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.
Letâs talk about âequities shortagesâ which are no more real than âlabor shortagesâ. That way every S.O.B. who whines about a labor shortage will hear: âOh. Itâs because of the Stock Share Shortage. You just have to print new shares of your company to get your workers energized.â
Letâs stop this âlabor shortageâ dead in its tracks. Letâs not print visas. Itâs 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
On X
New Topic: "What's your vision of true academic freedom?" [Asks @Philip_Girvan.]
An old joke about the diference between the Soviet and US constitutions. Both give freedom to dissent. The US gives freedom the day after.
Academic freedom is about making secure heroes out of Margot O'toole, Doug Prasher & Nassim Taleb instead of pushing them to the periphery.
Academic freedom is freedom to invite a senior colleague to self-copulate for inserting himself before your name on YOUR paper..and survive.
Academic freedom comes from the academic *obligation* to schedule lectures if you have even the possibility of strong disruptive results.
Academic freedom entails a right for a non-expert theorist of high ability to cross boundaries and live on merit without seeking permission.
Academic freedom is the insulation from threat or want to continue in good standing for *any* and *all* contributions & reasoned dissent.
What few people admit is that opposing "String Theory", "The Great Moderation", "Scientist Shortages" etc...leads to excommunication.
This was best put by @BretWeinstein: "Selection is to be feared only when just individuals are prevented from returning costs."
So @ahaspel asks what institutional reforms are needed (which was where I was headed when a birthday party occured in physical reality).
First of all, I am focused primarily on science. If universities can't provide academic freedom, science needs to move homes.
Next: Basic research in science is a public good (inexhaustible and inexcludible). Therefore we need higher levels of public funding.
To maintain academic freedom we need to move resources from what is falsely called 'scientific training' to the compensation of researchers.
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.).
Graduate training is actually much shorter than assumed. Typically one is a graduate 'student' in year 1,2 of a PhD and working thereafter.
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.
We must also fund entirely different sorts of people. Without Huxleys, Grossmans, & Hardys you don't get Darwins, Einsteins, & Ramanujans.
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.
Research & Teaching in Universities are as perfectly linked as Skiing & Shooting in the Biathalon: tenuously for all but Professors / Finns.
Last point for now: Freedom for academics is precisely freedom from academics. A real marketplace of ideas beats the pants off peer review.
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.
On May 23, 2003 an extraordinary talk at NAS called âExactly Backwards: Scientific Manpower Theoryâ was given.There is no record of this.
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.
The talk presented evidence to the National Academy of Sciences that NAS & @NSF partnered to manipulate markets over scientist salaries.
Now ask yourself why would @NSF be trying to weaken American scientists? Why would NAS help? How would NSF dependent scientists self-defend?
Gauge theoretic economics interest has come recently from @mathpunk @dabacon @diffeomacx @riemanmzeta @tylercowen @ahaspel etc... Loving it.
I should say that Gauge theoretic economics is also all about academic freedom, quashed as it was by the rennegade Boskin Commission idiocy.
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