Labor Shortages

We've talked about the problem that the National Academy of Sciences, National Science Foundation faked a labor shortage during the 1980s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, passing to Eric Bloch, as head of the NSF, and passing to Peter House as head of the Policy Research and Analysis Division. We've heard nothing on this front, even though we claim that there was a study done in 1986, that clearly showed that we were going to fake a science and engineering shortage that could have been cured by the market, which is what happens in the market economy.

- Eric Weinstein on The Portal Ep. 40

I feel gaslit when grown-ups talk about labor shortages in market economies w wage mechanisms.

It's basically an admission that capitalism is meant as a TRICK where workers can't benefit from markets.

Let's talk about the ongoing equities shortage & printing shares for workers.

You see, longterm labor shortages don't exist in large market economies.

But the news media counts on workers being too dumb to understand the wage mechanism. So everyone in media pretends to believe in labor shortages. Like they were jackalopes.

Let's print shares & not visas.

Let’s talk about “equities shortages” which are no more real than “labor shortages”. That way every S.O.B. who whines about a labor shortage will hear: “Oh. It’s because of the Stock Share Shortage. You just have to print new shares of your company to get your workers energized.”

Let’s stop this “labor shortage” dead in its tracks. Let’s not print visas. It’s time to recognize workers are suffering from a *share shortage*. We need to print shares not visas and add them to compensation packages.

Bingo! Look at that: totally fictitious problem solved.

- Eric Weinstein on X, August 19, 2022

The mythical Jackalope as analogue for labor shortages in large market economies with wage mechanisms.

On X

2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

New Topic: "What's your vision of true academic freedom?" [Asks @Philip_Girvan.]

8:04 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

An old joke about the diference between the Soviet and US constitutions. Both give freedom to dissent. The US gives freedom the day after.

8:10 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Academic freedom is about making secure heroes out of Margot O'toole, Doug Prasher & Nassim Taleb instead of pushing them to the periphery.

8:17 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Academic freedom is freedom to invite a senior colleague to self-copulate for inserting himself before your name on YOUR paper..and survive.

8:22 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Academic freedom comes from the academic *obligation* to schedule lectures if you have even the possibility of strong disruptive results.

8:24 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Academic freedom entails a right for a non-expert theorist of high ability to cross boundaries and live on merit without seeking permission.

8:27 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Academic freedom is the insulation from threat or want to continue in good standing for *any* and *all* contributions & reasoned dissent.

8:31 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

What few people admit is that opposing "String Theory", "The Great Moderation", "Scientist Shortages" etc...leads to excommunication.

8:37 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This was best put by @BretWeinstein: "Selection is to be feared only when just individuals are prevented from returning costs."

8:48 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So @ahaspel asks what institutional reforms are needed (which was where I was headed when a birthday party occured in physical reality).

10:55 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

First of all, I am focused primarily on science. If universities can't provide Academic freedom, science needs to move homes.

11:42 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Next: Basic research in science is a public good (inexhaustible and inexcludible). Therefore we need higher levels of public funding.

11:43 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

To maintain academic freedom we need to move resources from what is falsely called 'scientific training' to the compensation of researchers.

11:48 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

To get strong individuals, our target for researchers should be something like MA by 21-22 PhD by 25-26, permanent job by 26-28 (approx.).

11:57 PM · Dec 19, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Graduate training is actually much shorter than assumed. Typically one is a graduate 'student' in year 1,2 of a PhD and working thereafter.

12:04 AM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Raising PhDs should be Eusocial. Giving students to PI's in a 1 on 1 relationship is like parking choir boys with priests. Better in theory.

12:06 AM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We must also fund entirely different sorts of people. Without Huxleys, Grossmans, & Hardys you don't get Darwins, Einsteins, & Ramanujans.

12:14 AM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

A central point: scientists are supposed to be K-selected but universities are hell bent for leather to r-select PhDs.

Yet that's insane.

1:40 AM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Research & Teaching in Universities are as perfectly linked as Skiing & Shooting in the Biathalon: tenuously for all but Professors / Finns.

1:53 AM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Last point for now: Freedom for academics is precisely freedom from academics. A real marketplace of ideas beats the pants off peer review.

1:59 AM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Something occurs to me. If you've never had reason to test your own academic freedom, you may have absolutely no idea what animated me.

1:55 PM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

On May 23, 2003 an extraordinary talk at NAS called “Exactly Backwards: Scientific Manpower Theory” was given.There is no record of this.

2:29 PM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The talk was so extraordinary that it was repeated again at NAS 11 days later on June 3, 2003. Again there is no meaningful record of this.

2:33 PM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The talk presented evidence to the National Academy of Sciences that NAS & @NSF partnered to manipulate markets over scientist salaries.

2:38 PM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Now ask yourself why would @NSF be trying to weaken American scientists? Why would NAS help? How would NSF dependent scientists self-defend?

