Mar 25, 2020, 3:14 PM
(in response to message at bottom of post)
1 – The reason we charge money for courses is to filter people OUT, and keep people with it so they don’t waste instructor and peer time. People who don’t pay don’t stick with it.
2 – We accommodate those who who have less money – just ask. We are willing to “pay what you can”.
3 – We are not trying to build a student base yet. People in the course are those deeply interested in p willing to help us develop the core courses.
4 – We are, I am, building the foundations course very slowly. Releasing it as I can. And there are many things competing for my time because of the election year. The foundations course is by far the hardest course to create. It is not a matter of selecting textbooks, but writing it as we go along. Once the foundations course is done, we will use the income to split between the teacher and someone to administer the site and recruit professors for other content. This will let me (curt) work with professors on content rather than produce it all in competition with everything else I’m doing.
5 – The pricing is a test. Our target price is 200 per core course not 100. So people who are patient while we work on the courses get the discount for their patience. The average cost per online college credit hour is $400 (1200 per course). Our cost will be 100-200 per course. We will, of courses, produce videos for the average person once the courses have been tested with live students. So you can’t participate in the course for free but you may be able to watch some of the videos. Why? There is a difference between making you aware of something and spending effort educating you.
6 – The Institute is a test. It appears it is going to work. For it to work as we desire, we need a faster hosting platform. To do that we have to pay for it. To pay for it we need to charge for it.
7 – The ‘funded’ parts of the institute will hopefully attract donors if we scale. Donors will offset the cost of education for those with less money.
8 – The institute is organized as a non profit with goals of eventually obtaining certification. So we operate as if we intend to have certification. But we operate to distribut the message not to fund endowments.
9 – Our goal is to give you the best education in western civlization that is possible at a trivial price.
And please try to be merciful. Donations pay for hosting and trivial costs. We are all volunteers. I have so much to do I can’t do anything but sprint every day all day long. This is a labor of love for our people by all of us. Everyone in the P community working to make our movement happen is a volunteer and none of us do it for money.
Contact Us Message
—“It appears (on the surface anyway) your goal is to educate people on the merits of this “movement”. Admirable indeed. However, I take issue with the high cost in dollars you are charging for this “education”. Logic would indicate that if your goal were to get this philosophy in to the mainstream, you would not be charging money to do so. The fact you do put a price tag on this seems to indicate your goal is to amass wealth, not educate the masses on the merits of this philosophy as you seem to make it appear. If indeed education of the masses is your goal, you would do so freely, or at the most, for a small fee to cover the operating cost. Even then a donation based system would be superior. So, I’m left to wonder: Scam? Gimmick? Con?……. While I am very interested in learning more on the subject of Propertarianism, I have little interest in filling greedy purses. If/when you place your message above your pockets I will return. Until then……….. Good Day.”— Privacy Matters [email protected] 172.77.26.XX (via Frontier Communications)
CD: This kind of thing is what makes me want to stop working on the project, because these people don’t deserve it.