How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
blogs.lse.ac.uk
blogs.lse.ac.uk
I don’t regret my time as an academic other than my last two years. I should have left earlier, but the security the job afforded my family kept me there longer than I really should have stayed. This is a mistake many people make when in a secure job when they have kids so I am not too angry at myself. It is an experience few people get to have so I am grateful to have had it.
But hey, hate on the academics, they are the WORST! right?
Wait, what? Most jobs give you a salary, sure, but you nearly always end up producing far more value than you are paid back. The thieves are the shareholders of the company you serve.
(As for the land… not every piece of land is someone's property —and that's good.)
Unless you are part of a cost center, it seems to me the assumption is that you are producing more value than you cost to employ.
2) If the services you provide are commoditized, there are millions of other people who can do the work you do so you are more easily replaceable. Investing in your skills can remedy that. About the worst thing you could do would be to lament how you are beholden to the capital holders while stagnating with an undifferentiated skillset.
3) "The principle is the same" is an incredibly narrow view to take. It minimizes the horrors of slavery. Working for a living in an at will arrangement is nothing like being the property of another human. You can quit, and go find a new job. You can move to another state - there are no laws that say your previous employer can send bounty hunters after you to reclaim you as a runaway.
Perspective, please.
2) That's all very nice in principle, but in practice that's often not feasible. I'm not talking about the software industry, where everything is very open and full of opportunity, but about low-income jobs and how the people working in them often have such incredibly complex constraints about them that that talk about "investing in your skills" and "differentiating your skillset" is totally disconnected from the reality of life.
3) I guess so. Still I was trying to emphasise the whole binding aspect of it, the fact that in many situations you are only free to leave in principle, because being out of a job can throw you and your family into debt, homelessness, or worse. Wasn't exactly thinking of slavery in the literal, bounty-hunters-after-runaways, sense.
How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital.
I'm not taking modern Western society, I'm talking historical/modern capitalism. In all societies.
So by your definition any position short of economic independece would be slavery?
I'm not depreciating suffering. Calling employees in a poor bargaining position "slaves" is muddled argumentation. Any arbitrary non-negotiable position is not slavery - unless one wants to be poetic (i.e. "we are all slaves to laws of physics" etc).
As to the definition of slavery I would refer to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
"Slavery is a legal or economic system in which principles of property law can apply to humans so that people can be treated as property,[1] and can be owned, bought and sold accordingly, and cannot withdraw unilaterally from the arrangement."
Capital has been always a lopsided thing - few have it. It's quite different not having capital, than being treated as a capital asset and having almost no human rights.
As a fairly modern example Frederick Douglas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass) has more than a few words to say about his time as a slave.
"I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday... A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. ... I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent,"
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm
Being bound to only few means of sustenance is one thing. Having ones birthday robbed is another entirely.
The industrial revolution changed this dramatically.
I'm sure you have heard the term "wage slavery". Sure you can argue: "hey at least you know your birthday now, and technically we don't own you". But that's ignoring the fact that we have still robbed that person of free will because we have robbed them off the means of production. Saying that " they can quit if they want " is equivalent to saying a slave can kill himself if he doesn't like it.
I'm not saying that the situation hasn't improved. Slavery has changed, it is a more sustainable model now, with less chance of uprising, as people such as yourself actually defend it even though chances are, you are on the wrong side of it (I.e you sell your own labour rather than benefit from others labour in order to survive).
But it is still a massive inequality and it literally robs people of choice in their life.
"But that's ignoring the fact that we have still robbed that person of free will because we have robbed them off the means of production"
Who is "we" and what are the means of production that have been robbed from this person? Sure, poverty makes people dumb because all their energies are go to economic struggle - but being born to poverty does not imply that anything was stolen from them. I'm not saying poverty does not suck because it does. But it's not an act of personal malfeasance but a systems error.
It would be very cathartic if one could just blame all the rockefellers for the economic inequality in this world but the world is not that simple.