8:11 PM · Dec 20, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Gauge theoretic economics interest has come recently from @mathpunk @dabacon @diffeomacx @riemanmzeta @tylercowen @ahaspel etc... Loving it.

3:02 AM · Dec 21, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I should say that Gauge theoretic economics is also all about academic freedom, quashed as it was by the rennegade Boskin Commission idiocy.

3:11 AM · Dec 21, 2009

2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Spoiler Alert: Our US 50+ Year “STEM labor shortage” is *totally* 100% faked & rigged ... by the same political class that rigs primaries.

2:15 PM · Nov 3, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Just listened to my friend @SamHarrisOrg w/ @RadioFreeTom.

I was unexpectedly bewildered. Given the right forum, it would be an honor & privilege to steelman the substantive case against experts & their institutions into coastal-friendly PhD-style expert terminology & language. https://t.co/qVf4udNnco

1:46 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg First of all, nice to meet you Tom.

I’m concerned that many of those rejecting the highly trained, experienced & credentialed are trying to send a cogent & reasonable message that can be strawmanned because they don’t speak the language of the academy. I think we can translate.

2:08 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg 1/ Great. It sounds like we agree on a lot. Let’s agree we shouldn’t attack real expertise or fetishize the simple wisdom of laypeople in expert matters. What I think is happening is that lay people are catching on that they are being priced out of the market for expert loyalty.

4:59 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

2/ I think most lay people believe in experts...and the new words for expert are personal, private, etc. They believe experts are now private doctors. Personal chefs. Private pilots. Private police and fire depts. So there’s awareness, but no loss of confidence in experts.

5:07 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

3/ This then leads to the public experts & intellectuals. Here laypeople are increasingly conscious of real games played in back rooms & razzledazzle at the podium. This is the realm of the Esoteric/Exoteric experts w public theories for the out-group & real ones for insiders.

5:13 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

4/ Here again, lay people believe that there *are* experts but that without special access (e.g. lobbyists) they can’t command the expected loyalty of a public servants and thinkers. Who, after all, is informing the public about the minute to minute changes in a tax bill?

5:17 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

5/ If I take what I saw as the big three trust breakers in the 2016 election:

I) Free Trade
II) immigration
III) Terror

Each was defended by experts to the public by a suite of out and out lies that were maddeningly self evident. As if outsiders and morons were the same thing.

5:24 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

6/ In all three cases there was essentially a reality embargo to the public by expert cartels. Krugman called the case for freer trade an elite scam. The Immigration act of 1990 *actually* involved an expert conspiracy to promote a fictitious “STEM shortage” to lower tech wages.

5:38 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

/End And in the case of terror, it was so weird that politicians would look for any motive except *religion* for some reason that must be from some policy. The level of fiction given to the public was beyond insulting. It was outright derision & contempt. And the derided saw it.

5:43 AM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg Okay. I'm claiming that if we put the adjective 'private' in front of nouns associated w expertise (physician --> private physician, school --> private school, etc.) you'll find lay people believing it represents real expertise & thus an unfair advantage. They believe in experts.

4:04 PM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg What they intuitively don't believe in as much are their experts: ones they pay for/elect (H&R Bloch, their HMO, their senator etc..) or the ones provided for them (news analysts, columnists, public intellectuals). And this distrust is about expert loyalty, not expertise itself.

4:23 PM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg

These are from trade theorist @paulkrugman in his “Protectionist Moment” piece. I’m not trying to win here. I’m worried that you aren’t watching how this neo-liberal edifice is being abandoned because the expert’s public stance was a lie.

9:22 PM · Dec 16, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg @paulkrugman What are your thoughts here @RadioFreeTom? I can go into detail on a number of these. We could do the fake STEM shortage backed by the @NSF and @theNASciences if you don’t believe in such things.

5:42 PM · Dec 17, 2017

2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Nothing would be better for the United States than a 50 year dire “labor shortage” without a drop of “legislative relief.” This will never happen. Nevertheless, it’s important to laugh at industries pretending to believe in labor shortages in mkt economies with wage mechanisms.

3:25 PM · Feb 12, 2019

zerohedge

@zerohedge

US Job Opening Soar To All Time High: 800K More Than Unemployed Workers https://zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-12/us-job-opening-soar-all-time-high-800k-more-unemployed-workers

3:19 PM · Feb 12, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is the elephant in the lab.

A secret reason (which we collected anonymously multiple times at NBER/ASCB) for delaying tenure decisions beyond healthy fertility is departmental fear of committing to top women in research for fear they will find motherhood more fulfilling.

4:10 PM · Feb 26, 2019

Sabine Hossenfelder

@skdh

Nearly half of US female scientists leave full-time science after first child

11:33 AM · Feb 26, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

You can blame the Principal Investigators who told us this (both male & female). You can blame the universities. You can blame the messenger. But we need to talk about getting STEM moms a LOT more money for help in the house & make more allowances for staying home for 5-10 years.

