a college degree in 2025/2026/2027 ... don't

We started with a woman talking about going back to college.    I suggested a humble home and a large garden.  I then suggest SKIP and the bootcamp (gardening gardeners)

I am then asked about health care in the bootcamp.  

I think of the bootcamp as a place where people can focus on learning gardening, natural building and homesteading.  A sort of shitty school.  

For whatever college the woman was headed to, what is the health care there?  What is the cost of the college, the cost of the housing and the cost of food?


And there was mention of people with a lot of stuff that might need to be stored for the bootcamp.   Would it need to be stored for college?

Might have to agree to disagree there. Splitting wood and peeling logs is the kind of thing I love to do, but it is still work. Especially if you have to do it to stay warm, and can’t wander off after an hour.

When a person has baseboard heaters, or natural gas heat and pay $3000 per winter, do they call that "work"?

As for "have to do it to stay warm" - we have big supplies of wood right now.  I think all of our firewood harvesting is done at an extremely easy pace.  Without any desperation to stay warm.

But how many young adults dream of retiring to that humble a home before they’ve done much else?

Dunno.  Maybe a few million?  But I can only take about 20.

do you want to see most boots come and stay forever? Or do they come and hang out, build skills and then move on?

I gotta allow the people that just wanna be here for a few months if I am eventually gonna find the people that will be here for ten years or more.

Honestly I bought into all this about 10 years ago. I pursued a permaculture education and shunned college. Did it give me lots of life skills and prepare me for the future... possibly. The thing about the future is that its unknowable, I certainly don't see AI making many jobs go away in the next 6 months. The job I work at now will have layoffs but AI is barely adopted at all. They still do paper record keeping and this is a Fortune 500. AI just can't read the hand written and scanned PDFs. Don't get me wrong, ill be first in line to buy a robot but that is probably years to a decade away still.

For background I finally got tired of being poor and living with my parents and went back to school at 34. I now make double what my max salary has been at an entry level sustainability job (i know its a joke but it pays more than my apple tree ever did) but still can't find a way to climb out of my terrible social poverty. Land ownership seems like a cruel joke and though it seemed possible a few years ago, today it feels pretty unattainable, especially with a child and limited mobility. If I had gone to college, gotten the piece of paper and got an entry level job I might have my own homestead by now. Instead I waited for the permaculture skills to save me and they never have.

I agree that trades are more valuable than most college degrees, but society still rewards that paper. Get yourself the cheapest degree you can in something versatile. Scan job postings and see what the jobs in your area, theres a business phrase called 'going concern' which basically means assume these businesses will still be operating when you graduate. Governments arent going away either, those jobs arent what they used to be, but if you go on a job website and search 'permaculture' I guarantee the results will be zero. If youre passionate about permaculture and want to live the lifestyle then do that. I would love to do the Ant Village but I've never had the money or freedom to jump in to that experience. If you want to do permaculture design professionally, the minimum in Connecticut is a BS in Architectural Landscape Design. You can't not go to college if you want to pursue this path!
For millions and millions of kids out there, maybe college is a joke and permaculture is better for lots of reasons... but if the world is dying and you still have to get by in a crumbling society. Do whatever you love and think will be a good path for you. Try to have a positive impact (The world always needs more doctors!) and chances are you'll need the college paper for it. My advice is get the debt, have fun in college, try new things, learn new things, extend your childhood as long as you can. College is more than the sum of its parts. Poor without a degree is much worse in my experience than broke with a degree.

Live in a hut to service gardens, vs. sacrificing a lifetime servicing debts.

paul wheaton wrote:

I am then asked about health care in the bootcamp.  

For whatever college the woman was headed to, what is the health care there?  What is the cost of the college, the cost of the housing and the cost of food?

Yep. If she does not have family support, she has maybe 3 options: 1) use loans to pay for insurance and other living expenses, 2) go to school part time, and pay for living expenses from current salary, or 3) maybe save enough to pay for the costs - depending how much they are.
3 is the only option for bootcamp. If you are going to have fun and learn some stuff for a summer, having enough saved isn’t a big deal. If you end up staying for years or decades - yeah, it’s a big deal.

paul wheaton wrote:

And there was mention of people with a lot of stuff that might need to be stored for the bootcamp.   Would it need to be stored for college?.

A woman returning to college will probably keep on in whatever home she has, and keep using her stuff.
I did not mean to suggest that college does not also require resources. Maybe my point was too obvious - totally broke people are not coming to bootcamp for the room and board. The people you are looking for have a certain level of affluence, and hence have options - college, trade school, a job, woofing, backpacking through Switzerland, etc.

paul wheaton wrote:

When a person has baseboard heaters, or natural gas heat and pay $3000 per winter, do they call that "work"?

