Basically agree with this post, but I'll defend Noah's statement. The US military is only 15% combat roles. I assume Ukraine's is much higher because they're at war, but I'd still guess only 40% combat / 60% support. The military famously IQ tests everyone who enlists with ASVAB so they can get the high-IQ people into intellectual roles. Most of the smart people I know who enlisted in the military ended up in some kind of role like technician or machine operator. Noah is a professor. There is no way he would be in the 40% whose comparative advantage is direct combat.
Perhaps I am being too cynical and you make a good point about the IQ test- however, I am unsure: 1) Recruitment in Ukraine seems incredibly chaotic, predatory, and adversarial (running into towns and shoving people onto a bus) 2) C.f. what Dave Irving said.
However, most of those support roles are not jobs like "analyst". They are jobs like storeman, driver, technician (if you're lucky), logistics drone, etc. And it doesn't matter how clever you think you are.
Great article, but the caricatures are totally wrong about the personalities of the individuals involved. The conservative anti-work contingent is certainly not Nietzschean, but is more about in-group vs. outgroup, dignity and status, and negative freedom. On the other side, the moralizers are certainly not nihilists nor espousing self-abnegation, they are the actual proponents of will-to-power meritocracy. It’s really the Cavaliers versus the Calvinists all over again.
Not really. For those two particular cases, I think they're just LARPing: Vivek was raised upper-middle class, played tennis as a kid, wrote "libertarian raps". He clearly has a large personality and a wide range of interests and doesn't exclusively care about the grind. BAP is clearly not underemployed: he might hold himself as an Ubermensch but I doubt he thinks that all or even most white Americans deserve the same.
Anyways, even assuming that they hold them sincerely, their views are extremes, but not fair ones, exactly because they aren't representative. It's sort of adjacent to the annoying behavior when people pick the most out-there takes to accuse groups they disagree with of being indefensible. I'd rather debate the most extreme take which is still self-consistent.
The other issue with clever work is that clever work is actually difficult. It's easy to imagine being clever in certain situations but being clever on demand for a given problem is a real skill and most people who think they're clever likely fail at it. Few ideas survive contact with reality, so to be effective you often need a really good understanding of the domain, which requires hands on experience that can't be obtained just by being smart.
I believe that working your way up has a lot of merit that seems unappreciated by people due to the idea that you can learn things in school and be rational and just bypass the basic roles because they're trivial. I don't think that's true and that concept has done a lot of damage to our society
I'm glad you referenced what 100k is in terms of median household and median individual income. People are wierdly alergic to putting things in context like that. Making more than a majority of individuals in the richest country in the world is not a bad thing!
This is really great, thanks... I am presently in the conundrum of trying to find a "normal" job after freelancing for eight years... eeeghh lol. I appreciate both your realism and the point at building a better society regardless.
"The juster and higher alternative is to accept that you may never get your golden ticket and fight for a world in which the wages and conditions of work allow dignity for everyone. "
I've thought about this a lot. I'd be curious to know what percentage of workers exceed the *average* (not median) income? At that point you stand to lose from redistribution and will support the system out of pure self-interest. I can't find numbers for the average *household*, but the median personal income appears to be $40K whereas the mean was $60K...at the 70th percentile, roughly.
So that means you have 30% of the population, all else equal, that stands to lose from redistribution. You don't have to have a golden ticket to not want to exchange your silver for bronze.
This would help us world well. As a clever person I enjoy my job in the patent office. it lets me think. Status games are for narcissists and if we were clever we would used status traps to police them, and we could world our self with more safety. Fear is also the heart killer.
...she left me roses by the stairs. Surprises let me know she cares.
Someone got it!
Fantastic insights PB . Thankyou !
Thankyou :-)
Basically agree with this post, but I'll defend Noah's statement. The US military is only 15% combat roles. I assume Ukraine's is much higher because they're at war, but I'd still guess only 40% combat / 60% support. The military famously IQ tests everyone who enlists with ASVAB so they can get the high-IQ people into intellectual roles. Most of the smart people I know who enlisted in the military ended up in some kind of role like technician or machine operator. Noah is a professor. There is no way he would be in the 40% whose comparative advantage is direct combat.
Perhaps I am being too cynical and you make a good point about the IQ test- however, I am unsure: 1) Recruitment in Ukraine seems incredibly chaotic, predatory, and adversarial (running into towns and shoving people onto a bus) 2) C.f. what Dave Irving said.
However, most of those support roles are not jobs like "analyst". They are jobs like storeman, driver, technician (if you're lucky), logistics drone, etc. And it doesn't matter how clever you think you are.
Ask me how I know!
Great article, but the caricatures are totally wrong about the personalities of the individuals involved. The conservative anti-work contingent is certainly not Nietzschean, but is more about in-group vs. outgroup, dignity and status, and negative freedom. On the other side, the moralizers are certainly not nihilists nor espousing self-abnegation, they are the actual proponents of will-to-power meritocracy. It’s really the Cavaliers versus the Calvinists all over again.
You don't think BAP and Vivek are fair representatives of the extremes here?
Not really. For those two particular cases, I think they're just LARPing: Vivek was raised upper-middle class, played tennis as a kid, wrote "libertarian raps". He clearly has a large personality and a wide range of interests and doesn't exclusively care about the grind. BAP is clearly not underemployed: he might hold himself as an Ubermensch but I doubt he thinks that all or even most white Americans deserve the same.
Anyways, even assuming that they hold them sincerely, their views are extremes, but not fair ones, exactly because they aren't representative. It's sort of adjacent to the annoying behavior when people pick the most out-there takes to accuse groups they disagree with of being indefensible. I'd rather debate the most extreme take which is still self-consistent.
The other issue with clever work is that clever work is actually difficult. It's easy to imagine being clever in certain situations but being clever on demand for a given problem is a real skill and most people who think they're clever likely fail at it. Few ideas survive contact with reality, so to be effective you often need a really good understanding of the domain, which requires hands on experience that can't be obtained just by being smart.
I believe that working your way up has a lot of merit that seems unappreciated by people due to the idea that you can learn things in school and be rational and just bypass the basic roles because they're trivial. I don't think that's true and that concept has done a lot of damage to our society
The Cavaliers and the Calvinists both being on the right rings very true!
I'm glad you referenced what 100k is in terms of median household and median individual income. People are wierdly alergic to putting things in context like that. Making more than a majority of individuals in the richest country in the world is not a bad thing!
This is really great, thanks... I am presently in the conundrum of trying to find a "normal" job after freelancing for eight years... eeeghh lol. I appreciate both your realism and the point at building a better society regardless.
I'm familiar with how this has played out on the left, but hadn't thought about how it manifests on the right. Really interesting!
You don't win status for your friends, you win it over your friends!
"The juster and higher alternative is to accept that you may never get your golden ticket and fight for a world in which the wages and conditions of work allow dignity for everyone. "
I've thought about this a lot. I'd be curious to know what percentage of workers exceed the *average* (not median) income? At that point you stand to lose from redistribution and will support the system out of pure self-interest. I can't find numbers for the average *household*, but the median personal income appears to be $40K whereas the mean was $60K...at the 70th percentile, roughly.
So that means you have 30% of the population, all else equal, that stands to lose from redistribution. You don't have to have a golden ticket to not want to exchange your silver for bronze.
This would help us world well. As a clever person I enjoy my job in the patent office. it lets me think. Status games are for narcissists and if we were clever we would used status traps to police them, and we could world our self with more safety. Fear is also the heart killer.
It's a replay of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism vs the Stakhanovite movement.
This is a brilliant analysis.