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> The reality is quite different. Income, I believe, is determined not by productivity, but instead largely by rank within a hierarchy. In other words, power be

by whack 4y ago

> The reality is quite different. Income, I believe, is determined not by productivity, but instead largely by rank within a hierarchy. In other words, power begets income. The role of economics is to deny this uncomfortable reality. Economists reinforce hierarchies by denying their existence. My first impression was that the author was referring to people who are "popular" or "well-connected" when he was talking about hierarchy. But it seems what he is really talking about, is the corporate ladder. Ie, people higher up the ladder get paid more on average. Which seems very non-controversial - people climb up the ladder by accumulating promotions, which comes attached with pay increases. I haven't come across any economist who denies this. From a productivity perspective, an economist would argue that a firm's productivity is impacted more by a good (or bad) director/VP/SVP/CEO, as opposed to a single good individual contributor. Hence why people higher up the ladder get paid more. This sounds very reasonable to me, and I've yet to meet anyone who thinks that the average individual contributor has more impact than the average SVP. What would be more interesting is determining the traits that most impact the corporate hierarchy. Is it IQ, EQ, and hard work? Or is it height, good looks, and family connections? Economic theory would predict that the former plays a bigger role, and I would wager that as well. If the author has data demonstrating that the latter actually plays a bigger role, that would be a more interesting topic of discussion.

daniel-cussen 4y ago
It comes from combining traits. Power of course, if one were to lose power, for instance the power of one's testimony by being eg caught making false witness, it is much harder to keep ahold of money without that credibility. They basically have to be in balance, money and power. And note power isn't negative, many people say the whole "absolute power corrupts absolutely" which comes from Lord Acton, note he's a member of a nobility. Power is necessary in order to do good, or to be righteous, it is not only over others, it is for others, to protect others as well. And further, it is the combination of, in one case for me, being good-looking and technical, keeping my agent in business by providing tech help nobody else could give him, when I was a model, none of the other guys was technical and I was very technical. Or...I don't know, music and coding, to make the score for a video game. There's many.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  So I'm not meaning to brag about being a model or technical, just matter-of-fact, it was a job like any other. In fact they alone cared nothing for gaps in my resume or bad GPA, just looks, very tolerant in that regard. So what happened is the guy who scouted me, my agent, lived in the same neighborhood, and we'd bump into each other a lot. He started his own thing after getting fired, took models with him. But he was bad at tech, and had a really busted computer with a defective screen. So I had a really old VGA desktop CRT monitor lying around, brought it over and it worked great, he could use the laptop. Then, he had to get this "factoring" thing to work, like an advance on payments and value-added taxes, it's a whole thing in Chile, I don't know much about it. Well I knew enough at the time to like figure it out spinally, do intuitive stuff just by feel and based on idiosyncrasies of Chilean web apps...I got it to work, it was weird. He got the advance! And then he stayed in business, and he told me over and over he owed me a favor. He would have been screwed, he said so himself.

by whack 4y ago

daniel-cussen 4y ago

It comes from combining traits. Power of course, if one were to lose power, for instance the power of one's testimony by being eg caught making false witness, it is much harder to keep ahold of money without that credibility. They basically have to be in balance, money and power. And note power isn't negative, many people say the whole "absolute power corrupts absolutely" which comes from Lord Acton, note he's a member of a nobility. Power is necessary in order to do good, or to be righteous, it is not only over others, it is for others, to protect others as well. And further, it is the combination of, in one case for me, being good-looking and technical, keeping my agent in business by providing tech help nobody else could give him, when I was a model, none of the other guys was technical and I was very technical. Or...I don't know, music and coding, to make the score for a video game. There's many.

daniel-cussen 4y ago
So I'm not meaning to brag about being a model or technical, just matter-of-fact, it was a job like any other. In fact they alone cared nothing for gaps in my resume or bad GPA, just looks, very tolerant in that regard. So what happened is the guy who scouted me, my agent, lived in the same neighborhood, and we'd bump into each other a lot. He started his own thing after getting fired, took models with him. But he was bad at tech, and had a really busted computer with a defective screen. So I had a really old VGA desktop CRT monitor lying around, brought it over and it worked great, he could use the laptop. Then, he had to get this "factoring" thing to work, like an advance on payments and value-added taxes, it's a whole thing in Chile, I don't know much about it. Well I knew enough at the time to like figure it out spinally, do intuitive stuff just by feel and based on idiosyncrasies of Chilean web apps...I got it to work, it was weird. He got the advance! And then he stayed in business, and he told me over and over he owed me a favor. He would have been screwed, he said so himself.