Yes, of course! The goal of a job is that after a year of work, you have paid for room, board, bills, and fun, and still come out ahead financially. The goal of of collegp is to work (yes, work) to gain the skills you need to get a job that lets you come out ahead.

I gotta allow the people that just wanna be here for a few months if I am eventually gonna find the people that will be here for ten years or more.

What resources does your ideal 10 year person come in with? I listed the expenses I could imagine - health care, visits to family, technology, purchases for the homestead, an exit strategy. Do you disagree with that list? Do you believe (or have you seen) people stay for years without savings?

One topic that had not been directly hit on here is that both homesteading and college have bought me options.  In college, I avoided debt. I did take out a $3000.00 loan that had a waiver clause that I immediately used upon graduation from grad school. With the land and the homesteading philosophy and knowledge  I have repeatedly drifted in and out of the mainstream. There were periods where I held  down 3 jobs…and periods where  I had none. My knowledge of homesteading bought me freedom to do as I wanted.

I remember numerous conversations with relatives where we were speaking different languages.  They would ask something like “What time do you have to be at work in the morning? I would reply, “ I don’t have to be at work in the morning or ever.” They could not grasp that by the time I turned 30 I was able to live on my terms.

To be clear, that while the homestead bought me freedom, I grabbed a handful of degrees that didn’t hurt either.  

People are keeping bringing up the obstacles to gertitude which are relevant. For just a few:

—No transportation, lives in city
—No money to buy land
—Health issues, no energy or is working hard to pay medical expenses

For some people, this particular version of this particular path might not be immediately relevant.

But instead of focusing on negatives, maybe we can elaborate on things we can do despite these. Or the ideal circumstances.

So—best case scenario is, you are raised on a relatively well-off family farm, you start planting fruit trees, perennials like sunchokes, etc., and your family says, “Okay, nice!” So you are already very close, only a few changes aimed at subsistence permaculture and you’re there. Sort of like how Sepp Holzer did it.

And worst case: your family is either dangerous to be around or deceased, and you are stuck in the city with zero energy and having to muddle your way through work each day just to get another injection. Maybe add in an opiate addiction and there you have it. And you get your food from food stamps, charity, etc.

So let’s say Best Case Gert (highly simplified example) meets Worst Case Gert and they become friends. BCG sees WCG’s plight and says, “Come here, you can stay in the guest house, we’ll feed you healthy permaculture food while you’re here so you can just worry about your medical issues.”

The opiate addiction, trauma, etc. come up and so BCG thinks, maybe I could grow a patch of mushrooms and we could try some psychedelic therapy. So BCG works to become a qualified guide for psychedelic healings and while things don’t become all cheerful right away, it gives WCG more energy as the old blockages are worked through. WCG finds that their health issues, mental and physical, have not gone away, but things are improving very gradually as the mind, environment and nature exposure, and good food are doing their work. Soon enough WCG is able to join in on some of the farm work, go on foraging walks, and contribute to their adopted household maybe not through any sort of heavy labor, but in ways that are important nonetheless, and the exercise and feeling a sense of being needed helps them even more. Maybe they find that they’re an excellent singer or painter, and can bring joy to others through art, or humor, or have a wisdom that is cherished by others. At some point, WCG’s community will support them no matter what their ill fortune because they know their value.

It sounds like a “fairy godmother” sort of story but isn’t it possible?

This may also be a (simplified) map of how those who have attained to gertitude can start putting their skills to work at healing the world at large. And some people have more of some resource than others (wit, physical strength, compassion, attention to detail, and so on) such that one’s weakness can be made up for by another’s strength—which is why community has been so successful throughout history.

Andrés Bernal wrote:

Click Here to see the live today, Saturday 22nd at 10 am mt time!

Paul Wheaton, Alan Booker, Mike Haasl, Alexandra Malecki and Samantha Lewis will talk this subject live, go there to ask questions and participate. And leave any questions for the panel here!

We start in 5!!

https://www.youtube.com/live/SYqjg8HHiXw

This is on my mind a lot now, so I bring it up a fair bit.  

Recent responses  ....


I am called a "fear monger" and then

What exactly about 2.5% GDP growth should discourage me from getting a degree? What exactly about the most useless LLMs being deployed by Silicon Valley should discourage me (a human with aspirations) from getting a degree? Go outside and touch some grass, turn the news off, please.

I think if a person isn't gonna end up in debt, then college is heaps of fun.  So go.  

But if a person is gonna take on $100,000 in debt, they will want to consider if there is anything that might prevent them from paying that back.  

