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The unemployed will not be considered

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Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#61
post #45
post #38

If you needed further evidence, this suggests that there are ridiculous inefficiencies in matching up labor and jobs that you could make money solving. (In this case, caused by the dating site conundrum: there are more men then women, causing men to send out lots of messages without much thought, causing women to be very choosy in responding to messages, causing frustrated men to send more messages, causing women to…

If you needed further evidence, this suggests that there are ridiculous inefficiencies in matching up labor and jobs that you could make money solving. There are ridiculous inefficiencies, but they exist do to some completely screwed up assumptions people make, or that they just blindly follow out of deference to common wisdom. In order for someone to make money solving these problems, they'd need to convince the par…

Sorry, but you're horrifyingly correct.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#62
post #38

If you needed further evidence, this suggests that there are ridiculous inefficiencies in matching up labor and jobs that you could make money solving. (In this case, caused by the dating site conundrum: there are more men then women, causing men to send out lots of messages without much thought, causing women to be very choosy in responding to messages, causing frustrated men to send more messages, causing women to…

This situation makes up a good portion of an intro game theory course - the section is usually titled "games with asymmetric information", the problem is described as "the market for lemons", and the solution is described as "signaling devices", all of which are ridiculously un-Googlable terms, unfortunately. The economists who noticed this phenomena won a Nobel Prize for it, so there's a good indication that it's well recognized.

Also, a ridiculously amount of money is already made compensating for this, and we tend to hate the industries that make it. Consider this: almost the entire higher education industry is devoted to letting unemployed young people signal that they are, in fact, fit for the labor market despite never having held any job. The certification industry takes over that function for older workers, letting them signal that despite being out of work or wanting to switch fields, they can perform the job they're being hired for. A major portion of the open-source industry is driven by programmers who do that more directly: by writing code on their own time, not locked up by NDA, they signal future employers that they can write good code and increase their value on the open market.

Another interesting observation: one way to get rid of the problem would be to make all information public. If all of your past work products, private statements, interactions, personal beliefs, etc. were always available to anyone who wished to look, then prospective employers could always completely and thoroughly evaluate whether they wished to work with you. And vice versa: companies that act blatantly stupidly or crookedly would have their stupidity and malfeasance exposed to the world, and everyone would refuse to do business with them. It's like Foucault's Panopticon, yet instead of having a single authority watch everybody, everybody can watch everybody else.

Somehow I don't see this being politically acceptable, though.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#63
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably wouldn't have used a pic of a befuddled looking black guy as the sole picture for an article about the unemployed.

Again, why? Blacks are technically just as likely to be unemployed as whites.

Technicallly, they're almost twice as likely to be unemployed as whites:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm

Which is why using a black man for the picture isn't particularly smart. It's offensive because it's true, and nearly any conclusion you can draw from it is going to piss off someone.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably wouldn't have used a pic of a befuddled looking black guy as the sole picture for an article about the unemployed.

Again, why? Blacks are technically just as likely to be unemployed as whites.

If you account for blacks who are ex-felons or on parole who can't get jobs, black people are much more likely to be unemployed than whites.

A Western study shows that black people with a criminal history are half as likely to get a return call than whites with similar history in low level positions. Further, even for blacks without a criminal history,this same study shows that they are about half as likely to get a return call than whites with the same background.

This doesn't even include the roughly 15% of the black population currently being held in U.S. prisons who may or may not eventually be released and find that no one will hire them.

Source: UC Irvine Criminology, Law & Society C7 taught by Professor Seron Spring 2010.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#65
I've put up job postings in the past and you get a lot of mindlessly submitted resumes that have nothing to do with what you're looking for. I can only imagine that number of mindless, irrelevant submissions has increased with the recession.

Realistically, a company would take a person with the skillset and credentials they're looking for even if they're unemployed. They just don't want 500 irrelevant submissions for every 5 good ones, and "UNEMPLOYED NOT CONSIDERED" probably works more effective than "PLEASE ACTUALLY FRIGGING READ OUR POSTING AND ONLY APPLY IF YOU'RE A REAL CANDIDATE" - I'd still apply if I thought I was a relevant candidate and wanted a job though, I think this is largely much ado about nothing.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#67
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, why? Blacks are technically just as likely to be unemployed as whites.

Technicallly, they're almost twice as likely to be unemployed as whites: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm Which is why using a black man for the picture isn't particularly smart. It's offensive because it's true, and nearly any conclusion you can draw from it is going to piss off someone.

> It's offensive because it's true ...

Something about that sentence isn't right.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#68
post #38

If you needed further evidence, this suggests that there are ridiculous inefficiencies in matching up labor and jobs that you could make money solving. (In this case, caused by the dating site conundrum: there are more men then women, causing men to send out lots of messages without much thought, causing women to be very choosy in responding to messages, causing frustrated men to send more messages, causing women to…

This situation makes up a good portion of an intro game theory course - the section is usually titled "games with asymmetric information", the problem is described as "the market for lemons", and the solution is described as "signaling devices", all of which are ridiculously un-Googlable terms, unfortunately. The economists who noticed this phenomena won a Nobel Prize for it, so there's a good indication that it's we…

This situation makes up a good portion of an intro game theory course - the section is usually titled "games with asymmetric information", the problem is described as "the market for lemons", and the solution is described as "signaling devices", all of which are ridiculously un-Googlable terms, unfortunately.

If you want to learn more about this, check out Ken Binmore's Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction, which is pretty readable, and one of the major original books, Theory of games and economic behavior, by John Von Neumann.

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#69
post #38

If you needed further evidence, this suggests that there are ridiculous inefficiencies in matching up labor and jobs that you could make money solving. (In this case, caused by the dating site conundrum: there are more men then women, causing men to send out lots of messages without much thought, causing women to be very choosy in responding to messages, causing frustrated men to send more messages, causing women to…

Dash that hope. Dating adverts specifically targeted to people already in relationships:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/tv-advertisem...

Re: The unemployed will not be considered

#70
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But what does it mean to be employed? Receiving a paycheck? RMS doesn't take a paycheck from MIT, so he's both homeless and unemployed by the standard of receiving a paycheck and having an apartment/home. Yet for the right position, he's infinitely qualified." RMS may not get a paycheck from MIT, but he is making money. He has at least one book for sale and charges for signed pictures of himself. I am pretty sure he…

Right. The point is that he could be considered unemployed despite making money.

As one of my friends put it, "Livin' the dream."
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