870 karma · joined November 8, 2010
In other words, you're telling me both people and organisations are imperfect?! Shocking.
Sarcasm aside: really, it is shocking how SW engineers could come to think that any of the inexact, data-free, human-judgement-driven sides of business are optimal--simply from the theoretical argument that a market is involved. A little economics is a dangerous thing.
I suggest starting from the assumption that everything can be improved, unless proven otherwise.
Given that background, given that people are trying to improve the recruiting of engineers, given the penalty applied to people who recruit for the standard package, given the rewards for those who recruit accurately to their needs, .... why does the "irrationality" persist?
As great as Arch's documentation is (best in all linuces I've tried), I still prefer to have some nice defaults so I can get stuff done whilst learning the knobs.
::starts swiping fingers on a printed page to zoom in the text:: Hey, what the heck is wrong with this thing?
Of course. That's why I used the word "implementation". But I thought you had some kind of Marxist critique in mind that relates to some of the capitalistic aspects of the USA. (Since that is what this article is about.)
19th century Marxist theory doesn't have the answer, but it frames these issues in an important way.
Can you describe how you think it frames the present topic?
For anyone who cares to pick up the thread, steveklabnik has left you with:
Marxism is really about a methodology than a strict set of answers: you use the tools of dialectics and historical materialism to produce a scientific analysis
I understand what you mean. I can see how that relationship might be important to the theory. But what I said about "classes" (bad word: s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. So if we're going to discuss whether, in fact, workers lost more wealth than capitalists (or, s/capitalists/correct terminology/), those empirical issues should still be addressed.
For example, I may be a "worker bee" consultant at IBM, but holding stock factually altered my exposure to wealth shocks.
You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time.
Fair enough.
Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down.
oscilloscope posted a part of Marx's theory that's hopefully topical and has some insight to share with those of us who haven't yet set aside the time to read something long. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to want to discuss that.
harvey
Thanks for the references, I will keep them in mind. I love video lectures.
There is no 'middle class' or even 'upper class,' these are vulgar economists' terms.
OK, all I intended was rough percentiles. Let's say the 30th–60th percentiles are "all house", 60th–99th are "house and equities", and >99th may be invested in a hedge fund. Speaking of the USA.
I don't mean to imply some unified psychology to a social class, or anything like that.
yummyfajitas, that may shift compensation more towards wage/salary rather than benefits. What is it going to do about the unemployed youth?
I haven't read Marx, but if you two have, then maybe you can explain what feature of the Immiseration thesis is acting here, what changed when in the economic or political landscape, etc., in order to correspond with the evidence.
On the broad whole, over multiple generations, "capitalism" seems to have been good for workers: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzdx1tJidd1qc38e9o2_500.pn... (via @delong)
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As far as the crisis theory goes: is it true that workers' wealth was destroyed more than let's say upper-middle-class to upper class wealth? Stock prices declined a lot more than home prices in 2009. (Important because the medium and lower quantiles' wealth is mostly the house—but higher quantiles own liquid assets like stock shares. Some of the lower quantiles also have pensions coming to them; pension funds invest in equities and bonds and CDO's and other things. I don't know if pension funds experienced a greater hit than, let's say, hedge funds (which only take top-quantile money).) So in order to justify that "the workers" lost more wealth than "the rich" (who, obviously, have more to lose)—I'd want to see some numbers on decline in home values versus other assets, as a start.
It sure sounds sustainable.
I am not an economist. Is this view in any way valid?
But you're quoting an economist.
Am I seeing the right things?… What are the other causes? What can we do?
I don't know if you remember the standard US economist's story for rising wage inequality in the late 90's and early 00's. It was "skill-biased technological change" or "perhaps trade". (I translate that as "No f___ing clue.")
If any economists have figured out why wage:GDP ratios are dropping, I haven't heard that explanation.
(Actually I have heard one but haven't thoroughly looked into it: declining union membership rates roughly anti correlate with the http://i.imgur.com/u6aU2.gif.)
Of course, the weak are to be looked down upon!
May John Galt bless the boot of your heel as you crush those idiots who haven't figured out what DO they do that's valuable.
I'll be thinking of you next time I toss a Rails book at a homeless person and tell them to stop whining.
Not everyone in the world who's good at something gets paid for it.
And while it's great that you got rewarded for being productive, that doesn't mean it will always happen for everyone else.
The dark side to "Make your own success" is that "You're on your own."
"Life's not fair", bellum omnium. But the reason to talk about fairness is that it's something to strive for and insofar as we can make things fairer (like through SEC regulation) we should.
Nobody's saying the losers here are catastrophically equivalent to a war zone. But worthy of sympathy? Sure. Just because you're rich doesn't mean things can't suck for you, subjectively.
Also, here is what @bgmasters has already said about reproducing the content: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22922727433/read-share-p...
"""
The Book of Tea[2]... requires a mutual understanding between the artist and the spectator:
> The sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art appreciation must be based on mutual concession. The spectator must cultivate the proper attitude for receiving the message, as the artist must know how to impart it.
And the success of “People Staring at Computers” is based on condemnation rather than mutual concession. In a way, inviting condemnation can be the most effective way of imparting a message.
I think Duchamp understood the possibilities of condemnation as an alternative to mutual concession. He addresses this in his short essay, “The Creative Act“ [3]. He says once an artist gives their work to the spectator, it’s up to the spectator to make a decision about that work.
"""
Had this article come out at the same time, I think that discussion would have gone better.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4124275