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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have little interest in and has less chance of improving the human condition, but it let me buy a house and pay the taxes and fees. If I instead choose to do what I'm interested in I'd be lucky to afford renting a room in someone else's house.

I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.

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> But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.

Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).

I’m not exactly sure that’s how the world works…

It is if you want to continue educating new physicists.

'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.

less educators produce less educated, that's absolutely how it works.

the incentives, the logistics and finances of how we get to a point like that -- well that's where it gets muddier.

The worry is that by better funding educators we might have to make do with less administrators, which could leave students less administrated.

No it isn’t. You’re implying education = higher standard of living, more jobs. It doesn’t.

One man can make a video lesson and teach millions, so more educators doesn’t mean more educated.

You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad. Yet UCLA doesn’t operate on 1:1 ratios.

Finally, what makes you think there will be less educators? Very likely UCLA can rely on the rich and nerdy people who are willing to subsidize their own careers. This already happens in many fields.

Really finally, this is a shit practice. I’d like to see an audit of where the money goes such that the most student focused educators become last in line to get paid.

> You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad.

A here does not imply B. If it did then the natural conclusion is that the world only needs one singular educator.

In reality there's a sliding scale where more students to a given educator results in lower quality education, but a greater number of educated. The art is balancing these concerns.

> You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad.

Anything beyond it isn't bad, per se, but it is less optional.

It's possible to devote too much time and energy to education, i.e. diminishing returns.

Academia is, in essence, a multi-level marketing scheme that produces more of itself, and will (if given unlimited resources from other areas of society) expand until it takes all resources simply replicating more of itself.

Many poor countries have enormously bloated education sectors.

it’s definitely not how the US works, but it should be.

> Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).

There are plenty of people who would be totally happy to step into this professor's shoes at his current rate of pay just to have a position in academia. We have too many PhDs—there are more people who want a position in academia than academia can support.

We're not faced with the prospect of not being able to train a next generation of physicists, but there's a real possibility that the next generation doesn't view academia as the ideal place to be—the physics equivalent of Broadway. If that happens, fewer people will put up with low-valued positions and a dangled tenure carrot, and the college job market will adapt.

In the meantime we're not going to solve the problem of academic jobs being overvalued by the workforce by artificially inflating pay for the lucky few who landed an academic job at all.

Of course you are correct, nobody is ever promised anything like the ability to fulfill their dreams or to live a decent quality of life. But maybe the universities could pay them a living wage for teaching six classes a week.

$70k is a living wage in Los Angeles; he his homeless by choice. To be clear, I’m not saying he is not underpaid. He might need a roommate and to live in a crappy apartment and not in Westwood to make it workable, which does not seem fair for a PhD teaching physics. But it’s not homeless level.

People seem to think it is easy to have roommates. My roommates were horrible, they wouldn't clean anything, blast music and always a privacy risks.

> People seem to think it is easy to have roommates

It seems to me that they think it's easier than being homeless.

It is also that US is mostly filled with either very large single family homes or apartments in areas where rents are generally always high. A focus on efficient, individual space that is like 400 sq ft. dense studios but which actually translates into lower rent (e.g. 2500$ in the example to somewhere 1000-1500$ is needed). A lot of reforms and time needed for this.

This is one of the things I miss about Tokyo: there are plenty of small apartments there at relatively affordable prices. I personally would rather have a 400 sq ft unit to myself than to live in a shared house or apartment.

OK, I also live with roommates while I'm saving up a downpayment and waiting for mortgage rates to drop. But c'mon, there's a huge difference between being homeless and having roommates. I've been close to being homeless before, and at that point I would have been happy to have even the shittiesy roommates if it meant not sleeping on the streets.

I'm disgusted at the implication that 70k isn't enough to live in LA. Yes, it may not be enough to meet some arbitrary standard, but it's insane to say that the alternative is being homeless. This is just a spoiled rich kid who isn't making enough to keep their previous standard of living. There's tons of working class people in that same community getting by on way less than 70k who aren't getting articles written about them.

Well, he even says one of his criteria is he doesn’t want a long commute. There’s cheaper housing in LA. You just won’t favor it given other options.

When I was living in Cambridge (MA) in the early 2010s, it was unthinkable to not have a flatmate or four. By far the most economical situation was to rent a 4 or 5 bedroom house. Doing this, you could easily have a sub-1k rent within a 10 minute walk of the Harvard or Central T stops.

