Labor Shortages

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

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

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