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Talking about economists. Personally I can't wrap my head around why the person that provides the food and the basic services I need so I don't starve, or other

Talking about economists. Personally I can't wrap my head around why the person that provides the food and the basic services I need so I don't starve, or otherwise die of basic needs doesn't deserve at least as much as an economist who's basically the same as a modern day fortune teller or someone who builds the next gen photo/video sharing app.

dgb23 5y ago
Because we get payed based on perceived value on the market and not based on utility, importance and certainly not based on positive impact. All of these things are incredibly hard to measure and I don't think there is a reasonable objective way to evaluate them. The more people are willing and able to do a job, the less is the perceived marked value, especially if they are not organized in unions to assert their interests. Now from what I know unions are generally frowned upon in the US for some reason or another (perhaps because of their obsession with capitalist ideology), and reports say that large corporations are actively oppressing the formation of unions. So what is left is simply trying to avoid work and perhaps hoping that some companies will come around and provide reasonable working conditions and pay or to start businesses themselves, while trying to survive the bullying tactics of said companies.
- socialdemocrat 5y ago
  This has always bothering me: that people think the money you make and the contribution you make to society is the same. Sometimes it is completely detached. There are jobs which pay in a enormous amount of money but which create negative value to society. It is interesting, that in free-market economics, you get many of the same effects as in nature and evolution. There will always be parasites. The problem today, are all the people so convinced of the perfection of free-market economics, that they will insist that even the parasites somehow serves a purpose.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    That's because the money you make is a defined by your position in a competitive political hierarchy. Your "contribution" is defined entirely by political status. The more power you have over others, the more money you make. That's the real "free market" definition of value. There's a reason climate damage and other critically important side-effects of market dysfunction are dismissed as ignorable "externalities". They have little or no immediate political effect and no independent political agency. Therefore in market terms their value is either zero or negative. The physical reality is that the game board is on fire and unless something changes the entire game will be over soon.
  - jazzyk 5y ago
    The US, at least, has not been a free market for a long time. What we have is some form of (heavily financialized) crony statism, where a bunch of well connected monopolies milk consumers shamelessly (health "care", higher education, etc).
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > So what is left is simply trying to avoid work and perhaps hoping that some companies will come around and provide reasonable working conditions and pay or to start businesses themselves, while trying to survive the bullying tactics of said companies. There is no getting around the fact supply and demand = price. If society wants to change the price, society needs to work on moving the supply and demand curves. So what is left is providing people with the information on the market, such as publicizing pay rates (Colorado has made a good start here), and then providing people with the means to get an education so they can provide the type of labor that the market is willing to pay more for. Another option is unions, although that is more difficult when the global supply of labor is so high and people around the world are willing to work for 10x less. In this case, tariffs are an option, but then you get into politics and there are other consequences to consider.
bachmeier 5y ago
Honest question. Do you know what an economist is? I'm pretty sure you don't. Source: I'm an economist.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  As if anyone needed confirmation to my point. But I'll take the bait. Teachers of a social science cleverly disguised as real science, based on mathematical models that are little more complex than high school math, pushed by people such as you, who think arrogance is a virtue. Just like the nobel laureates who are responsible for the 2008 financial crises, a lot of standard policies the IMF and world bank has pushed, which has created phenomenons such as the oligarchs due to rapid privatization after the fall of the soviet union. Patterns that these very same economists have repeated in countless countries leading to same misery and the only thing they could come up with in response was "I guess I was wrong, sorry.". If anything 2008 would have been a good wake up call to kick out the currently dominating pile of economists and give the ones with an actual advanced math understanding an opportunity to try out and teach their models instead and turn this pseudoscience into actual science. But at the end of the day, people like you have a vested interest in keeping the profession as it is. Not only for the sake of their jobs, but more importantly apparently for the sake of their egos. Source: a person who respects actual scientists.
  - zingplex 5y ago
    Could we put Nobel laureates in scare quotes. The Nobel Prize in economics wasn't actually established by Alfred Nobel but instead Sweden's national bank trying to add credibility to their pseudoscience. The official title of the prize is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Even members of the Nobel family have come out and said the prize is bullshit.
Der_Einzige 5y ago
No idea why you're being downvoted/flagged on this one. The real answer is that the one who provides basic services is far more easily replaced than the economist. Economics does have a fair amount of fortune telling. I believe the entire field of technical analysis is bunk and really is "fortune telling" but I think that economists have a lot of value to add outside of fortune telling BS.
dragonwriter 5y ago
Capitalist economies don’t pay based on some moral analysis of what people “deserve”, they work on how much utility you provide to people, how much competition there is to provide that utility, and how wealthy the people are to whom you provide that utility.

