I had never before felt bounded by social class, by economics, by mother fucking money.
I remember when it hit home: I was taking a graduate seminar on Afghan Politics. After class one day, I struck up conversation with a girl sitting next to me. She asked about my background. “I used to fight forest fires,” I explained, thinking I was so cool.
Her forehead crinkled. She stopped for a second, then responded: “Oh. I didn’t know they let people like that, you know, in here.”
Wonderful. And Columbia has a $6 billion endowment[1] on which they pay absolutely NO TAX. They also recently used eminent domain to seize a portion of Harlem.[2] Columbia, Harvard, and every other elitist, non-profit-for-tax-purposes-only private university should have its tax exempt status revoked.
I actually work for Columbia and my brother graduated from their engineering school, SEAS. Now I think it's called Fu, no joke. Yes Columbia is elitist, like the other Ivys, but they do let a number of poor people in (like my brother) and give them just enough money to make it affordable with loans. Could they do better, ya I think so. But eh, what are you gonna do about it? In reality, if you are willing to become indebted to student loans and have decent grades/test scores you can get into a number of elitist institutions of higher education that will give you some sort of hardship discount.
In regards to your second point, I also happen to live just a few blocks from where that whole eminent domain thing took place. Believe me, it's quite blighted but has been on the up and up in the last 5 years or so. The handful of people who held out were operating storage facilities, gas stations and mechanics shops. One of the property owners is himself a developer developing property in Westchester. Every single one of them were offered a considerable amount of money to relocate. I've seen the plans, I've been to the meetings. Columbia will bring a ton of jobs and money to the neighborhood many, many times more than the current state of affairs. Not only that but I believe they will also be opening a grade school of some sort open to children from the area. Oh, the campus will also be focused on science and technology. You know, things that have a better ROI for society than storage bins.
I don't know the specifics of the case in question, but in general it should be considered legal and ethical to repurpose blighted property, whereas you seem to think it isn't. Well, it's been a fact of American law for a long, long time.
If an owner allows valuable property to fall into blight, he is not fulfilling his very minimal civic duties as a property owner.
> I don't know the specifics of the case in question, but in general it should be considered legal and ethical to repurpose blighted property, whereas you seem to think it isn't.
You're assuming that blight means "poor condition" or somesuch. The problem is that the operating definition is "property owned by the politically weak that is desired by the politically strong". That's how blight condemnations actually work.
Note that the person trying to defend Columbia says that the property was in poor shape but the current owners have fixed that. His argument is that they're engaged in the "wrong" sorts of biz, not that it's actually in disrepair.
Their reward for fixing actual blight is to have their property taken away....
> Well, it's been a fact of American law for a long, long time.
They let in a small number of charity cases only because if they didn't, they would have already lost their tax exemption. What are we going to do about it, you ask? Recognize that these institutions primarily exit for their own benefit, for the benefit of a tiny economic elite, and not for the benefit of the greater public good (as they claim), and start taxing them accordingly. If I and everyone else here has to pay capital gains taxes, Columbia should have to "pay its fair share" as well.
As for eminent domain, it should never be used for private gain. If Columbia wants more property in Manhattan (an island with some of the most expensive property on the planet), they should have to pay whatever the market demands, not call upon the government to steal it from tax-paying businesses. And the "jobs and money" argument always gets trotted out to defend eminent domain abuse and is bogus; this expansion will benefit Midwestern children of privilege who want to study in New York far more than it will the people who live in Harlem and have lived in Harlem for generations.
They use their endowment for the public benefit. Even though Columbia is expensive the endowment does substitute education and science to an extent. It is just that the interest on 6 billion dollars is not much for a huge university that happens to be positioned in some of the most expensive real estate in the US. It definitely qualifies for a non-profit status.
They do not use their endowment for public benefit, they use it for their own benefit, like other elite, private universities, and get tax exemptions for doing so: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22043995/
The scientific research they do is privatized; they hold the patents and license it off to others.
And if they can't afford Manhattan, they should have do what everyone else has to when in that situation: move somewhere less expensive. Eminent domain on their behalf is welfare for the rich.
Why did you choose those particular quotes? Are you saying that their tax exmpet status should be revoked because a few of their students are arrogant? While I agree with you that maybe they don't deserve tax exemption attacking the institution based on the behavior of a few students is just spiteful.
