6 ms·

This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have

This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have little interest in and has less chance of improving the human condition, but it let me buy a house and pay the taxes and fees. If I instead choose to do what I'm interested in I'd be lucky to afford renting a room in someone else's house. I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.

avg_dev 2y ago
Of course you are correct, nobody is ever promised anything like the ability to fulfill their dreams or to live a decent quality of life. But maybe the universities could pay them a living wage for teaching six classes a week.
- orionsbelt 2y ago
  $70k is a living wage in Los Angeles; he his homeless by choice. To be clear, I’m not saying he is not underpaid. He might need a roommate and to live in a crappy apartment and not in Westwood to make it workable, which does not seem fair for a PhD teaching physics. But it’s not homeless level.
  - cute_boi 2y ago
    People seem to think it is easy to have roommates. My roommates were horrible, they wouldn't clean anything, blast music and always a privacy risks.
    - cafard 2y ago
      For some years I lived in a group house in a close-in suburb of Washington, DC. Some roommates were horrible, for a while I was a horrible roommate. But somehow I got by nine years.
    - stavros 2y ago
      > People seem to think it is easy to have roommates It seems to me that they think it's easier than being homeless.
      - Agentus 2y ago
        [flagged]
        stavros 2y ago
        I think I'll take the roommates.
    - newyankee 2y ago
      It is also that US is mostly filled with either very large single family homes or apartments in areas where rents are generally always high. A focus on efficient, individual space that is like 400 sq ft. dense studios but which actually translates into lower rent (e.g. 2500$ in the example to somewhere 1000-1500$ is needed). A lot of reforms and time needed for this.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - linguae 2y ago
        This is one of the things I miss about Tokyo: there are plenty of small apartments there at relatively affordable prices. I personally would rather have a 400 sq ft unit to myself than to live in a shared house or apartment.
    - zrobotics 2y ago
      OK, I also live with roommates while I'm saving up a downpayment and waiting for mortgage rates to drop. But c'mon, there's a huge difference between being homeless and having roommates. I've been close to being homeless before, and at that point I would have been happy to have even the shittiesy roommates if it meant not sleeping on the streets. I'm disgusted at the implication that 70k isn't enough to live in LA. Yes, it may not be enough to meet some arbitrary standard, but it's insane to say that the alternative is being homeless. This is just a spoiled rich kid who isn't making enough to keep their previous standard of living. There's tons of working class people in that same community getting by on way less than 70k who aren't getting articles written about them.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        Well, he even says one of his criteria is he doesn’t want a long commute. There’s cheaper housing in LA. You just won’t favor it given other options.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - didgeoridoo 2y ago
      When I was living in Cambridge (MA) in the early 2010s, it was unthinkable to not have a flatmate or four. By far the most economical situation was to rent a 4 or 5 bedroom house. Doing this, you could easily have a sub-1k rent within a 10 minute walk of the Harvard or Central T stops. Not to “kids these days” it or anything, but the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing.
      - cxr 2y ago
        > the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing I used to think this way—that is, just like you—in my 20s. From my experience growing up, I was used to not having nice or even merely adequate things, and it was the norm to go without. I'm less cavalier about declaring it entitlement now. Why shouldn't an adult, even a brand new (i.e. young) one, not have their own place? I realized that I didn't have a good reason to justify the status quo (where a home of your own is out of reach), only that it was the status quo, and the thrust of my old position really just came down to something akin to the old saw that Hardship-<X> is good for you because "it builds character"—even though I'd never really found that argument persuasive when I'd encounter it elsewhere. (Just like the old retort "life's not fair", it seemed I'd only ever encounter it from someone in the process of actively trying to screw you over while trying to paint your indignance about it as unreasonable.) Not saying everyone should expect the works, but I can't exactly fault anyone who would be content with a 12x10 kitchen attached to an 8x10 office that doubles as a bedroom but isn't able to have it. And that's without even addressing the fact that we're likely talking about a situation where you're losing all this money on something you didn't even get equity for!
        didgeoridoo 2y ago
        I don’t know man, it’s not like I said the peasants should be content with their gruel. A private apartment in the center of one of the most desirable ZIP codes on the planet is an inherently limited good. Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy) is kind of the definition of entitlement. And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything, even after that time my housemate attempted to clean their vomit off the bathroom floor at 3 in the morning with the communal Roomba. I guess that was hardship of a sort, but hardship creates friends and memories — I don’t think I built an ounce of “character”, but I had a hell of a time.
    - linguae 2y ago
      It’s not always easy living with roommates (I don’t like it myself), but we all have to make choices. Unless we’re wealthy, we can’t have it all. For many people it’s either roommates or a long commute, and I know people who have roommates and a long commute since that’s all they can afford. It still beats homelessness.
  - ensignavenger 2y ago
    Zillow lists over 1300 places for rent in Los Angeles for less than $1600 a month, which is easily affordable on a $70k salary.
- wolfram74 2y ago
  You've done a bit of a bait and switch, "fulfill their dreams" and "decent quality of life" are two very different standards. One, sure, we're in a society and sometimes that calls for sacrifice, the other, if we can't promise a decent life we shouldn't be surprised when people break the contract and act in ways that hurt the common good.
