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I'm an engineer. I could go into a high-risk career trying to cure cancer, or I could flip houses. By my (admittedly rough and speculative) math, I'd make more

I'm an engineer. I could go into a high-risk career trying to cure cancer, or I could flip houses. By my (admittedly rough and speculative) math, I'd make more money doing the second. This has nothing to do with finance and everything to do with how capitalism privileges owners. Just because I can do something (e.g. cure cancer) doesn't mean I should do it out of some regard for the "public good", requiring great sacrifice, work, stress, and low pay, on my part. I might think differently if I got paid 1 cent for everyone who used my cancer drug, but that's just not how things work today.

nightski 12y ago
In a way this is partly a good thing. If everyone focused on going to space or curing cancer and were unsuccessful for quite some time we'd be in trouble. While there is a place for these endeavors and they are very important we have to be careful not to allocate too much focus to them.
- kmkemp 12y ago
  I disagree. Decisions are made based on risk/reward. Just because the reward is raised doesn't necessarily mean that its ratio is higher than another endeavor's. Economic incentives lining up with the public good is the ultimate goal that produces the best outcomes for everyone.
- copsarebastards 12y ago
  > In a way this is partly a good thing. If everyone focused on going to space or curing cancer and were unsuccessful for quite some time we'd be in trouble. Implicit in this claim is the idea that somehow we need someone to own things. Why is that exactly? In fact, employee-owned cooperatives demonstrate that when the doers own what they're doing, it can have some benefits for all involved.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nightski 12y ago
    You are correct, it was worded poorly. There is no overseeing entity controlling allocation of resources. All I was trying to say is that just because there are people who choose not to work on the high risk/high reward items does not mean they are not valuable. Balance is important.
  - ahomescu1 12y ago
    > Implicit in this claim is the idea that somehow we need someone to own things. Why is that exactly? Tragedy of the commons. When scarce resources are communally owned, they tend to get exploited even worse than when they're privately owned.
    - copsarebastards 12y ago
      I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a comment. Employee-owned cooperatives aren't communally owned, they're employee-owned (as the name indicates). The resources, in this case, are the employees themselves. So you're claiming that employees will exploit themselves more than an employer would?
- hellgas00 12y ago
  H igh risk endeavors in science are worth the risk because when they pay off they may shift the way we have been doing things in the past, which leads to unforeseen opportunities in the future. This is not an insightful thought, but I believe it is usually overlooked. The British Engineer Charles Babbage (Father of the Computer in many respects) wasn't afforded the opportunity to complete the first working mechanical calculator because of cost restrictions by the British Gov't, an invention which could have altered the British course in History. High risk projects in Science and Engineering may rarely pay off, but when they do the ROI is incalculable in many ways. Flipping houses, not so much. Curing cancer is a place holder for any number of fields that are still under-explored. Finance really shouldn't be a driver of growth, especially when the growth is concentrated in public financing of debt, it just doesn't seem sustainable.
cpwright 12y ago
There are plenty of people who lose money flipping houses. It might sound easy, but in practice it isn't. More likely, if you go into a career trying to cure cancer; there is a big pharmaceutical company or research institution behind it. They may be taking a big risk; but the career risk for you personally is not that big. You'll draw a salary even if you don't cure cancer.
rayiner 12y ago
I hate it when people complain about bright kids going into finance instead of STEM. My brother went to an Ivy and majored in physics. He asked me sometime junior year what he should do with his life. He'd already worked in research labs on nanotech, and was seriously considering getting a PhD. I told him to apply for finance and consulting jobs instead. He's glad he went into finance. He gets a ton of responsibility and respect at work, instead of getting dumped on by the hierarchy of a research lab or academic department. And he makes more two years out than PhDs at the peak of their career. Our society rewards those who own or help manage capital, and reserves the best healthcare, education, and housing for those with the most money. At the same time, our industries are structured so that scientists and engineers give up control of the technologies that create the capital in the first place. Entrepreneurship as practiced in Silicon Valley offers a little bit of reprieve from this, but just a little, and who knows how long it will last. In light of all this, I view telling kids to go into science or engineering similarly to telling kids to go pursue theater or art. If it's your burning passion, go ahead, but I don't consider it the most rational choice.
- Chinjut 12y ago
  The complaints are not necessarily directed at individual people who rationally choose careers in finance over other vocations, given the system they live in. The complaints are to a large extent over the fact that our society has been set up this way, with the goal of perhaps trying to change that so that people would feel less incentive/need to abandon science, mathematics, etc., for finance (in multiple senses!).
  - chongli 12y ago
    It hasn't really been set up this way. It didn't even evolve to be this way. It's ultimately a law of nature: ownership of capital yields exponential growth. The more you start with, the faster you grow. Most other sorts of vocations yield linear growth.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      I don't read "has been set up this way" in the parent as necessarily implying agency, but rather as an idiomatic way of referring to the status quo.
sliverstorm 12y ago
What opportunity is there for a traditional engineer to cure cancer (or the like)? As far as I can tell, we can only work indirectly to enable the chemists and biologists who work directly with cancer. Which is good, but you do that by making lab equipment, not by working in a lab.

