5 ms·

Agreed, doing what you love should be a privilege reserved for the affluent! She was a fool to dream beyond her class; thankfully, she's paying for it now. I

by jnovek 17y ago

Agreed, doing what you love should be a privilege reserved for the affluent! She was a fool to dream beyond her class; thankfully, she's paying for it now. I hope it stands as a lesson to others.

cynicalkane 17y ago
I know you were being sarcastic, but this is 100% true. Doing what you love, instead of what is useful, is a privilege, not a right.
- j_baker 17y ago
  That's only if doing what you love is truly not useful, which it usually isn't. I'd say that 90% of the time, a person who does what they love is more useful than a person who does what they don't love.
- jnovek 17y ago
  Do you do what you love? Then you must be very lucky. I know that I thank my lucky stars every day that what I love doing also happens to be fabulously lucrative. It disgusts me that we live in one of the most wealthy societies in the world and arbitrary criteria, such as the class or gender you were born with, still determine much about your ability to succeed in and enjoy life. Rhetorical question of self-examination: how would you feel if she were a math professor instead? Being an academic mathematician is just as self-indulgent as anything in the humanities.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - pwnstigator 17y ago
    On humanities and "self-indulgence": I hate the corporatization of academia in general, but professors really dicked themselves over when they took the attitude that their research was their "real work" and that teaching was commodity grunt work to be delegated to TAs as much as possible. Star physics researchers can get away with this-- just as, to use a fictional example, Dr. House can slough off his clinic duty-- because they are retained for their brilliant ideas. Most academics can't. This attitude fails the humanities especially, because the entire point of these departments' existence is to transmit culture from one generation to the next (e.g. teaching). Most humanities research (unlike in the sciences) is not very useful, especially if only academics can understand it.
  - catzaa 17y ago
    Even the poorest American have boundless opportunities. Unfortunately most people chose not to take these opportunities and then demand equality of outcome.
    - pwnstigator 17y ago
      Even the poorest American have boundless opportunities. You know nothing about poverty. Unfortunately most people chose not to take these opportunities and then demand equality of outcome. Almost no one expects or even wants "equality of outcome", but we do want a world where people are free from worries about health care (due to our third-world health care system) and meeting basic needs. You simply have a better society (more innovation, more creativity, happier and healthier people) if peoples' lives aren't clogged up by maintenance.
      - catzaa 17y ago
        > You know nothing about poverty. I grew up in a relatively poor family in a third world country (in a rural area). So, don't make baseless assumptions. > but we do want a world where people are free from worries about health care (due to our third-world health care system) and meeting basic needs. These (healthcare, education, etc...) are privileges. You are lucky to have it – but it is still a privilege and not something that you can demand. Btw, Europeans go to the USA for advanced health care (such as Cancer treatment). Ever heard of the MD Anderson cancer centre? It is the best in the world. Guess what, hospitals and doctors do not just pop into existence. They have to be paid and everything costs money. You want all this to be free (at least for you). I am quite sceptical of this – someone has to pay for it. It looks like everyone wants free healthcare and no-one wants to pay for it. > You simply have a better society (more innovation, more creativity, happier and healthier people) if peoples' lives aren't clogged up by maintenance. It seems that the list of entitlements only gets longer and the list of responsibilities gets shorter. Wasn’t the USA founded on the principle that everyone can pursue their happiness? It seems more like you want government to guarantee it. I think that this says more about the current generation of young Americans than of the American system.
        17y ago
  - defen 17y ago
    > how would you feel if she were a math professor instead? Being an academic mathematician is just as self-indulgent as anything in the humanities. The academic mathematician who wants to make more money can probably get a job in industry, or learn an in-demand skill such as programming, stats, etc. An assistant professor of Native American studies probably doesn't have the same capacity (to put it bluntly: is not as smart), so it was a much bigger gamble for her to take on so much debt to become a professor.
