Daily Archives: 16 August 2019

Value

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Wretchard (@wretchardthecat) asked an interesting question on Twitter Wednesday, and the implications from the question are being carefully ignored by the Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates who want to forgive all—or most—student debt.

Forgiving student debt sends the signal that educational investment is worthless because it cannot return the rate of the money borrowed to finance it. That may actually be true but then what is the value of the credential?

Read the whole thread, it’s pithy and concise, as are the comments ensuing.

A related question has implications that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates who want to make college/university education “free:” if nothing is paid for the education—if it has no cost (to the user)—what is the value of that education or of the credential that proclaims it? Value not in the eye of the holder, but in the eye of any employer?

Democracy is Terrorism

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That’s the openly stated position of the People’s Republic of China.  PRC President Xi Jinping now has said, through his government’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs of the State Council spokeswoman Xu Luying, that he

condemned what [the State Council] described as “terrorist-like” attacks on its citizens by pro-democracy protesters.
“We express the strongest condemnation of these terrorist-like actions[.]”

Because pro-democracy demonstrators—who are the citizens of Hong Kong—in objecting to Xi’s weeks-long attempt to take complete control of the erstwhile semi-autonomous city, are terrorists.

And this from Xu:

Hong Kong’s radical violent elements have completely broken through the bottom line of the law, the bottom line of morality, and the bottom line of human nature.

Never mind that the Hong Kong police have done precisely that: using strong-arm tactics—truncheons and beatings, on top of tear gas—to quell nearly universally peaceful protests.

Never mind Xi’s attempts to intimidate the people of Hong Kong by massing PLA units just outside the city and threatening to inflict a Tiananmen Square assault on the city.

Here, too, is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, with her crocodile tears:

Take a minute to think, look at our city, our home; do you all really want to see it pushed into an abyss?

No, they don’t. That’s why they’re in the streets, trying to protect Hong Kong from the power grab and threatened occupation of Lam’s bosses in Beijing.

On the other hand, the thought of democracy does truly terrify Xi.