Why Is College in America So Expensive? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-is-college-so-expensive-in-america/569884/?single_page=true <comment><USER4> I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want!

The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.

<comment><USER5> > Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are > expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. > "Universities extract money from students because they can," says Schleicher > at the OECD. "It's the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure."

Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our society (competition).

What happens when the government tries to provide for us: they gaurantee home loans: Financial crisis, they gaurantee drug costs: Skyrocketing drug costs, they gaurantee your student loan: Skyrocketing cost of school

By it's nature, anything the government subsidizes is going to be taken advantage of. You either have to take full central control (lets not go there) or let the free market actually work. You can't layer the two.

<comment><USER6> The free market does not work in all situations. There's a reason why our healthcare is an absolute disaster compared to any other first world country, why our college is far more expensive, why our drugs cost more etc

And it ain't because of cost control. Every time we loosen the reins a bit and let the 'free market' take the wheels, we see things get a lot worse for Americans as a whole. Especially when you have giant companies controlling the market entirely, like with ISPs.

<comment><USER7> > The free market does not work in all situations.

Sure, but you did not enumerate a single free market. I'd wager the US healthcare industry is far and away the most regulated market in the entire world. We know that regulation protects the big players at the expense of their would be competition and drives up profits. Colleges are hardly any better, and ISPs are nearly all monopolies granted by municipalities in exchange for kick backs of various sorts. The government has interfered with every industry in this list via direct/indirect regulation, grants, guaranteed loans, or tax incentives. Lets go ahead and throw in housing in our list, too.

<comment><USER8> From a European point of view I have a hard time understanding your opinion.

In other countries, regulated/public healthcare works better and is more efficient than your system, it's hard to deny it... I don't see how doubling down on cutting regulations would solve anything.

In a way it reminds me of the gun control issue: the idea that deregulating gun ownership and carrying will make everybody safer seems so absurd from abroad... I guess it's cultural.

<comment><USER9> Regulating a service and providing it at public expense are completely separate concepts.

Europeans do not have cheap healthcare as a result of price controls on private medical practices (regulation), but as a result of redistribution and subsidy (spending).

<comment><USER8> At least in France, it's both. The cost for the patient is usually low thanks to the health insurance, but also because of price control. A GP visit is 25 euros by law, covered from 70 to 100% depending on your insurance. Doctors can choose to charge more but then patients need better private insurances to be reimbursed.

You can find the price lists here:

* [https://www.ameli.fr/paris/medecin/exercice-liberal/facturat...](https://www.ameli.fr/paris/medecin/exercice-liberal/facturation-remuneration/tarifs-generalistes/tarifs-metropole) * [https://www.ameli.fr/paris/medecin/exercice-liberal/facturat...](https://www.ameli.fr/paris/medecin/exercice-liberal/facturation-remuneration/tarifs-specialistes/metropole)

<comment><USER10> How many visits does it take to get a simple prescription?

We have something similar, I've been appointed consultations only to be asked how I felt.

<comment><USER11> You can get a simple prescription at the first consultation. For what I remember 10yrs ago, to see a specialist, you need to go to you general practitioner first. Then he will decide if you need a referral.

Edit: you can go directly to a specialist or not follow the « health path », you will just get less reimbursed. Some specialist can be seen without referral (gyn, psy...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> College is expensive because people still pay that price. People pay that price because they have easy access to student loans.

So if we get rid of student loans, colleges would be forced to change their pricing.

If governments still want to encourage students to go to college, then perhaps non-price based methods would help. Scholarships could move away from being a monetary amount, to being a fixed amount of semesters paid for.

<comment><USER13> Naively, wouldn't a blank check for a semester ecourage universities to raise prices even higher?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, seems hard to make scholarships/student loans work without putting upward pressure on college pricing. Perhaps not possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are > expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. > "Universities extract money from students because they can," says Schleicher > at the OECD. "It's the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure."

That assertion makes no sense. In a market economy, almost all prices are unregulated. Yet the prices of TVs, hamburgers, etc., aren't skyrocketing. The lack of regulation is surely not the problem.

<comment><USER15> Right. The problem with college is that customers are _price-insensitive._ If a college raises its tuition, plenty of people will just sigh and take out the necessary loans. And then of course they have no trouble getting credit, since student loans are much less risky for lenders than other types of loans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In summary, the reason (from a spending perspective) presumably non-profit colleges are so expensive in the US is that US colleges spends 2x/student as much on staff and faculty as many OECD counterparts.

College faculty, staff, and administrators form a large constituency that will be campaigning to keep spending (private, public, or otherwise) up, which campaigners for lower higher-educational spending will need to keep in mind.

<comment><USER17> If the free market is the answer why aren't there a swath of good and cheap private options?

<comment><USER18> There are good and cheap alternatives. My community college was 1/3rd the cost of college.

The problem is students don't understand what they are getting themselves into.

<comment><USER16> Also it's almost impossible for private entities to compete with heavily subsidized public institutions on price, so they need to compete in other ways, like superior marketing, ease of financing, or "quality"

If states let their subsidies flow to private institutions on a per student basis, you could get some interesting results, but frankly I think community colleges are already so efficient it's a crowded market.

<comment><USER17> >Also it's almost impossible for private entities to compete with heavily subsidized public institutions on price, so they need to compete in other ways, like superior marketing, ease of financing, or "quality"

The entire argument is that they would be cheaper. You could argue they might be better but saying they can't compete on price just concedes the point.

<comment><USER16> Old thread now, but the reason I said they can't compete on price is states subsidize state universities to the tune of $7100/student/year ([https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and- tax/funding-d...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/funding- down-tuition-up)) (some of that goes to grants transferable to private institutions but I don't think it is much)

If you instantly dropped that subsidy and increased per student tuition at state schools by $7000 (I don't recommend this) there would quickly be private options strongly competing on price I bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Still, the return varies wildly depending on the college one attends. One in > four college grads earns no more than the average high-school graduate.

I found this shocking: 25% of _graduates_ are in a significantly worse financial position after college? They're not only getting zero monetary benefit for their degree, they've forgone 4 years of experience. And I'd bet that most of them are adding significant student debt on top of this.

I'd be curious how _that_ number compares internationally.

<comment><USER20> TBF these numbers can be... messy.

For example, at least one statistic is based on earnings 5 years out of school.

5 years out of school I was making less than 30k as a research assistant. A few months later I was making easily 100k+ more than most senior SDEs, and doing _exactly_ what I would be doing if I had a trust fund to pay the bills.

Many of my classmates who became doctors were in similar situations -- working through residencies at T+5 years but setting themselves up for mid 6-low 7 salaries in the near future.

So earnings over even a medium-term time horizon can be extremely misleading. You really need that 35-45 year career to get the full picture. Any college grad salary number with less than a 6 or evne 10 year time horizon is going to be a poor representation of what's really going on.

<comment><USER19> But... I can't help but wonder about how many of the graduates from the 75% of schools that take most of their applicants just end up doing something that basically required none of the education they acquired. I'd bet it's far more common then the scenarios you present.

[https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college- majors/](https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college-majors/)

I'm not sure the 600,000 humanities degrees lead to that kind of hockey puck style career path.

<comment><USER20> [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities- Grads...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities-Grads/242461)

But again, the problem is that it takes until mid-career to really assess lifetime earning potential, and that's an extremely late indicator. If the winds change, we have to wait 10 years to find out.

We need a more fine-grained model of how those high earnings are happening and a way of tracking progress/bottlenecks along those tracks. E.g., I suspect the law job/salary crunch should be far more worrying than near-term earning potential of humanities majors.

It's also worth pointing out that salary isn't everything and our society would be utterly screwed if everyone optimized for lifetime earnings. Fortunately, plenty of people are optimizing a multi-objective function that includes QoL and job satisfaction; see e.g. teaching in particular. I'd have a hard time telling a teacher that they made a bad career choice by not going into tech or becoming a plumber, and I'd have an equally hard time arguing that teachers shouldn't be college educated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Many western states got together to provide a cheaper alternative to state schools. Western Governors University is about 6k a year and is online and accredited. Its also used for teachers to get their advanced degrees while working full-time jobs. You can also go as fast or slow as you can/want. You could, in theory, do it in 3 years, so 18k TOTAL, that's pretty affordable. No idea if there is an option for eastern states.

They have IT/Nursing/Teaching/Business degrees upto Masters degrees.

[https://www.wgu.edu/](https://www.wgu.edu/)

<comment><USER22> I'm currently in their CS program that just opened up in June. I've been a software engineer for about a decade and so have picked up a pretty decent CS background just through osmosis. Here's the response I gave to a young person who wanted to know if they should go to a community college or WGU:

 _Honestly if I didn 't already know like 3/4 the stuff for almost every class I've taken so far I would probably hate this program because the materials and curriculum within each class aren't great. There are lots of errors and sloppiness all around, even on many of the exams. I can imagine trying to learn this all from scratch would be a crapshoot and take a really long time and be really frustrating._

 _That said, if you 're motivated it could be worth the time savings just to get out there and start working. You'll learn far more on the job than you would in the classroom anyway, and for me at least I definitely didn't appreciate the more abstract knowledge I came into contact with before I started working. But after a few years I had an actual application for it, and started to re-examine it in my own time. And it was a lot more interesting and actually held my attention at that point._

<comment><USER21> When I talked to them, the CS/IT programs had test outs, but they seem to be Microsoft oriented so the tests are most likely the microsoft tests.