  - avg_dev 2y ago
    i don't think i've done a bait and switch and generally don't actually know what you mean by saying that i have done so. my point in that sentence was simply that nothing is promised by life. society does have norms and people do have values. i never said that i don't understand (nor did i intend to imply or portray that i don't) why people would act in ways that are not to, or hurt, "the common good". it is clear why someone who doesn't feel like their life is comfortable when they are trying to better "the common good" would act against that same common good in order to get some peace or enjoyment out of their own existence.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Supply and demand, the pay would increase if there was no one willing to take the job. Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.
  - Volundr 2y ago
    > Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think you'll find that there's a lot of overlap in the group of people who think this guy should be paid more and those who want more pay for the people you named. > I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities. I'm not sure I'm prepared to cosign on the idea that the guy saving me a trip to pick up my own dinner is producing the same value as the guy educating the next generation of physicts.
    - MrMan 2y ago
      [dead]
poincaredisk 2y ago
>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Of course. On the other hand, one has to wonder which of this two occupations helps humanity more, and it's this the one that's paid better. And if not, should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  In the age of precision psychological influence and constant bombardment with low grade mind control, Capitalism is trash. To the most rapacious, the loudest, the most insidious go the spoils. If we're gonna keep the current system we need to slam the ban hammer on advertising and marketing with righteous fury.
- nordsieck 2y ago
  > should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead. The problem is that everyone has different ideas about what helps society. At least the current system, where people are compensated based on supply and demand, people actually want what's being produced. In contrast to the old soviet system where top down production decisions mean that what's "best for society" is of no use to pretty much anyone except those people who needed to fill their quota.
  - elashri 2y ago
    Why do you pick the two extreme situations. Isn't there a possibility of a middle ground?
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      The current system is not an extreme. Only concentrating power into the people who will pick what is good for society is extreme.
      - elashri 2y ago
ricksunny 2y ago
And then might the society be worse off for lacking the physics/scientific advancements by not supporting adequately an an individual to remain on the scientific path.
petesergeant 2y ago
The end result of this is that only people who are independently wealthy or who can’t make the private sector work for them end up as profs, which seems like a worse situation for society.
Cheer2171 2y ago
> I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Students at public universities deserve good instructors. Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services. Are you one of those people who thinks that whatever price the market offers for labor is axiomatically fair?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services. We're discussing wages. Wages are all about that rationale. If you make a choice you should abide by it. This is nothing to do with what students "deserve", whatever that means.
- medo-bear 2y ago
  [flagged]
- softsound 2y ago
  Public services? Isn't that exactly why he is paid less. Just imagine if he worked somewhere private. Deserve is an interesting phrase, who really does deserve more? The more you go down that rabbit hole the less you'll think people deserve in general. That said. I only have an associate degree and even I made $70k at a regular tech job working with someone with a PhD. I got lucky though before, too bad he didn't.
wesselbindt 2y ago
> But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).
- thierrydamiba 2y ago
  I’m not exactly sure that’s how the world works…
  - karmajunkie 2y ago
    it’s definitely not how the US works, but it should be.
  - medo-bear 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    It is if you want to continue educating new physicists. 'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.
  - serf 2y ago
    less educators produce less educated, that's absolutely how it works. the incentives, the logistics and finances of how we get to a point like that -- well that's where it gets muddier.
    - elevation 2y ago
      The worry is that by better funding educators we might have to make do with less administrators, which could leave students less administrated.
beachtaxidriver 2y ago
Amen. If the net present value and risk of being a professor paid as well as dealing with corporate B.S. I know which I would do...
oysterville 2y ago
I'm of the mind that if we had the best in the field educating the next generations and compensated them well that we would end up with better qualified graduates. It seems like this would be the result at all levels of education, really. In America we are doing the opposite, and then wondering why the results are sub optimal.
salawat 2y ago
>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Why should that employer's dreams take primacy over anyone elses? The answer: there isn't a reason why. All semblance of economic activity is based on a fiction. That fiction has been guided to structurally elevate a subset of people's wishes and motivations over everyone else's, including yours. And you're totally okay with that state of affairs. Useful idiot much? Can at least applaud the guy for sticking to his principles. Sometimes society needs a good nut kick to realize it's destroying itself. That it collectively takes so many ruined lives to do so is the true tragedy of our times.
honestAbe22 2y ago
[dead]
Have7878forever 2y ago
Move to China and Russia. He will be way more appreciated there with significantly lower cost of living. Furthermore he will produce many more important students there in astrophysics than in USA even if he can extend his life by 6x time more. East is the future. Dont waste it in the sunset west. If he truly loves teaching move to China. Humanity future lies in the east in the next 100 years.

