Okay, but who are you saying are the people who do things that do not have some “measurable” value? (Putting aside the question of just how to measure in some valid way educational value.)
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That’s generous of you.
If it weren’t for accountants, half of the US would go to prison just because of sheer incompetence.
I’ll fall on this grenade Max! How about people that insert themselves as middlemen into the productivity of others. This is not that their work can’t be measured, but that their work benefits themselves far more than anyone else. My best example is high frequency traders. Another example I learned about recently is the diamond trade, where until recent disruptions caused by technology a stone could pass through a dozen hands before reaching its retail buyer.
@LearnedCoward: If it weren’t for lobbyists we wouldn’t need accountants.
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So my wife’s medical practice got taken over by a large hospital group. One thing we noticed was that she had to fill out forms, with the same information on them, five different times, and give them to five different people from five different departments, who all work in the same office building for the same employer.
It could have been one form sent to all five departments. Or better, one form entered into the system, and the departments each pull the needed data. So it can be reasonably assumed that versions of forms asking for the same data were independently designed, reproduced, then distributed. Also collected by different people, and likely entered into the shared computer system by even more people. Plus, having the doctors fill out those forms (by hand, on different days) cuts into the time that could be used actually seeing patients.
I don’t know which ones, but I suspect that four of those five sets of people are producing no value. Negative value if you consider the office space, managers, insurance plans and other expenses required to allow those people to duplicate the work being done by others.
Imagine four nurses instead. I will even accept that it is very important that the data on those forms is required in the system. But it is very unlikely that five teams of people are really required to collect, digitize and process the same data. Honestly, the doctors could have just filled out one form online.
I don’t think it is unreasonable to imagine similar redundancies occurring in most large businesses.
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On the one hand, yes, they aren’t producing anything themselves.
On the other hand to give an example of a “middleman”: Cory’s agent, who sets up his book tours and deals with the publishers and handles publicity… That agent is a middleman, and takes most of the responsibility off of Cory to do anything but the writing bit that he’s good at. If not for agents, author would have far less time for writing, and their work wouldn’t be distributed to nearly as many people.
If you asked Cory, I’d be shocked, or even flabbergasted, if he said he’d want to do without an agent. Even though agents are middlemen, producing nothing themselves, and taking a cut of the profit from authors who do all of the “productive” work.
I’d imagine a lot of the “middlemen” out there are there for the same reason: to provide a specialized service so that the productive people can spend their time producing.
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I consider that a terrible example of a middleman. That agent is doing non-redundant work for Cory inc, that could not be eliminated by direct contact, presuming Cory does not have the time for those chores. The skillset of a middleman in the diamond trade is simply knowing who to buy from and who to sell to. It’s proprietary info with no value added.
But that is actually not that common. In our economy middlemen more typically are consolidators or distributors, which is actually adding value. Not every dairy farmer wants to bring his milk to the supermarket, so usually there’s a COOP or other entity that brings it to the packer, who then distributes it.
What I was critical of is the various entities that set up barriers to us doing what we need to do that require their blessing or taking their cut. Often it’s lawyers, the US has far more than any other industrialized nation. Finance has got their teeth around 20% of the US GDP. I don’t think there’s a fair return on that investment.
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Google Ngram also tells me that “underwater basket weaving” took off as a phrase from 1960. I have a feeling that the respected academics you refer to werent the ones with advanced degrees in nonsense subjects.
There is absolutely no reason that these post-isms should automatically be deserving of any intellectual respect whatsoever. If anything all @orenwolf needed to do was point to the Sokal Affair as the perfect example of even insiders pointing out that the emperor was indeed naked.
As for the think tanks, theres been plenty of writing (and hand wringing) about why there is a dearth of influential think tanks putting forth positions other than what you describe.
To tie this to the point above, academic intellectuals get respect from society when society clearly sees, or is persuaded to see value from their work.
