It’s kind of like today’s youtubers. Notice who the most successful youtubers are? They are the ones that have become experts or masters at a very specific niche! They don’t try to make videos about 10 different niches. They focus on just 1 niche they are passionate about and a master or aspiring master of it and make their entire living off of that niche.
This is what I mean. Of course, we may have several interests in our lives. One or two of them help pay off our bills, but the others may just be our hobbies or passions. The key is, there’s no point in trying to be average at 200 niches but a master at none that you can’t even make a living off of or get paid for. It would do you much better if you could master one niche and have a passion for it and go all the way with it.
Another one of my favorite movies: Jerry Maguire. Similar thing. Less clients, more personal attention.
Bruce Lee once said: I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
Simple dolls are one thing, but this one is required to loyally nurture a medium to large business successfully, without any education or expertise (yet somehow fated to become an unsuccessful loser UNLESS she get married young), as well as provide all sorts of other services. I would recommend just rubbing a magic lamp and wishing for a daemonic servant, but I suspect any jinniyah subsequently appearing would be too highly educated and qualified (and ultimately not too pleased with the arrangement…)
ETA: NB even at the ancient slave markets, people paid top sestertius for HIGHLY EDUCATED slaves to run their affairs; I wonder why?
No, I don’t think they are. I think they are reading your post exactly as you intended it, they just aren’t super keen on the scenario you’ve fixated on.
If all you wanted to know was if people would continue working or pursuing an education if they were financially independent, you could have asked that, no?
I’m pretty sure “B” only happens if you inherit money or you are living in a fairy tale, and a bad one at that. Stupid premise leads to logical conclusions the OP doesn’t want. Imagine that.
That’s a perfectly reasonable scenario. Most people have to choose between these two lifestyles sometime in their lives. :dubious:
Here’s another tough choice:
A) You are rich and famous and have lots of friends and every woman in the world wants to have sex with you constantly, but you never went to school.
B) You are poor and homeless and crippled and have lung cancer and are in constant pain, but you went to school and have a degree.
If money is not a factor, why should people jump through hoops to get a degree or diploma? Can’t they learn on their own? And isn’t the only real value in getting a degree bragging rights at a dinner party?
You’ve probably gone through school hearing that a degree means more income. That gets hit hard. The only other value you can see is that without a degree, you might feel inferior or awkward around people talking about their degrees. That’s too bad.
Let’s look at the idea you could learn on your own. First, you’d need tremendous self-discipline. Most high school dropouts think they’ll study on their own and get their GED. Fewer than a third actually do, and many of them go to GED prep classes. Second, you’d miss out on the ideas and viewpoints of other learners, the insights of professors, and the feedback on essays, projects, and assignments. You’d learn some things but not as many, and your understanding would be shallow and limited.
And one more point: when I was in high school, I overheard a teacher lecturing a kid on working harder so he could pass classes and graduate. The kid replied, “Mr. J., my dad and uncles own ________ [a big, successful regional company]. I’m guaranteed a job and a big salary whether I graduate or not.” Several years later, I heard a news report that the company had filed for bankruptcy and shut down. I sometimes wonder what happened to that kid.
The OP provides an answer to the very question it asks. The reason people need an education is to attain sufficient wisdom and critical thinking skills that they won’t propose ideas like this.
Well, in scenario B where the person skips school because they are worth $20 million: you’re skipping the part where because this person is uneducated they make terrible business decisions and end up getting screwed and losing every penny. They turn to heroin and live a chaotic short life on the streets of LA.
Meanwhile, in scenario A, the educated person who toils for a modest income parlays that experience with the wisdom acquired through the education received, and writes fantastic novels and poetry on the meaning of life and hardship. The works leave a lasting impression on society, and their heirs live a comfortable, well-educated, and rich lives for generations.
You see, college taught me that when faced with bullshit scenarios, one must play them out to their natural and logical end.
OP just to answer the question you think you’re trying to ask. I may well be independently wealthy in the next 18 months even if I am I am going to go back to school and get my PhD. Money is exceedingly important and without money it is almost impossible to have a fulfilled life but money in and of itself isn’t that important.
When you are younger (basically through High School) if it important to know a little about a lot because it allows you to find what you like and adapt to a variety of situations. As you get older it becomes more important to specialize and you eventually move to an inch wide and a mile deep. You can gain the specialized knowledge lots of different way and it is certainly not necessary to learn it at school.
Learning something about 100 different things in order to show off your knowledge is one thing. Specializing in a lucrative field while being quite ignorant of everything else is a completely different thing. And yet another separate thing is learning how to find things out that you need to know.
I know quite a few people who have only a high school education or at best some community college. What is different about them is not their income level, or their mastery of their jobs. It is their inability to see beyond what is directly around them. They have not learned to read or think critically. They have no knowledge of how to study, how to discern good sources of information from bad, how science actually works to develop knowledge, what the historical background is of what they are trying to think about is, and how it has resulted in what we have right now. Just to name a few things. ignorance is limiting.
