College Conspiracy

[L-A]

In my view the main risk of renting is simply ending up with a lot less wealth at the end of the game. Lack of wealth is a risk.

Right now, with real estate prices falling, the scales probably tip towards more people falling into the category where they should be renting. I'll grant you that.

Indeed. Also, renting has lack of wealth as a potential risk, but absence of debt as a definite advantage.

In my experience, people who rent intelligently end up with a wealth similar to people who buy intelligently in a comparable situation. I can see one way with which ownership of a house ends up meaning more money: when you go from owning to renting, and thus don't buy after selling. But at that point, you'd probably be after a better or bigger home than in your pre-ownership days, effectively increasing your "net" money loss in the end.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

Accusing your opponents of being brainwashed is a classic ad hominem attack.

I have a science degree. What's a positivist ontology?

Wasn't an ad hominem attack or even an insult. You read too much into my statement. I was just illustrating that hegemony operates at all levels of education and is not exclusive to any one discipline. We're all products of certain biological processes, but we're also all products of our socialization experiences and particular educational backgrounds, which inform our views of the world. "Indoctrination" is a loaded word that often means that the person invoking it doesn't philosophically agree with the socialization taking place in a group. My point was that the word is fluid and can be equally invoked to denote the socialization and educational agenda concerning natural and physical science students inasmuch as students in liberal studies, business, law, or the social sciences.

Natural science is generally based upon the positivist ontology, which holds that reality is objective and knowable outside of our own cognitive biases. This is in contrast to the postpositivist and antipositivist paradigms that generally permeate intellectual thought in the social sciences and humanities.

 

[fdeck]

Wasn't an ad hominem attack or even an insult. You read too much into my statement. I was just illustrating that hegemony operates at all levels of education and is not exclusive to any one discipline. We're all products of certain biological processes, but we're also all products of our socialization experiences and particular educational backgrounds, which inform our views of the world. "Indoctrination" is a loaded word that often means that the person invoking it doesn't philosophically agree with the socialization taking place in a group. My point was that the word is fluid and can be equally invoked to denote the socialization and educational agenda concerning natural and physical science students inasmuch as students in liberal studies, business, law, or the social sciences.

Natural science is generally based upon the positivist ontology, which holds that reality is objective and knowable outside of our own cognitive biases. This is in contrast to the postpositivist and antipositivist paradigms that generally permeate intellectual thought in the social sciences and humanities.

That's cool. I may have overreacted a bit.

I'd state the scientific agenda in slightly softer terms, as an intellectual game run amok, that happens to have generated a useful body of knowledge. It's the game of seeing what you can learn if you assume that reality is objective. I think that scientists are simple-minded people who do it because we enjoy this game. And if it's a good game (e.g., like playing music), you can carry it to an arbitrary level of sophistication.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

Not a problem, my brother. I was actually going to expound in my original post, but I didn't want it to to seem like I was slamming on Burk.