Not to “kids these days” it or anything, but the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing.

> the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing

I used to think this way—that is, just like you—in my 20s. From my experience growing up, I was used to not having nice or even merely adequate things, and it was the norm to go without. I'm less cavalier about declaring it entitlement now. Why shouldn't an adult, even a brand new (i.e. young) one, not have their own place? I realized that I didn't have a good reason to justify the status quo (where a home of your own is out of reach), only that it was the status quo, and the thrust of my old position really just came down to something akin to the old saw that Hardship-<X> is good for you because "it builds character"—even though I'd never really found that argument persuasive when I'd encounter it elsewhere. (Just like the old retort "life's not fair", it seemed I'd only ever encounter it from someone in the process of actively trying to screw you over while trying to paint your indignance about it as unreasonable.)

Not saying everyone should expect the works, but I can't exactly fault anyone who would be content with a 12x10 kitchen attached to an 8x10 office that doubles as a bedroom but isn't able to have it. And that's without even addressing the fact that we're likely talking about a situation where you're losing all this money on something you didn't even get equity for!

I don’t know man, it’s not like I said the peasants should be content with their gruel. A private apartment in the center of one of the most desirable ZIP codes on the planet is an inherently limited good. Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy) is kind of the definition of entitlement.

And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything, even after that time my housemate attempted to clean their vomit off the bathroom floor at 3 in the morning with the communal Roomba. I guess that was hardship of a sort, but hardship creates friends and memories — I don’t think I built an ounce of “character”, but I had a hell of a time.

> Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy)

k. So you're not against strawmanning.

> And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything

That's good for you, I guess. Are you acquainted with Rob K. Henderson and what he calls "luxury beliefs"? Or abfan1127[1]? It's easy to discount having "a quiet place to study"[2] if you've never been harmed by not having it and your response to your roommates' youthfully stupid hijinx involves grins and not grief.

1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25468799>

2. <https://pudding.cool/2024/03/teenagers/>

Any job should be able to afford a single one bedroom apartment - this is part of the calculus of why people stay in bad and abusive relationships/situations.

Any job, no matter how meager, should be able to sustain you, the individual, by yourself, should you choose to leave your situation.

Any other structure is a failure somewhere (policy, incentives, housing, structurally).

Fantastically popular city centers still require a huge number of people; what’s implied by having them waste their time on a commute and being unable to live near their job is that they’re “not worth” their presence - which, again, is required in the city center.

It’s not always easy living with roommates (I don’t like it myself), but we all have to make choices. Unless we’re wealthy, we can’t have it all. For many people it’s either roommates or a long commute, and I know people who have roommates and a long commute since that’s all they can afford. It still beats homelessness.

For some years I lived in a group house in a close-in suburb of Washington, DC. Some roommates were horrible, for a while I was a horrible roommate. But somehow I got by nine years.

Zillow lists over 1300 places for rent in Los Angeles for less than $1600 a month, which is easily affordable on a $70k salary.

You've done a bit of a bait and switch, "fulfill their dreams" and "decent quality of life" are two very different standards. One, sure, we're in a society and sometimes that calls for sacrifice, the other, if we can't promise a decent life we shouldn't be surprised when people break the contract and act in ways that hurt the common good.

i don't think i've done a bait and switch and generally don't actually know what you mean by saying that i have done so. my point in that sentence was simply that nothing is promised by life. society does have norms and people do have values. i never said that i don't understand (nor did i intend to imply or portray that i don't) why people would act in ways that are not to, or hurt, "the common good". it is clear why someone who doesn't feel like their life is comfortable when they are trying to better "the common good" would act against that same common good in order to get some peace or enjoyment out of their own existence.

Supply and demand, the pay would increase if there was no one willing to take the job. Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.

> Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage...

I think you'll find that there's a lot of overlap in the group of people who think this guy should be paid more and those who want more pay for the people you named.

> I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.

I'm not sure I'm prepared to cosign on the idea that the guy saving me a trip to pick up my own dinner is producing the same value as the guy educating the next generation of physicts.

And then might the society be worse off for lacking the physics/scientific advancements by not supporting adequately an an individual to remain on the scientific path.

>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.

Of course. On the other hand, one has to wonder which of this two occupations helps humanity more, and it's this the one that's paid better. And if not, should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.