4:10 PM · Feb 26, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

And yes, Dads can be more present. But before you go too far down that road, consider that some of the STEM women we spoke to said that they would have WANTED to be at home, particularly with little children (<7) and what they really wanted was a way back to research afterwards.

4:10 PM · Feb 26, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

What we need is a multi-decade “labor shortage” in STEM that brings technical employers howling in pain about employee wage demands. Family demands. Maternal demands. The answer is simple: in STEM the wrong people are in pain. It should be our beloved administrators & employers.

4:17 PM · Feb 26, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The extractive structures suffused throughout Higher Ed are on death watch for collapse:

Grant Overhead
Student Debt Slavery
Far Above Inflation Tuition Hikes
Administrator Displacement of Profs
Prestige Journal Premiums
Labor reclassified as “Training”

https://chronicle.com/article/U-of-California-System/245798

9:32 PM · Mar 1, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We’ve been lying about a shortage of scientists continuously since Sputnik. We have too many scientists relative to our anemic level of interest in paying for the basic research that created our modern economy.

Why do we believe a >60YO lie? Because of who tells it.

Scientists.

Dr Darren Saunders

@whereisdaz

Job opportunities for science graduates have failed to match the push to get more students to study science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM). https://smh.com.au/business/workplace/glut-in-demand-for-science-graduates-challenges-stem-hype-20190327-p517zj.html

10:26 PM · Apr 13, 2019

3:07 PM · Apr 14, 2019

Dr Darren Saunders

@whereisdaz

Interesting that so many assume this is referring to US situation. I guess the problem is widespread

5:30 AM · Apr 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@whereisdaz It’s originally driven by the US and the Cold War. But it spread to every developed nation with a decent scientific research enterprise. It’s now world wide as a problem.

6:31 AM · Apr 15, 2019

Dr Darren Saunders

@whereisdaz

We are our so often own worst enemies

7:21 AM · Apr 15, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We train undergraduates in STEM. That gives science professors a salary. Then as graduate students, profs make them teach & do their research work while denying they’re workers. Then as post-docs we ‘apprentice’ them for more extraction.

Then after multiple PDs we push them out. https://x.com/locoono2/status/1117450902946729985

3:42 PM · Apr 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The tweet quoted was apparently deleted. It asked why scientists would want to glut their own market and drive wages down. The answer is that we glut the bottom of the pyramid and make sure that those people used to glut the entry never reach the top of the pyramid to compete.

3:46 PM · Apr 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Want to follow an unsung hero?

Norm has been fighting the lies of the academy as a STEM professor for years. There were times in the ‘90s when it felt like he and I plus 2 folks at the Sloan foundation were the only STEM PhDs who hadn’t been zombified by the STEM shortage myth.

Norm Matloff

@matloff

Some years ago, some grad students sued UC, claiming they were workers. Then someone from my campus administration ordered faculty to disagree. Yes, you read this right. Of course, we just ignored them.

3:50 PM · Apr 14, 2019

4:02 PM · Apr 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Pipeline = “push out the supply labor curve” to make wages FALL.

Wouldn’t you want to push up the Demand Curve to make talent crazy expensive and want STEM employers in pain so they would hire every competent soul?

Politicians/employers always get this wrong. Huh. I Wonder why.

11:32 PM · May 3, 2019

Kamala Harris

@KamalaHarris

Women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ Americans are often underrepresented in STEM jobs. Fixing the problem starts with investing in our classrooms. That is why I’ve introduced a bill to build a pipeline of diverse talent for these good-paying jobs.

11:20 PM · May 3, 2019

Fusilli Spock

@awstar11

Why wouldn't an employer want to increase the pipeline? It's 100% in their interests.

11:34 PM · May 3, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

And why wouldn’t politicians want to please rich STEM donors rather than poorer STEM workers??

But that’s so cynical I’m told. So....let’s forget the whole supply and demand thing and go back once again to concern for the marginalized groups we want to lure into the pipeline...

11:37 PM · May 3, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Q: Is the key to getting @Kasparov63 back on top over the robots just mumbling “education & retraining” with ever greater conviction?

Good for @AndrewYang for pointing out that “The key is more education!” is just a slogan not a plan. He’ll take real heat...but he’s on target.

3:57 AM · May 21, 2019

Andrew Yang

@AndrewYang

8% of US jobs are in STEM fields. 92% are not. If someone thinks they can train 92% of workers for roles presently occupied by 8% of workers they have a rather fanciful view of both people and work.

2:52 PM · May 20, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The retraining, education, and “STEM shortage” myths are some of the most persistent in our society. Facing them will be unusually painful.

Time to bite the bullet anyway.

3:59 AM · May 21, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I know of no truly working profession.

