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Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

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Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#51

Post by Chris2048 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46
Chris2048 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors are harder to train, as such they are a rarer resource, and more expensive. We can freely pay cleaners less, and purchase more doctors. Isn't that how it works?

Yes, but hiring more doctors is counterproductive if their work is regularly being undone because of bad sanitation. In such a case, a dollar invested in cleaners buys a greater fraction of lives than same dollar invested in doctors.

> a dollar invested in cleaners buys a greater fraction of lives than same dollar invested in doctors

the dollar equation is relative, i.e. "in such a case". The balance point still ends up with doctors being payed more, and cleaners significantly less.

Plus, who guarantees that dollar cleaning improvement? Maybe all you'll be doing is setting a precedent for higher pay - you need more to correlate with better cleaning. Maybe regular (independent) inspections & testing?

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#52

Post by xlm1717 »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #21
askyourmother wrote: post #17

One of the most important jobs in a hospital, is the cleaner. To help prevent the spread of infections like MRSI, to help keep outbreaks of vomiting virus under control, and help reduce the number of admitted and post procedure patients dying as a direct result of infection acquired in the hospital itself. And yet, they are treated as the lowest employees there, well, most are not even employees, outsourced three or…

> Society has some warped views sometimes. At the moment, stopping to help a homeless person isn't worth anything. We should live in a society where helping someone in need makes you a millionaire. Where people are out hunting down the homeless, fighting to help them. A society where helping a kid to become happy makes you rich. Making a classroom of kids happy and teach them something at the same time earns you tens…

Talk about rose tinted glasses! You would need to invent some new product that did those things for kids and convince parents to buy it, otherwise no one will ever pay you millions to make kids happy and teach them something.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#53

Post by Chris2048 »

mac01021 wrote: post #41
golemotron wrote: post #30

The thing about markets is that they cut through all of the fuzzy thinking about what jobs "should" pay more than others, and tell us what we actually pay - what we collectively find valuable. That reality escapes most people.

That's probably 90% true, but there are phenomena that defy this. Imagine you live in a society where the population is mainly composed of two segments. Members of the first segment enjoy consuming service A. Members of the second segment would benefit tremendously from service B, but all the money is held by the first segment. Which service are you going to spend your time offering to the public? This is at least pa…

> selling my time to an advertising company than (say) running a programming/compsci dojo for middle school kids

There are lucrative teaching jobs, and lucrative consumer products bought by low-income communities. But in this case, teaching dojos don't scale the same way ads do.

Also, high-income communities can often incubate products that eventually become available to low-income communities, after they get over initial cost burdens.

Advertising is a good example though: If everyone uses ads, there is no individual (company) advantage to using ads, but you still have to use them to compete.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#54

Post by Chris2048 »

RobertoG wrote: post #39
golemotron wrote: post #30

The thing about markets is that they cut through all of the fuzzy thinking about what jobs "should" pay more than others, and tell us what we actually pay - what we collectively find valuable. That reality escapes most people.

"what we collectively find valuable" The mystic approach to markets. What determine the wage of a job is scarcity or abundance of people available to do that job. Multiply by one hundred the number of doctors or programmers and you will see "how valuable" their job is. You can apply that to the economy in general. Keep a few millions without job and you will see how you don't need to pay so much to the lucky that hav…

> Multiply by one hundred the number of doctors or programmers and you will see "how valuable" their job is.

The reason there is a scarcity is precisely the fact that multiplying availability is not easy, i.e. training is long and/or hard and/or expensive.

If you find yourself in a lucrative, scarce job, just make sure it's hard enough that it will always be that way...

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#55

Post by Chris2048 »

digestives wrote: post #12

My grandfather recalled once how his Latin teacher told him the most important job in society is that of the garbage collector - how can it function properly if everywhere is piled high with waste?

> how can it function properly if everywhere is piled high with waste?

Reminds me of http://joek.com/jokes/joke_102.shtml

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#56

Post by oarsinsync »

Sam-------- wrote: post #47

IMO this is wrong: Most any banker can become a garbageman. They are way overpaid, that's why there is a lottery for the jobs. Is the reverse true? Relying on strike time to tragedy is complete BS. As we saw in 2007/8 when banker messed up the consequences are indeed harsh. None of this works without gov putting its thumb on the scales. Where do you think the lack of innovation came from?

> IMO this is wrong: Most any banker can become a garbageman. They are way overpaid, that's why there is a lottery for the jobs. Is the reverse true?

The article actually states exactly this as part of it's "bullshit jobs" discussion.

> Relying on strike time to tragedy is complete BS. As we saw in 2007/8 when banker messed up the consequences are indeed harsh.

You're mixing up a strike with a very complex series of events that can arguably be described somewhere on a scale between "messed up" and "maliciously and fraudulently manipulated markets for their own profiteering at the expense of everyone else". However, determining exactly where on that scale they sit is a much bigger discussion than HN allows in a comment. Eitherway, the article again compares a garbage collection strike with a banking strike, which is a fairer comparison, and suggests that the biggest losers from that strike were the bankers.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#57

Post by mac01021 »

As someone who does not live in a high-density urban environment, I would rather keep my bank than my garbage man.

My waste is about half compostable and the other half, through a slight change in purchasing decisions, could easily consist solely of easily-burnable paper and cardboard.

Meanwhile, if I had noone to finance the purchase of my house or manage my retirement savings then I would be considerably worse off.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#58

Post by kom107 »

askyourmother wrote: post #17

One of the most important jobs in a hospital, is the cleaner. To help prevent the spread of infections like MRSI, to help keep outbreaks of vomiting virus under control, and help reduce the number of admitted and post procedure patients dying as a direct result of infection acquired in the hospital itself. And yet, they are treated as the lowest employees there, well, most are not even employees, outsourced three or…

They are valuable, except for the fact that machines can now do the disinfecting aspect of the job (the most important part) better and faster than they can.

See: http://tru-d.com/

And to the point someone else made in this thread, they are easily replaced; not requiring a significant amount of training or onboarding resources.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#59

Post by mac01021 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #53
mac01021 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably 90% true, but there are phenomena that defy this. Imagine you live in a society where the population is mainly composed of two segments. Members of the first segment enjoy consuming service A. Members of the second segment would benefit tremendously from service B, but all the money is held by the first segment. Which service are you going to spend your time offering to the public? This is at least pa…

> selling my time to an advertising company than (say) running a programming/compsci dojo for middle school kids There are lucrative teaching jobs, and lucrative consumer products bought by low-income communities. But in this case, teaching dojos don't scale the same way ads do. Also, high-income communities can often incubate products that eventually become available to low-income communities, after they get over in…

At the risk of hurting my case, advertising is probably not quite as good an example as you're making it out to be.

In particular, competition between two brands of the same product need not be a zero sum game. If every beer company runs ads in which beautiful women fawn over a guy drinking beer, the outcome might be that every company sees higher profits than in a world without any ads at all.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#60

Post by lmm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
Tomte wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a waste, when a patient dies in a shining, clean ward because no doctor was there. ;-) But I agree, cleaners should be more respected.

And now that we've stated both boundary conditions, we can have a productive discussion - is the pay allocation in a hospital arranged optimally in terms of lifes saved and if not, then how can we shift the arrangement (i.e. who should be paid more, and who less) to maximize the effectiveness of that hospital in saving lives?

Do you have any reason to believe it's suboptimal? It doesn't seem particularly implausible that the current allocation is close to optimal, and presumably hospital administrators and the like look at the numbers and allocate resources where they think they will most effectively lead to saved lives, no?
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