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The weird irony of our society seems to be that the most useless jobs pay the most, while the most essential jobs pay the least. A lot of important work is bein
by mcv 4y ago
The weird irony of our society seems to be that the most useless jobs pay the most, while the most essential jobs pay the least. A lot of important work is being done by volunteers and charity organisations. The best paying jobs are often parasitic. Like stock manipulation.
- ragebol 4y agoAgreed. Why is that though?
- bratbag 4y agoThe best paying jobs are generally the most scalable jobs, as you can derive income from/add value to more revenue streams with minimal time cost on your part. That doesn't automatically correlate with parasitical roles, but there is an overlap.
- ragebol 4y agoMight have some truth to it. Human attention does not scale (ie. impact many other people) very well, and jobs where human attention is crucial, like in teaching & care, don't pay very well.
- mind-blight 4y agoYeah, a lot of that motivation lends itself to rent seeking rather than adding value
- pjc50 4y ago"Feeling like your job is rewarding to you" is part of the compensation, and to a certain extent trades off against actual money.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIntersection of supply curve of people able and willing to do the work and demand curve of people able and willing to pay.
- gremlinsinc 4y agoBecause people who value specifics about a career or have a passion do it more out of that passion because they know it doesn't come with high pay. Take teaching for example. Also people working for non profit or other socially beneficial companies probably know the company budget goes to help more people not to pad CEO pockets... The lowest rung of essential jobs are the easiest ones to get so those most desperate for income basically are forced into legal slavery. And it is slavery. In Texas to rent a 1 bedroom apartment you need to work over 90 hours per week, assuming you earn twice minimum wage, maybe even more... Those who take the soulless jobs are taking jobs reserved for people just like them who value money above everything else and who will walk over anybody to get it. They're not as likely to have imposter syndrome because they lack humility and are narcissistic. So they're not as likely to be a pushover and accept standard pay... I wish we all could just earn the same amount but society has decided in a weird way who gets to thrive and we gets to barely survive.. It's not fair but it is what it is.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> I wish we all could just earn the same amount In your society, what is the incentive for someone to clean up diarrhea in a gas station restroom?
- s5300 4y agoSaid society has fairly simply automated self-cleaning restrooms. It’s really not that hard, or expensive.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoBased on the fact that they are not in widespread use already, and I have never heard or seen one, it seems reasonable to assume that they do not exist, or are very expensive, or have some other limitation. I would be interested in looking at a link for these bathrooms that do not require human labor for upkeep. Either way, the point is different types of work exist with different difficulties/desirabilities, and people need incentives to do the less desirable and/or more difficult work. If you expect people to slog through medical textbooks and training for 12 years to earn the same as someone checking out groceries, you might be living on a different planet.
- nicoburns 4y agoBecause taking advantage of market failures is much easier to profit from than producing actual value, and neoliberal political ideologies prevent us from correcting for that with regulation.
- rglullis 4y agoPlease, feel free to share one single example me of a job you can "produce value" without being out-competed by a machine and/or computer.
- ragebol 4y agoI'd value my kids being taught well, me taken care of if I'm in a hospital or old etc. No machine can compete with the human care. Machine can help, but not replace a human.
- rglullis 4y agoThis is not a satisfactory answer. First, "human care" is not a direct way of "producing value". Second, if these are the only " interesting jobs" we should be taking, how would society be able to afford it?
- goodpoint 4y agoBecause people trade salary for ethical values. Many are are willing to do ethically good things for less (or no) money. You have a full spectrum: - save the whales, feed the homeless, maintain Linux distributions: 0 money - clean floors in some company: $ - software development for the average company: $$$ - software development in "fintech", real estate, make weapons, or other somewhat questionable thing: $$$$$ - write algorithms in some FAANG to manipulate people using ads: $$$$$$
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> The best paying jobs are often parasitic. Like stock manipulation. Or you could look at it as part of the process of allocating society’s resources towards more productive ventures from less productive ventures. It is not the perfect mechanism, but if anyone has a better idea, they are welcome to share. I would credit at least some people working in finance for opening up the ability for any financially illiterate person to participate in a country’s economic growth by easily being able to buy broad equity index ETFs at near zero cost. A lot of people do not want to spend their time reading 10-K reports to figure out which businesses to invest in.