Medicine: broken.
Law: broken.
Research: broken.
Banking: broken.
Mgmt consulting: broken.

You’ll say “STEM, Tech and CS FTW losers!! Woot!!”

And I’ll whisper “Bro, thou dost protest way way too much.” Me thinks.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/columbia-had-little-success-placing-english-ph-d-s-on-the-tenure-track-alarm-followed-and-the-university-responded/

3:11 AM · Sep 3, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Let me tell you the secret as a US PhD in Math: the answer is under-compensation.

We got it into our head decades ago that we were entitled to STEM-serfs. So we started a rumor that our own US students are so dumb & lazy that we need STEM visas to protect us from our own kids.

ForbesScience

@ForbesScience

With U.S. students lagging in science, should scientists be elevated to celebrity status? https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/12/11/should-scientists-be-considered-celebrities-to-inspire-kids/

6:45 AM · Dec 12, 2019

12:23 AM · Dec 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Thus began one of the craziest lies in US history: the market couldn’t be used in STEM! Somehow, despite the theory that compensation should rise to direct our efforts, we started lying about scientist shortages. Math was now so critical that STEM PhDs should be practically free!

12:23 AM · Dec 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

If Math & science are so critical, where are our young PhDs with country homes, sports cars, high ranking jobs, multiple offers from top employers at mouth watering levels inducing envy from lawyers, management consultants & investment bankers?

Now watch your reaction to that Q.

12:23 AM · Dec 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

You‘re probably thinking: “Why should math & science folks need all those toys, money, security & freedom for their families? They should be happy to work for much less!”

Well the market says otherwise. The market says that analytic skills are fungible and we can’t accept that.

12:23 AM · Dec 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

And with your reaction you have your answer: we have weirdly decided that STEM talent should work for our national wealth and security but should not unapologetically participate in the power, freedom and pleasure they provide for everyone else. They are STEM serfs to be used. 🙏

12:23 AM · Dec 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

If you are interested in how this nauseating game has been played for decades and just how conscious the market tampering is, you should find this rather interesting. It is the national scandal that cannot be fully reported by any major news source:

https://users.nber.org/~sewp/references/archive/weinsteinhowandwhygovernment.pdf

12:28 AM · Dec 14, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I want everyone to remember who is deliberately destroying STEM R&D in the US. It’s America’s scientific employers conspiring within the national science complex to flood the market for almost 50Yrs by tampering with the wage mechanism to undermine scientist leverage. April 1990:

9:58 PM · Dec 18, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Here is what no one will say:

If you’re too weak to demand US-market level compensation for your family, you‘re too weak to tell an exploitative advisor to buzz off when you’re right. You‘re too weak to do US style science & challenge orthodoxy.

You‘re too weak to do the job.

9:58 PM · Dec 18, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

It’s MUCH more important to have strong scientists managing real risk than to fetishize anything else. There is no way to measure, manage or price control breakthrough science.#

The only way to screw up US science is to undermine bargaining ability.

Which we’ve done for >45Yrs.

9:58 PM · Dec 18, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The national science complex lives by tricking each generation into believing massive opportunity is just around the corner. But the market is always flooded.

And no one will seriously report the idea that the Science Complex is built around this lie, which killed our vitality.

10:08 PM · Dec 18, 2019

Alex Kontorovich

@AlexKontorovich

Let me see if I follow: the NSF is actually not supporting science/innovation but working actively to destroy it by ... "flooding" the market (and lowering STEM wages) with foreigners? I would usually ignore such nonsense, but you call yourself a "math guy," so what's your proof?

1:40 PM · Dec 19, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

First of all, “such nonsense” is a pretty disappointing indication from a Math PhD asking for “proof.” That’s not how we do things in math. If you claim it is nonsense sir, what is your proof?

Second of all, with that out of our way. Let’s try again. Nice to meet you, Alex.

2:37 PM · Dec 19, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Lastly: https://users.nber.org/~sewp/references/archive/weinsteinhowandwhygovernment.pdf

2:38 PM · Dec 19, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

They are not thinking they are trying to destroy it. They are thinking that they are entitled to interfere with the wage mechanism. Which they have conspired and lied to do. Sir.

2:41 PM · Dec 19, 2019

2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Both @IngrahamAngle & @realDonaldTrump aren’t getting it here. This isn’t about cheap labor. This isn’t about brain power. This is about US capitalism for labor.

Let me put it in simplistic terms: Americans are walking away from markets because our capitalists hate capitalism.

6:25 PM · Jan 11, 2020

The Columbia Bugle

@ColumbiaBugle

God Bless You @IngrahamAngle for Holding Pres. Trump's Feet to the Fire on His Immigration Promises!

Laura expresses the concerns of many America First Conservatives at the WH's plan to import more foreign "high-tech" workers to compete w/ Americans.

"You ran on America First."