Despite a positive GDP at this moment, I think things are gonna change in the next couple of years.  And these changes are going to prevent the new graduate from paying the debt.

OpenAI mathematically proved hallucinations are a fundamental aspect of LLMs. It’s not imperfect data, it’s how the technology works.

Meaning you’ll always have to have someone monitoring the output, for the 20% of the time it makes something up. It can alternatively not hallucinate, but then it won’t produce as answer.

Don’t believe the marketing hype.

my response:

I feel confident that i am not believing the hype.

I do know that there are people that are leveraging some of the most recent tools professionally and effectively.

The way we get stuff done is changing.

Anyone trying to convince you not to get a college degree is selling you poverty. All the talk about a changing economy making college irrelevant is BS and the hard data consistently shows degree holders make more money; easily confirmed with a google search landing on a credible source.

my response:

Historically, yes.

I guess your position is that the AI thing will not alter the future job market. Everything will be like it has been.

I have a different position. A position you call BS. And I am advocating a type of poverty. A sort of resilience to powerful economic shifts.

I think that people working for a company will use AI to get more done in a day.  After a while, everything is getting done, and there are human beings that are rather idle.  So a few people are let go.  AI didn't take their jobs directly.  It was indirectly.  Humans within the company are now five times more productive than they used to be.  So the company doesn't need as many humans.  


Mostly:  I think i am allowed to have an opinion.  I think most areas for where there a degree is of value, there will be more than 40% unemployment.   And for the trades, it will be about about 10%, but growing.  My opinion.  

Therefore ....    more opinions riding on top of those opinions ...  it will be really tough to get any job.  

Next in the series of compounding opinions ....      what does one do today to prepare?  I suggest gertitude.  And to get there, it would be wise to explore the SKIP program, or the bootcamp.   At which point it is pointed out that my opinions are because I am really a shill and wanna make money on these.  I then point out that they are both free (although the bootcamp does have an application fee).  I think the college stuff we are talking about is definitely NOT free.  


I feel a bit abused to get so much hostility when trying to help people.  

Oh well ...  i guess i really need to stick to permies only.  :)

If I understand a gardening gardeners program correctly, somebody solves the problems of location; including zoning, taxes, property insurance, housing and heat. As well as the problem of food. Then the gardeners just... garden.

One last post (maybe) on this topic of college education.

Some people are adamant about getting a college education, and wet their pants when someone disagrees. Well, it doesn't matter whether there is any disagreement, because you're going to do what you're going to do. Godspeed.

My recommendation is that you DO NOT take on debt to get a college degree. If you plan to go into debt, sit down and run the numbers. How much will your salary be, given your major, and what are your monthly debt payments, and for how long?

If you cannot find a job, or you get laid off after obtaining one, can you make your debt payments? Will you have a sizeable cash stash to cover living expenses and debt payments?

Keep the following in mind. If you default on your debt, the government will withhold any tax refunds due in any year that you default and withhold from your future social security if the debt is not repaid by the time you retire.

Also, while you're partying in school and delaying adulthood, consider the lost income in your calculations. In other words, you could be working and making money, even if that income is less than your wishful-thinking future income.

Compare and contrast this situation with, for example, obtaining a trade school education debt-free in two years. And you will work and earn as an apprentice while going to school.

How much time will it take you at a higher salary with debt to catch up to someone with a lower salary without debt, who worked while you were not working? And if that lower-salaried person is also investing in, for example, a 401(k) and/or pension, add that fact into your calculations.

Also, your future salary depends on the career you choose. For example, if you major in psychology, you are toast. You will likely become a bartender because there are no jobs in psychology (except in extreme extenuating circumstances). Even if you find a job in that field, you might become a social worker, but you will not be making more than a tradesperson.

With a college degree, you will need to go where the jobs are. What will be the future cost of living if you're required to live in a high-cost-of-living area to find work in your field? On the contrary, people in the trades, for example, can not only find jobs (because they are in high demand), but they can likely find jobs just about anywhere they desire to live. For example, an electrician can find a job anywhere, from large cities to small towns.

Also, note that tradespeople typically get paid overtime. Salaried people do not, yet they may be pressured to work significant overtime, depending on the company. Salaried overtime is a disguised pay cut. Then you are visited by the Layoff Grim Reaper and thrown into the street, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So, that big hoped-for salary, along with debt maintenance, a high cost of living, extra taxes, and the potential of being laid off or fired, or replaced by AI, may not be all it's cracked up to be. But you won't know that unless you run the numbers and compare for your particular situation. Without financial analysis, everything else trying to justify college is emotional garbage.

