20 ms·

Careful now - why does a cosmetic surgeon in London s exclusive Harley Street earn £1,000,000 while a doctor restoring sight and correcting cleft palate and fis

Careful now - why does a cosmetic surgeon in London s exclusive Harley Street earn £1,000,000 while a doctor restoring sight and correcting cleft palate and fistula in Africa earns 5% as much? Do you think their work is worth less?

simonh 5y ago
Of course there are different forms of value that are not fungible. Moral or human value as independent of financial value. The point I'm making is that the £1m came from somewhere. Now yes sometimes it came from a Mafia sex slave operation or whatever, but those are minuscule edge cases on the scale of say the UK economy. We're talking about the economy in general and what makes on economy more valuable than another one in economic terms.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > sometimes it came from a Mafia sex slave operation or whatever, but those are minuscule edge cases on the scale of say the UK economy A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, after a while the money laundering starts to add up: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/uk-losing-fight-money-laundering-it-can-still-win-if-we-want/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/uk-losing-fight-money-l... The UK economy offers a unique mix of commercial fairness and predictability, achieved by a comparatively incorruptible commercial court system, with disinterest in where the money actually comes from provided it isn't UK crime. Whereas in China, for good and ill, billionaires are not above the state and can get clobbered when they become politically inconvenient. Such as Jack Ma. (A question nobody is asking in this thread: what's the relative price of a taxi in, say, Lowestoft? What does that say about the regime there?)
  - simonh 5y ago
    Stuff like that sucks, absolutely, but again it's not a huge factor to the UK economically. That money passed through, it didn't land in the UK. The impact on us economically was probably in the 10s of millions. Total Russian investment into the UK is only about 1% of all foreign investment, which itself is 20% of GDP. So 0.2% of our economy is linked to Russia at all.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      > The impact on us economically was probably in the 10s of millions That's less than Roman Abramovich paid for one Chelsea player. There's probably been more than £10m of donations to the Tory party alone from oligarchs. Try again with a more realistic figure. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/tory-donors-husband-given-8m-by-kremlin-linked-oligarch https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/tory-donors...
      - simonh 5y ago
        It depends where the money landed, that's where the big fees would be made, but just shuffling it around, I'd be very surprised if it was more than that. Look, you can bring up minuscule footnotes in Appendix F of what matters to the UK economy as much as you like. Yes these things suck. No they are not even remotely consequential to why a taxi driver in London, or Londoners in general earn what they do or how a modern economy functions. The more time you spend obsessing over incidental edge cases, because they are things you can get enraged about and get a good adrenalin buzz over, the longer you will be mind blastingly uninformed about how the word really works.
MichaelZuo 5y ago
People do spend millions of dollars to make themselves feel better, if they have the capability. That shouldn’t be surprising in the modern world. Assuming it’s not illegal money and no coercion was involved, then by definition the customers must have believed that the cosmetic operations were worth it, at least at the point of purchase. Since cosmetic surgery is much less burdened by regulation, externalities, and so on, I would say the prices charged are reasonably close to the market clearing price. The surgeons in Africa may or may not be subject to greater distortions depending on the local market. Though I imagine cosmetic surgeons specifically in Africa are paid about the same relative to their skill level, staffing level, and facilities?
- lozenge 5y ago
  I'm not surprised, just amazed people would say it's "(more) valuable" and the UK must be "doing something right" without a second thought as to whether they're confusing financial value with moral value, or whether the transfer of money really represents a transfer of value. Spare me the Econ 101, Harley Street is a status symbol, the doctors there are not more highly paid because they're objectively safer or more skilled. I guess we could call Africa's history of conflict, exploitation and colonialism, and usurious loans from the World Bank to leaders who aren't interested in their citizens' welfare, a distortion of the local market.
  - Droobfest 5y ago
    It's a matter of risk that I'm paying for to avoid, not absolute quality. I would not wager my life on a random doctor in Africa even while 90% of doctors there might be more skilled than in London. I'm paying to eliminate the risk of encountering the worst 10%. In that light, yes I would personally expect the doctors in London to be able to avoid the worst outcomes better on average. Whether that's warranted is another discussion. This goes for loads of stuff. I would wager a $30 meal to be fresher than a $5 meal on average. I'm not saying there aren't any $5 meals that are fresher than some $30 meals, but just that the $30 has a lot lower chance to make me sick.
    - 5y ago
mleonhard 5y ago
Starting a comment with "careful now" is extremely condescending and disrespectful. Please stop.