4:11 AM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

It is time...past time...to have our CEOs howling like little wimps. We need something like a 50 year deep labor shortage with zero “Wage Relief”. So what if wages go up a bit? Let them go up more and more and MORE until they take an ENORMOUS chunk out of Capital’s share of GDP.

6:25 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

What’s the answer to any wage gap for women?

What’s the answer to Millenial family formation?

What’s the answer to discrimination against Seniors and Youth?

What’s the answer to careers after child rearing?

What’s the answer to Minority unemployment?

A: TIGHT LABOR MARKETS.

6:25 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I’m going to overdo it so that the point is understandable to everyone:

When corporations whine about not being able to find smart people to hire, we all win as a society. The goal of making capitalism serve society is to get CEOs to perjure about non existent labor shortages.

6:25 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Oversimplifying only slightly: The proper job of politicians is to laugh at such corporate CEOs debasing themselves & to ask them about the ratio of their total compensation packages to the compensation packages they are offering: “What happened when you offered 7 or 8 figures??”

6:25 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This message has been brought to you by the pro-market, pro-freedom, Pre-Clinton, Pre-Identity Politics, and Pre-Batshit crazy Patriotic American Left.

6:25 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

[Note: people will ask about what the simplifications are about. They are about automation, singular talents that are quite rare, infant industries, temporary shortages, path dependencies, endowment variation, etc., etc.]

6:31 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

A correct initial point. Wrong (business school friendly type) frame.

Given not Zero sum: do you think more or less innovation would happen if labor access rights were securitized & traded as in Coasian theory or if they were confiscated and used as seigniorage as they are now?

7:16 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Erik Brynjolfsson

@erikbryn

It’s not zero sum.

Do you think wages (and innovation and profits) would be higher or lower if fewer of the very smartest people came to Silicon Valley from the rest of the world? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-ring_theory_of_economic_development

6:54 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Next point: do you think that it is more or less efficient to pretend STEM workers are ‘graduate students’ being paid with immigration lures and not allowed to unionize or is it better to use markets?

7:16 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Additionally, how many of the H1Bs are tethered to “sponsoring employers” or masters? What happens when wage signals are distorted by servitude? How many niche businesses founded by immigrants would have been founded by natives? Why is this often not estimated or set to zero??

7:16 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Overarching point: our entire immigration discussion is framed & structured to come to conclusions favored by employers. It excludes rights issues, efficiency issues, tampering, dilution, externalities. You are interpreting my frame rejection as my not having thought about this.

7:20 PM · Jan 11, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Well, I’ve thought about this. Even published.

7:20 PM · Jan 11, 2020

2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

One of many journalists to wake up to the idea that the US STEM shortage is an employer hoax...but she was open & honest that she had been played. And she may have been first in MSM to call Bullshit.

She was very kind to me for opening her eyes.

I admire her integrity greatly. https://x.com/dabeard/status/dabeard/status/1350967115528994817

2:28 AM · Jan 18, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Prof. Norm Matloff was one of a tiny group of Left leaning patriots who led the fight against the hollowing out of American science and technology.

This is one hero of mine saluting another from a movement whose story has never been written.

We tried. We failed. But we fought.

2:32 AM · Jan 18, 2021

Norm Matloff

@matloff

She was the first writer in the mainstream press to expose abuse of the H-1B work visa, long before bipartisan recognition of the problems. See this article quoting @EricRWeinstein https://www.sharonlbegley.com/scientists-engineers-will-work-4-food

1:20 AM · Jan 18, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Thanks for the invitation. I can try to explain my concern.

There really *is* a problem w MAGA, Trump, Qanon & conspiracy theories running rampant. And it will result in death & destruction if it spins out of control.

However it is being fueled by those who claim to fight it.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

CBR_wick

@CBR_wick

Hi @EricRWeinstein. Can you please explain to the public why you would be preemptive like this in a way that seems to contradict your value system? 🙏

12:42 AM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The entire war over fact checking is a war of 2 low resolution teams.

One team wants absolute freedom to spread wild eyed theories that just about everything is a psyop or a false flag.

The other team wants to impose institutional consensus reality on everyone via media & tech.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Unfortunately, I can’t live under either. So each of the warring parties thinks I’m against them & for the other team. In their mentalities if you aren’t on their simplistic team you are, de facto, working for the other side. There’s no basic concept of *responsible* heterodoxy.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

No the Freemasons do not run everything on behalf of pedophile reptilians who faked Sandy Hook with crisis actors.

