But the point is not that it may or may not be usefull to society (if we let people dictate what they should learn, we wouldn't be a democracy), the point is that everyone who is mentally capable of doeing something should be allowed to do it. If someone is not capapable of doeing something, like becoming a geologist, just because of financial reasons, that is wasted potential and a dream shattered.
Now, I have yo uheard saying what's bad about the system applied in most european countries, but I did not hear you saying what you think is better. So. What do you think is better?
Well it's better that every bum gets admitted than a large portion of potential engineers and scientists never get an education. But government regulation of universities is
part of the reason why there are so few European schools in the world top 100, so I'd pick the US model if it means better quality universities.
Along these lines it must also be questioned whether the bail-outs during the financial crisis did any good at all. De Facto we bought ourselves a couple of years before the same problem will come back to bite us in the butt... only that the bubble that is gonna burst is gonna be even bigger then and the government will be weaker and less able to respond to the acute humanitarian crisis following the financial breakdown. I.e. the longer this farce is kept up, the harder the fall is gonna be... that's the longterm view that everyone is too scared to acknowledge.
The bailout had to be done to prevent the biggest collapse since the great depression, and it didn't fundamentally change incentives either. Sure, some institutions got bailed out, but there were even more (Lehman, New Financial, American Home/Freedom Mortage, Madoff, Charter, Mervyns, Netbank, Terra, Sentinel, Washington Mutual...) that were allowed to fail. TARPs did cover some people's asses, but most people who invested in real estate before the crisis probably lost money overall. It's not so much that everyone's going to take insane risks all the sudden because they have a small chance of making a profit after paying off the next TARP, but that the business cycle is a fundamental problem of every industrialized market economy, ever. Financial crises aren't unique to the US and their are many factors that cause them that are far more significant than whether or not people expect a bailout.
The extreme short-term view is something specific to the US... lots of companies in other countries (Germany, Japan, etc.) also use shares for funding, yet take a much more longterm view. (Comparative Management and Organisation research is very conclusive regarding that fact.)
True, but cross-holding is more common in those countries (especially Germany; Japan of course has the keiretsu) between banks and the business they support, often resulting in management voting for itself every year. This is fine as long as shareholders hold stock in the long term and can take that perspective.