The Beggar Barons (2022) | Hacker News Reader

The Beggar Barons (2022)

zedshaw.com

30 pointsadamc14 comments

Keep the same attitude in mind when your college comes. Asking for a donations.....

Ask yourself if you feel comfortable giving a billionaire some of your hard-earned money.

A college is radically different. I have gripes about their designs as institutions but they are, in the end, non profit institutions.

Radically different?

Are they legal entities with massive assets that act demonstrably in their own self interest, against the interests of the publicity c, their students, and their skilled workforce?

Are they overseen by a bunch of MBAs executing classic managerial practices and financial manipulations?

Different tax status, same principal agent problem

I have the same thought when my alumni foundation hits me up for a donation: I already paid you many tens of thousands of dollars more than my education actually cost you, so why should I give you more? Aren't you already the worldwide #1 recipient of my "charitable donations"? I imagine many of my generation feel similarly, and wonder if it is making an impact on alumni donations in aggregate. I can imagine being a lot freer with my checkbook during those calls if I had been able to pay for my whole education with a summer job like a boomer.

Maybe I'm a bit too sympathetic to colleges, but it is extraordinarily expensive to hire professors and do research.

I have a history degree. It is pretty cheap to hire history professors, but they still didn't do it and mostly I was taught by adjuncts and grad students. My education used no expensive facilities other than the library.

Also it's a public institution, so if we want it to do research we should pay for that out of tax revenue instead of making 18 year olds take out a mortgage's worth of undischargable loans, and then calling them in ten years in hopes that they want to hand over some more for no benefit.

Regardless of its veracity, that was a painful read. I’m sure Zed could convey his disgust far more forcefully than by repeatedly engaging in prepubescent (and intellectually lazy) sarcasm that itself is a straw man of what Apple’s and Microsoft’s employees would even be thinking when making any requests.

This article reflects more poorly on Zed than on the companies he’s trying to criticise.

Zed being kinda snarky is worse than billion dollar companies asking for free labor?

Regardless of how you feel about his tone, what he’s complaining about does happen quite a lot. He has a valid point that’s worth debating.

I agree it’s a legitimate point and a debate worth having, but rule 1 of any genuine attempt at persuading others is to avoid alienating the very audience you want to persuade (in this case by coming across as jealous and vindictive and thus unreasonable).

How cute.

You and I both know that corporations only respond to

1)lawsuits that they lose (and only sometimes)

2) profit motive

3) really bad publicity

Sorry, just to be clear: I assume Zed is trying to convince me and other non-corporations of a particular position. I don’t think Zed is trying to influence any corporations directly, and he’d probably say any attempt to so is a lost cause, whereas influencing consumers as a class is a roundabout way of influencing the corporation because it goes directly to your #2.

...are you familiar with Zed's work in general? This article is tame by comparison.

https://programming-motherfucker.com/

I was not prior to reading the piece (I'd never heard of him).

My initial point stands, especially when it comes to convincing people with no dog in the fight (like me), but I can understand how it's at least partly tongue in cheek.

In a vacuum it sure seemed spiteful and covetous and for me detracted a lot from what he was saying, hence my initial comment.

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