- uVacCXNiiJCTnYB 4y agoIn theory that's true, but in practice the people at the top deciding what's profitable aren't working for maximising public good, so it doesn't work anymore
- lotsofpulp 4y agoWho are the people at the top? How do they “decide” revenue minus expenses? Are you claiming there is widespread fraud in SEC filings? If you are referring to many industries becoming controlled by a handful of large organizations, then people working in trading and finance have nothing to do with that. That is in the political arena.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoI presume he's talking about Congress, and by 'deciding' he's talking about them making regulations that effectively have the US government underwrite long tail risks while leaving profits privatized for larger financial institutions.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI understood mcv’s comment about “stock manipulation” being part of the highest paying jobs to refer to people working in finance, such as HFTs.
- roenxi 4y agoStock manipulation isn't really a "well paying job" though. The person making money isn't drawing a salary. The key insight that explains the situation is that we pay based on how easy it is to replace someone. If you are doing a critical job that everyone can do (like cooking) then it is unlikely to pay well. There has been little success by systems that pay people based on how important their job is.
- pm215 4y agoI think that's an important part of it. I'd add another factor: the global economy and financial system is an impossibly complex construct that nobody understands in its totality and which as a result is very difficult to control and predict. Some companies and people manage to find parts of the system where they can essentially tap into a stream of money. Jobs in that area then tend to pay rather more than you would expect from their overall social value (and from the value to the global economy of that stream of money existing), because they're locally valuable in increasing the efficiency of the tapping-of-money process. Conversely, important work that happens not to be easily tied to tapping some stream of money is much less well paid and often under-resourced entirely.
- mbg721 4y agoThat part sounds like "Don't be perceived as a cost-center," but I think most big-lumbering-org departments have figured out how to plead their case. That's a lot harder to do with something like teaching, where there's a large supply of candidates and everyone agrees the job is socially valuable, but confounding factors make it very hard to measure any individual's contribution.
- mcv 4y agoIs there a large supply of teachers? My impression is that lots of countries have a teacher shortage. And that's partly because society doesn't value teachers as much as it should. Over a century ago, teachers were still considered among the important people of the town (together with the mayor and the local notary), and commanded some respect. These days they're often seen as glorified babysitters despite having manager-level responsibilities.
- 7373737373 4y agoInteresting downside of human psychology/market dynamics, if many want to help others e.g. as nurses or teachers, that positive trait is punished financially due to the high number of applicants
- mcv 4y agoAlso, if you want to help others, the fact that you can do so is itself used as compensation. Greed is rewarded a lot more than altruism.
- germinalphrase 4y ago“teachers, that positive trait is punished financially due to the high number of applicants” There are teachers shortages throughout the country. States are rushing to reduce certification standards. “A high number of applicants” isn’t the cause of low teacher wages.
- ipaddr 4y agoLow wages are the reason for low applicants. High standards are another reason for low applicants.
- weakfish 4y agoAlso, horrible work life balance. Partner is a teacher and works till 9 every night.
- germinalphrase 4y agoThere are multitudes, and they differ across the country. I will add though that “high standards” in many states is as low a bar as ‘generic bachelors degree’ and/or ‘experience relevant to content area’ and the shortage persists.
- ipaddr 4y agoWhen I went to school teachers didn't need a bachelors degree they went to teacher college for a year or two. Requiring a bachelors hasn't increased educational outcomes either just added gatekeeping.
- amag 4y agoYeah, David Graeber has even written a whole book on the subject: Bullshit Jobs [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs