your own decisions and vote whomever you wish.

I really do not like that this has happened. But that is me. I have many friends in Argentina, and I don’t think this will be good for them. However, this does not look to me as Trump trying to steal money from the government as has been said here above and in other comments, but a rather valid decision with it’s motivations and reasons.