"Slavery has changed, it is a more sustainable model now, with less chance of uprising, as people such as yourself actually defend it"
I think you are being silly. The specific difference between slavery and current economic trends now is that to fix slavery the people needed to implement fundamental changes to the economy and legal system at large scales. Nowadays to give people a little more independence in developed economies would only require a sustainable model of basic income which is more of a political hassle rather than anything since most developed countries already have extensive systems of income transfer.
Interestingly, becoming a capitalist is almost as difficult as becoming nobility used to be. It's not a birth right, but very few people manage to start poor and die wealthy. Even creating your own personal business is not easy —though some professions, like medicine, have it easier than others. Capitalists are a caste.
So, what to do when you're not a capitalist? The only thing you can reasonably do: you go find an employer, and give up most of your autonomy for 40 hours a week. Well, given the sheer amount of part time work we have in our industrialised countries (including France, Germany, and the US), it's more like 30. 30 hours a week, you have basically no say in what you do nor how you do it. You can only hope that whatever is being asked of you resembles what you actually want to do. For most people, this is not the case: they just hate their job, but live with it because it's the only way they can pay their bills. (And no, they don't have access to better jobs. And switching jobs is a pain. And they have a poor bargaining position in the first place, thanks to unemployment.)
That was an individual's point of view. Collectively, things are much worse. See, a small proportion of the population (the capitalists) can decide what is being done. They decide what has economic value, provided they can sell it. When they can't sell it, they use aggressive marketing (fashion) or artificial scarcity (copyright) to sell it anyway. They lobby for laws meant to reinforce their position (as is natural: when life is good for you, you want it to stay that way), effectively preventing the common people from having any serious say. And of course, there's the maximisation of profit, that have the capitalists drive wages down, or maximise production, or outsource work, or externalise costs… or all at the same time. They destroy people's lives (outsourcing) and pollute the land (externalisation). It looks like long term, capitalists are at best poor decision makers, and at worst criminals deserving the chopping block (or anything that permanently prevents them from doing further harm).
Lucrative property is currently human right. Probably the most fiercely enforced. It should be abolished. No one should be able to have others work for them just because they happen to own something they don't use themselves (land, factories, houses…). I'm not sure what the alternatives are yet, but capitalism just doesn't work.
Pre industrial revolution: Anywhere. You had large agricultural community (i.e farmers) typically in a Surfdom kind of relationship. So yes, they had to either pay some form of tax, or tend to land of others. But they also had land of their own, of which the could depend and survive on. "Unemployment" wasn't a thing. You also had open access to resources (hence they oil and gold rushes). These have all since been privatised.
> Who is "we" and what are the means of production that have been robbed from this person
"We" is the capitalists. Means of production is property, natural resources, etc.
> It would be very cathartic if one could just blame all the rockefellers for the economic inequality in this world but the world is not that simple.
It actually is that simple. But that's just identifying the problem. The solution to how we unwind multi-generational theft is an outright impossible one. The capitalists of today, think they rightfully own their capital, as it wasn't them personally who stole it.
> I think you are being silly.
Ad-hominem, but you are entitled to that way of thinking. It is difficult when people challenge our core beliefs, I can understand the position.
> Nowadays to give people a little more independence in developed economies would only require a sustainable model of basic income which is more of a political hassle rather than anything since most developed countries already have extensive systems of income transfer.
Would "only require", and given it's such an obvious thing to adopt, why hasn't it been? I would argue: "Because capitalists don't want it, and they are the ones in control". There are extensive systems of income transfer from the middle class. But Warren Buffet made it clear that Capitalists are largely unaffected by such measures (this is true the world over, not just the US).
I did not claim that capitalism was 'fair', nor that the rich elites did not have a political leverage to further their personal well being. But it's not slavery. Calling things "Unfair" would be a good start, and then figuring out the parameters of the solution space. I.e. if the status quo is "unfair", then what would "fair" look like. It certainly does feel unfair that while the productivity has skyrocketed people still need to work 40 hour weeks to provide for housing, food and healthcare.
But I don't think the answer to "fair" is in rural pre-industrial societies.
I said: "I think you need to specify your historical period and geographical region before you can claim that a great number of people had access to productive land and economic independence before industrial revolution."
