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Was firing an over-reaction?Was firing an over-reaction?Posted Mar 25, 2013 19:49 UTC (Mon) by tjc (subscriber, #137)In reply to: Was firing an over-reaction? by deepfire Parent article: Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost It was critical, independent thinking that led me to the conclusion that capitalism--even with its flaws--is superior to democratic socialism. Critical, independent thinking is something that is almost completely missing in higher education today. Most liberal arts students are intellectual automatons, accepting what they're told without thinking much about it. Diversity is celebrated, but only in areas that don't matter much, such as race and sex. Displaying any sort of diversity of thought is an invitation for ridicule. And ridicule is no substitute for a well-reasoned argument.
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Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 25, 2013 20:24 UTC (Mon) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
>, independent thinking is something that is almost completely missing in higher education today. Most liberal arts students...
For what it's worth, this problem is not nearly so bad in mathematics. To keep a place in academia, perhaps you are required to suppress independent thinking... but this is a "choice" in the sense that by the end of your degree you will at least be capable of thinking critically.
ISTM that most math majors leave academia for this reason, though much better off for the experience.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 27, 2013 4:19 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> For what it's worth, this problem is not nearly so bad in mathematics.
Part of that is due the nature of mathematics itself -- it is a beautiful thing, a transcendent truth untainted by lesser things. Computer Science is nearly so, but not quite.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 25, 2013 23:59 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Anyone claiming that the effective subjugation and elimination of much of the human race from the pool of equally-treated employees 'does not matter much' is not only an intellectual automaton -- he's a *bad capitalist*.
Hint: doubling your employment pool by hiring people without regard for sex is a good thing for the employer for hopefully obvious reasons. Being forbidden from treating some of your employees like slaves (or, indeed, actually *as* slaves) is a good thing for the employer, because it prevents a race to the bottom where your competitors outcompete you by treating some of their employees like slaves and beating you on price, forcing you to do the same even if you don't want to.
This is the sort of thing regulation (and anti-discrimination legislation) is *for*. It's *why* unbridled capitalism doesn't work: without legislation to suppress perverse incentives like this, it contains the seeds of its own destruction. Legislation like this is a large part of the reason why Marx was wrong (well, that and the fact that some enlightened employers, like Ford, realised that they had to pay their employees enough that they could afford to buy things: that economic slavery was bad).
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 26, 2013 10:28 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Legislation like this is a large part of the reason why Marx was wrong It funny: Marx said many different things yet you somehow talk without ever clarifying what exactly you mean as if everything he said was wrong. Well, that and the fact that some enlightened employers, like Ford, realised that they had to pay their employees enough that they could afford to buy things: that economic slavery was bad Actually it was not Ford's altruism but creation of FED which made it possible to expand markets which, in turn, made continuation of capitalist possible. Ford employees can only buy Fords because someone somewhere digs the ore for the food and shelter. As long as it was possible to expand markets capitalism ruled, when it struggled to do so (Germany and Japan in XX century) it become violent, when nukes made hot resolution impossible it stagnated and surged when new markets become available (it's easy to see things like the opening up of the country to foreign investment and collapse of USSR and other, smaller expansions on a graph), and of course when it finally covered the world it started disintegrating as expected (again on the same graph: extreme efforts by FED, ECB, PBOC and others were just enough to stop this collapse for a time and it's clear that these programs have limited lifetime). Now, if you talk about the next stage (utopia which will be achieved after capitalism collapse) then I agree that here Marx described something based solely on a wishful thinking - but it was well over hundred years ago, it's hard to blame him. P.S. And of course the fact that it's still one of the best available descriptions of the capitalism's collapse is just sad: we had a century to prepare to the event, did nothing and instead gave awards to people who just ten years ago explained how capitalism can go on expanding forever on a finite planet. Gosh. Pathetic.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 26, 2013 15:29 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
That sounds plausible until you actually start digging.
Economic growth in the US was NOT linked to exports. In fact, US exported hardly anything during the first post-war years (hardly anybody in Europe could buy imported stuff).
Ultimately, economic growth is not linked to external expansion - it is also linked to internal expansion. Slashing the cost of a $500 widget to $50 immediately opens up a lot of internal market - and that has been the main engine of US and European economic growth for quite a bit of time.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 27, 2013 15:14 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
My Marxism reference was referring to his fundamental axiom, that capitalism would collapse when the marginal rate of profit was driven to zero and everyone ended up a slave with arbitrarily low wages. This didn't happen because (among other reasons) of the growth of the union movement, which Marx could hardly have predicted.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 27, 2013 15:35 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
I'd say that Marx also overlooked the explosive economic growth that allowed for quite a bit of time for wages to rise in real value.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 28, 2013 0:01 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
No, he expected that -- he was writing a short time after the Industrial Revolution had truly gathered steam. Economic growth wouldn't slow the processes he identified -- it would accelerate them, as they're driven by competition. But of course he didn't foresee the labour movement or the modern welfare state, which has pretty much eliminated the race to the bottom he foresaw. (Other things might well have eliminated it too.)