One final recommendation: If you are hell bent on majoring in liberal arts, you can live at home and get a degree online for a lot less money than going to a campus.

Here is another recommendation that may ruffle some feathers:

You should not marry someone who is significantly in debt. Their debt becomes your debt through marriage. If a significant number of people follow this advice, you may become unmarriageable if you take on a sizable college debt.

Consider this situation. A debt-free woman marries a man with sizable college debt. The man loses his job due to downsizing, can't find another job quickly, and cannot make payments on his student loan debt.

Is Sally Sue going to be happy making Billy Bob's debt payments for him?  If the situation were reversed, would Billy Bob be excited about making Sally Sue's payments?

When someone goes down this debt rabbit hole, you never know what misery they may find.

Be wise. Count the costs.

paul wheaton wrote:

Next in the series of compounding opinions ....      what does one do today to prepare?  I suggest gertitude.  And to get there, it would be wise to explore the SKIP program, or the bootcamp.   At which point it is pointed out that my opinions are because I am really a shill and wanna make money on these.  I then point out that they are both free (although the bootcamp does have an application fee).  I think the college stuff we are talking about is definitely NOT free.  


I feel a bit abused to get so much hostility when trying to help people.  

Oh well ...  i guess i really need to stick to permies only.  

First off, thanks for posting the live stream. Highly enjoyable conversation!

Second - I don’t know if it was my “people don’t wanna live like this” comments you mentioned as unkind, but I apologize if they were. It was never my intention to suggest the lifestyle you are advocating is in any way bad. I do think it is important to think about where folks are coming from when wondering why a program like bootcamp doesn’t have a hige waiting list.

Finally, I am sorry you are feeling abused by the responses. I do think that it is human nature not to believe in massive changes for the worse like this, where a strategy that has worked well for generations, and weathered major shifts already (like the computer and internet revolutions, and multiple economic upheavals), is suddenly going to be a liability. So your message will naturally be met with disbelief - it isn’t personal. Just gotta hope you make people think and prepare even a little…

Lina Joana wrote:... I do think that it is human nature not to believe in massive changes for the worse like this, where a strategy that has worked well for generations, and weathered major shifts already (like the computer and internet revolutions, and multiple economic upheavals), is suddenly going to be a liability. So your message will naturally be met with disbelief …

I agree that this is a factor.

Problem is, that when I look around, yes, there are a few jobs for those with University degrees, and yes, there are useful things you can learn there, but there are a whole lot more people that I keep reading about who are stuck in service industry jobs - restaurant, retail, cleaning - and can barely afford rent and groceries, let alone college debt. Of my son's cohort, many are under-employed. However, three of them work in the building trade in various capacities, and they're at least making ends meet, and are enjoying the work. A few I know who are doing the white collar jobs, are getting paid worse when you consider that amount of overtime they're expected to put in. Then there are a very few that got the prize and are doing awesomely well.

Traditionally, only the wealthy got higher education. The rest made do with Grade 10, then gradually Grade 12. Now we are given the message from many places, that without a University Degree, you can't get a good job. I would study the path you want to take very carefully. What percentage of grads today, get that good job in their field? What percentage are still waiting tables? Are you genuinely capable of gradding in the top 10% of your class? Or do you have iron-clad connections? The young people I know who have done the best are ones who picked up practical skills at community college.

Will this change? Eventually yes, maybe. We currently still have a lot of Baby Boomer refusing to retire. Will their jobs still exist when they do retire?  Will different jobs exist? My sister was in a field which was constantly downsizing as computers did more and more, and companies sent more work to countries with lower wages. She was more or less forced into retirement in her mid-50's and only maintained a good standard of living because she'd started saving heavily at a young age. One can't do that if their school debt uses up that slack.

As much as I agree with Paul’s answer to the issue, I still think the issue is likely to he different.

Paul suggests unemployment—I suggest that there will be a lot more jobs and they will be harder, more grueling, and less pleasant than today’s worky jobs. There will be a lot of jobs created in pollution management, power plants (of all kinds and fuels), in mental health management and treating AI-induced psychosis (because people won’t be forced to use their brains at all) and in general feeding the AI machine and cleaning up after it. The solution is still the same: live sanely.

There is a historical precedent, the Industrial Revolution. It took away the work of spinners, weavers, craftspeople of all sorts and started rolling out mass produced cloth, leading to lots of people losing their jobs. Then, the machine, even hungrier, had to pull a great chunk of the population out from the countryside and into the city for factory jobs. People weren’t satisfied with what the automated process could make, they wanted more! And so the machine got fed and now we’ve fast fashion and disposable clothes, a lot more worky work around and not much unemployment last I heard.

