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In a company he'd get paied for working outside his job schedules. And if the market could find the right price for something, capitalism wouldn't be such a fai

• jerf 12y ago
  But I can't resist pointing out here that we're talking about a University. It's universities that have been hotbeds of criticizing capitalism for decades. It's probably university-educated, university-created, and university-supported ideas that prompted your comment in your first place. It's universities doing everything they can to foster hatred of "capitalism" and telling you how horrible it is in every way they can. And when you're not looking or listening, they turn right around and pay people exactly what the market will bear and pocket the difference. (At least, to your way of thinking. That's not really the best way to think of it, but for rhetorical purposes I'll accept your way for the sake of argument here.) I feel genuinely bad for this person, who sounds very good at what is actually a very hard job that even a "mere" Physics PhD is not adequate qualification for (evidence: many of them still suck at teaching physics). But I still can't help but read the complaints about the coldness of capitalism here with a bit of a raised eyebrow. This is a University. No excuses! If there's any entity anywhere that ought to be paying what the professor "the right price" without reference to "cold" market facts right now, with no prompting, no public campaign, just doing it, it's a University. Stop talking and show me how much better your way is than capitalism... but, oh, wait, it's apparently just raw capitalism with a wafer-thin moralistic sheen drawn over it. And no, there's nothing even remotely exceptional about this one case. We've had a stream of articles on HN that establish how this is absolutely the norm across the board, so no escape out that hatch. Perhaps those of you who have gotten your ideas about capitalism that ultimately source from the University system ought to reconsider whether your source is that reliable, if they can't put their own ideas into action.
  • danielweber 12y ago
    This is one of the reasons I would love to see the adjunct teachers unionize and strike. The ivory-tower professors love telling how great unions are for every other industry; why should they be left out of the awesomeness?
  • wfo 12y ago
    Right. This was the case many years ago (at least in the US) but now universities are essentially for profit corporations run by MBAs who care nothing for the mission of the institution, overloaded with administrative parasites who latch on to any profitable industry and spit platitudes about 'education' and then turn around and stab it in the back. There has been a massive shift in governance of universities; if you go to any university you will see the faculty (read: the people who actually do the work of the university and are public intellectuals) have almost zero power, a token appointment or two in the puppet university governing body, not the board which makes the real decisions. This is happening for a number of reasons, partially because the short-term corporate profit agenda has infiltrated every industry no matter how noble (see: health care. Accountants decide what treatment you get, not a doctor. Businesspeople decide which doctors and nurses are doing a good job based on profits and cost-cutting, not a standard of care), which is really a result of a cut in funding. It's essentially a result of a shift in culture; towards a culture indoctrinated into the religion of economics, valuing things only for their potential profit, using economic measures even when (especially when) they are inappropriate. Defunding art, education, health care, infrastructure, safety nets, anything with intangible or even long-term tangible value in favor of things which show up in short-term metrics. It's especially prevalent among youth. Ask a college kid what's important to him; he'll say making money, period point blank. Everything else is secondary, if it even exists. Our world is a lot more cutt-throat than it was even 50 years ago, when intellectuals and professionals were respected, and there was a healthy middle class, not a quickly disappearing one, full of people trying to tread water in it or claw their way out by tooth and nail before being "middle class" means no more than barely eking out an existence for the short years you're healthy to work at maximum productivity, but only with the permission of a high ranking member of the owning class (i.e. a 'job').