But this was a few years ago, so no idea how they just started offering their CS in June.

You would have to confirm them. I had a co-worker who was attending while working a full time job, thats how I found out about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's not a very useful article. They touch on some possibilities, but never peel the data enough to come to useful conclusions. They also jump between different kinds of costs - cost to the student, and cost to the country.

Which is a pity, because normally the Atlantic does better.

<comment><USER24> Yes, for example, I'd like to know how other countries can be cheaper. What percentage of their budget is professors? What percentage of ours is professors? What about administrators? Student services people?

I've been in higher ed for decades and I don't feel _I_ understand where the money goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> All the gov would need to do is mandate that colleges charge tuition as a percentage of post-graduation salary, and you'd see half of these low quality colleges peddling worthless degrees go bankrupt overnight.

At the end of the day, this country needs to decide whether the role of universities is to train students for career paths, or purely to provide higher education. It's very difficult to orient the structure around both without the incentive's being misaligned towards one of them.

<comment><USER26> Then colleges would have to be in the business of risk management. That would be like charging a hospital based on the recovery rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I remember when I graduated state tuition, I had a full ride scholarship through state tuition. By the time I graduated my tuition funding got cut in half due to lack of government funding. I worked 3 jobs and only had to pay for living expenses / textbooks.

I checked recently my local University _(the biggest one in the country, top 50 in many majors)_ charges $1000 per 3 semester hours(1 course). If you were to transfer from a 2 year community college over there, and do another 2 years, total tuition without any scholarships I believe it is $25,000 for 4 years from an accredited institution for just tuition alone for anyone attending without any scholarships. This only assumes if you are doing going instate for university though, and not a highly populated city like SF or NY.

Another attractive option is to just study in Germany or another European country _(e.g. switzerland for computerscience, etc)_. Tuition is free (I believe?), and still very good as well. I studied abroad there, education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule _(university of applied sciences)_. Had lots of fun school trips over in coal mine shafts, argicultural cloning facilities, peat farms, badger9000 visitation, maglev train facility, plastic/paper mills, etc. They didn't have anything like this in the states.

<comment><USER28> > Tuition is free (I believe?)

There was a brief period where it was not free everywhere (but still very low for US standards) but this legislation has been largely rolled back so it should be basically free. You only have to pay a small (often very small) fee per semester (varies a lot mostly because it often includes a mandatory public transport ticket which can be a bit expensive in some cities but still a lot cheaper than buying it yourself). You also need health insurance which is usually less than 100€ / month for students inside the state mandated system so you want this anyway i think. :)

> education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule (university of applied > sciences)

In general a Fachhochschule is a less theoretical approach to higher education. Courses are a bit more school like compared to a university and the barrier to entry is also a bit lower (don't know if this is relevant to foreigners though). There used to be a huge distinction to normal universities as they originally did no research and degrees were not considered equal to a university degree. But a lot changed in recent years, now you can even apply to a university master's program with an FH degree and it's often possible to start a research career at an FH.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule)

<comment><USER29> How are the professors there though because this HN thread [0] titled "'We can't compete': why universities are losing their best AI scientists" was about American tech companies hiring European AI researches because European colleges pay miniscule salaries to high valued professors which is probably exacerbated by free/low cost tuition.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600275)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is such a weird article. It promotes this vision of college being expensive, then undercuts its main argument:

> "The public system in the U.S. is working as well as most systems," he says. > "Parts of the U.S. look like France."

> Three out of every four American college students attend a school in this > public system, which is funded through state and local subsidies, along with > students' tuition dollars and some federal aid.

If 75% of students attend a school in the public system, and the public system is working as well as most systems, aren't we in pretty good shape? Why are we letting the experience of a minority of students drive the conversation here?

<comment><USER31> Even if the quote says the public system that covers most students is "working well", the average student loan debt of a graduate is still pretty high [1]:

> When they graduate [in 2016] the average student loan borrower has $37,172 > in student loans, a $20,000 increase from 13 years ago.

Of course this is an average, but I don't expect this is something where some people with millions of dollars in student loans are skewing the averages. I imagine the median is not _that_ far off.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the- average-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average- student-loan-borrower-owes-when-they-graduate.html)

<comment><USER32> $17,000

And only ~50% of students had student loan debt.

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic- we...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-well-being- of-us-households-in-2016-education-debt-loans.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Supply and demand. Everyone in high school is expected to go to college; you're essentially considered a failure if you don't. Couple this with easy access to student loans and other forms of credit and it's easy to see why the price of college has just gone up and up.

<comment><USER34> The numbers do not (fully) support your argument. We have a similar situation in Canada in terms of expectations ... but the for the price paid by students which is signficantly lower. And, the participation rate is 54% for Canada compared with 44% with the U.S. - so, by your argument, university education should be much more costly in Canada than it is in the U.S.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Because the game is rigged. Citizens without debt are a danger to the established order. Why else are young people encouraged to get into tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt, for a degree in something vague like "business", just to become recruitment consultants. After that they are encouraged to buy a big house (in other words take on a huge mortgage), and 3 cars. Debt keeps citizens chained down and the rich rich.

<comment><USER36> In the case of housing, how is having a mortgage worse than renting? You could at least sell the house and have [some of] the money back.

<comment><USER35> Actually I take back the mortgage part. People these days are lucky if they can afford any kind of house, big or small, at least in or near big cities. Most people are probably just glad to own anything let alone a big house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I went to college in the US and then grad school in Europe and Asia and my personal impression is that you get what you pay for. Professors outside the states don't get anywhere near as much money and as a result don't provide the same level of personal level attention and guidance. For my undergraduate thesis, I saw my advisor once a week. For my PhD thesis, I saw my advisor four times a year. In the US a normal class had around 3-4 hours of lectures a week, plus continuous assessment, and ran from September to June. In the UK, where I did my PhD, it was 2-3 hours a week, one test at the end of the year, and classes started in October and ended in March. I didn't realize how good I had it in the states until I left. If you can afford it, it's awesome.

<comment><USER38> The one exam versus continuous assessment is more of a cultural thing.

As are the old Oxford terms of Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity which are very short.

In decent universities in the UK they still have a one on one tutorial system though (Oxbridge, Durham, Exeter etc. all had it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Here's the line that stood out to me:

 _more than three-quarters of students attend nonselective colleges, which admit at least half of their applicants. No one knows for sure how good these colleges are at their core job of educating students._

It's important not just because of educational outcomes, but also because the tuition/cost discussion is often dominated by selective colleges, and/or colleges with national or international brands. When it comes to _those_ colleges, that's when we start hearing about the "arms race" described in the article (and amusingly highlighted in a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that was heavily criticized: [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/18/malcolm- gladw...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/18/malcolm-gladwell- sets-debate-over-whether-good-campus-food-prevents-more-aid-low)).

Another cost that gets brought up: all of the administrators who apparently didn't exist in large numbers decades ago. And, I have also heard the theory that expensive liberal arts degrees are basically subsidizing STEM research, especially now that federal research grants are harder to come by.

But again, these issues seem to be the domain of the selective colleges. What's going on at the nonselective colleges -- community colleges, lower- ranked liberal arts colleges, and the for-profit and online colleges -- needs more attention.

</comment><comment><USER40> How come these articles never ask the obvious thing: why did college in America very rapidly become so expensive after being so reasonable for most of the prior century.

And how did that magical cost inflation happen at exactly the same time that healthcare costs skyrocketed and the dollar plunged in value? (while at exactly the same time, all commodities skyrocketed and all foreign GDPs skyrocketed).

That's the result of debased standards of living through destroying a nation's currency in the process of funding economic stupidity (massive budget deficits), war, etc.

It's not just that college got so expensive. It's that the standard of living dropped, amplifying an already elevated cost inflation. That's represented in the permanent price increases you see in all commodities for one example (which are priced in dollars). Gold isn't going back to $300; oil isn't going back to $13. Wages didn't keep up with the rate at which the clowns in DC destroyed the American standard of living. Some things are held in check by market forces, you can only inflate the cost of video games so much in a market system, or you rapidly lose buyers. College was able to skirt that market restraint courtesy of the government's student loan backing, which pretended the US standard of living had just kept right on climbing.