M Ljin wrote:As much as I agree with Paul’s answer to the issue, I still think the issue is likely to he different.

Paul suggests unemployment—I suggest that there will be a lot more jobs and they will be harder, more grueling, and less pleasant than today’s worky jobs. There will be a lot of jobs created in pollution management, power plants (of all kinds and fuels), in mental health management and treating AI-induced psychosis (because people won’t be forced to use their brains at all) and in general feeding the AI machine and cleaning up after it. The solution is still the same: live sanely.

There is a historical precedent, the Industrial Revolution. It took away the work of spinners, weavers, craftspeople of all sorts and started rolling out mass produced cloth, leading to lots of people losing their jobs. Then, the machine, even hungrier, had to pull a great chunk of the population out from the countryside and into the city for factory jobs. People weren’t satisfied with what the automated process could make, they wanted more! And so the machine got fed and now we’ve fast fashion and disposable clothes, a lot more worky work around and not much unemployment last I heard.

I fully agree while completely disagreeing, if that makes any sort of sense at all  

To explain a little, more jobs doesn't necessarily mean gainful employment. One good example is the shift to uber driving and gig economy stuff leaving countless young people in a bind where they can only make the rent doing 3 or more "jobs" and sometimes that doesn't even cut it.
Another example: I remember not that many years back (10 or so?) my mother trying to help make ends meet by doing gig work on the "amazon turk" thing...and it resulted in loss more than gain. More often than not, she'd spend 4 or 5 hours on a "task" estimated to take 1 or 2 hours, ending up with an equivalent wage of less than $3/hr.

As far as that last sentence, M Ljin, what country do you live in again? Last I checked, official unemployment numbers in the US were considered a complete joke by "both sides of the aisle" due to not only reporting "half the story" but also the "adjustments" that were put in place after 1994 to make the economy look "stronger". Arguably the best estimate out there of real unemployment is still somewhere between 20 and 25% (that's both the metrics combined and measured using the pre-1994 adjustments: the U3, meaning "collecting unemployment checks", along with the U6, the "underemployed" such as part time that want full time as well as those who have "run out" of "unemployment").

That number reflects (roughly) the way the BLS estimated the unemployment, peaking around 25%, during the Great Depression in the US. Hard to not notice that the numbers are comparable. Have been since the 2008 "crash" and only rebounded a bit from the peak of ~35% during the Covid fiasco.

I hope I'm not coming off as argumentative with these comments - not my intention. I just think we need a solid, empirical frame of reference when it comes to something like jobs availability.

I haven't watched the videos yet - just downloaded for offline viewing - but I keep coming back to this gut-wrenching feeling that what this discussion is missing is the idea that it is a full paradigm change happening, and the new paradigm is not even close to being set yet. We're in a transition from one "base reality" to another, and until that new reality has solidified, we really don't know what to expect. We see changes happening, but can't be sure those changes are even permanent yet.

All we know for sure is that everything is about to change in huge ways.

College is not going to prepare anyone for something like that - it's like the saying that generals are always fighting the last war. Perhaps a truly classical education would be useful, meaning the whole trivium & quadrivium style education based in classics, music and math, but certainly not the current liberal arts "design your own degree" kind. It might just be me, but I can't see either Karl Marx or Ludwig Von Mises haven't anything much to offer anyone in the oncoming "new economy".

Anyone currently reading the Illiad and the Odysee? Anyone learning guitar while designing a 3 bedroom roundwood timberframe?

Another angle to all of this:  There may be a thousand different philosophies about what things will look like in two years.  Therefore, a thousand different suggestions for the woman considering a return to college.  It is clear that there are some that are thinking what I am thinking, and they are saying "don't."

And when it comes to how to prepare for two years in the future, I feel like the core is:  a humble home and a large garden.

I want to go a little further and say:   for 30% of the population, a humble home and a large garden is a massive life improvement for nearly any scenario two years in the future.  It's just basic math.  

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:If I understand a gardening gardeners program correctly, somebody solves the problems of location; including zoning, taxes, property insurance, housing and heat. As well as the problem of food. Then the gardeners just... garden.

Thanks for that Jeremy!

I like to think that if we can get "gardening gardeners" dialed in, then you can replace "paul" with "homesteaders".

paul wheaton wrote:Another angle to all of this:  There may be a thousand different philosophies about what things will look like in two years.  Therefore, a thousand different suggestions for the woman considering a return to college.  It is clear that there are some that are thinking what I am thinking, and they are saying "don't."

And when it comes to how to prepare for two years in the future, I feel like the core is:  a humble home and a large garden.

I want to go a little further and say:   for 30% of the population, a humble home and a large garden is a massive life improvement for nearly any scenario two years in the future.  It's just basic math.  

