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Have you seen how much scientists get paid nowadays? Don't even get me started on how most people who follow that career path just end up as lab techs at best,

by xenihn 7y ago

Have you seen how much scientists get paid nowadays? Don't even get me started on how most people who follow that career path just end up as lab techs at best, who earn even less. Everyone I know who majored in bio, chem, or physics has ended up in tech. For the money. And why should they have done otherwise?

jacobolus 7y ago
It is a huge waste of talent and misallocation of resources that a large proportion of the smartest and best-trained scientists and engineers in the world get sucked into working in finance, business consulting, advertising/surveillance, etc. There’s nothing wrong with individual people making this choice (I have many friends in those fields). It’s just evidence of large structural problems in the society. (Of course, not all “tech” is zero-sum or harmful.)
- scarejunba 7y ago
  No, it is a pretty good allocation and a great use of that talent. That talent is producing value at a scale unprecedented in human civilisation. The human race has spoken, and this is what it wants. And I, for one, love it.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    > talent is producing value at a scale unprecedented As far as I can tell, much of this “value” consists of inserting oneself into existing money flows and diverting a tiny part into one’s own pocket, at the expense of everyone else in the society. Wages in the broader society have been stagnant for decades despite steep increases in labor productivity. Healthcare, housing, and education costs keep skyrocketing without commensurate improvements in quality. In the USA, life expectancy is going down, infrastructure is aging without replacement, worker and consumer protections have eroded, children’s lives are increasingly regimented and controlled, 40% of adults are obese, loneliness is rampant, young people are deeply indebted, almost nobody has enough savings to comfortably retire, many ecosystems are facing collapse and many species are facing extinction, ...
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      Listen, I know you have your pet loves: American obesity, loneliness, debt, etc. etc. I have mine. And it is possible that if I allocated all labour I wouldn't do it like you would. In fact, I suspect no two people would have the exact same allocation. Fortunately, because we are free people, we have proposed a mechanism. You make something valuable to me and you get a sort of exchangeable vote from me that you can use to get someone (perhaps even me) to make something valuable for you. This is a nice mechanism because that way useful people can be rewarded for their usefulness by letting them choose the next thing for labour to be allocated to. This system is distributed, everyone trusts the vote, and you can't make me do something against my will. This system of free and fair collaboration and competition has produced the current allocation as the current consolidated view of what people want. It's not what you want, true. It's not even what I want. But it's what we (all of us) want as independent agents collaborating and competing with each other.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      >As far as I can tell, much of this “value” consists of inserting oneself into existing money flows and diverting a tiny part into one’s own pocket, at the expense of everyone else in the society. Then you should keep “what you can tell” to yourself. People that sit in the middle and provide no value are quickly competed out of business without the protection of some kind of government mandate to be a middleman.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- xenihn 7y ago
  You don't have to be smart or well-trained to get the big bucks. I don't have a STEM degree. The most successful engineers I know don't even have a degree at all.

by xenihn 7y ago

jacobolus 7y ago

It is a huge waste of talent and misallocation of resources that a large proportion of the smartest and best-trained scientists and engineers in the world get sucked into working in finance, business consulting, advertising/surveillance, etc. There’s nothing wrong with individual people making this choice (I have many friends in those fields). It’s just evidence of large structural problems in the society. (Of course, not all “tech” is zero-sum or harmful.)

scarejunba 7y ago
No, it is a pretty good allocation and a great use of that talent. That talent is producing value at a scale unprecedented in human civilisation. The human race has spoken, and this is what it wants. And I, for one, love it.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  > talent is producing value at a scale unprecedented As far as I can tell, much of this “value” consists of inserting oneself into existing money flows and diverting a tiny part into one’s own pocket, at the expense of everyone else in the society. Wages in the broader society have been stagnant for decades despite steep increases in labor productivity. Healthcare, housing, and education costs keep skyrocketing without commensurate improvements in quality. In the USA, life expectancy is going down, infrastructure is aging without replacement, worker and consumer protections have eroded, children’s lives are increasingly regimented and controlled, 40% of adults are obese, loneliness is rampant, young people are deeply indebted, almost nobody has enough savings to comfortably retire, many ecosystems are facing collapse and many species are facing extinction, ...
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Listen, I know you have your pet loves: American obesity, loneliness, debt, etc. etc. I have mine. And it is possible that if I allocated all labour I wouldn't do it like you would. In fact, I suspect no two people would have the exact same allocation. Fortunately, because we are free people, we have proposed a mechanism. You make something valuable to me and you get a sort of exchangeable vote from me that you can use to get someone (perhaps even me) to make something valuable for you. This is a nice mechanism because that way useful people can be rewarded for their usefulness by letting them choose the next thing for labour to be allocated to. This system is distributed, everyone trusts the vote, and you can't make me do something against my will. This system of free and fair collaboration and competition has produced the current allocation as the current consolidated view of what people want. It's not what you want, true. It's not even what I want. But it's what we (all of us) want as independent agents collaborating and competing with each other.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    >As far as I can tell, much of this “value” consists of inserting oneself into existing money flows and diverting a tiny part into one’s own pocket, at the expense of everyone else in the society. Then you should keep “what you can tell” to yourself. People that sit in the middle and provide no value are quickly competed out of business without the protection of some kind of government mandate to be a middleman.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
xenihn 7y ago
You don't have to be smart or well-trained to get the big bucks. I don't have a STEM degree. The most successful engineers I know don't even have a degree at all.