I should not have a free education. If the world worked my way, I'd have gotten a job as a child, and payed my own way through a cheap private school.
this is as good a place as any to jump back into this....i missed a lot
in catching up, i realized something....something that it seems most everyone here is trying to impress upon you.....the wealth of transactions that have to do with the value of an emotional state, rather than things
you're not impressed, maybe. because you're young, and emotional states are pretty much enjoyment and anger (a bit simplistic, i know)....rand has a special appeal to the young, imo, for that reason....objectivism isn't designed to deal with subtlety, nuance, or the ephemeral -solemnity, for example, or awe....it's connection to emotion is through action, and so long as emotions remain simple, objectivism can be made to work...
your quote above embodies this disparity in some ways.....you feel you haven't paid for your education....that, ideally, you must trade something for it....yet you don't see that you have been trading all along....public (free) or private (paid for) education is really all the same in terms of transaction...your self-interest keeps you going, because somewhere in those complex reaches within you, you feel the value it provides (somebody mentioned two of them -reading and writing)...so you trade time, effort, and focus in return for knowledge
and you unwittingly offer up appreciation, too....something freely given in spite of all feelings to the contrary, without thought of return.
but the simple, ojectivist side of you sees only the material side of the transaction...you should get a job and pay for the knowledge....
questions: in an ideal, objectivist society, what job would a child work at to pay for their education? how is a rate of exchange for the transaction calculated? what's to keep someone else's self interest from seeing the advantage of exploiting the child? would there be safeguards against this? would you being pay for those, as well?
the list, i believe, would go on and on, skirting the value of emotional states that have no obvious, direction connection to self interest....like empathy....in favor of material transactions
imo....objectivism doesn't really qualify as a stand alone philosophy....it exists as a one of a binary star system....the other being unthinking emotional response, that can be destructive to the entire sphere of value that it acts within.
