By way of Slate, we can read John F. Kennedy’s Harvard application, sent in 1935. Things must have gotten (much) harder. Would this application get you in these days, even as a legacy candidate? I’d be surprised. Competition in admissions arises from scarcity of education opportunities. Is education necessarily a scarce resource? Perhaps not, but as an abstract enabling opportunity, that scarcity cannot be eliminated, I don’t think, even with the likes of OpenCourseWare, etc. This is by definition: the scarcity is what makes a thing (e.g. an elite education) an enabling opportunity.

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It is often said in certain situations that it is the thought that counts, but in fact, it is the amount of some limited resource expended that counts.

Are humans beyond such crassness? I submit that they are not, and to keep them pleased, expend we must.

Certainly that resource is not necessarily as transparent as money, but all the same. After all what is one born with? One is born with time, which is a limited resource. It doesn’t matter if one converts time into money at an exchange rate known as a salary or one converts time into effort at an exchange rate known as physical ability, so long as one is not superman, these exchange rates are finite, and thus the output is limited as well. One must wonder if it isn’t the finitude of the resource (time) that ultimately creates value and if it isn’t the transfer of value that pleases. If so, what can we conclude about even the most benign and thoughtful gestures? That they are merely purchases with a portion of one’s lifetime pool of resources?

There is some kind of corollary to this along the lines of time maximization as a life algorithm, but I don’t have time to think about it.

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