nightski 12y ago

In a way this is partly a good thing. If everyone focused on going to space or curing cancer and were unsuccessful for quite some time we'd be in trouble. While there is a place for these endeavors and they are very important we have to be careful not to allocate too much focus to them.

kmkemp 12y ago
I disagree. Decisions are made based on risk/reward. Just because the reward is raised doesn't necessarily mean that its ratio is higher than another endeavor's. Economic incentives lining up with the public good is the ultimate goal that produces the best outcomes for everyone.
copsarebastards 12y ago
> In a way this is partly a good thing. If everyone focused on going to space or curing cancer and were unsuccessful for quite some time we'd be in trouble. Implicit in this claim is the idea that somehow we need someone to own things. Why is that exactly? In fact, employee-owned cooperatives demonstrate that when the doers own what they're doing, it can have some benefits for all involved.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nightski 12y ago
  You are correct, it was worded poorly. There is no overseeing entity controlling allocation of resources. All I was trying to say is that just because there are people who choose not to work on the high risk/high reward items does not mean they are not valuable. Balance is important.
- ahomescu1 12y ago
  > Implicit in this claim is the idea that somehow we need someone to own things. Why is that exactly? Tragedy of the commons. When scarce resources are communally owned, they tend to get exploited even worse than when they're privately owned.
  - copsarebastards 12y ago
    I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a comment. Employee-owned cooperatives aren't communally owned, they're employee-owned (as the name indicates). The resources, in this case, are the employees themselves. So you're claiming that employees will exploit themselves more than an employer would?
hellgas00 12y ago
H igh risk endeavors in science are worth the risk because when they pay off they may shift the way we have been doing things in the past, which leads to unforeseen opportunities in the future. This is not an insightful thought, but I believe it is usually overlooked. The British Engineer Charles Babbage (Father of the Computer in many respects) wasn't afforded the opportunity to complete the first working mechanical calculator because of cost restrictions by the British Gov't, an invention which could have altered the British course in History. High risk projects in Science and Engineering may rarely pay off, but when they do the ROI is incalculable in many ways. Flipping houses, not so much. Curing cancer is a place holder for any number of fields that are still under-explored. Finance really shouldn't be a driver of growth, especially when the growth is concentrated in public financing of debt, it just doesn't seem sustainable.

cpwright 12y ago

There are plenty of people who lose money flipping houses. It might sound easy, but in practice it isn't. More likely, if you go into a career trying to cure cancer; there is a big pharmaceutical company or research institution behind it. They may be taking a big risk; but the career risk for you personally is not that big. You'll draw a salary even if you don't cure cancer.

rayiner 12y ago

I hate it when people complain about bright kids going into finance instead of STEM. My brother went to an Ivy and majored in physics. He asked me sometime junior year what he should do with his life. He'd already worked in research labs on nanotech, and was seriously considering getting a PhD. I told him to apply for finance and consulting jobs instead. He's glad he went into finance. He gets a ton of responsibility and respect at work, instead of getting dumped on by the hierarchy of a research lab or academic department. And he makes more two years out than PhDs at the peak of their career. Our society rewards those who own or help manage capital, and reserves the best healthcare, education, and housing for those with the most money. At the same time, our industries are structured so that scientists and engineers give up control of the technologies that create the capital in the first place. Entrepreneurship as practiced in Silicon Valley offers a little bit of reprieve from this, but just a little, and who knows how long it will last. In light of all this, I view telling kids to go into science or engineering similarly to telling kids to go pursue theater or art. If it's your burning passion, go ahead, but I don't consider it the most rational choice.

Chinjut 12y ago
The complaints are not necessarily directed at individual people who rationally choose careers in finance over other vocations, given the system they live in. The complaints are to a large extent over the fact that our society has been set up this way, with the goal of perhaps trying to change that so that people would feel less incentive/need to abandon science, mathematics, etc., for finance (in multiple senses!).
- chongli 12y ago
  It hasn't really been set up this way. It didn't even evolve to be this way. It's ultimately a law of nature: ownership of capital yields exponential growth. The more you start with, the faster you grow. Most other sorts of vocations yield linear growth.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I don't read "has been set up this way" in the parent as necessarily implying agency, but rather as an idiomatic way of referring to the status quo.

sliverstorm 12y ago

What opportunity is there for a traditional engineer to cure cancer (or the like)? As far as I can tell, we can only work indirectly to enable the chemists and biologists who work directly with cancer. Which is good, but you do that by making lab equipment, not by working in a lab.