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 29, 2013 6:46 UTC (Fri) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> Hint: doubling your employment pool by hiring people without
> regard for sex is a good thing for the employer for hopefully > obvious reasons.
All other things being equal your statement is of course quite correct. But they aren't always like your textbook out in the real world.
Lets push an example to an extreme.. kinda like you do in the next one... and see where it might lead to a different conclusion.
We all know programmers tend to be a) a bit wierd, b) overwhelmingly male and c) tend to be socially inept in general and especially in interactions with MOTOS. We also know (heck, I know well enough from direct experience, know several at least as good at IT things as myself) that women can program but they are even less represented at the extreme high end than they are in general. We also know that those few extreme programmers can often produce more output than a dozen or more normal ones. The "A bit wierd" factor seems to correlate with the high output.
Theory holds that women and men are equal, thus adding women to a team shouldn't matter. But the reality above disagrees, adding women to an existing team of males (especially in this industry) always seems to involve drama, sensitivity/diversity training and changing the work environment in general to allow maternity leave, no more death marches, etc., all of which impact productivity. Btw, if you only apply the new kinder and gentler rules to the females, kiss moral goodbye. And if you figure the odds are non-trivial that one or more of your twitchy but highly productive ones will get sacked in an HR incident to boot, perhaps the wise course for a manager IS to exclude half the talent pool, pulling whatever tricks are required to keep the EEOC in the dark.
Discuss. And try to keep it rational. What proposed changes in social conditions would best work to mitigate/eliminate the perverse incentives in that scenario?
> a race to the bottom where your competitors outcompete you
Good grief, that is so epic stupid you must be college educated. That can only happen as a pathological extreme of an imbalance of supply and demand of labor, and guess what; given the condition the result WILL happen. But if labor isn't so abundant that employers can do that labor will always be able to bid up their price with or without unions even. Especially in industries like ours.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 29, 2013 15:21 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] adding women to an existing team of males (especially in this industry) always seems to involve drama, sensitivity/diversity trainingIf it involves 'drama' the people causing the 'drama' need to grow up and realize that half the human race is female. If sensitivity training is even *needed* to interact with women this is even more true (FWIW I have never had any such training at any point, nor have I heard of it existing in the UK outside organizations in recovery mode from situations where actual sexual harrassment has been going on: this may be a US-specific insanity). changing the work environment in general to allow maternity leave, no more death marchesGood! Organizations that do not acknowledge that their employees have families and that those families deserve priority at times do not deserve to exist (and there is such a thing as paternity leave in decent organizations and sane countries, too: men have families as well, and expecting them to ignore a new child in favour of the latest deadline is inhuman). Organizations that are so incompetent at planning that frequent death marches are necessary do not deserve to exist (they're harming their employees by doing that, of whichever gender). That can only happen as a pathological extreme of an imbalance of supply and demand of laborYeah. That is a very frequent case in many industries: after all, there are always more people waiting at the gates. Guess why it doesn't happen? Because of, gasp, regulation preventing it from taking hold.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 29, 2013 17:01 UTC (Fri) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> nor have I heard of it existing in the UK
Here in the US diversity/sensitivity training is a huge industry. Huge.
> there are always more people waiting at the gates.
Why? If wage rates drop people lose interest in training to enter it. There is a bit of a lag but a lot of people entered IT because they heard they pay was good. If pay ever dropped a lot those who came for the money and not because they have a burning desire for it would quickly leave.
Same theory applies in most industries. Here where I live the job most people without a degree lust for is the offshore oil & gas industry. It isn't because they love oil, they love the fact it is the highest paying industry in the area. If they cut the pay back few would line up for a shot at spending weeks at a time on an offshore platform. They pay that good because the job requires a certain sort of person, the sort who won't screw up, blow up a multi-billion dollar oil platform and rack up untold more billions in enviromental and PR damage. In other words, they don't need a degree but they do need clue and stability.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Mar 29, 2013 20:16 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> Here in the US diversity/sensitivity training is a huge industry. Huge.
Large companies have mandatory training for every employee once a year on diversity/sensitivity training.
A couple of years ago, the web-based training module at my company wouldn't let you complete the training in less than an hour. Even if you read everything (instead of watching the videos), if you finished in less than an hour, it forced you to keep interacting with it until an hour of interaction had completed.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Apr 1, 2013 14:16 UTC (Mon) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> Anyone claiming that the effective subjugation and elimination of much of the human race from the pool of equally-treated employees 'does not matter much' is not only an intellectual automaton -- he's a *bad capitalist*.
This is projection -- I didn't say anything about subjugating or eliminating anyone from anything.
Was firing an over-reaction? Posted Apr 1, 2013 22:55 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Claiming that diversity of race and sex "don't matter much" is tantamount to that. But perhaps, just maybe, you didn't realize they were a problem? (If so, you're speaking from a privileged position and should probably talk to people more.)
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