   A humble home and a large garden seems to be a wise goal for anyone.  I think that knowing how to do things without technology can provide skills for when/if technology takes over many jobs.  
    Debate always exists, but it's not an efficient means for solutions when dealing with unknowns.  None of us knows exactly what this future will look like.  
      So from that point of view, a solution could (must?) be to start with the children.  Instead of hard-core STEM education, teach also sustainability, the science of soil and gardening, and life skills.  And from the view of sustainability and practicality, skip the government and offer it ourselves.  I know all the "why-we-can't-do-that's".  One can't do it alone, but a community can.  
   People don't know there are options like boot camp. The young are still open and curious and open to ideas. Now this is not a solid business plan, organized vision, detail oriented solution.  But it's an answer.

     
   

Susan Mené wrote:    People don't know there are options like boot camp. The young are still open and curious and open to ideas. Now this is not a solid business plan, organized vision, detail oriented solution.  But it's an answer.      
   

I feel like the bootcamp is a solution for millions of people.  And we cap out at 20.  

I would think the bootcamp would be jam-packed-full right now with a huge waiting list.  But ... nope.  

People keep trying to see what the catch is.  I think Stephen and I are just stupidly generous.  And we believe in what we are attempting to do.  And that if this works, we will find ourselves in a self-sustaining community of productive permies.  And as this group grows in knowledge, experience and ideas, we will see better and better things come of it.  New innovations!  

Then I will formally roll out "Gardening Gardeners" and, in theory, 100,000 homesteaders will offer a GG program.  They too will want resilience and community.  And with 70% unemployment, a million people will gladly connect with a homestead to be a gardener.  

To get there, I first need to fill the bootcamp.  And by "need" I am talking about me laying out coin and heartbreak in an effort to create a design that will, in time, help millions of people.

Stephen is putting 60 hours a week in guiding gardeners.  No pay or anything.  He just believes in this like me.

If this works, can people that have been here for a year or two be hired by another homestead to get it to work?  Maybe otises will see two years in the bootcamp as equivalent to PEP3?

Susan Mené wrote:   So from that point of view, a solution could (must?) be to start with the children.  Instead of hard-core STEM education, teach also sustainability, the science of soil and gardening, and life skills.

Definition of STEM: STEM is an approach to learning and development that integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Seems like permaculture fits this concept - particularly the 'integrates' part, not to mention biology and soil microbes qualify as science.

I think one of the biggest issues with education is the lack of genuine integration within and between subjects and with life. Early math - Son, run to the garden and pick me 10 walking onion leaves. Take your friend and get him to pick me 10 too. How many will that be all together? Son, your bike tires seem soft. They've only got 15 PSI of air - how much do we need to add so it reads 60 PSI?  This needs to be on top of actually teaching kids *how* to learn (Example: I did not know how to make my brain "rote memorize" - it was *not* intuitive for me, but it's critical for basic math facts. My Son had similar issues, but a professional got him bouncing on a mini-trampoline while practicing addition and subtraction. It totally worked for him when coupled with 3 years of a math program that worked to support his dyslexia.)

Tristan—

Thank you so much for the explanation! I wasn’t aware of the different techniques of measuring unemployment.

You guys think that going in the trades to acquire that homestead is a good idea? (non-US)

paul wheaton wrote:

I feel like the bootcamp is a solution for millions of people.  And we cap out at 20.  

I would think the bootcamp would be jam-packed-full right now with a huge waiting list.  But ... nope.  

Oh man… it feels so completely obvious to me, yet so hard to express… let me give it another go.

First, start with an assumption that is nearly universal in the usa, and partially correct: manual labor is not hard to learn. There is skilled work - construction, woodworking, the “trades”  - that are acknowledged to take knowledge and experience. Then there is Chopping wood, digging ditches, peeling logs, that can be learned in a couple of hours on the job. Farming is a funny one - most “educated” people will unconsciously think it can’t be that hard. Farmers know better, but they already have the skills. So right or wrong, those millions of people who would benefit are already going to be skeptical that they need even a shitty school to learn the skills.

given that assumption: what does the bootcamp look like from the outside? I have looked at it in a fairly superficial manner. I looked over the initial website, and I looked at a BEL thread or two. This probably isn’t a complete picture, but it may not be far off from what someone stumbling on it might see. And while I don’t see it the way I describe it below, I think it is a fair picture of what others do.

