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Comment by thechao | Hacker News Reader

They've become 14.6x more efficient at ... what? Increasing their pay? C'mon.

Like it or not, they've become more efficient at maximizing shareholder returns. 1978 to present included all sorts of financial shenanigans designed to turn a company from the old school "return on assets" model to a financial vehicle that profits on the spread between it's revenue stream and financing costs. I think it's shit too, but the job turned from running a company go making money appear, and the pay went with it.

Don't hate the player, hate the game (seriously, the system is screwed up horribly)

Genuine question, have you tried hating the game and observed the response? I'm curious if your experience has been the same as mine?

yes actually - I spoke with a contractor at giant banks, at a high level of security, and with it compensation. The casual stories he told were related to beyond-belief daily animosity, racist language, whoring references and other verbal attacks and harsh emotional content. The whole thing was told in the same breath as I get this much per hour (a lot), I travelled to this place and got this hotel, I got this bonus.. in the same breath.

There is more going on with people and work and money than most people seem to acknowledge when speaking in general.

Any idea why this change occurred?

I know it’s probably multifaceted, but my first thought was that increasing inflation since the 70s has meant that there is an incentive to have as much debt as possible, the hope being that it will be inflated away

The Friedman doctrine[1] + hyperstition[2].

1. Friedman, Milton. "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits." The New York Times, 13 September 1970, https://web.archive.org/web/20230913104415/https://www.nytim...

2. Carstens, Delphi. "HYPERSTITION." Xenopraxis, n.d., http://xenopraxis.net/readings/carstens_hyperstition.pdf.

With the complete end of the gold standard in the 1970s, the government/fed's been free to create as much USD as it wants. The benefit of newly created money goes to those who spend it first (it's essentially a wealth transfer from those who get it last to those who get it first), and it's the banking/financial system that generally gets first dibs on this newly created money. This means there's a continuous, persistent transfer of wealth from the real economy to the financial system. In theory this wouldn't happen if the fed instead created money by e.g. dropping it out of helicopters equally to everybody (or direct transfers to their bank accounts), but the whole financial industry has a vested interested in keeping the current approach.

This is such a simple and clear explanation of the financialisation of society I just wanted to keep a reference

> Don't hate the player, hate the game (seriously, the system is screwed up horribly)

I say it is fair to hare the player unless they are working to change/improve the "screwed up" game they are playing.

Price is based on how difficult it is to find someone that won’t drive a massive company awry, not based on them becoming better.

Like Carly Fiorina? The pay for CEOs is set by the board, and the board of most large companies is made up of CEO's from other large companies. It's the private equivalent of plutocracy.

The board is not made of other CEOs

The person you're replying to is suggesting that their pay rates are inelastic due to scarcity.

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