<comment><USER41> >why did college in America very rapidly become so expensive after being so reasonable for most of the prior century

I've seen (sorry, forget where, no citation) studies that suggest the inflation came from three factors:

1\. Competition between campuses to attract students led to construction of ever more fancy facilities -- gyms, espresso bars, swanky dorms, sport stadiums, ... which all cost $$

2\. Administrators (somehow) became a new rent-seeking class (perhaps see #1?) that extracted maximum $$.

3\. Sticker price vs the real price (also same as healthcare) -- when not every student is paying, or able to pay, their own fees, education providers charge different prices. We're only looking at the sticker price here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Somewhat guaranteed access to Federal funding via FAFSA reduces incentives to price shop. Combined with campus building envy.

</comment><comment><USER43> How are government guaranteed loans not mentioned?... that alone kills this articles credibility...

</comment><comment><USER44> I think the actual answer is "because it can"...it's really that simple.

Supply and demand dicate how much colleges can charge students, nothing else. If schools _can_ charge $30k/year, and fill up the classrooms, why wouldn't they?

It's similar to the question "what's my house worth?"...the answer is exactly how much someone is willing to pay for it, nothing more and nothing less. Any real estate agent will tell you the same.

Many factors go into why colleges can charge so much and get away with it. Certainly the price distortions caused by easy-to-get guaranteed student loans is a big driver, but others exist of course.

</comment><comment><USER45> Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads, but you'll do it for far cheaper if you attend a public university in your state of residence. If you want to do a postgrad program, don't worry: top tier schools will come sniffing if you're good enough, no matter where you're coming from.

<comment><USER20> _> Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads_

I went to a "pleb-tier" [1] school for undergrad and then to a top-tier university for grad school.

It's just not true. There is a _huge_ difference in the quality of education, _especially_ in STEM fields. And most especially in Math. "pleb-tier" schools will get through everything in Harvard's Math 55 if they're lucky. Not even exaggerating -- the first year at Harvard covers what you'll get in four years of honors track at a "pleb-tier" place.

And then there's the recruitment pipeline. Coming out of top-tier school I had multiple 300k-500k offers _without even applying for any jobs_. Out of pleb- tier school, I wasn't getting anything over 80k and that was with lots of networking. CS and Math are two of the rare fields where phd school has, IME, a positive expected value, _as long as you 're substantially trading up credentials._

IMO the optimal route is as follows (at least in STEM):

* Is your state flagship within a 1 hour drive and top-10 in your field? If so, that option is a complete no-brainer.

* 3/4+-ride to a top 10 place outside of commuting distance, or a 1/2 ride to a top 10 place within commuting distance? Again, no brainer.

* Otherwise, the calculus becomes harder. Your best bet is probably to aim for a PhD at a tippy top school (top 5 or so), but getting into tippy top phd program from a "pleb-tier" is not nearly as easy and you're making it out to be... especially in older/more saturated fields like Math.

\--

[1] FWIW I don't like this terminology but... whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year—nearly twice as much as the > average developed country.

This narrative needs to die.

Hear me out before judging...

Yes, University is expensive! But - a large portion of the numbers you see thrown around include living expenses! The same living expenses a student would incur if they were not attending University.

The predominant reason for this is students are still today largely encouraged to be Professional Students, ie. full time students who do not work, or work very little.

This mandates their living expenses having to come from elsewhere - <USER2> parents, or loans! No person should be taking out loans to eat at Taco Bell... or buy toilet paper.

Instead, we need to shift the focus away from encouraging Professional Students, but rather we should encourage Professionals who attend University.

Not only will our youth gain more valuable and tangible life-long skills and experience working full-time, but their education can become a more significant compliment to their ascension to adulthood. Working well with others, balancing a bank account, paying bills, working on real-world problems, and more!

It will take longer to gain their degree, but it will become more valuable and appreciated in the process. Graduating students will have actual skills and experience industry needs, not just academic and homework skills.

At the top of it all, they'll be graduating with much less, or no debt - <USER3> working full-time during school would have been paying the bills, buying that Taco Bell and toilet paper, and more.

<comment><USER47> The market is not looking to hire a bunch more unskilled 18 year olds. If the U.S. military wasn't essentially a workforce development program for unskilled 18-year-olds, we would have an even bigger glut.

Your argument is flawed.

This may be true for master's degrees, where it makes sense to work full time and take courses part time, but the idea that it makes sense for a bunch of 18-year-olds to try to compete over a bunch of minimum wage jobs doesn't seem like a great solution. Most jobs for 18 year olds cannot over living expenses and college tuition.

<comment><USER46> Working professional doesn't necessarily mean bachelor-degree professionals.

There are plenty of places that hire students full-time, for interships or full positions. Students can even get unskilled jobs - nothing wrong with that.

Working at McDonald's, possibly working you way up to shift leader, team leader or manager is perfectly acceptable.

Just so that you work full-time.

<comment><USER6> You're extremely out of touch with the modern day job market and issues students face.

There's zero to very little career advancement while working minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage jobs won't even cover the cost of rent in most states, let alone the full cost of living and the cost of college. Saying that there are 'plenty of places' is also outright wrong considering the competition for minimum wage jobs is harsh; it's not just students that are in the pool.

<comment><USER46> You're talking to a student who's spent 15 years attending community college and then University while working several full-time jobs to get to where I am today.

Don't tell me I'm out of touch when I'm living exactly what I'm preaching. Don't tell me it's impossible when I'm doing exactly what I advocate for.

It's time to change the University system... and standing here and saying these things are too hard to fix is why it's so broken.

The solution isn't more tax-payer subsidies... it's fixing what we expect out of Universities, and what we expect out of students.

<comment><USER6> And you're talking to someone that went through it all the same. Just because it's worked out for you doesn't make your experience the norm for all students. If you're expecting all students to spend 15+ years working just to get through their degree then I would argue that system is just as fucked up as the one we currently have.

The solution is to make college free for students and wipe away student loan debt. You're not going to fix the expectations, and even if you did that doesn't solve the mess we're in right now, does it?

<comment><USER46> Why do we need a solution "right now"? Why can't we take the time to get it right - instead of applying just another band-aid that will need further fixing a few years down the road. Enough band-aids...

Not everyone needs to attend University and get a shiny degree - we need to stop that narrative while we're at it. There's plenty of trades that pay well and are in high demand. There's nothing wrong with being a blue collar worker, and we need to, as a society, stop thumbing our nose at it.

I assert making college free for students has two effects:

1) Makes the experience less valuable for the individual. 2) Increases taxpayer burden for largely frivolous degree programs.

Number one is because without "skin in the game", it's difficult to appreciate what you have. How many of us look back and truly appreciate High School classes? They were free for most of us... but it was just something you had to do to get on with your life. You weren't there because you wanted to be. You weren't hungry to learn, and you certainly don't remember every detail from 11th grade literature class, nor are you applying those experiences to your work today. We risk turning University into the same experience, and in the process we devalue bachelor degree programs more-so than they already are. That's not to say University should spin you into massive debt - we need to fix that too, but I refer back to my original assertions about encouraging (or mandating) full-time employment while attending school.

Number two is because, imo, there's a large number of degree programs that should not capture taxpayer funding or offer loans. If you're going to major in psychology, you almost certainly should continue through to a master's program or higher - if you stop with a bachelors, your job prospects are extremely limited. If you're going to major in art history - we need to be realistic with expectations... you're probably not going to find a job in that field very easily if at all.

We do our students a disservice by brainwashing everyone into believing going to University and graduating in 4 years with a shiny bachelors degree is the only way to earn a decent living. Reality is all too often the opposite - people graduating after 5-7 years with degrees industry doesn't want and zero experience in what industry expects, only to find out students can't secure well-paying jobs several years after leaving University. It's no surprise really.

<comment><USER6> Ah, there it is. 'Largely frivolous degree programs'. Not everyone can (or should!) be in STEM, the point of higher education is that having an educated populace with a wide variety of topics is good for the overall health of your country. Regardless if it's art history or psychology, a healthy nation needs a balance of educated individuals.

And to address your first posit: You would be objectively wrong. It is a remarkably ignorant America-centric viewpoint considering many other nations and countries do in fact have free college for their individuals. It does not devalue the experience at all. Why is it that we can't learn through what other nations have done?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Most of the other points in comments here are valid (or potentially so), but one thing I've not seen mentioned is the decrease in govt funding of public colleges and university. When I attended college 20 years ago (Penn State)I remember seeing graphs showing how decreased state funding matched tuition hikes pretty well. A quick google search turned up [https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher- educati...](https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher-education- lead-to-increases-in-tuition) which shows the same sort of graph, even if it doesn't go back as far and isn't quite the same axis.

<comment><USER49> I think a lot of university staff cry wolf over funding and always have, even in the good times. Yeah, they're really feeling the effects of it, what with admin staff sizes increasingly exponentially, constantly building new buildings and renovating existing ones, etc. My humble state school is like a luxury resort these days. There's puh-lenty of fat for colleges to trim if they're really feeling the pinch, but they seem to do anything but that. Honestly, I think we haven't done enough to force schools to get a handle on their spending habits.

