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by ryandrake 589 days ago
I sometimes can't even detect sarcasm on HN anymore. What 16-18 year old kid (or their parents) has the capital and time to start and run their own business? Even when they're adults, they likely will not have access to business ownership. Depending on the source you use, somewhere between 5 and 10% of Americans own their own business. I'm not saying basic business skills aren't valuable--they are, but the vast, vast majority of people will work for someone else throughout their careers. Shouldn't we be optimizing education for the 90% case?
3 comments

You and I have a fundamentally different view about how to optimize education. Your view is probably great to cover the base case of people “checking out” of their children’s education, but my individualized view doesn’t care about the 90% but the child in front of me.

I’d also posit that this approach to education reduces overall attainment by dulling the edge of what the margin is capable of.

Very few of the subjects I studied in high school reach the bar of being useful to 5-10% of the students
I don't know if this is sarcasm or not but:

You could make it work if this "everyone forms an LLC in school" initiative comes with "everyone gets a chunk of cash to invest into this business". I assume the time would come from restructuring curriculums so that half of your senior year is spent on this project. Maybe add another year onto high school instead that is the Business Year.

This would also require a massive increase in the amount of money going into schools so it's pretty much a non-starter in the US.

As to "optimizing for the 90%", I feel like there's probably a lot of interesting differences in a world where every high school graduate has been in a boss' shoes. Possibly bosses would be able to get away with a lot less shady shit. This probably doesn't help the chances of setting it up either.

I would legit support a law that gives every 18 years old 50k to decide what to do in their life. And to adjust it with life.

As a society we would be making a better long term investment in the economy.

And give them good education, but most importantly examples we can.

You haven’t lived very long have you. Because this belays a fundamental misunderstanding of how most people work.