THEY DON'T MAKE CAPITALISTS LIKE THEY USED TO.The Anchoress interrupts a rant about Obama Hitler socialism for a personal complaint, which she believes is relevant to her point:

I feel like my relationship to my son’s college is a microcosm of our relationship to the government. Every year tuition goes up appreciably, even though our salaries have gone stagnant. There are union workers on campus, you see, and they must get their raises, even if services to the students must be cut to ensure them. So, it’s cut services or bleed the students, and either way the cafeteria has too many carbs. The scholarships don’t go up, but the tuition does. We’re trying to keep his student loan debt down to about $30,000, so our contribution, year after year, just gets bigger and bigger.

I think I see the relevance: A degree from the college of her choosing is something The Anchoress believes she should have, and if the price goes up to what its administrators think the Free Market will bear, this is not capitalism in action, as it might seem to the uninitiated, but socialism, because all the money over and above what The Anchoress wishes to pay for this sheepskin will be going to communist union janitors; she just knows it.

If only she could strike a bargain with the professors -- have them come over to the house and teach Buster, free from the constraints of the unions! She could in recompense bake them a pie. They could call it Galt's Gulch Community College!

It's astonishing that these people achieved adulthood without ever realizing that the Invisible Hand is not Casper the Friendly Ghost.

UPDATE. The Anchoress amplifies in comments that her husband (who already has a profitable engineering degree) and her sons agree that university educations are worthless, which makes it even harder for me to understand why she hasn't taken the kids out of school yet and used the savings to buy gold, shotguns, and a generator in preparation for the End Times, and maybe some church raffle tickets. Also, why in the first place is she exposing these innocent young minds to the evil liberal professors who, her commenters assure her, will just try to convert them to Marxism? They'll be safe from that kind of brainwashing at barber college.

Using the kind of fantasy problem-solving she also exhibits in her subsequent, why-isn't-Obama-doing-this-thing-I-heard-about-in-the-Gulf post ("Is this something that is possible? I have no idea, but let’s find out! Seems like something the government ought to already be aware of"), The Anchoress dreams up (via the medium of one of her children) an alternative educational regime -- sort of a rightwing Montessori:

My Elder Son has made a very strong case for the de-emphasizing of degrees in favor of true competency certification (based not on education credits but true proficiency) for educators, the social sciences and business degrees, and artists--whether in fine arts or music--should be able to study as apprentices, journeymen, etc.

These certificates, which I'm sure would be covered with gold stars, would also no doubt be accepted in lieu of diplomas from accredited colleges by the Bigbrain Randian Wealth Producers who have Gone Galt. And aren't they the only sort of people by whom Buster and Boomer or whatever his name is would consent to be employed? Don't dream it, The Anchoress, be it! Let your Galt schools be the monasteries of the new Dark Ages!