<comment><USER50> I agree with the luxury portion. My university hasn't added a "cheap" dorm in decades. Now they're all suites, where 2 or 4 people share a bathroom, and are much more expensive.

I think a big part is students growing up in a middle class lifestyle and wanting to change as little as possible. I lived in the cheapest dorm available (no AC in the heat and humidity of Iowa). At current rates, 4694/year versus 6415 in the super nice ones, all before the meal plan.

So we have tons of people with low earning potential trying to maintain the lifestyle their parents have provided for them despite the fact that maintaining that lifestyle _after_ college will mean they're saving little to nothing, and that their student loans will live on for many years.

People waking up to the harsh reality of what starting wages will get them, how long student loans would take to pay back, etc. would go a long way toward cutting the fluff costs associated with college.

<comment><USER48> At the same time, "cheap" can hurt the effort at education. My freshman dorm room had me and one other roommate in a single room that I recall as being 8 ft by 15 ft. It was probably larger, but the issue wasn't the size but that he liked to come in at 3am and go to bed, falling asleep to the TV, while I had an 8am class and really had problems sleeping with noise on.

Did I need to learn to deal with it? Sure. Did I learn that you can fail a class in college? Yes I did. Was that a loss of time and money? Oh yes it was.

<comment><USER50> Your roommate in a suite could have just as easily been like that (unless it really was a socioeconomic class problem). GPA in the same-major across housing situations would be interesting to explore. I had neighbors who partied every Friday night with loud music and underage drinking until ~2 AM. It sucked, particularly when they did that during finals week and I had 8 AM finals.

I have friends who were in the suites, and there was basically no community developed there. In the standard dorms, people knew each others names because they'd run into them on the way to the bathroom. People kept their doors open (particularly in areas without air conditioning).

I say all this as a graduate of Iowa State, which I understand has one of the higher on-campus housing rates (95% of freshman, 50% of people who were on- campus last year are again this year).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It seems that everything the government is willing to pay for (or lend money for) gets outrageously priced. From healthcare (what is the cost of saving an american life?) to 'defense' (what is the cost of taking a killer's life?), the US has developed a system that mortgages the future of our children to subsidize the anxieties of 'adults' of the present.

</comment><comment><USER52> State schools, my friends. If you're in-state, you might pay 1/4 or less the costs of a private college.

<comment><USER53> That depends massively on which state you're a resident of.

<comment><USER52> Probably does vary by state. But overall:

"According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was $34,740 at private colleges, $9,970 for state residents at public colleges, and $25,620 for out-of-state residents attending public universities." \- [https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm...](https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064)

So in-state is, overall, a shade more than 1/4 the cost of private.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are > expensive:

Bloated self-serving administration.

</comment><comment><USER55> Because America is so expensive. A really good education at a state school still costs almost nothing in the long run, yet unless you are a wealthy young kid with parental support, the ability to go to school full time for 4 years is an unimaginable luxury.

<comment><USER56> Many enterprising youth use the military as a way to pay for school, too.

I had 7 brothers and sisters growing up, not enough money for Mom and Dad to put me in school. Uncle Sam was there for me, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm always amazed at how how classes require new $200 textbooks each semester. (Have there really been breakthroughs in every subject, requiring new books?)

To me, that's a big sign of what's wrong. Too many hands in the student's pocket.

</comment><comment><USER57> TLDR:

> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are > expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. > "Universities extract money from students because they can," says Schleicher > at the OECD. "It's the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure." > In places like the United Kingdom, the government limits how much > universities can extract by capping tuition. The same is true when it comes > to health care in most developed countries, where a centralized government > authority contains the prices.

Both true and not true.

College is indeed expensive because of unregulated price increase, but it's that way _because of_ , not in spite of, government intervention. Much like home prices.

Federal student aid has ensured that the cost of education grows to meet the amount of loan money available. Similar to mortgage guarantees.

Please note that I am not decrying student aid. I only went to university because of it. But you can draw a straight line to that and price hikes.

<comment><USER58> The same goes for medical care. The article tries to say that university and medical care are somehow competitive or part of a free market. There's no coincidence that both "industries" are the most heavily regulated and subsidized industries in the economy, and they're the most expensive.

Consumers of both products are completely divorced from the costs. People just don't think 20-30 years ahead. Student loans will weigh you down for a large part of your adult life, but when you're 18 you have no concept of that. Same with health care. Many many people don't care if their eating and health habits are detrimental... the consequences are years off and, frankly, someone else will pay for them.

So government steps in and breaks the market mechanisms. Student loans are non-dischargeable and subsidized to an unlimited amount. Your health habits cannot be taken into account with health insurance; government mandates the same coverage for everyone, whether or not you eat 10,000 calories of potato chips a day, or you run three miles a day.

The entirely predictable result is that prices go up unsustainably.

<comment><USER59> I will link to this book over and over: "Overcharged" explains the American medical system and its problems in great detail. Cannot recommend it more. Price obfuscation, third-party payments, and government interference have warped the medical system in ways that will make you laugh (then cry).

[https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health- Car...](https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health- Care/dp/1944424768/)

<comment><USER58> Thank you, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The health-care-education correlation runs deep. The premier health care systems are almost invariably associated with the premier universities in the area. The administrators write the rules.

</comment><comment><USER61> Why is college/housing/healthcare/childcare so expensive in America? Nothing here is optimized for the consumer, it's all optimized for profits.

</comment><comment><USER62> Sports teams. A LOT of spending on sports teams, stadiums, etc...

</comment><comment><USER63> Stupid, slightly off topic question: With costs this high, the huge financial burden and the unclear advantage one gets from a US university education, why do Americans not simply study abroad, say in Germany, where University is free?

<comment><USER64> Oh some do that already

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Seem like supply and demand pricing to put it succinctly.

</comment><comment><USER66> Mainly because of unsecured government guaranteed loans. The government pretty much has to give you a loan no matter what your predicted ability/willingness to pay back is. Colleges are capitalistically taking full advantage of this cash flow.

</comment><comment><USER67> TLDR;

Most of the cost can be traced back to staff, specifically non-teaching staff. With entire range of sport coaches to councelers on campus, things become expensive. Also, US has 4 different types of universities: public, private non-profit, for-profit, community schools. If you only take public universities in to account, US education system is actually more affordable than France or Canada. So there is huge variance and outliers which throws of the average.

</comment><comment><USER68> Why is everything so expensive in America...

</comment><comment><USER69> As history has shown overwhelmingly for decades, it's perfectly possible to run a good four year college with quite reasonable costs for the student. E.g., it was long common for students to work off the costs just by helping in the dining hall.

But, a lot of students want to go to prestige colleges. Nearly all the prestige colleges are the four year colleges of famous, high end research universities. In such universities, the teaching loads per professor are quite low, but the expenses for the research are quite high.

If a student is content to make good use of an okay public four year college, hopefully live at home, keep down the cost of living, concentrate on learning and grades, then they can get a good four year education and be ready for graduate school where they need pay no tuition and maybe get a stipend.

Actually, when I was a STEM field grad student, I paid no tuition, and a prof told me that they had tuition scholarship going begging from having too few well qualified applicants. A way to get an Ivy League degree is to have good grades from a four year college, good SAT and GRE scores, maybe 1-3 years of relevant work experience, and then apply to graduate school in a STEM field department of an Ivy League university. In essentially this way, I got accepted to Cornell, Brown, Princeton, and more.

Much of the emphasis on research was from the US Federal government for US national security and, then, bio-medical research (all those test tubes are expensive!). The national security interest was from The Bomb, the Cold War, the Space Race, and now whatever, e.g., information security. So the DoD, NSF, and NIH made the research universities an offer they couldn't refuse: Take the money or cease to be a leading research university.

Well, that Federal money is no longer so easy to get, but the research universities still want to concentrate on research, and students still think that is where the prestige and/or good education is.

Then with good reputations for research, the universities get highly ranked, and students want to go there for their four year ugrad education -- which then is darned expensive.

E.g., on YouTube, look at the lectures of Prof Allan Adams on introductory quantum mechanics at MIT: It appears that this is the only course he was teaching that year; it was the last year he was teaching it; and otherwise he was doing research on string theory. So, add it up anyway you want, and a seat in that course is EXPENSIVE.

But, don't really need a seat in that course. Instead can buy a stack of highly regarded introductory texts on quantum mechanics (used, save money), download lectures, from Adams and possibly elsewhere, and just STUDY. If take the course at MIT and do at all well in it, still have to STUDY. Sitting in the class is not much better than watching the videos; still what's important to learn the material is to study. But if want to rub shoulders with other good students and some big time profs, then, sure, would rather be at MIT. Still, if take a course in quantum mechanics at a four year college, maybe a course not quite as well informed as at MIT, then just work to get good grades, also learn quantum mechanics from the Adams videos and the best books, do well on the physics GRE, and apply to a high end grad program in physics. Then will still have a good shot at doing as well as the MIT grads in the grad program.