- jon_dahl 17y ago
  This is true for many people. But if you have a choice - and large portions of the world do - you're better off being underpaid and enjoying your work, than being paid well and hating it.
- pwnstigator 17y ago
  It's a good thing we have large, inefficient, hierarchical corporations. Having most working people doing things they hate that are also pretty useless really puts the damn proles in their place. (Sarcasm, obviously.)
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  And yet persistent threads in entrepreneurial discussions on HN is 'find your passion, the follow it' and 'make something great, if you build it they will come'. I agree with these ideas, the whole point of a large open economy (and one that is compounded by the internet) is that there's a market for everything and if you're really good at what you do then you'll get by. The point of meritocracy is to reward excellence. And, you know, this lady excels in the field of native american studies. That might seem frivolous and useless to other people, but suppose we pursue your thought to its logical conclusion and let that field die off because the economic benefits are not clearly quantifiable. Who will teach it if anyone wants to study it in the future? It's not like we can import people from Asian or Europe, is it? They don't mint scholars of our indigenous culture. I'm disturbed by your suggestion that the history and anthropology of a country's indigenous culture (even one that has been displaced) lacks any economic utility.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Just because there's a market for everything doesn't mean there's a living wage attached to every possible activity. I think you're getting yourself a little tangled up here.
  - istari 17y ago
    Totally agree. "They" should be paying her a lot more because it's completely unfair to let the market set wages.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
Yes, doing whatever you want regardless of it's commercial viability is a privilege reserved for the affluent. Perhaps one day we will become so wealthy that robots do all the work, and people don't have to do anything they don't like. Until then, most of us need to do work that benefits others in order to survive.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I think her work probably does benefit others. Maybe the benefits of teaching the history and situation of a defeated indigenous culture are not all that tangible, but I suggest that that is in part due to a weakness in our social mechanism of assigning value. The implication (probably unintentional) of your suggestion is that we'd be better off as a society if this subject weren't even available for study (since people wouldn't be wasting their productivity on learning to teach it), giving rise to a curious paradox wherein ignorance is considered more valuable than knowledge. This concept only works as long as you assume a number of people with a surplus of economic assets who are willing to work at a net loss because they love teaching. Really, I don't think this is a sustainable path over the long term.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    Her work does not benefit others very much as demonstrated by their revealed preferences: no one is willing to pay her much for her teaching. I'm saying that we'd be better off as a society if most people who want to become scholars in Native American Studies don't do it, and become nurses instead. Less fun for them, but great for those of us who want the services of a nurse more than the services of a professor. We compensate them for the lack of fun with money.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      Again, your syllogism is faulty. You assume her work is fairly valued in exact proportion to the income it generates. But what of the possibility that her department's revenues subsidize the high cost of other departments, such as physics labs or in-demand business speakers? It's not cheap to participate in a program like this, especially not at a decent school. If there was very low demand, you would expect this to be cheaper, no? http://www.stateuniversity.com/program/05-0202/American-Indian-Native-American-Studies http://www.stateuniversity.com/program/05-0202/American-Indi... I can't get with your thesis that she's being poorly paid because she's choosing to have more fun. It sounds as if she's worked extremely hard to get to the academic level she is at. And if you sample people, I imagine that most would expect that a professorship at an ivy-league university would pay well, since you have to be at or near the top of your field to land such a job.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

