4 ms·

So what's the point of the article? "Prestige=bad"?

yhoiseth 6y ago
> So a crucial question is: to what extent is it possible to move our prestige equilibrium to a different and more useful one? Where say it might be prestigious to actually do something useful for the world. Seems a worthy topic of study.
- soniman 6y ago
  That's what money is for. You want to do something useful? Somebody will pay you. It's like he's saying "We need a system that allocates prestige to people who do useful things" and we literally have that, it's called a market.
  - yhoiseth 6y ago
    The idea here is that the market values things that are not so useful. Maybe there is some way to make the market value useful things more?
sanxiyn 6y ago
That people eat is a human nature, but what people eat is quite cultural. Just as it is desirable to steer the food culture to healthier diet, it seems desirable to steer the prestige culture to more useful marks of prestige, since just like food, what people find prestigious seems cultural. (e.g. teaching is prestigious in East Asia, and it may be better if other cultures also find teaching prestigious.)
hyko 6y ago
Prestige = low quality signal. That’s why it’s called prestige and not excellence. In theory, this provides a “moneyball” style opportunity for arbitrage, but in reality you probably won’t be able to profit from it because elitism creates a very robust moat protecting the incumbents.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Low quality signal for what? What would improve, for whom, if they hired better. What would better quality look like? Management consulting has a hard to define "job" in objective terms.
  - hyko 6y ago
    Merit. Productivity would improve, for everyone, if they hired better. Better quality would look like more profit (or better triple bottom line metrics if you’re that way inclined). The job of a management consultancy is to improve an organisation’s performance, and in capitalism the key performance indicator is profit.

> So a crucial question is: to what extent is it possible to move our prestige equilibrium to a different and more useful one? Where say it might be prestigious to actually do something useful for the world. Seems a worthy topic of study.

soniman 6y ago
That's what money is for. You want to do something useful? Somebody will pay you. It's like he's saying "We need a system that allocates prestige to people who do useful things" and we literally have that, it's called a market.
- yhoiseth 6y ago
  The idea here is that the market values things that are not so useful. Maybe there is some way to make the market value useful things more?

sanxiyn 6y ago

That people eat is a human nature, but what people eat is quite cultural. Just as it is desirable to steer the food culture to healthier diet, it seems desirable to steer the prestige culture to more useful marks of prestige, since just like food, what people find prestigious seems cultural. (e.g. teaching is prestigious in East Asia, and it may be better if other cultures also find teaching prestigious.)

hyko 6y ago

Prestige = low quality signal. That’s why it’s called prestige and not excellence. In theory, this provides a “moneyball” style opportunity for arbitrage, but in reality you probably won’t be able to profit from it because elitism creates a very robust moat protecting the incumbents.

dalbasal 6y ago
Low quality signal for what? What would improve, for whom, if they hired better. What would better quality look like? Management consulting has a hard to define "job" in objective terms.
- hyko 6y ago
  Merit. Productivity would improve, for everyone, if they hired better. Better quality would look like more profit (or better triple bottom line metrics if you’re that way inclined). The job of a management consultancy is to improve an organisation’s performance, and in capitalism the key performance indicator is profit.