81–90 of 206 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you shouldn't have opinions on private equity if you find it hopelessly confusing.
I said the article was incoherent. Not the topic of PE.
Because it sure seems to me that all they are doing is squeezing their employees and vendors ever harder as per the Bain "how to run a company into the ground" handbook.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>When most people say "bullshit job", it seems to me like they really mean "job that could be solved by a well-built machine". What Graeber seems to mean is jobs that serve the interests of some people at the expense of others and overall contribute very little, nothing, or actively work against the interests of society at large.
That is what Graeber aims to describe - he's even specifically written about how technology has undermined "meaningful" employment in agriculture and manufacturing - but the problem is his arguments against "bullshit jobs" conflate jobs which don't serve society with jobs whose employees feel they're worthless because they much preferred being poet-musicians. The latter argument, and Graeber's vision of "Hell is a co…
Wasn't how I read it. He mentioned that technology "freed up" people from working in the field, though, meaning they could then be put to work in bullshit jobs.
>his arguments against "bullshit jobs" conflate jobs which don't serve society with jobs whose employees feel they're worthless because they much preferred being poet-musicians
I derive a lot more benefit from poet-musicians than I do from corporate lawyers. Admittedly, corporate lawyers are never employed for my benefit, but I think was kind of the point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, you can make that sort of broad argument about anything. For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). The point being made here is whether Private Equity CEOs are contributing anything substantial apart from concentrating capital. The answer to that has to…
The answer does not have to be "no." Private equity is one of the most valuable functions of a market based economy, and that's understating its importance. To say the head of a private equity firm serves no purpose, is to claim allocating private capital in a market economy needs nobody in charge of that process at the company doing it. Nearly all venture capital is private equity. Sam Altman is the President of a p…
I can't say I'm surprised and I much agree with this. I've held many positions in both the private and public sector. While the public sector was always inefficient (honestly it was significantly worse than I pictured before starting...far far worse like you could easily eliminate hundreds of jobs without impact worse) private sector is pretty bad in many places as well. It's also amazing what networking can do to ge…
> While the public sector was always inefficient (honestly it was significantly worse than I pictured before starting...far far worse like you could easily eliminate hundreds of jobs without impact worse) private sector is pretty bad in many places as well. I've worked in a public sector department that was run like a business. It was a contact centre that provided information and assistance with various government f…
I agree with this. I also think there's an inescapable analogy here with software projects - I think people are just really bad at handling large amounts of complexity. In software, large projects are notorious for high failure rates, in the same way that large organisations seem to collapse under their own weight. We don't see able to administer or manage on a large scale effectively.
This is just thinking out loud, but the conclusion I draw from this analogy is that small focused projects and small focused teams work best. Don't try to create a behemoth. Hence the effectiveness of startups and the UNIX/Pythonic way of keeping things simple.
Most people who criticize "bullshit jobs" simply lack the perspective to see how these jobs are critically important for society. Take the list from the article itself, one of the "bullshit jobs" listed is actuary. Well, without actuaries, insurance would not be priced correctly, and would be prohibitively expensive or too cheap and insurance companies would go out of business. Either way, insurance would be less ava…
In terms of personal insurance, a world with less insurance looks like a place where people don't suffer just for the small risk of such a loss.
Catastrophic events such as fire and health could be dealt with more sympathetically by society rather than being handled by a profit-making industry that only really wants to help people who are rich enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So for the example of an actuary, ideally their job would also be automated by an advanced program...If we took every actuary working 9 to 5, and instead threw all of their tens of thousands of daily working hours at coding a program to do their job... What, exactly, do you think actuaries do during their 9-5? Do you think they manually compute actuarial tables with a TI-89?
I personally see a lot of potential for automation, -just tonight I was out working for a non-profit that saves a lot of hassle because I learned them a few Excel tricks back in 2012. Another place I was paid for less than 20 hours and it shaved two hours of preparations for the run of a machine, meaning they could keep it for several years more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off-shoring is a wonderful example of private equity types reducing global inequality, helping the poor, and helping consumers. It's true that the wealthy Americans who formerly collected rents due to an accident of their birth might not be happy about it, but so what? Real income is rising, BTW. It's only real wages (i.e. income excluding benefits) in the US which have not due to a shift of comp from wages to non-wa…
>Off-shoring is a wonderful example of private equity types reducing global inequality Pitting third world workers against first world workers isn't good for either of them in the long run. The same threat that hangs over US workers (we will offshore your job if you unionize and demand higher wages) actually hangs over 3rd world workers too (we will reshore your job if you unionize and demand higher wage). It's a win…
As for income (not wages, which is a subse of income), data is easily googleable.
http://m.research.stlouisfed.org/fred/series.php?sid=COMPRNF...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much of Europe works perfectly well with out health insurance.
Weeel now. As an example Finland - while there is a fairly functional state paid health service, most affluent people take the health insurance anyway and go to private clinics for day-to-day needs to avoid the public queues. Most eployees have a compulsory medical coverage by the employers, which is a bought service from the private clinics. Thus the medical scene is a bit more complex than "state pays it all". It c…
So, some paperwork is mandatory, no actual health care.
The reason many employers voluntarily provide an actual health insurance (or simply reimburse private-sector medical costs directly) is that it is one of the few tax-free benefits that employers can give to people, so it works efficiently as an additional compensation. And of course, because employee absences are costly, it makes good sense to try to keep them in good health.
The public sector health care does practically nothing in terms of preventive health care for people between 25-65 and in employment (except for maternity-related things). This is left to employers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When most people say "bullshit job", it seems to me like they really mean "job that could be solved by a well-built machine". Farming used to be a bullshit job until we built gigantic combines and automated watering systems and agricultural data storage systems, and now our farming problems are electronic, not logistic. (except for water, but that's another story.) So for the example of an actuary, ideally their job…
Farming isn't a bullshit job, at least not if you love it. The same could be said of everything. What society, and by secondary intent technology should aim to do is to enable everyone to be capable of performing the job for which they have passion for. My parents are farmers, and love it. I love it too. It is far from a bullshit job. But for the average joe slaving away on a rice paddy in China, they may dream of so…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A critical assumption in that view is that the returns on actively and passively managed funds are independent. Are they, or are the passive funds freeriding on the work of the active funds?
They are certainly not independent given they are allocating between the same underlying investments, but I fail to see how they are freeriding given the data. Many have looked at this and presented the data far more eloquently than I could: https://hbr.org/2013/05/just-how-useless-is-the-asset/ http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/Malki...