What I saw was “learn homesteading skills and get a free bunk and food!” Ok, what are the homesteading skills? I saw splitting and stacking wood, building fence, peeling logs, planting trees and seed, harvesting rhubarb, and maybe a bit of repair work on one of the buildings. I did not see any indication that I would be learning, say, woodworking or building from a master. It certainly isn’t an apprenticeship with a skilled artisan. It sounds like a little of this and a little of that, with most of it being low skill manual labor that you could learn to do in a day. But I am being encouraged to stay for a year or more, to “learn the skills”.
At this point, the question comes up: “so I am basically spending the first week learning low skill labor, followed by months of doing that work, generating resources and building up land that is owned by one guy? That sounds a lot like my hard work is  benefiting someone else, and I don’t even get a salary.”


Again, I know that this is not what is happening! For one thing, I know that the work the boots do is not directly benefitting Paul unplumbed, unpowered buildings don’t add much to land value. Nor do hugels. So there is almost no benefit to Paul directly, and if he does get anything, he probably pays way more than its value in food costs.

But to the casual observer, it is going to sound a lot like the Otis offers to the pep2 person as described in the live stream: “come to my place and put your muscle into improving my land for me, and then we will say goodby, and I will reap the benefits of your labor”.

Don’t know if this makes sense. My hope is that it does, and that it might offer some insight into how to market the program so that it sounds more appealing to those who would benefit. Like emphasizing the skills people don’t feel they could learn on their own.

People actually settling down on an acre is a whole different issue. It also goes back to what Alexandra was saying on the live stream: she isn’t just looking for a place to live, she wants the security of ownership, and something to pass on to her kids. No idea how to solve that.

M Ljin wrote:

There is a historical precedent, the Industrial Revolution. It took away the work of spinners, weavers, craftspeople of all sorts and started rolling out mass produced cloth, leading to lots of people losing their jobs. Then, the machine, even hungrier, had to pull a great chunk of the population out from the countryside and into the city for factory jobs. People weren’t satisfied with what the automated process could make, they wanted more! And so the machine got fed and now we’ve fast fashion and disposable clothes, a lot more worky work around and not much unemployment last I heard.

"not much unemployment last I heard."

I'm not sure where that came from. The last I checked, there is more unemployment than you can shake a stick at, especially in white-collar fields, including the high-tech sector. With 30,000 layoffs here and 24,0000 layoffs there, and on and on, after a while, it adds up to significant unemployment.

Have faith, get a college degree, and stand on the street corner with a sign that says, "Will Engineer for Food," or "Will Engineer for College Debt Maintenance."

We are all speculating about the future and how best to navigate it. Keep in mind that the fine print says, "Past performance is NO guarantee of future results."

History is not a linear mathematical function, and "black swans" and "tipping points" may appear. Therefore, predicting the future is like a local weatherperson saying it's going to rain when it doesn't. There is always a statistic to accompany the prediction. 80% chance means there is a 20% chance of the opposite. And sometimes that opposite really does occur.

At least the benefits of living frugally and planting gardens don't change with time, unless there is a nuclear war and zombies roam the earth. You won't get rich, but you might be happy, and you won't need to sell your soul to the company store. The founding people and pioneers of this country did that, and it worked. It wasn't easy, but it worked.

However, the post I quoted above makes a good point about the Industrial Revolution. The revolution brought significant economic benefits, lifting all boats. Yet, it could be argued that to obtain these benefits and promises, society sold its soul to the Devil.

In particular, Farmers, shopkeepers, craftspeople, and others who owned their own businesses and were self-sufficient were bought off to work in factories. Over time, educational institutions, industry, and government oriented themselves to support the Czars of Commerce.

Society was brainwashed into believing that indentured servitude was the new reality. Parents no longer owned their own businesses or maintained self-sufficiency, so they could no longer set an example for their children.

The government's goal for education was to produce people who stand in line, raise their hands, keep their mouths shut, and go to work in the factories.

When Henry Ford developed the assembly line, he had trouble finding workers. Craftspeople who used creativity and skills to build products end to end told Old Henry he was crazy. There was no way they were going to stand on an assembly line and turn bolts.

But Henry was brilliant. He raised wages until it became attractive to work for him. He later remarked that it was the best decision he ever made.

In other words, the love of promised money enticed society into indentured servitude. And it worked for a long time.

Over time, college became a significant issue in diplomarizing white-collar servants for the Industry Czars and Masters of Commerce. This high demand drove college costs to rise faster than medical costs.

The principles of Industrial Psychology were then studied and used to achieve high productivity from a workforce at the least possible cost. So, enjoy ping-pong tables, video games, free coffee in the break room, and recognition certificates to psycho-manipulate smart asses to high productivity (including overtime) without paying more money, while CEOs enjoy their yachts and top-shelf martinis as they hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah with Wall Street elites.

