Lots of great points brought up. Some people are taking this aggressively for some reason, name calling, character assumptions etc. I won't engage with that, it's not my style.
After reading the posts here, reading more about Smith's generous act, and thinking about it some more, I have changed my view somewhat, but I still have to come out negatively on this.
But there are some good things that have come from it:
- Robert F Smith did a good thing with his money. In fact in my original post it was never about Smith, it was more to do with the graduates. It reminds of of the YouTuber Mr Beast who has a ton of FU money and just does random acts of charity (tips waitresses $10 grand, purchased every.single.item in a grocery store and donated it all to a food bank, once bought a homeless man a house). Smith's intentions are well meaning but somewhat misguided (I'll get to that later) but overall there's no fault to him. Regardless of any ulterior motives Smith might have (publicity?), he did a good thing by helping people, and the world is a better place when people do good things.
- The students are actually going to also do well. This is where my view has changed. Originally I viewed them as akin to lottery winners, and it's well documented that lottery winners tend to lose control and end up in the same position pre-win or worse after a few years. But I realized there's a fundamental difference between the graduates and lottery winners. Lottery winners actively play the Lotto in the hope that they win and thus take a shortcut to success. However these students never played anything. They worked hard to graduate. The gift from Smith came from out of the blue. Those students who worked hard to have minimal or no debt upon leaving school (and thus did not get much or anything at all from Smith) will probably be fine. The ones who needed this kind of relief but flame out later in life probably would do so anyways. But Smith has given those students who are smart and hard working but shackled with predatory debt a headstart, which should only accelerate their progress. On the whole this event was a good thing for the vast majority of those students.
- This event made international headlines and thus has sparked some wide discussion on student loans and the whole post-secondary education complex and how scammy and predatory and broken it is for most of the US.
Here's where I'm still coming out on the negative for this event. Probably millions of people by now have become aware of this event, and for many of those people this still sends a signal that charity and bailouts from billionaires or governments are a good way to solve problems. It was made worse by Smith's call to action for other billionaires to copy him and bailout more students in the future. This is wrong. There are even 2020 US Presidential candidates who have some sort of student loan forgiveness in their platform to campaign on. How many students out there are hoping those candidates get in so they can be absolved of their loans, instead of taking the steps today to work themselves free? (to be fair there are probably instances of students getting caught in some predatory loan scheme that need help, but that's a case-by-case thing).
Charity in and of itself is generally a good thing, bailouts are sometimes necessary on a case-by-case basis, but if a system is broken, like the current post-secondary education complex, you should find the root cause and take action from there, not try and patch up the problems that happen later down the line through infusions of money from billionaires or governments.
After reading the posts here, reading more about Smith's generous act, and thinking about it some more, I have changed my view somewhat, but I still have to come out negatively on this.
But there are some good things that have come from it:
- Robert F Smith did a good thing with his money. In fact in my original post it was never about Smith, it was more to do with the graduates. It reminds of of the YouTuber Mr Beast who has a ton of FU money and just does random acts of charity (tips waitresses $10 grand, purchased every.single.item in a grocery store and donated it all to a food bank, once bought a homeless man a house). Smith's intentions are well meaning but somewhat misguided (I'll get to that later) but overall there's no fault to him. Regardless of any ulterior motives Smith might have (publicity?), he did a good thing by helping people, and the world is a better place when people do good things.
- The students are actually going to also do well. This is where my view has changed. Originally I viewed them as akin to lottery winners, and it's well documented that lottery winners tend to lose control and end up in the same position pre-win or worse after a few years. But I realized there's a fundamental difference between the graduates and lottery winners. Lottery winners actively play the Lotto in the hope that they win and thus take a shortcut to success. However these students never played anything. They worked hard to graduate. The gift from Smith came from out of the blue. Those students who worked hard to have minimal or no debt upon leaving school (and thus did not get much or anything at all from Smith) will probably be fine. The ones who needed this kind of relief but flame out later in life probably would do so anyways. But Smith has given those students who are smart and hard working but shackled with predatory debt a headstart, which should only accelerate their progress. On the whole this event was a good thing for the vast majority of those students.
- This event made international headlines and thus has sparked some wide discussion on student loans and the whole post-secondary education complex and how scammy and predatory and broken it is for most of the US.
Here's where I'm still coming out on the negative for this event. Probably millions of people by now have become aware of this event, and for many of those people this still sends a signal that charity and bailouts from billionaires or governments are a good way to solve problems. It was made worse by Smith's call to action for other billionaires to copy him and bailout more students in the future. This is wrong. There are even 2020 US Presidential candidates who have some sort of student loan forgiveness in their platform to campaign on. How many students out there are hoping those candidates get in so they can be absolved of their loans, instead of taking the steps today to work themselves free? (to be fair there are probably instances of students getting caught in some predatory loan scheme that need help, but that's a case-by-case thing).
Charity in and of itself is generally a good thing, bailouts are sometimes necessary on a case-by-case basis, but if a system is broken, like the current post-secondary education complex, you should find the root cause and take action from there, not try and patch up the problems that happen later down the line through infusions of money from billionaires or governments.
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