Some of those vast demographics see value, some dont even once exposed to the programs. It isnt axiomatic that all work in those areas creates any value for the entire demographics in question.
To be clear and full disclosure, I come from a somewhat academic family (two of whom made their careers teaching in state universities) and personally have a “useless” liberal arts BA. I strongly believe in the “well rounded” college education ideal but do also believe that if academia/intellectuals are to be returned to positions of honor they damn well better do something to earn those positions.
Most definitely those exist in the corporate world. Of course there is also an organizational concept of society that corporations have a duty to crate employment rather than sheer fiduciary duty to stockholders. I can see both views.
That latter is a relatively recent 1970s creation of a supply side economic theorist. It’s one of the causes of the inequality crisis. The NYTimes had an article recently on that person, but I’m too tired to find it.
This claim seems odd to me as I’ve read things much older than the 1970s on the subject. Like more than 100 years older than that.
$70k a year for private college has created a lot of hostility to academia in general.
Weird what happens when people start treating something for the public good like education as if it’s a luxury item to be sold.
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And of course, the proper place to place that hostility are the lowest ranking members of that institution.
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No, but that’s the face of the system we see hear & about most. It’s like when someone’s pissed about something ridiculous at a fast food joint, there’s no one to yell at but the poor kid behind the counter, they don’t get to yell at the executive who made the policy.
It’s modern ascendancy is widely attributed to Milton Friedman, no surprise. A sociopathic corporate culture has led directly to inequality, since the philosophy requires the corp win at any cost.
So when did the focus for a corporation change from being a responsible citizen to prioritizing maximizing shareholder value. It all started with an article by renowned economist Milton Friedman in 1970 who said the “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Other economists picked up the ball and ran with it, declaring that executives and board members were essentially “employees” of the shareholders and worked for them. The idea certainly appealed to shareholders in the 1970s who were enduring a decade of a sluggish stock market. When the Reagan revolution came, deregulation and the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy would create investment and innovation only enhanced the supposed primacy of the shareholders. And then hedge funds and activist investors used and continue use the idea to pressure companies to maximize returns at all costs., primarily for their benefit. The idea also led to the ever-growing CEO pay as rewards for increasing shareholder returns and the counterproductive focus on quarterly earnings.
Friedman’s article was ferocious. Any business executives who pursued a goal other than making money were, he said, “unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.” They were guilty of “analytical looseness and lack of rigor.” They had even turned themselves into “unelected government officials” who were illegally taxing employers and customers.
How did the Nobel-prize winner arrive at these conclusions? It’s curious that a paper which accuses others of “analytical looseness and lack of rigor” assumes its conclusion before it begins. “In a free-enterprise, private-property system,” the article states flatly at the outset as an obvious truth requiring no justification or proof, “a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business,” namely the shareholders.
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Sure, but the person yelling at that kid has bigger problems than just a messed up food order. You (not you specifically) need to be above just turning to the only thing within fist range into the acceptable target of your ire just because you can reach it.
Yet the hatred towards others is celebrated by many, and in general glossed over by still more.
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Not defending it, just explaining it. People know there’s no way their voice will ever be heard by someone with actual power and it frustrates them. Gently explaining, as I do, to a kid behind the burger counter that the computer that they punch has overcharged me because it’s programmed to will not ever get me results, and my patronage will not be missed.
Nor will my son be missed by the elite schools he might have attended, until vast numbers of kids are willing to vote with their feet and abandon the “selective college” game that they don’t actually have the ante for. But the American middle class isn’t ready for that. Yet.
Telephone sanitizers?
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My hearing impairment has resulted in some lip reading ability but I’m still unclear of the meaning of this reply.
In short, “Okay.”
Just that I disagree with you on this issue, you KNOW I disagree with you on this issue, because we’ve had these debates before. It means, you have your view of this, I have mine, and I don’t believe either of us would really benefit from yet another rehash of our clearly opposed views.
I’ll happily talk punk and punk production with you all day long though.
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