by jnovek 17y ago

Agreed, doing what you love should be a privilege reserved for the affluent! She was a fool to dream beyond her class; thankfully, she's paying for it now. I hope it stands as a lesson to others.

cynicalkane 17y ago

I know you were being sarcastic, but this is 100% true. Doing what you love, instead of what is useful, is a privilege, not a right.

j_baker 17y ago
That's only if doing what you love is truly not useful, which it usually isn't. I'd say that 90% of the time, a person who does what they love is more useful than a person who does what they don't love.
jnovek 17y ago
Do you do what you love? Then you must be very lucky. I know that I thank my lucky stars every day that what I love doing also happens to be fabulously lucrative. It disgusts me that we live in one of the most wealthy societies in the world and arbitrary criteria, such as the class or gender you were born with, still determine much about your ability to succeed in and enjoy life. Rhetorical question of self-examination: how would you feel if she were a math professor instead? Being an academic mathematician is just as self-indulgent as anything in the humanities.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- pwnstigator 17y ago
  On humanities and "self-indulgence": I hate the corporatization of academia in general, but professors really dicked themselves over when they took the attitude that their research was their "real work" and that teaching was commodity grunt work to be delegated to TAs as much as possible. Star physics researchers can get away with this-- just as, to use a fictional example, Dr. House can slough off his clinic duty-- because they are retained for their brilliant ideas. Most academics can't. This attitude fails the humanities especially, because the entire point of these departments' existence is to transmit culture from one generation to the next (e.g. teaching). Most humanities research (unlike in the sciences) is not very useful, especially if only academics can understand it.
- catzaa 17y ago
  Even the poorest American have boundless opportunities. Unfortunately most people chose not to take these opportunities and then demand equality of outcome.
  - pwnstigator 17y ago
    Even the poorest American have boundless opportunities. You know nothing about poverty. Unfortunately most people chose not to take these opportunities and then demand equality of outcome. Almost no one expects or even wants "equality of outcome", but we do want a world where people are free from worries about health care (due to our third-world health care system) and meeting basic needs. You simply have a better society (more innovation, more creativity, happier and healthier people) if peoples' lives aren't clogged up by maintenance.
    - catzaa 17y ago
      > You know nothing about poverty. I grew up in a relatively poor family in a third world country (in a rural area). So, don't make baseless assumptions. > but we do want a world where people are free from worries about health care (due to our third-world health care system) and meeting basic needs. These (healthcare, education, etc...) are privileges. You are lucky to have it – but it is still a privilege and not something that you can demand. Btw, Europeans go to the USA for advanced health care (such as Cancer treatment). Ever heard of the MD Anderson cancer centre? It is the best in the world. Guess what, hospitals and doctors do not just pop into existence. They have to be paid and everything costs money. You want all this to be free (at least for you). I am quite sceptical of this – someone has to pay for it. It looks like everyone wants free healthcare and no-one wants to pay for it. > You simply have a better society (more innovation, more creativity, happier and healthier people) if peoples' lives aren't clogged up by maintenance. It seems that the list of entitlements only gets longer and the list of responsibilities gets shorter. Wasn’t the USA founded on the principle that everyone can pursue their happiness? It seems more like you want government to guarantee it. I think that this says more about the current generation of young Americans than of the American system.
      - 17y ago
- defen 17y ago
  > how would you feel if she were a math professor instead? Being an academic mathematician is just as self-indulgent as anything in the humanities. The academic mathematician who wants to make more money can probably get a job in industry, or learn an in-demand skill such as programming, stats, etc. An assistant professor of Native American studies probably doesn't have the same capacity (to put it bluntly: is not as smart), so it was a much bigger gamble for her to take on so much debt to become a professor.
jon_dahl 17y ago
This is true for many people. But if you have a choice - and large portions of the world do - you're better off being underpaid and enjoying your work, than being paid well and hating it.
pwnstigator 17y ago
It's a good thing we have large, inefficient, hierarchical corporations. Having most working people doing things they hate that are also pretty useless really puts the damn proles in their place. (Sarcasm, obviously.)
anigbrowl 17y ago
And yet persistent threads in entrepreneurial discussions on HN is 'find your passion, the follow it' and 'make something great, if you build it they will come'. I agree with these ideas, the whole point of a large open economy (and one that is compounded by the internet) is that there's a market for everything and if you're really good at what you do then you'll get by. The point of meritocracy is to reward excellence. And, you know, this lady excels in the field of native american studies. That might seem frivolous and useless to other people, but suppose we pursue your thought to its logical conclusion and let that field die off because the economic benefits are not clearly quantifiable. Who will teach it if anyone wants to study it in the future? It's not like we can import people from Asian or Europe, is it? They don't mint scholars of our indigenous culture. I'm disturbed by your suggestion that the history and anthropology of a country's indigenous culture (even one that has been displaced) lacks any economic utility.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Just because there's a market for everything doesn't mean there's a living wage attached to every possible activity. I think you're getting yourself a little tangled up here.
- istari 17y ago
  Totally agree. "They" should be paying her a lot more because it's completely unfair to let the market set wages.

yummyfajitas 17y ago

Yes, doing whatever you want regardless of it's commercial viability is a privilege reserved for the affluent. Perhaps one day we will become so wealthy that robots do all the work, and people don't have to do anything they don't like. Until then, most of us need to do work that benefits others in order to survive.

anigbrowl 17y ago
I think her work probably does benefit others. Maybe the benefits of teaching the history and situation of a defeated indigenous culture are not all that tangible, but I suggest that that is in part due to a weakness in our social mechanism of assigning value. The implication (probably unintentional) of your suggestion is that we'd be better off as a society if this subject weren't even available for study (since people wouldn't be wasting their productivity on learning to teach it), giving rise to a curious paradox wherein ignorance is considered more valuable than knowledge. This concept only works as long as you assume a number of people with a surplus of economic assets who are willing to work at a net loss because they love teaching. Really, I don't think this is a sustainable path over the long term.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Her work does not benefit others very much as demonstrated by their revealed preferences: no one is willing to pay her much for her teaching. I'm saying that we'd be better off as a society if most people who want to become scholars in Native American Studies don't do it, and become nurses instead. Less fun for them, but great for those of us who want the services of a nurse more than the services of a professor. We compensate them for the lack of fun with money.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    Again, your syllogism is faulty. You assume her work is fairly valued in exact proportion to the income it generates. But what of the possibility that her department's revenues subsidize the high cost of other departments, such as physics labs or in-demand business speakers? It's not cheap to participate in a program like this, especially not at a decent school. If there was very low demand, you would expect this to be cheaper, no? http://www.stateuniversity.com/program/05-0202/American-Indian-Native-American-Studies http://www.stateuniversity.com/program/05-0202/American-Indi... I can't get with your thesis that she's being poorly paid because she's choosing to have more fun. It sounds as if she's worked extremely hard to get to the academic level she is at. And if you sample people, I imagine that most would expect that a professorship at an ivy-league university would pay well, since you have to be at or near the top of your field to land such a job.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]