Similarly for other STEM fields, at least pure and applied math and, from all I can see, also computer science.

Net, it really is possible to get a really good education, with really good GRE scores, in a cheap four year ugrad program, and, then, be fully competitive in a high end grad program at one of the best research universities.

So, if have to sit in your parent's basement for a year getting the best ugrad STEM field education before taking your GREs and going for an Ivy League, etc. grad education, then DO that, and save some really big bucks, maybe $40,000 a year for 4 years.

NBA basketball has spectators who pay big bucks and makes a good spectator sport. A good ugrad STEM field education is not a spectator sport and is essentially the same as learning to play basketball well yourself. Can't get good at a STEM field just by watching; instead have to DO it. The best video lectures, the best books, and STUDY. You CAN do that.

E.g., pay all you want to MIT and take the Adams course. He still makes a total mess out of the Fourier transform. But the Fourier transform is presented with overwhelming clarity, beauty, and precision in W. Rudin, _Real and Complex Analysis_. At some point quantum mechanics will want to use the spectral theorem of linear operators on a Hilbert space. Well, the spectral theorem is in a finite dimensional version, intended to be a gentle introduction to the full version, in Halmos, _Finite Dimensional Vector Space_. There is the full version in another book, short, by Halmos, in

Introduction to Hilbert Space and the Theory of Spectral Multiplicity: Second Edition (Dover Books on Mathematics)

for about $10. For more, there is W. Rudin, _Functional Analysis_ , as usual for Rudin, with astounding precision.

Will have a tough time at any university finding a physics prof who will do that well with either the Fourier transform or spectral theory.

So, can get the Halmos book for about $10. For Rudin, _Functional Analysis_ , a fast Google search showed a used copy for $12.10. Why spend $40,000 a year????

Indeed, soon in high end STEM field academics it's accepted that with no more than a little guidance and some good texts, any of the good students can learn whatever they need. Basically the students are expected to be able to learn this way for their research. Once are a research prof, definitely are expected to learn this way just to keep up in the field. Net, all those $40,000+ a year ugrad expenses are for what the heck????

</comment><comment><USER70> The real answer is "because America". People in high places want to get rich, so they will make sure to lobby for laws and regulations so they can profit incredibly well from normal people.

I don't think there is any other country where capitalism has taken over so completely, and the people are not rebelling - but cheering - for America to continue.

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo Not enough government subsidy.

<comment><USER71> There is far too much government subsidy, loans should be much harder to get.

<comment> oh-kumudo College is essentially free for many european countries, that is what I think sufficient level of subsidy

<comment><USER72> > College is essentially free for many european countries, that is what I > think sufficient level of subsidy

Most of the countries which people usually talk about here - France, Germany, Spain, etc. - have significantly lower matriculation and graduation rates than the US does.

<comment><USER73> Could you point me to some numbers?

<comment><USER72> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the ArXiv Decides What's Science - <AUTHOR> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-holy-grail-of-crackpot-filtering.html <comment><USER2> The basic heuristic I use for determining what 'counts' as science relies on 3 questions

1) Are there methods or is there a description of how to observe something?

2) Are old methods being applied to a new phenomenon.

3) Are new methods being applied to an old phenomenon.

It isn't possible to do science if you don't have a viable tool (method) for measuring a phenomenon of interest or if you can't describe the phenomenon you want to study in a way that others can observe it.

Cases like Mochizuki with the ABC conjecture are harder, but at least the ABC conjecture is a know quantity.

It is reassuring that classifying papers by category of research works fairly well. Both phenomena and methodology are described using specialized vocabulary, and mismatches tend to jump out, like trying to use a hadron collider to study the blood pressure of a frog.

I almost like to believe that a crackpot that could masquerade as a scientist might actually discover something because they would be forced to actually engage with the concepts and tools of science.

<comment><USER3> The number of String Theory papers, PhD candidates, and conferences was staggering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have found arxiv to be a dead-end when publishing without affiliation. It's impossible to get feedback on papers, let alone the necessary endorsement to submit. That leaves SSRN as the only option. Arxiv requires you to email authors for endorsements which almost never works, since it's essentially spam.

<comment><USER5> Why not submit to a journal?

<comment><USER6> The "without affiliation" aspect is a dealbreaker in many fields. Lots of journals won't even acknowledge you if you're not at an academic institution.

<comment><USER7> It's not a dealbreaker in computer science, where the norm is for blind peer review. And in any case, you can just list your undergrad institution or a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> _The "insiders" can immediately tell who is an "outsider." Often it doesn't take more than a sentence or two, an odd expression, a term used in the wrong context, a phrase that nobody in the field would ever use._

seems a bit like when you're on top of your game with a certain programming language and feeling bored with stackoverflow questions and mailing lists asking the same old questions. Happy that in software we can easily move on to a new language / concept / idea to keep things exciting.

<comment><USER9> Of course, you can do that in science too. I believe the intent of that quoted text is not to indicate that all questions in scientific fields represented on arxiv, or even most, are answered. The only purpose is that language easily belies who does not "belong"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Arxiv banned the physicist who actually was able to build a physical model that makes sense in every aspect. Just because the reviewer did not understand one of the conclusions, the periodic table, that was a result of the theory. Of course you don't understand a result if you don't understand the theory which requires months/years to really grasp. The principle they are using only works if you stay in your paradigm, but if your paradigm is broken, you loose any real progress.

[http://archivefreedom.org/freedom/Sarg.html](http://archivefreedom.org/freedom/Sarg.html)

Having spent the time to understand, I only laugh these days about the many papers I see every week that contradict our standard model :)

<comment><USER11> Sorry to break this to you but this _is_ crackpot science, and there is no way such a manuscript can pass through any respectable physicist.

Obviously you're not a physicist; let me simply say that this is not how a scientific paper looks like.

It is just some philosophical text attempting to interpret some basic concepts in physics, introducing new fields no one ever seen (seriously?), and myriad of strange conjectures coming from nowhere and it goes borderline mysticism about vacuum. There is no new basic equation from which you can derive new, experimentally testable conclusions.

It's not even wrong.

Here're a few gems from his "theory":

> The energy is inseparable attribute of the matter.

> The Bohr atomic model is a correct mathematical model when assuming that the > space is void.

> The intrinsic matter could never disappear.

> The vacuum is not a void space, but contains a unique grid structure. This > grid structure named a Cosmic Lattice (CL) is built by two types of > alternatively arranged nodes, each one containing 4 sub-elementary particles > with shape of six sided prisms.

> The Newton's gravitation (universal gravitational law) is a propagation of > the IG field in CL space

What?!? I'm sorry but I can't believe I wasted ~10 minutes reading this crap. Yes, sorry about the language, but this is bullshit pseudoscience and any sane respectable physicist will reject this and blacklist this guy.

Here's how new theories in physics work: you put very little and very very basic assumptions into your theory (which is essentially an equation, that is compatible with experiments and hence is compatible with the old theory within a certain limited domain) and new stuff you _derive_ from your basic equation comes out it in the form of experimentally testable predictions. You have to get a lot more stuff than you put into building your theory.

Special relativity is a very nice example, you just assume Galilean invariance and constantancy of speed of light and out comes time-dilation, length contraction, energy-mass relation. If you add equivalence principle you get general relativity which gives you spacetime and new theory of gravity, blackholes, etc etc. And old Newtonian physics is happily reproduced when speeds and energy densities are small. And most importantly, predictions of new theory agrees with observations and experiments in the domain where the old theory failed.

Some intermediate mathematical stuff between your basic equation and experimentally testable measurable predictions might be difficult to interpret (wavefunction and entanglement with Schordinger equation, "holes" with Dirac equation, virtual particles, etc.) but you don't dwell on this stuff like a philosopher because neither your current theory nor experiments doesn't give you a deeper understanding to it anyway. So instead of going mystic, you sweep the non-testable stuff under the rug, hope that future physicist will have a better theory eventually and just "Shut up and calculate".

What you don't do is, you don't pull a myriad of new philosophical stuff out of nowhere where your assumptions are all that comes out and call it physics.

Even if you're not a physicist, you can see what kind of a "scientist" he is by checking his publication history (0 papers in any respectable physics journal).

<comment><USER12> The requirement of testable predictions would rule out an entire field of current theoretical physics. Not that I disagree with you (quite the contrary), but (almost) no paper on String theory would be accepted under that rule. Also, papers on pilot wave theory vs. Kopenhagen interpretation would come to mind.

<comment><USER11> Science isn't a computer program based on some simple algorithm. I understand that it can be difficult to spot crackpot to a layman.