I studied at Columbia and I have to say his tales of class snobbery are a bit over the top. Me and a lot of my friends were poor and did not feel ostracized about it.
And although there were some rich kids and Saudi heiresses in class, the displays of wealth were more likely to be subject of jokes than the other way around. I remember people made fun of one girl because she took a cab to school every day (we would usually walk to school or use the subway).
In general the students in my class considered themselves progressive and enlightened so any snobbery towards poor people was very unlikely to be popular.
I think the writer had some bad luck in that he joined a program witch was considered to be a cash cow for the university so he ended up with a lot of rich kids. Although now that I think of it, my program was also to be considered a bit of a cash cow.
If there is anything wrong with the way the school treated him, it is the fact that no-one pulled him aside to tell him something like "hey kid, this program is for rich kids and financial aid will be harder to come by, so try to find something else."
"Simply, I decided that I was going to be a high-profile person and create a high-profile company with a very strong and meaningful brand.The mohawk, the blog, the plentiful f-bombs, etc. are all just a part of who I am as a person, but I also choose to accentuate that part of my personality for strategic reasons."
As impressive as the story is - it sounds very typically American. A boring American has the normal story you know. An interesting American has this story or some variation of it - maybe immigrant parents, maybe poor childhood, maybe doing something social, maybe struggling to get into college, maybe rich friends one is jealous of. Lots of American movies I'm watched have this story.
Everyones story has a narrative that is a lot more interesting, but all the magazine reading and the movie watching you do forces your narrative into a typical down-up-down-up scheme, because it seems like that's the right story to tell.
There is that story of those African boys who ran across the savannah and some of their friends were eaten by lions. that is a non-traditional and interesting narrative. Being top in Columbia is just about standard for an american narrative.
I'm not hating on the story - but I just think that it's not that different from many stories I've read.
I think it's not the flow of the narrative as much as it is the "drama for the sake of it." I mean, the way it reads, Matt seems like the guy who came up from nothing, on food stamps and government cheese. Not some son of a professor.
I mean, I don't care where you come from, but most people mow their own lawns. That ain't hardship, in my opinion. And, his stories of being dejected for being not rich was kinda cloying, especially for someone who has done as his dad has and clawed his way out from a lower-middle working class background in a school where most people didn't mow their lawns because they didn't _have_ lawns.
That said, he did do forest fireman work. And, he was a Paramedic. That's pretty cool. In other words, it's the choices he's made that's semi-interesting, not that he was forced down those paths he chose. He has a rebellious streak, and it's discordant with his abilities and drive for achievement in school and entrepreneurship. And, I think the takeaway (at least in his eyes) is he's not some stuff-shirt stiff when he easily could be given his abilities and work ethic.
That is a great point. Just reading how he framed his life story, he sounded like a kid who was given so many opportunities to succeed and turned them down because he was spoiled. But if you look at the actual things he's done not through his words, he tried things that very few people would attempt. Actions, not words?
You should read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Monomyth is the basic pattern found in most narratives regardless of location or culture.
Welll... yeah, that's why good stories are good stories; they're structured in a way that keeps you guessing. Best part about this story is that it's true, unlike the other places where I've seen this "model" used (hollywood)
I have been an entrepreneur for over fifteen years, with one mild success and a few spectacular failures. And I must say I enjoy this article more than the rest of the articles combined in terms of explaining why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs. The reason has nothing to do with hardship, wealth or upbringing. Anyone can become an entrepreneur. You must first possess a demon deep inside that needs to get out. The author clearly has one and my own experience is that entrepreneurship is his only cure. Good luck.
I remember when it hit home: I was taking a graduate seminar on Afghan Politics. After class one day, I struck up conversation with a girl sitting next to me. She asked about my background. “I used to fight forest fires,” I explained, thinking I was so cool.
Her forehead crinkled. She stopped for a second, then responded: “Oh. I didn’t know they let people like that, you know, in here.”
Wonderful. And Columbia has a $6 billion endowment[1] on which they pay absolutely NO TAX. They also recently used eminent domain to seize a portion of Harlem.[2] Columbia, Harvard, and every other elitist, non-profit-for-tax-purposes-only private university should have its tax exempt status revoked.
1) http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
2) http://news.google.com/news/search?q=columbia+eminent+domain