The record so far over the last 300 years or so, counting economic systems that have proven stable, adaptable and lasting, is Some Form of Capitalism: Many and Brilliant Alternatives: Pretty Much Zero. I think we’re well into “psychic power” territory here.
From our kiddy debate here up through newly forming nations, there’s always a contingent that thinks if you can logically outline it on paper, it must be workable. And yes, just like other tautologies, it all works great… on paper, and with any number of players who agree to voluntarily abide by every rule thereon.
Put an economic theory formed this way into the real world and barring a totalitarian government enforcement, it crumbles. It crumbles anyway, sooner or later… into some form of capitalism.
Do you have any understanding of “capitalism” and “socialism” beyond brief dictionary definitions? What on earth makes you think the Scandinavian countries with lukewarm socialist governments (about as strongly socialist as any stable system can manage) are not capitalist economies? They most assuredly are - 100% players in the capitalist world economy that function under socialist government and society. Having high tax rates to fund deep social support is not the antithesis of capitalism.
Perhaps I do not have and understanding of capitalism and socialism beyond dictionary (or textbook) definitions, but I think having an understanding of what those definitions are is a good starting point so to speak. Are you saying a place like Sweden does not have a mixed economy? Are you saying a mixed economy really means capitalism and not a mixed economy? Are you saying the Capitalism part of the country is what makes it stable and not the mixed part? Your arguments do not seem coherent to me, but hey, that’s OK.
In the range of <—Communism---------------------Capitalism—> the Scandinavian countries are on the Capitalist side of the spectrum. And you’ll notice that, if anything, they are becoming more so, not less.
They are going from countries of less opportunity to those of more opportunity. If their countries were doing well, they wouldn’t feel the need to leave. Guess which countries aren’t doing well?
I’d say that Sweden has a primarily capitalist economic system, although from a conventional US viewpoint it’s somewhere over Socialist into Communist.
If you feel a need to differentiate it because it supports a socialist government, I wouldn’t argue, but I’d call the Swedish society mixed rather than the government or economic systems, which are entangled but distinct.
All existing capitalist countries have “mixed economies”, including the US. There are no pure capitalist countries out there.
Humans have apparently found that the best economic system is a mixed economy. We argue a lot about how to get that mix precisely right, but that’s fiddling at the margins as opposed to tearing down the market system and creating something different.
Don’t get me wrong. There is certainly money to be made in technology. Just like any other field requiring skill, intellect and specific subject matter knowledge. But tech workers have their own styles and customs and attitudes that are just as insufferable as any lawyer, banker or member of any other well-paid profession.
**RickJay **- I’m not even talking about a “fancy” desk. Just something a bit nicer than the Roman slave galley setup. For example, the NYC headquarters of TheLadders.com.
But that’s the nice thing about capitalism. I can always shop around for someplace that either has nicer offices or is willing to pay me a premium to sit in their shithole office space.
Neither does my dad.
I don’t know. I’ve been doing this shit for about 20 years. And I’ve made a decent enough living at it. I’m also in a position where I know exactly how much people make doing this stuff and how much companies are willing to pay for it. But I only know maybe one guy who made real “I can retire at any time” money. He founded a couple of software companies in the 90s and sold them for enough money to start a venture capital fund with some other guys. Everyone else makes decent enough money too, but they are still tied to the corporate grind.
The difference is that many (if not most) tech workers think that their value is in their ability to write mad code. So they end up getting paid for their time, which is a simple calculation of market rate x number of hours they can work. Or they pin their hopes to getting a tiny piece of equity in some startup and hope it gets acquired for billions. The smart ones like Gates or Zuckerburg own the software and sell that. Because the software can be worth a hell of a lot more than the sum of all the individual contributor’s efforts.
Really the same logic applies in any professions. It’s why making “partner” is such a big deal for lawyers and consultants and other professions. Because then you can finally start living off of other people’s labor rather than your own.
I think this could work for students who are focused on acquiring a very specific set of skills. Many college students are not sure what they want to do and college helps them find out. Also a lot of valuable learning happens at the intersection of different disciplines.
Let’s say as a student entering college you have an interest in both science and graphic design and are not sure what you want to do with it. Over a period of time, perhaps in conversation with other students and professors you decide that scientific illustration is your passion and intended career path. You take science classes and you also study graphic design. You have access to a range of lab facilities, high-end graphic software, high-quality printers, large illustrated books etc.
Your long-term goal is to start your own business so you take an entrepreneurship class in the B-school. You work on projects with business-school students and learn how to create a business plan, make a pitch etc as well get to make some useful contacts.
Could you get this through a MOOC? Not without difficulty and it would involve all sorts of running around to do things which happen naturally on a campus where you get students, faculty and facilities in one place.
I can guarantee you I was much younger than your dad was when this because valid. Much younger.
I have my own business now which I do because I like it, not because I have to. I work the hours I choose and with the clients I choose. That was my goal since I was in my late 20s.
Anyway, I live in Silicon Valley and know many, many techies. I also know quite a few who became financially independent by taking a “tiny equity position” in the firm they worked for. In fact, pretty much all my tech contemporaries from the 1990s are in that category. It’s not quite as easy now as it was, but it’s still pretty common out here.
Ditto, although I have been alternately self-employed and corporate since about 20 - a bit Travis McGee-ish in that I only went on the payroll as a necessity in between fairly successful stretches on my own, and sometimes to build up to a new plateau. I walked out of my last tech job just before the 2001 crash (and watched the industry I left essentially vanish).
