That's a strawman. Nobody is saying that the only way to be an entrepreneur is through Thiel's program. And once you remove that implicit assumption from your snark, there's nothing left.
That's not a strawman at all. If the argument is that any given high school graduate would be better off starting a company than going to college, using 20 hand-picked or self-selected candidates isn't very good support. Pointing out that fact is important context.
The post I replied to has been edited since I made my comment. It previous had a much stronger false dichotomy where the only entrepreneurs were those in Thiel's selected group. I still think the false dichotomy offered is too strong, but it's less pronounced than it was.
The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap, which contradicts Thiel's pet libertarian anti-educational theories or dependence on luck. There is patent absurdity in considering Thiel's approach as a viable alternative to education at any sort of scale comparable even to Ivy League admissions never mind offering such an alternative to the millions of college students under 20 or the 20,000,000+ residents between 15-19 (that works out to $2 trillion at $100,000 apiece with approximately $500,000,000,000 additional per year).
"The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap,"
What? Just, what? I have no idea where you get this limited universe of options from. You are aware of the enormous industry dedicated to funding entrepreneurs that aren't this program, right? And how you leap from that to straight-out linear projection of funding all high school students I have no idea, since I do not see anywhere where this is presented as the only possible path (or even the only desirable path), a further strawman you seem to have simply added to the pile. You seem to be just making things up wholesale, then getting upset with those things.
Is it necessary to fund all persons 15-19 - be they high school students or "precocious" young people (following Thiel's "logic") who dropped out before they were eligible for college? Of course not, but there is a five order of magnitude gap between Thiel's $2,000,000 and the $400,000,000,000 it would take to apply it to the four million college students under the age of 20. [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98]
The industry you mention relies on an educational process - i.e. the method employed by higher education. Your criticism is bereft of examples of such programs which have demonstrated results - never mind examples which scale.
With the Von Mises Institute a front nine away. I run into libertarian theories quite frequently. Usually it is more intellectually rigorous.
Comments
That's a strawman. Nobody is saying that the only way to be an entrepreneur is through Thiel's program. And once you remove that implicit assumption from your snark, there's nothing left.
That's not a strawman at all. If the argument is that any given high school graduate would be better off starting a company than going to college, using 20 hand-picked or self-selected candidates isn't very good support. Pointing out that fact is important context.
The post I replied to has been edited since I made my comment. It previous had a much stronger false dichotomy where the only entrepreneurs were those in Thiel's selected group. I still think the false dichotomy offered is too strong, but it's less pronounced than it was.
The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap, which contradicts Thiel's pet libertarian anti-educational theories or dependence on luck. There is patent absurdity in considering Thiel's approach as a viable alternative to education at any sort of scale comparable even to Ivy League admissions never mind offering such an alternative to the millions of college students under 20 or the 20,000,000+ residents between 15-19 (that works out to $2 trillion at $100,000 apiece with approximately $500,000,000,000 additional per year).
"The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap,"
What? Just, what? I have no idea where you get this limited universe of options from. You are aware of the enormous industry dedicated to funding entrepreneurs that aren't this program, right? And how you leap from that to straight-out linear projection of funding all high school students I have no idea, since I do not see anywhere where this is presented as the only possible path (or even the only desirable path), a further strawman you seem to have simply added to the pile. You seem to be just making things up wholesale, then getting upset with those things.
Is it necessary to fund all persons 15-19 - be they high school students or "precocious" young people (following Thiel's "logic") who dropped out before they were eligible for college? Of course not, but there is a five order of magnitude gap between Thiel's $2,000,000 and the $400,000,000,000 it would take to apply it to the four million college students under the age of 20. [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98]
The industry you mention relies on an educational process - i.e. the method employed by higher education. Your criticism is bereft of examples of such programs which have demonstrated results - never mind examples which scale.
With the Von Mises Institute a front nine away. I run into libertarian theories quite frequently. Usually it is more intellectually rigorous.