Education doesn’t confer virtue or anything, but it does give you a much bigger toolbox.
Because education isn’t just for jobs. College isn’t a trade school.
Knowing art history helps make a museum come alive. Not just look at all the pretty colors.
Knowing some history explains why the U.K. left the EU or why there’s a North Korea and a South Korea.
Knowing some economics helps to understand why certain products are priced as they are.
I could go on and on. Plus, even if I was independently wealthy, I’d still assume that my spouse would want to do something rather than sitting at home counting my money. Having financial security means they could work a job they really wanted to rather than the safe job. Or perhaps non profit work?
I am bristling at “marrying the girl and giving her everything she needs.” Oh and then further down thread, “they are in love and it’s real and true” or some such dreck.
Marry this girl, you are so in love. Start popping out kids right away. I hope they are all healthy. But I wonder, after a few pregnancies, when the high school figure is long gone, how true and real will that love be? Are you helping with those kids, or do you subscribe to that other 1950s rule, “she had the kids, she can take care of them.”
Love that is true and real does not consist of making out in the moonlight and going to the movies and dancing all night long. Love that is true and real is cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, poopy diapers, neverending laundry, car repairs, arguing with in-laws, headstrong toddlers, scrubbing toilets, taking out the trash, ear infections, dyslexic/ADD kids, mortgage payments, and never getting enough sleep.
You’ll have all those and more even with the fabled 20 million dollars. In fact, 20 million may not be enough.
If you are too busy working 80 hours a week to earn/maintain that 20 million dollars, and you are too damn tired when you get home to hear about the busted dishwasher, or listen to another knock-knock joke, or help look for the other shoe before you leave for work, don’t be surprised if someone else looks at your wife, and who will kiss her in that ticklish spot under her ear, who will rub her feet, and who will help the kids with their homework. She might file for divorce and take at least ten million dollars with her when she leaves.
~VOW
and so forth. Life cannot be mapped out so precisely. Things chane. Shit happens. Your nice and neat plans get shredded and tossed in the wind.
Can you adapt? Will you land on your feet?
A college degree tells future employers ONE THING. That you have the capacity to learn.
Let’s change up your OP just a tiny, tiny bit. The young lady is the owner/inherits the successful business, and has the $20 million in HER pocket. She tells YOU that you don’t need to finish school, it doesn’t matter, she has enough to provide for you and give you everything you’ll need. You can even work with her to maintain the successful business, but always always remember, it’s HERS.
~VOW
I graduated from college in computer science in 1973. Almost none of the facts and skills I learned in college were of any use to me by the time I retired. What was of use to me was learning how to learn. That let me switch specialties several times and get to a reasonable level of recognition in them.
It sounds like your original scenario was the guy telling the woman to quit that useless school to get married and get the money. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be interested in any woman who would agree to such a horrible proposition.
I’m sorry that you seem to have such a horrible experience in school. I kind of enjoyed mine enough to stick around for a PhD.
B is only a good choice in hindsight, so it’s not really a choice is it? A is a good choice at the time you get to make it, B is not. Regardless of what the outcomes were.
I had a buddy in HS; wanted to open a retail business after he graduated. He actually made a good business case to his parents. - Instead of paying for college, give him that money; he’d use it to open a business/invest. Plus four years of income from working instead of studying/partying. The numbers he used it was well into his career that the expected more money from a college-education job would break even let alone pay off.
He did go to college, graduated, & then opened that retail business that didn’t require a college education. Was quite successful at it, too. There’s no shame is stating you own your own business & you’re the CEO at a cocktail party. Then he got married & had a kid, & you know what? Working six days a week (& seven during busy season) ain’t all that. He got out of that retail world because he wanted to actually be a parent & not a sperm donor.
Things change; desires/priorities, the economy/technology. There was a time that you could be quite successful making buggy whips, or even carbaraters but those formerly high-flying business probably can’t even support a family at poverty wages anymore.
I have no problem with hypotheticals but your hypo is sooo far off the deep end that it doesn’t pass the smell test as there are too many variables. Look at divorce rates; look at how many people have the same desires/hobbies that they did five, 10, 20 years ago. Circumstances change, people change. Because of that I wouldn’t take your bet.
Combining this with your original premise that I, as a woman, drop out of school to spend my life with a millionaire with no formal education …
No way in hell do I want to be married to Trump or anyone like him.
Personally I value education for the sake of education. Formal education isn’t about getting a better job, it’s about learning how to learn, how to grow mentally, how to branch out. Does everyone need it or use it in the same way? No, obviously not. But I’m not going to tie myself to someone who thinks education is a waste of MY time.