I never made more than a paycheck living, though; the equity options rarely came my way and those that did were washouts. I was fortunate to marry that “ideal half” who had tremendous drive and talent but no way to harness it; I could support her business efforts part time while working at my own interests. It worked out well; we walked away from pretty much all income at 50 and now get to screw around with whatever longshot hairbrained idea intrigues us.
Here’s to the tech survivors who got out, and another round for those who did it without a lucky roll of the buyout dice.
I read this response to my post and I thought “hmm, I’m having trouble understanding this response to my post - i.e. why would one list four non ivy league schools as some of the top schools Google recruits from to contradict my assertion that the leverage of an ivy league education affords in the work world may be on the wane.” So I went and did some unrelated homework. After that I went to a Jewish deli with my girlfriend. It was in a part of town we had never been to. I liked the decor, and thought it had a certain traditional yet gaudy feel which I kind of like - I think the style was sort of old Italian woman meets post modern art. The walls were painted purple, but not offensively so, It was a rather soothing shade of purple actually, and added to the dining experience. We both ordered beers, but the bottles were different shapes, and I said to my SO "WOW, they can fit the same amount of beer into my beer bottle as yours? Your’s looks so much smaller. Then I read the labels and saw that her beer contained about 7% less fluid oz., but that didn’t really account for the difference in how different they looked to be in size ans beer holding capacity. Her’s was shorter and a little more stout, she was pretty convinced that the added girth made up for the lack in height which is why the two bottles could hold roughly the same volume. When our meal came, I had the corned beef, and she had the pastrami; I keep making the same mistake whenever I go to a Jewish deli, I always order corned beef instead of pastrami, but I really like pastrami better, it has much more flavor, don’t you think? I should also mention that they had a wonderful pickle bar, you could go up an unlimited number of times. This was a first for yours truly, I have never experienced an all you can eat pickle bar - I went up twice. After my second trip to the pickle bar, we paid the bill and came home. So I re-read the post when I got home, and after several hours away I still thought, “what does this list of schools have to do with the Ivy League”?
You said “14% of google employees have no college degree”, implying that the choice was between “Ivy League” vs “not bothering to go to college at all”. Did you mean specifically the Ivy League schools (Harvard, Yale, etc), because some people use the term as short hand to mean “elite, highly competitive universities” in general (of which MIT and Stamford would be included in that group_.
Did you really not grasp that, or are you naturally extremely pedantic?
Bottom, line, if you want to work for Google, stay in school kids (or drop out and start your own software company).
Then you are fortunate. Just out of curiosity, what is/was your area of expertise? You can tell me technology or industry if you don’t want to get into details.
My experience in the 1990s around Boston’s Rt128 loop was a bit different. I has started my tech career with one of those rapidly growing ecommerce consulting firms that were featured in Wired and Fast Company like every month (remember CTP, Digitas, MarchFirst, Sapient, Scient, Viant, and Razorfish?). Lots of really smart programmers and grads from top schools. For months it was all big celebrations of hitting headcount or revenue milestones and talk about how we were all going to get rich off our stock options.
Then the bubble burst in 2001, 70% of the company got laid off, stock options worthless, and off I went to business school.
But mostly what I remembered was a lot of really nerdy kids jammed together in rooms writing code until midnight every night and working every weekend.
I also remember a lot of failed startups and out of work developers complaining about outsourced jobs in the early 2000s.
My point is simply that a lot of these companies involve a lot of people who aren’t the founder and his inner circle working unsustainable hours in not the greatest conditions for something that ultimately ends up not panning out. A lot of tech workers would relate their experiences more towards Office Space than The Social Network.
Although in all fairness, working for a rapidly growing small company with really smart people can be a lot more fun and exciting than working in the back office of some giant megacorporation.
I’d also recommend checking out the documentary Startup.com. It’s a pretty interesting take on the time period.
Getting back to the OP, I was in a used book store today and happened to notice a Life Magazine from 1963 with a cover story titled “Automation’s really here: jobs go scarce; Point of No Return for Everybody”. I scanned through the article and it had a lot of the same concerns voiced in this thread. It quoted the Labor Department saying that in 1968 they expected 64 million workers and 14.6 looking for work. That’s ~18% unemployment. A lot of similar hand-wringing (4-hour work days were mentioned). Obviously it never happened.
By Ivy League I mean the 8 schools in the Ivy League, if I meant elite, highly competitive schools that’s what I would have said, but I didn’t say that I said Ivy League. There is a significant distinction between the two terms. You are having an argument with words I am not saying and the points I am making seem not to have entered your sphere of comprehension yet. If you would like me to further elucidate upon this, I would be happy to expand upon these points, but only if you ask nicely. Otherwise we will have to agree to disagree, or agree that we agree upon the arguments you are having with words I am not saying.
There is nothing great about work, in fact, most top of the line capitalists not-so-secretly despise workers, especially low wage workers. It’s great to have money in a capitalist society, though.
So first you make a dismissive, poorly thought out response to my post, then you call me pedantic, now you are saying I am a jerk; if you do not have the ability to have an intelligent response to what I am saying yet continue to respond to what I am saying is their really any need to descend into name calling? If you do not have the ability to make intelligent arguments, or at least arguments relative to what I am saying but prefer name calling, should you not go to the BBQ pit? This is not the BBQ pit, and I have not called you names so the response seems unwarranted.