Now we have AI promising to become AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), which will later become ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence), with the ultimate goal of replacing humans, as the AI prophets and gods assure us there will be heaven on earth and peace among nations.

Thus ends my short history of the Ghosts of Society Past, Present, and Future.

Go forth and be happy. Obtain a college degree and speculate about all the future riches that degree will bestow as you continue in servitude to the Powers That Be.

In the meantime, you might want to consider living humbly and planting a garden as a backup plan, just in case the SHTF.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!

As Tiny Tim says, "God Bless us, every one!"

the thing about gertitude though is a major paradigm shift.  i mean ......the thing is, most people arent ready for the weird humble blessing of gertitiude.becuase to them its only a blessing if you squint at right... some of it is a backwards blessing...not having much, not much to lose.
gertitude actually looks like being a loser, to say it bluntly, to the majority of the population, who arent ready for that paradigm shift. at least in the so called "first world"

ah idk...hard to explain really.

we know its not about being a loser =P of course...and what something is and what it appears are different, the map and the territory and all that. but i have heard you ruminate on why gerts all over arent screaming from the rooftops about how awesome the life of a gert is...but this is part of why. gerts been told she isnt  really with the program, not making it, not a normie, not winning, basically a loser at the game of life ...but because her priorities have shifted so much she knows she is not even playing the same game. people laugh when she tells them she lives on miracles and good vibes ! or her real wealth is her mature perennials.

well many gerts...they dont even know it, they somewhat or totally believe that they are losing the game, idk maybe they are from one perspective. maybe they are imperfect and feel lacking or whatever...which ok is pretty much everyone - i dont know any perfect peeps living a life like a shiny glam commercial, some idealized moneyed life or whatever. particularly young gerts, just starting on the path to gerthood, maybe they just have some half acre rented land and a crazy landlord or some such....they ride their bike and feel like they are losing at the who has the shiniest car game, etc. they are still shaking off all those weird perceptions coming at them from the normies.

i do know some people who have had luck + privilege + maybe family money or whatevers...and to them they think things are so easy, or they get distorted perspectives because of this they arent ready to acknowledge or face. i also think in many ways the coming shifts are bringing into focus the real valuable work arent always the best paid...like for people who have been able to make quite a bit of money doing something relatively not that valueable overall...those most easily replaced by AI for instance, but who are used to making a high wage for desk jobs, etc. well i sense i am nearing a dangerous space here...but i will skirt around by saying i think some people are being notched down, and even if they dont see it, and think its catastrophic, could be good for them overall to get some much needed perspective. bad for the bank account, but good for the soul type things.

most people wouldnt choose it, most who stumble into gertitiude do so by way of failing at the normie game, and/or rejecting it, but made to feel on the fringes of the fringe, they dont count, so far off the left field they arent even looking at the same picture.

the weird thing about poverty consciousness is that it has little to do with poverty. to be able to perhaps bend the definition of gertiness to my own lens here, i dont see gert as poor, but by most metrics in this weird world, she very much is. poverty consciousness though - i see its more of an effect of having things, having enough income or the illusion of security that you fear losing it. i think a lot of people who are truly poor, get to make peace with it eventually, idk though some people are just wrecked by it, but many just learn to work with it. again a weird backwards blessing. they get frugal and smart and have a much better perspective on sustainable resource use for instance, as one of the many backwards blessing there.

so i think gert is poor person who knows she isnt poor, shes got what she needs, shes got skills, shes got land. she knows the value of community and helping and being helped. money in the bank, no money in the bank, shes still living in abudance.

as to the rest of the threads here, i think college is great if you get to study what you want, and want to learn, and also for the networking and meeting people and making connections part. i think its great if you want to really devote the time to your passions, or even just figuring out what your passions are.

not so much if you are in it mostly for get the good job afterwards and make more money. that whole latter strategy hasnt really been working right for the last decade or two, not like it did before anyway, not universally.

idk i went to a good art school on a full scholarship- all i ever wanted to do was make art, its always been clear as day that this was my path...in spite of everyone telling me constantly i would starve and be broke. so i am used to being in a whole different perspective than most, and doing it anyway because its what i wanted to do. in my defense the 90s were a different time to make a liberal arts degree look less silly. but no even then it was like get a degree in art and what like paint a picture on the back of it and maybe sell it for a hundred bucks ???!??  
i wouldnt have gone to college either time i did, first art school and later at evergreen state college, if it hadnt been free ish, where both times i went to college it was close to free, but having to scramble and work a regular job to pay for living expenses to be able to make the most of it. but yeah at the price of free ish - its very much worth it. at the price of some 100k, no way.