Yes there are/were conspiracies behind Epstein, H1B, @MSNBC, PPE, climate science, the “Great Moderation”, Great Reset...everywhere institutions want a “consensus”.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Having spent a good portion of my 20s at Harvard, I know *exactly* how this game works. Our betters sit down and try to figure out how to control others behind closed doors. They see themselves as the intrinsically enlightened people who need to do the thinking for all of us.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

When they wanted to cut our Social Security payments & raise our taxes they opted to try to change the CPI rather than pass legislation. When they wanted to pay less for scientists they knew to keep *silent* about NSF Labor Shortage claims even though such shortages don’t exist.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

These are the folks who tell you “masks don’t work” rather than “save masks for doctors as we forgot to restock them and moved all manufacturing to China like morons”. They will then spin on a dime to tell you “Only bad dumb people don’t wear masks”. This is the worst of Harvard.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So I don’t want Alex Jones and Qanon nor do I want @TwitterSafety, @msnbc and @Harvard. I see them as very different forms of the same thing: people who want to take away our ability to see clearly.

And, I assure you, @Harvard tries to paint anyone it can’t control as dangerous.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So, my belief is that anyone who rejects/questions Davos, Consensus Reality, Institutional Narrative, Public Health Campaigns, High Immigration, Peer Review, Primary Election Coverage, Trust & Safety...will be treated as Alex Jones sooner or Later.

This is Managed Reality ™.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I cannot live in Managed Reality ™ because I think it defeats the purpose of being a human being. It negates being an American. It abdicates responsibility for our children.

I have defeated Harvard about half the times we have fought. How? Because they just aren’t that good.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Managed Reality ™ has a weak spot. It’s not run by our A-team anymore. Fauci isn’t Francis Crick. Biden isn’t Elon. Janet Yellen isn’t Satoshi.

In general, the A-Team is going independent because tech/media/Ed are enforcing way too much conformity through personal destruction.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So why am I worried?

Well, I’ve been trying to save the institutions. It’s probably doomed, but almost no one is trying to do what I do: rescue the institutions from their death spiral by reinserting their critics in positions of prominence (eg Chomsky at MIT).

Hence my fear.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

If I were a tech guy I’d retreat into wealth. If I were a professor I’d shut up and collect my salary with job security. If I was a politician or journalist I’d follow the other sheep.

But I’m a science guy, an American and a dad. And I want my kids to have a particular future.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Thanks.

3:50 PM · Feb 12, 2021

2022

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

“Immigration has no negative effects.”

“I won’t make you pregnant.”

“Two weeks to flatten the curve.”

“NAFTA is a rising tide lifting all ships.”

“US STEM employers are facing a deep labor shortage.”

“Inflation is transient.”

“CPI is a measure of the COL.”

“Iraq has WMD.”

12:47 PM · Feb 18, 2022

Sam Altman

@sama

genuinely curious:

the fed has smart people. how were they so wrong about inflation being transient, when it seemed so obvious to most people that it wasn't going to be?

8:23 PM · Feb 17, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I feel gaslit when grown-ups talk about labor shortages in market economies w wage mechanisms.

It’s basically an admission that capitalism is meant as a TRICK where workers can’t benefit from markets.

Let’s talk about the ongoing equities shortage & printing shares for workers.

3:12 AM · Aug 20, 2022

Steve Rattner

@SteveRattner

Joining @Morning_Joe in a few to discuss the ongoing labor shortage and inflation. Where are America’s workers?

10:27 AM · Aug 19, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

You see, longterm labor shortages don’t exist in large market economies.

But the news media counts on workers being too dumb to understand the wage mechanism. So everyone in media pretends to believe in labor shortages. Like they were jackalopes.

Let’s print shares & not visas. https://t.co/1BamM9kNEo

3:16 AM · Aug 20, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Let’s talk about “equities shortages” which are no more real than “labor shortages”. That way every S.O.B. who whines about a labor shortage will hear: “Oh. It’s because of the Stock Share Shortage. You just have to print new shares of your company to get your workers energized.”

3:19 AM · Aug 20, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Let’s stop this “labor shortage” dead in its tracks. Let’s not print visas. It’s time to recognize workers are suffering from a *share shortage*. We need to print shares not visas and add them to compensation packages.

Bingo! Look at that: totally fictitious problem solved. 🙏

3:23 AM · Aug 20, 2022

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

If I have 1 piece of advice: Vote for whoever in Congress is most likely to hold PUBLIC hearings on

COVID Origins
Epstein Connection to IC
UFOs
CPI as Tax Increase/SS Reduction
Fake Labor Shortages
DHS meddling in Social Media
Etc.

I don’t believe the US is still on the ballot.

12:54 AM · Nov 8, 2022

2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Michael Shermer: you are quite incautious about what I say. Your world is dominated by careful scientists and wild eyed conspiracy theorists. The idea of wild eyed scientists (e.g. Francis Collins, Gerald Bull, Peter Daszak, Edward Teller) and careful conspiracy theorists (e.g. Seymour Hersh, William Davidon, Jack Raper, Gary Webb, etc) doesn’t occur to you nearly enough.

Roughly speaking I claimed that the U.S. government was, at a minimum, faking UFOs and that there is ample evidence that we FAKE exactly such things (which I documented) and destroy our own people’s sanity, reputations, careers and lives on a regular basis playing the “That sounds like a conspiracy theory!!” game.