1\. String theory doesn't assume 20 crazy things and its axioms aren't its only predictions 2\. String theory does have a basic equation from which you draw many results, leading to falsifiable predictions that is not covered by standard model. Some of them may not practical with today's experimental tools, but that's not all of them. I take you haven't seen any string theory papers. I'm saying we're suddenly going to see superparticles this year at LHC, but it is entirely plausible that if they exist, LHC should eventually detect them. 3\. You're probably talking about this [http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/2/e1501466](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/2/e1501466) recently posted on HN. In case you missed, that is an _experimental_ paper.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In Zimbabwe, We Don't Cry for Lions - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html <comment><USER2> It is amazing how everyone can jump on this wave of political bandwagon, including the government in Zimbabwe, without really acknowledging the irony that much more terrible things have happened in Zimbabwe in the past 20 years without nearly the same outcry. Massive hyperinflation, people starving to death, and we suddenly have tears in the West over "Cecile the lion". The corrupt government of Zimbabwe is quick to wipe away our tears and assure us that this will never happen again, all the while continuing to neglect their human citizens. I can agree that big game hunting is stupid and wasteful, but killing a lion simply isn't that big of a deal, not in the grand scheme of things, and not when we rely every day on the deaths of millions of cattle to provide us food. That's just cognitive dissonance. If anything, the doctor was paying a high price for a stupid hobby, which ultimately benefits the local people of Zimbabwe. How many people in Zimbabwe can be fed for $25,000, the price of hunting a male lion?

<comment><USER3> The cognitive dissonance you cite disappears completely if we accept the uncomfortable elephant in the room: we value the remaining animals far more than we value human life. And isn't that normal when there are 7 billion of us and 30 000 of them?

<comment><USER4> How many humans do there need to be before I can own one and keep it in a cage (even if regulations require it to be a big cage)? I'm thinking of putting the cage on display and calling it something. Maybe a yoo.

My point being, we seem to value them more in our actual interactions, but when it comes to discussing rights and laws, we still value them less. So my actual question is why do we have this discrepancy. We cry on the death of a lion more than a human, yet putting another lion in a cage for our own amusement is allowed but doing the same with a human is considered extremely wrong.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that those that cry on the death of lion are pretty much opposed to caging them (in anything smaller that a national park) as well.

<comment><USER4> For those most opposed, I would agree. But I suspect that most of those involved in this outcry are not so opposed (they may be opposed to any caging, but they would be fine with some level of caging).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Don't tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don't bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.

So don't learn from our mistakes, basically?

This is among the most ignorant things I have ever read. Terrible article from a person with a terrible mentality.

<comment><USER7> The paragraph before the one you just quoted:

"We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people."

And the paragraph directly after:

"And please, don't offer me condolences about Cecil unless you're also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger."

"Please don't care about the animals in my country more than you care about me and my countrymen" is a reasonable request. I don't see anything terrible about it. I'm not sure why you dropped the surrounding context.

<comment><USER8> Humans are intelligent creatures and villagers killed are a result of encroaching the animals rightful land. There are no condolescence for those deaths caused by one's own mistake. Get out of the animals territory and fight for your survival with those other humans not with poor animals. There are only 3000 tigers left in the wild if a Bengal tiger kills a villager going inside their territory of sundar ban it's the fault of that human not tiger. Here at least American's are being right to care about 3000 tigers or lions instead of over 7 billion humans. This article shows the sick mentality of the people who thinks it's alright to encroach on other animals turf since it's easier. They are cowards not able to fight for survival with their own fellow human. There are no surrounding context in it. It's just talking about villagers encroaching lions rightful forest and pushing them to extinction.

<comment><USER9> > Humans are intelligent creatures and villagers killed are a result of > encroaching the animals rightful land.

What are you going on about?

A lion will hunt where there is food for it. Even if there's a single village in all of Zimbabwe, it will go there and take the easy meal. There's nothing easier than eating livestock. The livestock is trapped, defenseless, and absolutely tasty.

> There are no condolescence for those deaths caused by one's own mistake.

What mistake? Existing?

> Here at least American's are being right to care about 3000 tigers or lions > instead of over 7 billion humans.

Can you help everyone out? Please go to Zimbabwe and feed yourself to a lion. It will help the lion out. It will provide several days worth of sustenance. You're a bit more bony than a cow, but I'm pretty sure the lion won't complain too much. On top of everything, there will be one less human around! Win/win!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If people are hitting the paywall the gist of the article is that lions are dangerous animals. People living in rural village are terrorized by lions and it has a serious impact on their way of life. Zimbabweans have a lot of respect for wild animals but aren't opposed to them being hunted. America once again stirred up a social media frenzy when they don't understand the issue at all.

<comment><USER11> I take issue with the thought of conservation only being necessary for cute, cuddly animals. There are significant benefits of maintaining biodiversity in the various biomes.

<comment><USER12> I agree. Especially when those "cute" animals have long ceased to have any significant role in their ecosystem due to their reduced numbers. I think conservation efforts should primarily focus on the ecosystem not single species. In fact it is not uncommon for environmentalist organizations to follow this approach, to the apparent detriment of the ability to stir up any interest among the wider public. Biological corridors? Mangrove forests? Too many humans take this as faceless abstract technical entities, even when their face is more often than not also a human face.

<comment><USER11> Completely agree with your entire comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people."

That's on point.

<comment><USER14> I sincerely believe that people would rather humans die than animals. Its really bizarre and should be studied. Is that people see other people as a competition for resources? It's really fascinating the stir over the death(or murder) of 1 animal vs death(or murder) of hundreds or even thousands of people per day.

<comment><USER15> Objectively, lions and other apex predators do a lot of good in maintaining species population balance in their respective ecosystems. And, objectively, humans are extremely destructive forces, both to every ecosystem into which they've expanded their range and to each other through excessive population density, wars, oppression, loss of frontier, and in many other ways.

This is simply another form of ecosystem imbalance; we kill lions, we use medicine to encourage unfit humans to survive and reproduce and intensive agriculture to produce many times more food than could be grown using natural methods. The effect is the same as with any other predator-prey imbalance: the prey animal populations expand far beyond the ecosystem's carrying capacity, leading to stress, disease, weakness, starvation, and numerous other ills among the prey population. Eventually the prey population is reduced dramatically as nature kills off huge numbers of unfit animals.

You're welcome to call me callous, but I choose not to cry for humans, African or otherwise.

<comment><USER14> I don't think you are alone in your perspective. But I do cry for humans. There is nothing more powerful that I know of then the human brain. The potential for humans to do destructive things is great but so is the potential to do incredibly positive things. I mourn that lost potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Honestly Zimbabwe has so many problems a lion dying is not a big issue. Hell Zimbabwe children were being tied up and set on fire a few months ago in South Africa[0].

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyX4aOd_2BY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyX4aOd_2BY)

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation)

But you're right, it's not a big issue. There are other issues, which is why the US does more than just have citizens post to Facebook about a lion.

[http://www.usaid.gov/zimbabwe](http://www.usaid.gov/zimbabwe)

<comment><USER16> Yea about that aid:

[http://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2014/jul/15/ai...](http://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2014/jul/15/aid-africa-west-looting-continent)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Don't tell us what to do with our animals

the animals aren't yours or anybody else's. They belong to that planet which we just happen to share. Human race, having achieved the ability to destroy the planet's eco-sphere, thus got a duty of steward of the eco-sphere which it has been carrying poorly so far.

Anyway, killing big game this days is a serious mental sickness.

<comment><USER19> How is hunting a serious mental sickness? Lest you forget your ancestors were very capable hunters, else you would not be here.

<comment><USER20> Take any group of cub scouts to the park, they see a duck, they reach for a rock. Its built-in. We are hunters.

<comment><USER18> >Take any group of cub scouts to the park, they see a duck, they reach for a rock.

any non-mentally ill adult present would use the situation to explain that it isn't acceptable.

> Its built-in. We are hunters.

yea. Hannibal Lecter.

<comment><USER20> Explaining what society condones has nothing to do with what built-in impulses Homo Sapiens possesses. What's your point?

<comment><USER18> Homo Sapiens doesn't possess those built-in impulses. Some sick members of society imprint that it on some others (usually early in their life), and with society putting some effort into it, that bad habit will be exterminated.

<comment><USER20> Evidence seems to contradict that Pollyanna view.

<comment><USER18> judging by your other comments, talking about evidence you probably mean your personal experience. Well, by the same token one would expect that people dealing with rapists would with the same validity talk about such Homo Sapiens built-in impulse too.

<comment><USER20> Really? My experience with the general population of youth in our area is similar in any way? This thread is off the rails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a pity there is so much confusion between 1) how foreigners reacted to the incident, 2) the problem of endangered species and violated habitats and 3) the poor situation of the locals. It seems nearly impossible to have a rational conversation about a damn lion while these three things aren't considered separately first. Yeah, I've tried to read the article's comments, my bad...

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been trying for weeks to start an honest discussion on the Internet about a hunter's role in conservation. At almost every turn I get hit with the "he's a poacher" stick!

Can we just forget about the dentist? He's not a poacher! Maybe he's just a bad person?! No one really knows. But he's not a poacher.