dgb23 5y ago

Because we get payed based on perceived value on the market and not based on utility, importance and certainly not based on positive impact. All of these things are incredibly hard to measure and I don't think there is a reasonable objective way to evaluate them. The more people are willing and able to do a job, the less is the perceived marked value, especially if they are not organized in unions to assert their interests. Now from what I know unions are generally frowned upon in the US for some reason or another (perhaps because of their obsession with capitalist ideology), and reports say that large corporations are actively oppressing the formation of unions. So what is left is simply trying to avoid work and perhaps hoping that some companies will come around and provide reasonable working conditions and pay or to start businesses themselves, while trying to survive the bullying tactics of said companies.

socialdemocrat 5y ago
This has always bothering me: that people think the money you make and the contribution you make to society is the same. Sometimes it is completely detached. There are jobs which pay in a enormous amount of money but which create negative value to society. It is interesting, that in free-market economics, you get many of the same effects as in nature and evolution. There will always be parasites. The problem today, are all the people so convinced of the perfection of free-market economics, that they will insist that even the parasites somehow serves a purpose.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  That's because the money you make is a defined by your position in a competitive political hierarchy. Your "contribution" is defined entirely by political status. The more power you have over others, the more money you make. That's the real "free market" definition of value. There's a reason climate damage and other critically important side-effects of market dysfunction are dismissed as ignorable "externalities". They have little or no immediate political effect and no independent political agency. Therefore in market terms their value is either zero or negative. The physical reality is that the game board is on fire and unless something changes the entire game will be over soon.
- jazzyk 5y ago
  The US, at least, has not been a free market for a long time. What we have is some form of (heavily financialized) crony statism, where a bunch of well connected monopolies milk consumers shamelessly (health "care", higher education, etc).
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> So what is left is simply trying to avoid work and perhaps hoping that some companies will come around and provide reasonable working conditions and pay or to start businesses themselves, while trying to survive the bullying tactics of said companies. There is no getting around the fact supply and demand = price. If society wants to change the price, society needs to work on moving the supply and demand curves. So what is left is providing people with the information on the market, such as publicizing pay rates (Colorado has made a good start here), and then providing people with the means to get an education so they can provide the type of labor that the market is willing to pay more for. Another option is unions, although that is more difficult when the global supply of labor is so high and people around the world are willing to work for 10x less. In this case, tariffs are an option, but then you get into politics and there are other consequences to consider.

bachmeier 5y ago

Honest question. Do you know what an economist is? I'm pretty sure you don't. Source: I'm an economist.

rjzzleep 5y ago
As if anyone needed confirmation to my point. But I'll take the bait. Teachers of a social science cleverly disguised as real science, based on mathematical models that are little more complex than high school math, pushed by people such as you, who think arrogance is a virtue. Just like the nobel laureates who are responsible for the 2008 financial crises, a lot of standard policies the IMF and world bank has pushed, which has created phenomenons such as the oligarchs due to rapid privatization after the fall of the soviet union. Patterns that these very same economists have repeated in countless countries leading to same misery and the only thing they could come up with in response was "I guess I was wrong, sorry.". If anything 2008 would have been a good wake up call to kick out the currently dominating pile of economists and give the ones with an actual advanced math understanding an opportunity to try out and teach their models instead and turn this pseudoscience into actual science. But at the end of the day, people like you have a vested interest in keeping the profession as it is. Not only for the sake of their jobs, but more importantly apparently for the sake of their egos. Source: a person who respects actual scientists.
- zingplex 5y ago
  Could we put Nobel laureates in scare quotes. The Nobel Prize in economics wasn't actually established by Alfred Nobel but instead Sweden's national bank trying to add credibility to their pseudoscience. The official title of the prize is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Even members of the Nobel family have come out and said the prize is bullshit.

Der_Einzige 5y ago

No idea why you're being downvoted/flagged on this one. The real answer is that the one who provides basic services is far more easily replaced than the economist. Economics does have a fair amount of fortune telling. I believe the entire field of technical analysis is bunk and really is "fortune telling" but I think that economists have a lot of value to add outside of fortune telling BS.

dragonwriter 5y ago

Capitalist economies don’t pay based on some moral analysis of what people “deserve”, they work on how much utility you provide to people, how much competition there is to provide that utility, and how wealthy the people are to whom you provide that utility.