Which is *exactly* what just happened in UFO land. We admitted we did what I claimed we were likely doing when I was on Rogan.

And what I claim about our failed 40 year “Quantum Gravity” and “String Theory” program is simply that it completely disabled a potentially dangerous activity: successfully discovering and sharing the power of new physics in open universities with foreign nationals of rival nations well beyond the Manhattan Project era nuclear physics. Is that deliberate? It sure as hell would be a lot less suspicious if we ever had the string theorist/quantum gravity people at the same conference head to head with their rivals and detractors. Wouldn’t it?

I’m sorry this seems crazy to you. But the U.S. government makes shit up. It’s called “Covert Operations”. In laymen’s terms: we conspire to gaslight our own people. And we do it a lot around national security.

Now would you please consider that you are carrying water for the very people that do this particularly vile form of reputational wet work? Is that what you want to do??

Enough.

I was writing about the danger of a manipulated CPI in 1996 (now admitted). The fake NSF labor shortage (now discredited) in the 1980s. Biden’s cognitive crisis for all 4 years of his presidency (now known to all). The fake racism charges against the Wuhan Lab leak theory (ahem).

Etc. See the pattern?

Michael: you do not get to do this cheaply. You live in a simplified world of good rational people and bad madmen. I live in a different world and the scourge of that world is the shitty debunker making fun of the scientists with the courage to say “Uh, ya know the mainstream position just doesn’t add up.”

Conspiracy is everywhere. And those of us who are disciplined in talking about them do not need you telling us what is possible based on heuristics.

I don’t think our secret federal scientists are in possession of the final theory at all. I have never said “We have anti-gravity.”

Stop stirring the pot. You are not the amazing Randi and I am not a spoon bender. I debunk debunkers. Deal with that first.

If you want to go head to head with my track record, let me know. I would LOVE that.

If not: be more careful.

Like a scientist. Thanks.

No hard feelings.

Michael Shermer

@michaelshermer

Dear @EricRWeinstein The history of technology strongly indicates that UAP-type "anti-gravity" tech cannot be Earthly. Here's my explanation of why from my forthcoming book Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters:

An alternative to ordinary explanations for UAP sightings is that they represent Russian or Chinese assets, drones, spy planes, or some related but as yet unknown (to us) technology capable of speeds and turns that seemingly defy all known physics and aerodynamics. Pilots and observers describe “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles” accelerating from 80,000 feet down to sea level in seconds, or making instantaneous turns and even sudden stops, or shooting off horizontally at hypersonic speed, breaking the sound barrier but not making a sonic boom, which should be impossible, not to mention that it would kill the pilots instantly. And these vehicles appear to be able to do so with no apparent jet engine or visible exhaust plume, suggesting that they’re using some anti-gravity technology unavailable to even the most advanced experimental programs worked on at DARPA. When 60 Minutes’ correspondent Bill Whitaker asked former Navy pilot Lieutenant Ryan Graves, who had seen with his own eyes UAPs buzzing around Virginia Beach in 2014, “could it be Russian or Chinese technology?” Graves responded “I don’t see why not,” adding that “if these were tactical jets from another country that were hangin’ out up there, it would be a massive issue.” Top Gun navy pilot and commander of the F/A-18F squadron on the USS Nimitz, David Fravor, told 60 Minutes “I don’t know who’s building it, who’s got the technology, who’s got the brains. But there’s something out there that was better than our airplane.”

The hypothesis that the objects are terrestrial and developed by some other nation or corporation, or some genius working in isolation, is highly unlikely, given what we know about the evolution of technological innovation, which is cumulative from the past. In his seminal work The Evolution of Technology, the historian George Basalla busts the myth of the inventor working in isolation, dreaming up new and innovative technologies out of sheer creative genius (the ping of the light bulb flashing brilliantly in the mind). All technologies, Basalla demonstrates, are developed out of either pre-existing artifacts (artificial objects) or already existing naturfacts (organic objects): “Any new thing that appears in the made world is based on some object already in existence,” he explains. But some artifact had to be first—an invention that comes from no other invention, ex nihilo as it were. If this is the case then that artifact, Basalla shows, likely came from a naturfact. (Barbed wire is a famous example. Its inventor, Michael Kelly, in 1868 explained: “My invention [imparts] to fences of wire a character approximating to that of a thorn-hedge. I prefer to designate the fence so produced as a thorny fence.” )

In How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley demonstrates through numerous examples that innovation is an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that is a result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is different from invention, Ridley argues, because “it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people that makes innovation possible.” Innovation, he continues, “is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, not a matter of lonely genius. It is gradual, serendipitous, recombinant, inexorable, contagious, experimental and unpredictable. It happens mainly in just a few parts of the world at any one time.” Examples include steam engines, jet engines, search engines, airships, vaping, vaccines, cuisine, antibiotics, mosquito nets, turbines, propellers, fertilizer, computers, dogs, farming, fire, genetic engineering, gene editing, container shipping, railways, cars, safety rules, wheeled suitcases, mobile phones, powered flight, chlorinated water, toilets, vacuum cleaners, shale gas, the telegraph, radio, social media, block chain, the sharing economy, artificial intelligence, and hyperloop tubes.