In the age of precision psychological influence and constant bombardment with low grade mind control, Capitalism is trash. To the most rapacious, the loudest, the most insidious go the spoils. If we're gonna keep the current system we need to slam the ban hammer on advertising and marketing with righteous fury.

> should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.

The problem is that everyone has different ideas about what helps society.

At least the current system, where people are compensated based on supply and demand, people actually want what's being produced. In contrast to the old soviet system where top down production decisions mean that what's "best for society" is of no use to pretty much anyone except those people who needed to fill their quota.

Why do you pick the two extreme situations. Isn't there a possibility of a middle ground?

The current system is not an extreme. Only concentrating power into the people who will pick what is good for society is extreme.

The extreme here is underpaying the professors and researchers so much in comparison with others (Like University and labs administrators)

> The extreme here is underpaying the professors and researchers so much

The problem is not that those people are underpaid.

The problem is the morass of regulation that prevents people building enough housing where they want to live, which keeps the cost of housing high.

And look - I get it - most of that regulation is there for a reason: it's popular. People like it. People like having rent control, or limited increases in property taxes. People in single family houses like not having apartment buildings go up next door to them. People like seeing green space on office campuses. People like mandatory parking requirements for homes and businesses.

But ultimately, a high cost of living is deeply corrosive to society, and all the little perks that come from these regulations just aren't worth it.

All forms of structuring society are "regulation". Capitalism doesn't exist without private property law.

> All forms of structuring society are "regulation"

If you're going to count the emergent structure that forms from voluntary cooperation as "regulation", the word loses its meaning.

> Capitalism doesn't exist without private property law.

Sure it does.

Laws aren't self-enforcing: the the thing that makes laws "real" is violence (or the threat of violence) backing them up.

For those who are unable to avail themselves of remedies under the law - typically because they're engaging in illegal behavior - they can skip the law bit and move straight to violence.

Basically every criminal organization or individual operates in this manner.

I'm not saying it's nice to live this way - I very much like living in a place with a (mostly) functioning legal system. But Capitalism very much does exist without private property law.

That's law, not regulation.

Sounds like there is an excess supply of physicists and physics professors, so on the margin they are no help at all.

Scientific discovery is not driven by economics 101.

Your dismissal of "excess supply" based on "margins" eliminates breakthrough contributions by profs that work for 20-30 years producing marginal research until one day they make the connection that transforms the world.

It's true that most professors never come up with breakthroughs. You cannot predict in advance which ones will. The best we can do is put many of them to work on research, connect them with their peers, and wait.

no thanks for me. I wont stop you from paying them out of your own pocket.

This is all besides the point because lecturers aren't even a research position.

I'm of the mind that if we had the best in the field educating the next generations and compensated them well that we would end up with better qualified graduates. It seems like this would be the result at all levels of education, really.

In America we are doing the opposite, and then wondering why the results are sub optimal.

> I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.

Students at public universities deserve good instructors. Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services.

Are you one of those people who thinks that whatever price the market offers for labor is axiomatically fair?

> Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services.

We're discussing wages. Wages are all about that rationale. If you make a choice you should abide by it.

This is nothing to do with what students "deserve", whatever that means.

Public services? Isn't that exactly why he is paid less.

Just imagine if he worked somewhere private.

Deserve is an interesting phrase, who really does deserve more? The more you go down that rabbit hole the less you'll think people deserve in general.

That said. I only have an associate degree and even I made $70k at a regular tech job working with someone with a PhD. I got lucky though before, too bad he didn't.

The end result of this is that only people who are independently wealthy or who can’t make the private sector work for them end up as profs, which seems like a worse situation for society.

Move to China and Russia. He will be way more appreciated there with significantly lower cost of living. Furthermore he will produce many more important students there in astrophysics than in USA even if he can extend his life by 6x time more. East is the future. Dont waste it in the sunset west. If he truly loves teaching move to China. Humanity future lies in the east in the next 100 years.

>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.

Why should that employer's dreams take primacy over anyone elses?

The answer: there isn't a reason why. All semblance of economic activity is based on a fiction. That fiction has been guided to structurally elevate a subset of people's wishes and motivations over everyone else's, including yours. And you're totally okay with that state of affairs. Useful idiot much?

Can at least applaud the guy for sticking to his principles. Sometimes society needs a good nut kick to realize it's destroying itself. That it collectively takes so many ruined lives to do so is the true tragedy of our times.

Amen. If the net present value and risk of being a professor paid as well as dealing with corporate B.S. I know which I would do...

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