avg_dev 2y ago

Of course you are correct, nobody is ever promised anything like the ability to fulfill their dreams or to live a decent quality of life. But maybe the universities could pay them a living wage for teaching six classes a week.

orionsbelt 2y ago
$70k is a living wage in Los Angeles; he his homeless by choice. To be clear, I’m not saying he is not underpaid. He might need a roommate and to live in a crappy apartment and not in Westwood to make it workable, which does not seem fair for a PhD teaching physics. But it’s not homeless level.
- cute_boi 2y ago
  People seem to think it is easy to have roommates. My roommates were horrible, they wouldn't clean anything, blast music and always a privacy risks.
  - cafard 2y ago
    For some years I lived in a group house in a close-in suburb of Washington, DC. Some roommates were horrible, for a while I was a horrible roommate. But somehow I got by nine years.
  - stavros 2y ago
    > People seem to think it is easy to have roommates It seems to me that they think it's easier than being homeless.
    - Agentus 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - stavros 2y ago
        I think I'll take the roommates.
  - newyankee 2y ago
    It is also that US is mostly filled with either very large single family homes or apartments in areas where rents are generally always high. A focus on efficient, individual space that is like 400 sq ft. dense studios but which actually translates into lower rent (e.g. 2500$ in the example to somewhere 1000-1500$ is needed). A lot of reforms and time needed for this.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - linguae 2y ago
      This is one of the things I miss about Tokyo: there are plenty of small apartments there at relatively affordable prices. I personally would rather have a 400 sq ft unit to myself than to live in a shared house or apartment.
  - zrobotics 2y ago
    OK, I also live with roommates while I'm saving up a downpayment and waiting for mortgage rates to drop. But c'mon, there's a huge difference between being homeless and having roommates. I've been close to being homeless before, and at that point I would have been happy to have even the shittiesy roommates if it meant not sleeping on the streets. I'm disgusted at the implication that 70k isn't enough to live in LA. Yes, it may not be enough to meet some arbitrary standard, but it's insane to say that the alternative is being homeless. This is just a spoiled rich kid who isn't making enough to keep their previous standard of living. There's tons of working class people in that same community getting by on way less than 70k who aren't getting articles written about them.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Well, he even says one of his criteria is he doesn’t want a long commute. There’s cheaper housing in LA. You just won’t favor it given other options.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - didgeoridoo 2y ago
    When I was living in Cambridge (MA) in the early 2010s, it was unthinkable to not have a flatmate or four. By far the most economical situation was to rent a 4 or 5 bedroom house. Doing this, you could easily have a sub-1k rent within a 10 minute walk of the Harvard or Central T stops. Not to “kids these days” it or anything, but the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing.
    - cxr 2y ago
