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How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#101

Post by Dylan16807 »

1stop wrote: post #48
chucksmash wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternative are you suggesting? salesman who sells $100,000 in product a year should get paid $150,000 a year? Unless you are part of a cost center, it seems to me the assumption is that you are producing more value than you cost to employ.

Or people get paid their value, and we stop thinking it's okay for a select few to reap the surplus value of others... you know, kind of like how we got rid of slavery (except we didn't, we just paid a little more for it).

Both people are supposed to benefit in a transaction. Do you disagree with that? The employee getting 100% of the value is just as unworkable as the employer getting 100%. In the one extreme nobody ever gets a job because it's worthless, and in the other extreme nobody ever gets an employee because it's worthless.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#102

Post by andrepd »

chucksmash wrote: post #99
andrepd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not like the analogy, and the difference in scale is surely a big one, but the principle is the same. In slavery, you were prevented to quit by physical coercion. In capitalism, you are prevented to quit because if you do you and your family will starve (or at least live in poverty, on modern welfare states). The employer can pay you minimum wage for your labour, even if it generates 10x more value, because y…

1) You are totally discounting the social safety net. 2) If the services you provide are commoditized, there are millions of other people who can do the work you do so you are more easily replaceable. Investing in your skills can remedy that. About the worst thing you could do would be to lament how you are beholden to the capital holders while stagnating with an undifferentiated skillset. 3) "The principle is the sa…

1) I didn't, that's what I was referring too when I said "or at least live in poverty, in a modern welfare state"

2) That's all very nice in principle, but in practice that's often not feasible. I'm not talking about the software industry, where everything is very open and full of opportunity, but about low-income jobs and how the people working in them often have such incredibly complex constraints about them that that talk about "investing in your skills" and "differentiating your skillset" is totally disconnected from the reality of life.

3) I guess so. Still I was trying to emphasise the whole binding aspect of it, the fact that in many situations you are only free to leave in principle, because being out of a job can throw you and your family into debt, homelessness, or worse. Wasn't exactly thinking of slavery in the literal, bounty-hunters-after-runaways, sense.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#103

Post by ghaff »

stretchwithme wrote: post #98

Isn't medicine like this to a degree? The interns and resident make very little per hour, work long hours and have little control over anything. Sounds like apprenticeship as well. Why do people put up with it? Because its very difficult to leave and start a competing enterprise. There's either a contract that locks you in or licensing that locks you out. Or you need government funding to compete with those who have…

Not at all. Interns and residents have a reasonably high probability [1] of becoming fairly well-compensated licensed physicians if they choose to follow their program through to the end. This isn't an argument about long and even grueling apprenticeships with modest compensation. It's about how even those who make it through such an apprenticeship in some professions will mostly not find a job at the end--which isn't the case with doctors.

BTW, I'm not sure I believe the drug dealer/actor/pro athlete thought really applies to academia--even if it's true that PhD degrees in many fields probably don't have a great ROI and aren't likely to result in a tenured position.

[1] I don't know the numbers but I have no reason to think a lot of people, especially from better programs, are forced out during internship or residency.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#104

Post by cossatot »

throwaway009382 wrote: post #81

I am both an aspiring graduate student (though, maybe not after reading this) and grew up with many friends who were/are still in organized crews, plus did some delivery for a few years myself when I was a foolish 17 yr old. Most delivery driver jobs here pay $150-200/day depending on how busy the line is, and the people that work them usually aren't looking to move up instead they want cash wages for easy work, sinc…

Great post.

If you get all of this, you'll probably be able to navigate grad school just fine...

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#105

Post by throwaway009382 »

avn2109 wrote: post #100
throwaway009382 wrote: post #81

I am both an aspiring graduate student (though, maybe not after reading this) and grew up with many friends who were/are still in organized crews, plus did some delivery for a few years myself when I was a foolish 17 yr old. Most delivery driver jobs here pay $150-200/day depending on how busy the line is, and the people that work them usually aren't looking to move up instead they want cash wages for easy work, sinc…

Very underrated comment, by far the best in the thread. Sounds like drug gangs are borrowing the business model of governments.

I guess they are like a government, in that they can afford to wait out disputes while the drug businesses can't. Every once in a while these other groups will try and get rid of the dominant extortion gang but since they live off skimming, and their business model is a vehicle and a gun, they can afford to go to war while the drug dealers and cartels all will be losing money and cannot sustain a lengthy conflict. The narcotics businesses have extensive bribery networks they need to keep operating to survive and any interference in the income will threaten to unravel it all. Some of them have minimum wholesale they need to buy every month in order to keep up supply, and customers will also start calling competitor lines if deliveries are stopped.