simonh 5y ago

Of course there are different forms of value that are not fungible. Moral or human value as independent of financial value. The point I'm making is that the £1m came from somewhere. Now yes sometimes it came from a Mafia sex slave operation or whatever, but those are minuscule edge cases on the scale of say the UK economy. We're talking about the economy in general and what makes on economy more valuable than another one in economic terms.

pjc50 5y ago
> sometimes it came from a Mafia sex slave operation or whatever, but those are minuscule edge cases on the scale of say the UK economy A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, after a while the money laundering starts to add up: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/uk-losing-fight-money-laundering-it-can-still-win-if-we-want/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/uk-losing-fight-money-l... The UK economy offers a unique mix of commercial fairness and predictability, achieved by a comparatively incorruptible commercial court system, with disinterest in where the money actually comes from provided it isn't UK crime. Whereas in China, for good and ill, billionaires are not above the state and can get clobbered when they become politically inconvenient. Such as Jack Ma. (A question nobody is asking in this thread: what's the relative price of a taxi in, say, Lowestoft? What does that say about the regime there?)
- simonh 5y ago
  Stuff like that sucks, absolutely, but again it's not a huge factor to the UK economically. That money passed through, it didn't land in the UK. The impact on us economically was probably in the 10s of millions. Total Russian investment into the UK is only about 1% of all foreign investment, which itself is 20% of GDP. So 0.2% of our economy is linked to Russia at all.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > The impact on us economically was probably in the 10s of millions That's less than Roman Abramovich paid for one Chelsea player. There's probably been more than £10m of donations to the Tory party alone from oligarchs. Try again with a more realistic figure. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/tory-donors-husband-given-8m-by-kremlin-linked-oligarch https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/tory-donors...
    - simonh 5y ago
      It depends where the money landed, that's where the big fees would be made, but just shuffling it around, I'd be very surprised if it was more than that. Look, you can bring up minuscule footnotes in Appendix F of what matters to the UK economy as much as you like. Yes these things suck. No they are not even remotely consequential to why a taxi driver in London, or Londoners in general earn what they do or how a modern economy functions. The more time you spend obsessing over incidental edge cases, because they are things you can get enraged about and get a good adrenalin buzz over, the longer you will be mind blastingly uninformed about how the word really works.

MichaelZuo 5y ago

People do spend millions of dollars to make themselves feel better, if they have the capability. That shouldn’t be surprising in the modern world. Assuming it’s not illegal money and no coercion was involved, then by definition the customers must have believed that the cosmetic operations were worth it, at least at the point of purchase. Since cosmetic surgery is much less burdened by regulation, externalities, and so on, I would say the prices charged are reasonably close to the market clearing price. The surgeons in Africa may or may not be subject to greater distortions depending on the local market. Though I imagine cosmetic surgeons specifically in Africa are paid about the same relative to their skill level, staffing level, and facilities?

lozenge 5y ago
I'm not surprised, just amazed people would say it's "(more) valuable" and the UK must be "doing something right" without a second thought as to whether they're confusing financial value with moral value, or whether the transfer of money really represents a transfer of value. Spare me the Econ 101, Harley Street is a status symbol, the doctors there are not more highly paid because they're objectively safer or more skilled. I guess we could call Africa's history of conflict, exploitation and colonialism, and usurious loans from the World Bank to leaders who aren't interested in their citizens' welfare, a distortion of the local market.
- Droobfest 5y ago
  It's a matter of risk that I'm paying for to avoid, not absolute quality. I would not wager my life on a random doctor in Africa even while 90% of doctors there might be more skilled than in London. I'm paying to eliminate the risk of encountering the worst 10%. In that light, yes I would personally expect the doctors in London to be able to avoid the worst outcomes better on average. Whether that's warranted is another discussion. This goes for loads of stuff. I would wager a $30 meal to be fresher than a $5 meal on average. I'm not saying there aren't any $5 meals that are fresher than some $30 meals, but just that the $30 has a lot lower chance to make me sick.
  - 5y ago

mleonhard 5y ago

Starting a comment with "careful now" is extremely condescending and disrespectful. Please stop.