      > the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing I used to think this way—that is, just like you—in my 20s. From my experience growing up, I was used to not having nice or even merely adequate things, and it was the norm to go without. I'm less cavalier about declaring it entitlement now. Why shouldn't an adult, even a brand new (i.e. young) one, not have their own place? I realized that I didn't have a good reason to justify the status quo (where a home of your own is out of reach), only that it was the status quo, and the thrust of my old position really just came down to something akin to the old saw that Hardship-<X> is good for you because "it builds character"—even though I'd never really found that argument persuasive when I'd encounter it elsewhere. (Just like the old retort "life's not fair", it seemed I'd only ever encounter it from someone in the process of actively trying to screw you over while trying to paint your indignance about it as unreasonable.) Not saying everyone should expect the works, but I can't exactly fault anyone who would be content with a 12x10 kitchen attached to an 8x10 office that doubles as a bedroom but isn't able to have it. And that's without even addressing the fact that we're likely talking about a situation where you're losing all this money on something you didn't even get equity for!
      - didgeoridoo 2y ago
        I don’t know man, it’s not like I said the peasants should be content with their gruel. A private apartment in the center of one of the most desirable ZIP codes on the planet is an inherently limited good. Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy) is kind of the definition of entitlement. And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything, even after that time my housemate attempted to clean their vomit off the bathroom floor at 3 in the morning with the communal Roomba. I guess that was hardship of a sort, but hardship creates friends and memories — I don’t think I built an ounce of “character”, but I had a hell of a time.
  - linguae 2y ago
    It’s not always easy living with roommates (I don’t like it myself), but we all have to make choices. Unless we’re wealthy, we can’t have it all. For many people it’s either roommates or a long commute, and I know people who have roommates and a long commute since that’s all they can afford. It still beats homelessness.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  Zillow lists over 1300 places for rent in Los Angeles for less than $1600 a month, which is easily affordable on a $70k salary.
wolfram74 2y ago
You've done a bit of a bait and switch, "fulfill their dreams" and "decent quality of life" are two very different standards. One, sure, we're in a society and sometimes that calls for sacrifice, the other, if we can't promise a decent life we shouldn't be surprised when people break the contract and act in ways that hurt the common good.
- avg_dev 2y ago
  i don't think i've done a bait and switch and generally don't actually know what you mean by saying that i have done so. my point in that sentence was simply that nothing is promised by life. society does have norms and people do have values. i never said that i don't understand (nor did i intend to imply or portray that i don't) why people would act in ways that are not to, or hurt, "the common good". it is clear why someone who doesn't feel like their life is comfortable when they are trying to better "the common good" would act against that same common good in order to get some peace or enjoyment out of their own existence.
Ekaros 2y ago
Supply and demand, the pay would increase if there was no one willing to take the job. Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.
- Volundr 2y ago
  > Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think you'll find that there's a lot of overlap in the group of people who think this guy should be paid more and those who want more pay for the people you named. > I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities. I'm not sure I'm prepared to cosign on the idea that the guy saving me a trip to pick up my own dinner is producing the same value as the guy educating the next generation of physicts.
  - MrMan 2y ago
    [dead]

poincaredisk 2y ago

>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Of course. On the other hand, one has to wonder which of this two occupations helps humanity more, and it's this the one that's paid better. And if not, should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.