Even worse, when the heat on the streets is so hot during a war from all the shootings and police are everywhere, not much business can happen so the extortion crews turn to contract hits for income. For $10-15k you can pay them to kill off one of your rival drug dealers, potential informants or even people in your own delivery crew so you can move up and take their place. So while they are fighting off a rival takeover they are also open for local business dropping bodies all over the streets and blaming it on the invading gang, which police then turn their attention to, and are getting paid while the rivals/cartels are bleeding money. Eventually they have no choice but to give up the dispute to save their own business from extinction, much like how businesses have to settle in court when defending against government lawsuits and can't afford too much delay.

What is really surreal about the black market is after these violent outbursts everything is simply settled by a payment of back taxes owed and you just go back to work like nothing happened. One of the enforcers who managed us was shot at repeatedly by somebody he knew living in the same immediate neighborhood during one of these wars and next week it was all cleared up above us by whoever was in charge and beefs squashed. He'd still see the guy on a regular basis, no hard feelings, only business.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#106

Post by nhstanley »

stared wrote: post #30
lukasm wrote: post #16

>The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth. That's description of statups.

With startups, you can pivot (with academia you can too, but it's rather 3-5 years). With startups, you can fail (and try again); in academia, if you fail, you fail. In short: with startups, if something is not working (or you totally lost belief in it), you can quit a project without quitting startups for good. In academia, if you want to stay, you often need to stay in a miserable conditions 1-3 more years (e.g. to…

Not my opinion, but what I think lukasm was getting at is that a majority of players in the startup game aren't VCs or founders, but suckers taking low wages and/or options and/or insane hours on the promise of a big future payout that never comes.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#107

Post by loup-vaillant »

chucksmash wrote: post #46
saalweachter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are producing more value than you are being paid for, why are you working there?

What alternative are you suggesting? salesman who sells $100,000 in product a year should get paid $150,000 a year? Unless you are part of a cost center, it seems to me the assumption is that you are producing more value than you cost to employ.

Note: there is no such thing as an actual cost centre: those quickly get fired or outsourced. (Exception: the shareholders themselves.)

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#108

Post by 1stop »

fsloth wrote: post #89
1stop wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people get paid their value, and we stop thinking it's okay for a select few to reap the surplus value of others... you know, kind of like how we got rid of slavery (except we didn't, we just paid a little more for it).

Please do not be disrespectful of the people who had to suffer through slavery as slaves by comparing their position with whomever you think is a "slave" in a modern western society.

That's right, don't talk about suffering now, because it used to be way worse!

How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital.

I'm not taking modern Western society, I'm talking historical/modern capitalism. In all societies.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#109

Post by fsloth »

1stop wrote: post #108
fsloth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not be disrespectful of the people who had to suffer through slavery as slaves by comparing their position with whomever you think is a "slave" in a modern western society.

That's right, don't talk about suffering now, because it used to be way worse! How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital. I'm not taking modern Western society, I'm talking historical/modern capitalism. In all societies.

"How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital."

So by your definition any position short of economic independece would be slavery?

I'm not depreciating suffering. Calling employees in a poor bargaining position "slaves" is muddled argumentation. Any arbitrary non-negotiable position is not slavery - unless one wants to be poetic (i.e. "we are all slaves to laws of physics" etc).

As to the definition of slavery I would refer to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

"Slavery is a legal or economic system in which principles of property law can apply to humans so that people can be treated as property,[1] and can be owned, bought and sold accordingly, and cannot withdraw unilaterally from the arrangement."

Capital has been always a lopsided thing - few have it. It's quite different not having capital, than being treated as a capital asset and having almost no human rights.

As a fairly modern example Frederick Douglas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass) has more than a few words to say about his time as a slave.

"I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday... A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. ... I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent,"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm

Being bound to only few means of sustenance is one thing. Having ones birthday robbed is another entirely.

Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

#110

Post by 1stop »

fsloth wrote: post #109
1stop wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, don't talk about suffering now, because it used to be way worse! How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital. I'm not taking modern Western society, I'm talking historical/modern capitalism. In all societies.

"How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital." So by your definition any position short of economic independece would be slavery? I'm not depreciating suffering. Calling employees in a poor bargaining position "slaves" is muddled argumentation. Any arbitrary n…

Capital hasn't always been a lopsided thing. There was a time when a great number of people had access to productive land, and had the means to survive without relying on "employment".

The industrial revolution changed this dramatically.

I'm sure you have heard the term "wage slavery". Sure you can argue: "hey at least you know your birthday now, and technically we don't own you". But that's ignoring the fact that we have still robbed that person of free will because we have robbed them off the means of production. Saying that " they can quit if they want " is equivalent to saying a slave can kill himself if he doesn't like it.

I'm not saying that the situation hasn't improved. Slavery has changed, it is a more sustainable model now, with less chance of uprising, as people such as yourself actually defend it even though chances are, you are on the wrong side of it (I.e you sell your own labour rather than benefit from others labour in order to survive).

But it is still a massive inequality and it literally robs people of choice in their life.

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