/* If you want to see what a poacher does and if you don't want to sleep for a few days then just ask me for a video of a live Rhino, suffering, with half it's face chainsawed off for his horn... (Brings me half to tears to just describe the video!) */

He's not what's important here. People are loving the animals that they care about to death. They're so against someone killing them that they're hurting the hunting, and in turn, the conservation industry.

One of the most beloved people on Earth, Nelson Mandela, hunted and described the benefits that hunting had on conversation: [http://imgur.com/a/ZJ0QK](http://imgur.com/a/ZJ0QK)

Nelson is cited for marketability, for the real numbers there are plenty of credible sources and institutions that'll provide the same information.

</comment><comment><USER23> ... Well except that Zimbabwe is trying to extradite the dentist for poaching. The lion was in a national park that brings in significant tourism dollars for the state, they quite literally were crying for this lion.

<comment><USER24> > Well except that Zimbabwe is trying to extradite the dentist for poaching.

FYI the author talked about this in the article as he also mentioned their president had a baby elephant slaughtered for his birthday.

> The lion was in a national park that brings in significant tourism dollars > for the state, they quite literally were crying for this lion.

While I agree that it seems like the author is missing some perspective from the park / tourism side of things he did offer a different perspective I haven't read about. I'm sure someone from their parks service would have yet another perspective.

Still, it's good to hear about these types of issues from other perspectives for I fear of drowning in an echo-chamber that is American news.

<comment><USER25> > their president had a baby elephant slaughtered for his birthday.

This really highlights asymmetric power relations in the issue:

It's easy to gang up online against a wealthy, white, male dentist. Mobbing Zimbabwe's president, on the other hand...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is way different having to kill a lion that is making life in your village miserable to having this foreigner come in and do it for "fun" disregarding the laws of your country. One thing doesn't excuse the other.

Having said that, he is right on " ... don't offer me condolences about Cecil unless you're also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed ..."

<comment><USER27> I don't think there are many people who are upset about Cecil's killing that would not also mourn someone killed by a lion. The author's insinuation that we don't care about something we were never given the opportunity to care about is the worst kind of moral fallacy, and is entirely unfair.

<comment><USER20> To be truthful, we've laughed about idiots killed by lions, when those idiots ignored fences and signs in a zoo. So its entirely situational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The best way to turn me off of a cause is to see a bunch of people soapboxing on facebook/twitter. Regardless of whether or not I agree with Cecil the lion being hunted down, the internet mob is disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER29> I find all these articles that try to compare and measure sympathy and emotion as pointless. People are comparing the outpouring of grief for Cecil to apathy towards human killings and inhuman treatment of animals in the meat industry. A person can be severely depressed if they lose a dog, and another can show no emotion when they lose a parent. You can't compare human emotion because it's not always rational.

In this specific case though, I would also argue given the declining numbers of lions, the anger is justified.

<comment><USER12> I tend to think that human emotion was not rational by definition (and by not rational I mean uncorrelated not negatively correlated). Of course "not rational" is not synonymous of bad or superfluous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I grew up in small town in eastern part of India, where Tigers were rolling on the streets and wild elephants were more dangerous than any other animal. Just dont piss them off, that was told to anyone new in that area. My dad use to take me to elephant(trained off course) rides into the jungle(the real jungle) to watch tigers and all other wild animals. I started to enjoy it more and more. My uncle was a forest ranger and had a tiger cub, so I played with him every weekend or whenever I get a chance to visit him. One day I came to know a tiger was shot dead by "some guy" as kid I felt really bad, I was like "why kill a tiger for no reason?" I was more surprised when the local people were really sad about this. Like, they have develop some kind of affection to this animals, no matter how deadly they can be. An unspoken bond between the people and the wild animals. Off course the government was not going to investigate much about it, because of local corrupt officials. Officials were more concerned about food, jobs, education and medical facilities. Which took more highlight than the killing a tiger, which for majority of people in that locality was a big deal.

</comment><comment><USER31> I live near Vancouver in BC. We still have large mammal wildlife, grizzly bears, black bears, Cougars. They are killed by park rangers or police if they become comfortable in the human world. You can also pay to go on grizzly hunting trips further north in the province. We have just as far to go as we want Zimbabwe too.

But just because it's the same here, and because there are worse things there, can't we just agree that culling these magnificent animals should be done by officials as the grim task it is, and not by rich for recreation?

Lions that attack villagers do have to be killed sadly, but why not embrace Eco tourism instead of trophy hunting for the ones that are not a threat?

</comment><comment><USER32> Sport hunting changes lion social behavior, as per: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320710...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320710003459) I don't have an Elsevier account, so only read the abstract, which states that lions are seeking denser cover.

Some conjecture:

Do Zimbabwe villagers live in denser cover? If so, maybe sport hunting increase the threat by forcing lions closer to villagers? That would add a bit of irony to the situation.

</comment><comment><USER33> The frankly appalling discussion going on over at the nyt's comments section with first world environmentalists saying the author and the rest of that third world people should just "move to the city" without even the slightness sign of empathy towards people who make less in a year than what many nyt readers make in a day ironically reminds me of the attitude many far-right US nationals have regarding immigration. Basically most of them simply ignore the realities of the immigration process and honestly believe that people can just walk to the nearest US embassy and request a greencard and that the reason there are so many illegals its simply because they wont do that.

Of course even a glimpse at the US visa system shows that there is no such option, that many visas are just temporary and tied to employment or studies that will eventually end, and honestly the only real option left is to just marry a US citizen, an option which is already becoming more and more difficult. The far-right is unwilling to understand this and how if their grandfathers in the 20th century had been faced with these strict immigration rules they would been forced to return home and stay there when in reality many came here unannounced and uninvited, just as illegals do today.

Back to the lion issue, the problem with this line of thinking that rejects the idea that opinions from outside the US hold any value nor should be considered at all is that it doesn't solves the problem. Hunting in Zimbabwe, a dirt-poor country with a collapsed economy, its actually the only way some people have to make a living. US environmentalists much like the far-right don't share that problem with the other side and thus can afford the luxury of disregarding their suffering and even ask the foreigners for further sacrifices so they don't have to admit they were dead wrong.

</comment><comment><USER34> No problem, you will cry for lions in the future, probably.

 _" Using the calculations of Hayward et al. (2007), biomass density of preferred lion prey in Gonarezhou national park was calculated... the protected area could support enough preys for between 115 and 357 lions._

 _... the 2014 census found 33 lions in the protected area._

Lions where positive only in the 5% of the points analyzed in the census.

 _For the Tuli Safari Area the scientific model predict a population of about 40 lions and the 2014 census found..._

 _zero lions_

Source: " _Surveys of lions Panthera leo in protected areas in Zimbabwe yield disturbing results: what is driving the population collapse? "_ Groom et al. 2014.

Models also predict that the park could support a population of Hyaena of 354 animals... 2014 census found between 400-490 hyaena in the national park instead.

This is hardly a surprise because is the same ecological rule for the whole freaking planet earth: Mesocarnivore liberation. Same that leads to the american coyote, and the english fox and the jackals now expanding to the west and reconquering Europe. You are bassically destroying the big fauna in cascade. A really expensive mistake.

> _How many people in Zimbabwe can be fed for $25,000, the price of hunting a > male lion?_

This will depend on how many money and goats they have still after figthing the strange new hyaenas plague. And don't forget the bovine tuberculosis also.

Ok I have one idea, If we wipped the local lion pride we could kill also those 50 new hyaenas!.

(some months later) end of the hyaena problem, hum, how this new 500 jackals appeared?

</comment><comment><USER35> People are coming to the defence of man-eating lions in a place where lions eat people.

How are there 7 billion of us when we hate ourselves and each other so much?

</comment><comment><USER36> Though I don't care much about the subject in general, I'm already tired of this backlash against the backlash. :/

However yes, we can be angry about the Cecil incident. It went viral for whatever reason, other incidents didn't. That's the nature of social media, you'll have to get used to it. No, we don't have to "fix" Zimbabwe or the world before being angry at one needless death, thanks.

The author's point about lions scaring villagers when he was young is interesting yet not a justification, these lions are now in a reserve and the species is now vulnerable, if not soon to be endangered. Of course behind the words there is always the lingering self-serving idea that people are so much more important than our cousins in the animal kingdom. Well, guess what at 7 billion vs. 25k lions, which population could use a little thinning?

</comment><comment><USER37> I'll never forget our tour guide in Zimbabwe saying his last paycheck before dollarization was 4 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars. For a tour guide. So yeah, they might have bigger problems than Cecil the Lion.

</comment><comment><USER38> Sure, there may have been much worse things happened in Zimbabwe than a beloved wildlife Cecil, but the fact that this event raises awareness about wildlife conservation is a BIG DEAL! [1]

[1]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/cec...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/cecil- supporters-donations/400436/)

PS: I was wondering if Palmer's PR team paied for this NYT article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Translation: "you imperialist westerners are out of touch, soft, and basically, anti-Africa (a stop short of 'racist'). How can you love a dangerous creature more than all us poor Africans"?