CuriouslyC 2y ago
In the age of precision psychological influence and constant bombardment with low grade mind control, Capitalism is trash. To the most rapacious, the loudest, the most insidious go the spoils. If we're gonna keep the current system we need to slam the ban hammer on advertising and marketing with righteous fury.
nordsieck 2y ago
> should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead. The problem is that everyone has different ideas about what helps society. At least the current system, where people are compensated based on supply and demand, people actually want what's being produced. In contrast to the old soviet system where top down production decisions mean that what's "best for society" is of no use to pretty much anyone except those people who needed to fill their quota.
- elashri 2y ago
  Why do you pick the two extreme situations. Isn't there a possibility of a middle ground?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    The current system is not an extreme. Only concentrating power into the people who will pick what is good for society is extreme.
    - elashri 2y ago

ricksunny 2y ago

And then might the society be worse off for lacking the physics/scientific advancements by not supporting adequately an an individual to remain on the scientific path.

petesergeant 2y ago

The end result of this is that only people who are independently wealthy or who can’t make the private sector work for them end up as profs, which seems like a worse situation for society.

Cheer2171 2y ago

> I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Students at public universities deserve good instructors. Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services. Are you one of those people who thinks that whatever price the market offers for labor is axiomatically fair?

robertlagrant 2y ago
> Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services. We're discussing wages. Wages are all about that rationale. If you make a choice you should abide by it. This is nothing to do with what students "deserve", whatever that means.
medo-bear 2y ago
[flagged]
softsound 2y ago
Public services? Isn't that exactly why he is paid less. Just imagine if he worked somewhere private. Deserve is an interesting phrase, who really does deserve more? The more you go down that rabbit hole the less you'll think people deserve in general. That said. I only have an associate degree and even I made $70k at a regular tech job working with someone with a PhD. I got lucky though before, too bad he didn't.

wesselbindt 2y ago

> But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).

thierrydamiba 2y ago
I’m not exactly sure that’s how the world works…
- karmajunkie 2y ago
  it’s definitely not how the US works, but it should be.
- medo-bear 2y ago
  [flagged]
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  It is if you want to continue educating new physicists. 'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.
- serf 2y ago
  less educators produce less educated, that's absolutely how it works. the incentives, the logistics and finances of how we get to a point like that -- well that's where it gets muddier.
  - elevation 2y ago
    The worry is that by better funding educators we might have to make do with less administrators, which could leave students less administrated.

beachtaxidriver 2y ago

Amen. If the net present value and risk of being a professor paid as well as dealing with corporate B.S. I know which I would do...

oysterville 2y ago

I'm of the mind that if we had the best in the field educating the next generations and compensated them well that we would end up with better qualified graduates. It seems like this would be the result at all levels of education, really. In America we are doing the opposite, and then wondering why the results are sub optimal.

salawat 2y ago

>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is. Why should that employer's dreams take primacy over anyone elses? The answer: there isn't a reason why. All semblance of economic activity is based on a fiction. That fiction has been guided to structurally elevate a subset of people's wishes and motivations over everyone else's, including yours. And you're totally okay with that state of affairs. Useful idiot much? Can at least applaud the guy for sticking to his principles. Sometimes society needs a good nut kick to realize it's destroying itself. That it collectively takes so many ruined lives to do so is the true tragedy of our times.

honestAbe22 2y ago

[dead]

Have7878forever 2y ago

Move to China and Russia. He will be way more appreciated there with significantly lower cost of living. Furthermore he will produce many more important students there in astrophysics than in USA even if he can extend his life by 6x time more. East is the future. Dont waste it in the sunset west. If he truly loves teaching move to China. Humanity future lies in the east in the next 100 years.