Comment by danharaj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danharaj | Hacker News Reader

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> Erm... isn't the actual root cause of the problem raised in TFA the opposite of debasement? Namely excess supply of people who're willing to go into academia to "do the most essential work in society", whatever the terms, as a sister comment from an insider pointed out? If the perceived value of being in academia was low enough, the market would force the universities to treat adjuncts better.

this eerily sounds similar to the kind of logic i was rejecting. this is an appeal to the logic of markets and the assumption that they are efficient to derive truth. this is exactly neoliberalism. at least in old school liberalism we could acknowledge markets' shortcomings via externalities and the idea of market failure! Otherwise i think the sibling comment is a good response.

Neither your comment nor the comment you cite replies directly to mine - meaning, neither of you addresses the question what happens if people refuse to work for universities at the current level of compensation (perhaps some do not have a better option right now, but those who studied STEM certainly do.) I claim that comp will have to go up, boom, problem solved. Where am I wrong? What other solution would you propose that cannot be circumvented by the employer as long as the employees are willing to help circumvent it, for the same reasons making them willing to accept a raw deal now?

Instead, your comment in particular rejects what I said because it's "neoliberalism." All I said was that employers will tend to give you shit as long as you take it, be it for-profits, non-profits, government or individuals. I don't think that's quite the same as denying externalities or market failure or generally arguing about neoliberalism and other abstract concepts at a great distance from the issue at hand.

In concrete terms, I believe the someone quitting a bad job or not taking it in the first place is better off than someone who does take it and then broods about the debasement brought about by neoliberalism or whatever the supposed root cause of their condition is. In other words, my angle is more productive than yours as a basis for action.

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