The progressives want slaves, and their recommendations makes debt slaves of us all. We end up, to paraphrase the captain and Mick, owing money to the banks, that own us.

And this is unjust. But the same people who enslave want to turn the anger anywhere else but the people who are putting the rainbow shackles on while you adore the unicorn.

Ostensibly, contemporary students deserve some sympathy. They have incurred a collective $1 trillion in college loan debt. A cruel twenty-something stereotype has arisen of a partly employed college graduate, cocooned back at home in the basement or garage, doted on by his helicopter parents, making just enough money for easy entertainment and transportation, but not enough to make a dent in his college loans. The idea of getting married upon graduation, raising a family, and buying a home is now a distant twentieth-century legend. In fairness, an economy with near zero GDP growth, near zero-interest rates on savings, nearly $20 trillion in aggregate national debt, a record labor non-participation rate, and unsustainable Social Security and Medicare entitlements is unlike the boom times that met upbeat and well-educated English and history majors in the 1950s and 1960s.

In response to such bleak scenarios, prolonged adolescence has become the post-baccalaureate norm. As Bernie Sanders’ spread-the-wealth uprising might suggest, college youth are bitter that some people are doing better than they are. Debt-free, skilled young plumbers or electricians without college degrees have a more optimistic short-term future than does a recent graduate with a major in environmental or ethnic studies. Struggling to pay the annual interest on a $100,000 loan, while working part-time at Starbucks and interning without compensation for a local non-profit, can gobble up the entire decade of one’s twenties.

Yet visit campuses and there is almost no awareness on the part of students of why their education has proven both expensive and inadequate, much less any self-realization that their own leisured lifestyles are incompatible with the liability that they are incurring. The annual cost of education has usually risen beyond the rate of inflation in part because there are record numbers of administrators and non-teaching personnel on campuses, from diversity czars and gender counselors to exercise trainers and psychological service facilitators. Teaching loads for tenured faculty have been reduced. Non-instructional costs, from paying a speaker like Hillary Clinton $300,000 for a 30 minute chat at UCLA to setting aside “prevention centers” and “research support” for particular aggrieved groups, are not cheap.

Yet supposedly politically aware students are not protesting over the crony-capitalist cycle of the federal government guaranteeing their shaky student loans, which further inflates the cost of education. That web of deceit is not much different from the disastrous 2008 Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae empowerment of Wall Street sub-prime loan profiteering. Then the con was airbrushed by Wall Street’s supposed eagerness to help the poor subprime mortgage holder; now, the mutual back scratching and price gouging are exempt from audit through progressive campus mission statements about fairness, equality, and diversity.

This cannot last. It will not last. My advice is only go to university if you have to. And I work for one: the cost of this to my psyche is huge. We are accountable, not merely for our errors, but not saying the correct phrases or acceding to the current fashionable neuroses. Because we need that license to work: the secular convergence includes all the learned professions. We cannot be antifragile unless we have not merely enough money to leave, but have left. The best we can be is robust.

And this is a structural weakness. It gelds the profession. We cannot speak without fear or favour, lest someone gets offended. As if offending people is not part of the business: part of one’s duty is saying to the patient that what they want to do will not work, or damage them.

In this life, it is better to be antifragile. Where complaints are merely more publicity, and make you stronger. This does not work in the corporate system we have, and where I am an officer. And it is the reason why some of the smartest people I know preach minimalism.

Because the Cappy is correct. The most important thing in this world iss not your credentials. Or your possessions. It is other people. (The most important thing of all is your salvation: but Christ called us to be free, not to accrue student debt).

While society and convention is pushing you to get that $100,000 liberal arts degree, followed by a $50,000 car, a $600,000 McMansion, and a wife and children who are likely to beget an additional $100,000 in life-long credit card debt, the “Wisdom of the Manosphere” tells you it can all be replaced with a used car, a skilled trade, a cheap studio apartment, a used motorcycle, and network of loving, caring people. I’ll say it again for the cheap seats,

“The most important thing in life is other people.”

And once you realize that, you can save yourself an easy $500,000 in lodging expenses, $100,000 in life long car expenses, $100,000 in credit card debt for crap you don’t need…not to mention…find yourself a decent quality girl…instead of a psychopath with tits and a spending problem attached to it.

Now, some of you will say… yeah. You don’t practice this. You live in a nice suburb, work for a university, have a few degrees and both your lads are at uni. Well, yes. But consider the following.

• I’m weird. I have the math genes. The University is my sheltered workshop, as it should be
• Neither of my boys will do a liberal arts degree
• I live in a town where the house prices are not batshit (usually, everything in NZ is a bit crazy at present).
• Student loans are zero percent here. My lads take the money and invest it. not spend it

Most young men should get a skill. One that cannot be done over the internet. Read Cappy. Drive a maintained older car, get experiences, and don’t worry about your watch or peacocking. It is better to have skills and experiences you can talk about than possessions.

And let the liberal twits starve. They will not one iota of happiness to your life. Almost all the great books are available (and the great poems) for little cost, and will not be on the current approved reading list. Look for those who are wise, look for skill, look for beauty, look for honour. They do exist in the university, but, as they are unfashionable, they are hidden.

Only go to university if you are, like me, a natural academic, with the associated weirdness, or called to a profession that demands you have letters behind your name. People matter, and people to not live in the Library.