Because there are 7 billion of us on the planet and only 30k lions left. We have had it really good (including Zimbabwe in terms of population growth) for 150 years, yet we have decimated our kindred animals using excuses like "conservation" or "danger". This article takes an instinct that was relevant 300 years ago and shamelessly punts it into our modern age, circumstances having changed enormously, in order ultimately to push another agenda.

<comment><USER39> Still not really the issue though. People care plenty for Africans. But if he's got a new take on how we can deal with decades of government corruption without getting a whole lot more Africans killed in the process, everyone, everywhere, is all ears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So all people in Zimbabwe do not think exactly the same? And might even have differences of opinion? Mind blown...

Not really sure how Cecil the Lion fits into HN, oh well.

</comment><comment><USER41> Finally some sanity.

</comment><comment><USER42> That is some very basic trolling. Not sure why HN crowd is biting, or why this article is on HN at all.

</comment><comment><USER43> Anthropocentrism at its purest. Reminds me of someone on BBC talking about "shark infested waters of South Africa".

</comment><comment><USER17> > We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more > about African animals than about African people.

[http://www.usaid.gov/zimbabwe](http://www.usaid.gov/zimbabwe)

<comment><USER44> You could say though that USAID is not Americans, per se, but the American government caring about African people, and anyway it could also be raised that in relative terms not that much goes to foreign aid, and also that not all of it is employed solely for humanitarian reasons.

Btw, I appreciated your Wiki link above.

<comment><USER17> > You could say though that USAID is not Americans, per se, but the American > government caring about African people,

I agree, and I thought of that before posting it, but the reality is, I assume I'm sending aid to Africa already. I imagine most American's assume that is the case as well. We may not know about USAID specifically, but we assume we are sending it. So, it's not something we need to get worked up over.

Effectively, it's taken care of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What's the author's point? That we should wantonly kill lions? Let's just eradicate 'em all?

He should sound much happier, then. Because we're on our way:

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction- countdown/afr...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction- countdown/african-lions-face-extinction-by-2050-could-gain-endangered-species- act-protection/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Most of Zimbabwe's problems are not America's fault, and quite frankly, there's not much we can do about them. But Cecil's corpse is our fault, because he was shot by an American dentist. People tend to care more when they feel implicated, and it's logical to care more when you can actually do something about it. It's easier to boycott the dentist than to hope for a coup that ousts Mugabe.

</comment><comment><USER8> Humans are intelligent creatures and villagers killed are a result of encroaching the animals rightful land. There are no condolescence for those deaths caused by one's own mistake. Get out of the animals territory and fight for your survival with those other humans not with poor animals. There are only 3000 tigers left in the wild if a Bengal tiger kills a villager going inside their territory of sundar ban it's the fault of that human not tiger. Here at least American's are being right to care about 3000 tigers or lions instead of over 7 billion humans. This article shows the sick mentality of the people who thinks it's alright to encroach on other animals turf since it's easier. They are cowards not able to fight for survival with their own fellow human. There are no surrounding context in it. It's just talking about villagers encroaching lions rightful forest and pushing them to extinction.

<comment><USER4> >Here at least American's are being right to care about 3000 tigers or lions instead of over 7 billion humans.

Assuming the sale of 1 of those 7 billion could save N of those 3000, how big would N be before you support it? If need be, you don't need to pick the 1 at random but can select based on what ever criteria you desire.</comment></comment>


China holds drill to shut down 'harmful' websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-40830048 <comment><USER2> It's amusing to read the alarmism in this article, on bbc.co.uk, while keeping in mind that the UK already filters, surveils, and blocks websites nationwide and has statutes to censor sites that advocate against the monarchy or "imagine the death" of the queen.[1]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#Politics_and_extremism)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious -- are you a Chinese national? I feel like I keep seeing userXYZ's posting pro-China whataboutism every chance possible.

<comment><USER4> I really don't think using rhetoric like "whataboutism" as a distraction when someone points out some sort of hypocrisy promotes conversation in any useful way.

<comment><USER5> I'd agree in general, but I have noticed that particular topics have a way of provoking a lot of comments that do seem 'suspicious'.

I've found that while in practice these comments are often by otherwise somewhat acceptable HN commenters and not shills, they are often noticeably more partisan/controversial/low-quality than their other comments.

Specifically, this seems to happen with discussions that involve particular nation states (India, Turkey, Russia, Serbia, China are at the top of my list), as well as particular topics (gender, Trump, socialism/capitalism, etc.).

While I do agree that pointing this out violates the principle of charity and possibly hurts the conversation, it's still a 'dynamic' that kind of stands out.

EDIT: this is more of a general 'observation', not necessarily applicable to this particular thread.

<comment><USER6> It's curious that you leave the US out of your list of nation states that tend to attract particularly low-effort comments around here. In my experience this is way more pronounced with the US than any other country that's discussed on HN.

Of course any country that's discussed here is likely to attract people from that country who feel they have something to explain or defend, but due to the userbase being predominantly American the bias is very much towards the US, not India, Russia, China or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > A document circulating online and attributed to a cyber police unit said the > drill had been held "in order to step up online security for the 19th Party > Congress and tackle the problem of smaller websites illegally disseminating > harmful information"

If true, the Chinese government isn't even pretending this information is "fake" or "untrue", but instead they just find "harmful".

<comment><USER8> Considering true information as "harmful" is perfectly normal in Western societies as well (in certain contexts). The U.S. government response to leaks from Chelsea Manning, Snowden, and the leaks flowing right now from the current administration have been similar: "The REAL problem is how damaging this leak is!"

I don't mean to imply that it's an acceptable thing to think, or that the U.S. is as authoritarian as China (it's not by an order of magnitude), but contextualizing this makes it seem less surprising. If we're more alarmed, we should have been this alarmed to begin with. This is the party that spearheaded the Cultural Revolution and erected the Great Firewall... this kind of behavior is very par for the course.

<comment><USER9> There's a difference between being harmful to an administrative agenda, and harmful to people.

It's one thing to publish a leak detailing corruption which "harms" the agenda and reputation of the criminals engaged in it. Boo on them. "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."

It's another to publish a leak that reveals identities and plans made in secret, and gets people killed.

Somewhere in the middle are leaks like yesterday's transcripts of Trump talking to Australia and Mexico: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/austra...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia- mexico-transcripts/) Perhaps world leaders should be able to speak together confidentially, and perhaps these transcripts will 'harm' people in the future when politicians are less able to communicate frankly because the conversations are public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the Chinese state going to do about the 'harmful' information that is encoded in various blockchains, Bitcoin's[1] being one example?

[1]: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z4k73w/someone- pu...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z4k73w/someone-put-the- tiananmen-square-tank-man-image-in-the-bitcoin-blockchain-to-troll-china)

<comment><USER11> What You See Is All There Is

If the lion share of people can't see it, it doesn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the west, its the corporations that decide what content is considered "harmful" and remove it. Ex: youtube, patreon, twitter, etc.

<comment><USER13> There's a tremendous difference between private companies deciding what to do with their own platforms, and the government dictating what all companies must do with their platforms.

<comment><USER14> Does that argument fly anymore when corporations are so much more powerful than most nations?

FB and google both have a larger population than china. Censorship by FB or Google is far more harmful/effective than whatever the chinese government does.

Also, would we support corporations right to censor if they were censoring content we disagreed with? Imagine if FB/Youtube/Verizon/etc started censoring lgbt content. Would we still use the "private companies" can do whatever they want argument?

Given how powerful many companies are ( especially monopolistic companies like FB/GOOG ) maybe it's time corporations are required to protect free speech like corporations are required to protect the rights of minorities/disabled/etc.

<comment><USER15> I disagree that corporations are more powerful than nations, because FB and google can't compel you to do anything.

If I opt out of google, then I miss out on google's services. If I "opt out" of my country's laws, I go to prison.

Google censorship only controls what people say on google. Government censorship can control what their citizens say anywhere.

<comment><USER14> > I disagree that corporations are more powerful than nations, because FB and > google can't compel you to do anything.

Not directly but they could get the government to act on their behalf. Also, I'd say FB, GOOGL are more powerful than most nations. I don't think monaco or luxemburg are more powerful than FB or GOOGL.

> If I opt out of google, then I miss out on google's services. If I "opt out" > of my country's laws, I go to prison.

But if corporations can get the government to make the laws. Also, if your job requires you to have a facebook account or an internet connection and FB or AT&T "ban" you, that could be damaging to you.

> Google censorship only controls what people say on google. Government > censorship can control what their citizens say anywhere.

In another way. Google censorship censors you on google on earth. Government censorship only controls you within a nation's borders. You could argue that google's censorship is global while a government's censorship is local.

When it comes to large transnational monopolies like GOOG and FB, in many ways their censorship is far more damaging and dangerous. Even more so when you consider the influence large monopolies have over governments and laws.

Whatever your views, it's a very interest topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>