How celebrities stay famous regardless of talent
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
He said it was a question of network effects and impact. Mozart died broke because of poor money management and the inability to reach a worldwide audience.
An elementary school teacher is only paid a small amount relative to most celebrities because their impact is small. They cannot reach more 10-30 students at a time.
A baseball player is paid millions because he (through cable TV) can impact/entertain many more anonymous people indirectly.
Is it fair? Probably not but there aren't incentive systems in place to pay good teachers according to their impact.
Clive James had a fascinating BBC documentary a while back, a multi-part series "Fame in the 20th Century". It's pre-Internet but I believe still very relevant.
If it makes you "feel" any better, there are lots of computer programmers, too. Saying there is a lot of something doesn't have to mean it's "easy", just... that there's a lot of it.
I'm not seeing where some sort of complicated explanation is necessary.
(Also... "there was only one Mozart" is rather more hero worship than truth. There are many factors that coincided to make Mozart, and I fully expect there have been multiple people since then that have been every bit as talented, but didn't have the same factors coming together. Going into that would be a long, long post about music theory and music history, though.)
I would say it is fair, if you define fair to mean that what someone gets paid should roughly reflect the utility they create for others. Rockstars and baseball players can reach a large audience and give pleasure to them.
If a teacher is only helping c. 30 students, then even if each one of them gains far more utility from him than from a rockstar, the total amount of utility the teacher is creating isn't going to be as much, because of the smaller audience.
To put it another way: some jobs aren't scalable, some jobs are (e.g. musicians, sports stars), and the top people in the jobs that're scalable are going to create a lot more utility, and in a market economy earn a lot more money, than the top people in the unscalable jobs.
But none of them was unique or had an irreplaceable life changing impact on me.
Obviously that can happen for some children, but then again it could happen with your neighbor or any good figure of wisdom.
*addendum: In short, if they can appreciate the university lecture, odds are they've already had some good teachers, and/or managed to work around the poor ones.
This is a very good description of a lot of online communication, including many HN discussion threads. But I don't have to tell you that, because you already know it. I guess this generalizes to saying that it feels like swimming upstream sometimes to add significant amounts of new information to an online discussion among casual participants who may not know one another in real life. I find it easier to dig out my references and really lay out a lot of new information in some online networks I participate in with other members of a membership organization. Many of us have met one another in real life, and have already established emotional bonds over a meal or a beer, so on those networks I feel more comfortable challenging conventional wisdom. That CAN happen here on HN, of course, but it feels considerably less natural.
Perhaps your beliefs and views are different enough enough from the established practice (of education or other) that what is old information to you sounds like new information to others (me). You may feel as though you're swimming upstream, but I simply find a new idea to play with.
I really do enjoy your posts.