It is simply not possible that some nation, corporation, or lone individual—no matter how smart and creative—could have invented and innovated new physics and aerodynamics to create an aircraft of any sort that could be, essentially, centuries ahead of all known present technologies. That is not how innovation works. It would be as if the United States were using rotary phones while the Russians or Chinese had smart phones, or we were flying biplanes while they were flying stealth fighter jets, or we were sending letters and memos via fax machine while they were emailing files via the Internet, or we were still experimenting with captured German V-2 rockets while they were testing SpaceX-level rocketry. Impossible. We would know about all the steps leading to such technological wizardry.

Consider the Manhattan Project, arguably the most secretive program in US history to date, leading to the successful development of atomic bombs in 1945. The Russians had an atomic bomb by 1949. How? They stole our plans through a German theoretical physicist and spy named Klaus Fuchs. Modern tech companies like Apple, Google, Intel, and Microsoft are notoriously secretive about their inventions, forcing employees to sign Non Disclosure Agreements (NDEs), enforcing extensive security protocols for their offices, and protecting intellectual property rights through countless lawsuits. And yet…all of our computers, smart phones, computer chips, and software programs are essentially the same, or at least in close parallel development. Countries and companies steal, copy, back engineer, and innovate each other’s ideas and technologies, leaving no one company or country very far ahead or behind any other.

11:53 PM · Jun 22, 2025

5:57 AM · Jun 23, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Grok believes in long-term labor shortages in market economies with wage mechanisms.

Or rather @grok was trained on a corpus in which that was perseverated over reality.

11:23 AM · Jul 26, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We need a new concept, and I don’t know what to call it. Cognitive Poisioning by Mid Level National Security/National Interest. Or something. Anybody?

5:11 PM · Aug 6, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Essentially our national interest infrastructure appears to be wholesale dumping low level cognitive sludge into the public discourse absolutely everywhere. On TECHNICAL issues.

Who came up with this??

How do you expect to get away with it?

5:11 PM · Aug 6, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Biden is sharp as a tack (anti-neuroscience).

COVID came from a wet market pangolin (anti biology).

The CPI is a Cost of Living measure (anti-mathematical economics).

All humans should be represented equally in all elite activities (anti-Evolution).

There is only one theory in fundamental physics (anti mathematics and physics).

We have labor shortages in STEM (Anti market economics).

Vaccines are absolutely safe (anti-medicine).

Steel Buildings just collapse like that (anti structural engineering).

Etc.

That is bad enough. But somehow, we are willing to absolutely revoke the credentials of any expert who is not in on the fiction via this one crazy tool: reputational destruction.

Here is how it works.

Some collection of your government attached professional colleagues lose control of a cover story. That’s their problem. It shouldn’t be a “you problem”.

Francis Collins and Toni Fauci lost control of a virus cover story. Tough shit boys.

Prof Dale Jorgenson and Senators Moynihan and Packwood lost control of a CPI cost of living story. Shouldn’t have cooked the books gentlemen.

The Military lost control of a FAKE UFO special access program. What were you thinking?

The Whitehouse installed a committee to replace a Parkinson’s president. And you want neuroscientists to lie on behalf of an unelected committee?

You wasted 40 years of physicist putting an end to the career of anyone who wouldn’t believe in Ed Witten as the quantum gravity fairy. And that makes the people who called it into crackpots?? Walk us through the logic.

You blew up the world financial system on a story called “The Great Moderation”. And this makes those of us who called it into charlatans? How exactly? Be specific.

We can’t afford to kill all our strongest minds, all the time on EVERY botched operation.

Let’s face facts. Our national interest folks suck at their jobs if they have to take down people smarter than them to do their work.

Period.

We can’t pollute every technical area for national interest. These people just aren’t very good or ethical. I’m sorry.

You can’t just pollute all technical fields. You are just bad at your jobs. And we aren’t going to cover for you out of modesty any more. You’ve just gotten too agreessixe.

You’re simply preposterous.

We are better. You are worse. All you have over us is your cloak of covert authority. And that is it. That one thing.

Tough shit, gentlemen in the shadows.

5:11 PM · Aug 6, 2025

Related Pages

• Academic Freedom
• Eilberg Amendment (1976)
• How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers
• IMMACT90
• Immigration
• Issues of Legislation and Merit in Scientific Labor Markets
• Migration For The Benefit of All: Towards a New Paradigm for Migrant Labor
• National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)