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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

Or there are some locations where markets just breakdown because the environmental factors overwhelm whatever salaries you offer.

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Offshore oil rigs beg to differ. For almost any set of circumstances, there’s a salary that will entice people to fill the role. They just don’t want to shell out the mid six figure salary that would be required. It’s only a “breakdown” because we collectively feel entitled to have people fill the role but don’t want to actually pay what it costs.

Salary is only part of the equation.

Offshore oil rigs deal in billions of dollars worth of hydrocarbons per day. The revenues make it feasible to offer high salaries and still generate massive returns. Many rural locations just aren't economically productive to justify the kinds of salaries necessary to draw people to them.

If we take for granted that "farm requires farmers, farmers require doctor", then the doctor should charge whatever market rate is for someone to work there, and the farmers should be paying that, drawing that from salary from the farm business, and that should be priced into the cost of the farm business's output?

Why can't the farms increase prices to support a basic quality-of-life for those living there?

I don't disagree there's some breakdown of the market here, but I'm not sure that saying "well there's not enough money coming in to the area" isn't stopping a step short.

I think farmers don't set their own prices, (there's nuance, but not really). They haul to middlemen who pay what they pay. Sometimes they even sell to transport companies / truckers that buy it to haul it to middlemen, both of whom pay what they can pay.

In that setting, the "regional" middlemen have the power to set prices, not the farmers, so a distant farmer from a poor community has no leverage over what teachers are paid in their community.

Generally speaking, I think almost all locally-produced, distributed industries work this way, by aggregating many producers the middleman has a ton of power to set prices, but of course is subject to the prices set by the next tier up, all the way to the commodities exchange, from what I can tell.

Anyway, this "averaging over a large area" ruins local economic efficiency.

Doesn’t Australia also deal in billions in mineral revenue in these remote locations? Seems the money is in the area just the revenues aren’t being captured in a way to fund the teaching.

Human entitlement really is the bane of game theory.

> Or there are some locations where markets just breakdown because the environmental factors overwhelm whatever salaries you offer.

There's literally no such thing - I wanna see an example!

The given scenario is not an example, because you can simply raise the offering until people take you up on it!

I mean, you can ask people to work in high-risk life-threatening environments and people will take you up on that offer IFFF the offer is high enough!

Want someone to work on a seabed? In an oil rig away from home for 9/12 months? In arctic conditions away from home for 3 years at a time? That's all happening right now.

Hell, you could put out an advertisement for volunteers on a one-way trip to Mars and you'll still get those positions filled!

If you cannot get teachers to move to a rural area, you are doing something wrong.[1]

[1] Where I am right now, I'll take that offer given a good enough salary and long enough contract. Many older teachers, maybe 10 years from retirement, will happily sell up and semi-retire to teach a few more years renting in a rural area before actual retirement. If they aren't doing it, it's because the offer is too low.

There is always a price. At the right price, someone will go to teach in a war zone. This is not a hypothetical either, Libya has expats from the West to this day.

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