To which you replied: "Pre industrial revolution: Anywhere."
"Anywhere" would imply all members of pre-industrial agricultural communities thrived in sovereign bliss. This is quite far from the truth.
Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia#Transition_t...
Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29#Lan...
(Sadly this does induce a counterparty risk that I perhaps failed to fully account for)
Every piece of property was stolen at some point even if it was sold legally after that. All major resources generally have come from such "acquisitions".
Nobody ever expected to, in any country. Did they?
A multi-level marketing scheme.
I think it depends. From the outside, industry looks to be churning out nothing, but trivial stuff for sale.
I suppose what one chooses to focus on. The stuff I do in industry helps people design houses and infrastructure.
- They assume that for everyone doing a PhD there is an equivalently attractive job waiting for them. However, many young people going doing PhDs (especially in the countries highlighted, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia) aren't choosing between a steady job and the uncertainty of PhD - there are often either no jobs available or very unattractive ones (e.g. working well below your skill level, poor working conditions, etc). A PhD offers an interesting hybrid of employment and training while offering more intellectual freedom and stimulation than your average desk job (note to Americans - most PhDs in Europe come with some form salary/scholarship/stipend).
- They seem to assume that everyone going into academia from the PhD level up is aiming to remain there. Many people do PhDs and then go to industries - certain industries (e.g. biosciences) pretty much require a PhD if you want to get anywhere interesting.
Both these significantly weaken the drug gang analogy, since it rests on the premise that there is a big pool of people joining at the bottom of the pyramid with the principal aim of clawing their way to the top. The motivations for doing a PhD however are far more diverse, from being simply a more interesting (or simply available) option that regular work (flexible hours, intellectual freedom, and a prestigious title at the end of it) to being a requirement to work in a particular industry. Certainly in my experience, only a minority of people starting PhDs do so with the explicit goal of attaining tenured professorship.
In the first bullet point you can replace "doing PhD" with "working for a drug gang" and nothing is different;
The second bullet point may not apply exactly to drug gangs and industry, but surely many people view drug gangs as a means to an end, a place where they can gain unparalleled experience.
that makes it sound like the kind of experience they could put on their CV... imagine the interview...
Interviewer: "Tell me about an experience you think would be relevant here at OfficeDeskCo"
Guy: "Well I was in the east side crack dealers gang for 4 years, and this one time...."
Citation?
Plus, people doing PhDs are (hopefully) not stupid - they have a pretty good idea of the proportion of professors to PhD students when they sign up - I should hope they can do the math slightly better then your average gang member.
We all knew the statistics, but every single one of us assumed those numbers were about other people.
Many one-on-one sports are examples. Floyd Mayweather might make close to $500m in career prize winning. The "contenders" who fight him (apart from big names like Manny Pacquiao or Oscar De La Hoya) under him will earn ˜1% of that. Beneath them, "journeymen" (maybe the top 25 in a weight class) fighters often make something like that $3 an hours wage.
I suspect acting is often similar. Music, stand up comedy and arts in general. The possibility of attaining the prestige and earning of Tom Cruise keeps aspiring actors in gyms and auditions, trying to climb the steep ladder.
Apart from all that, there is definitely something in the zeitgeist about universities and academia. I think they are in for a tsunami of change sometime in the next generation. This is just one example. The weird entanglement of research and education. The trading on Prestige. The dynamism of competition under them (non academic education, bootcamps, online learning, etc.).
People who do well in the arts have a rare combination of charisma, marketing/networking skills, existing social contacts, persistence, location, luck, and talent - which often belongs at the end of the list, unfortunately.
Ironically, academia is one of the few places where you can work in the arts and do better than average. You can get real funding for arts research, especially if there's a technical angle.
Of course you don't usually have an audience - unless you count other academics - but not everyone loses sleep over that. And there's often a special policy niche for academic art. It's a kind of "Look at us as a country - we totally do serious difficult art" cultural brag.
It seems to be important to fill that niche. What it gets filled with isn't so important.
The drug dealer analogy would be more fitting if dealers were paid in drugs. ;-)
That's description of statups.
In academia, you end up having to do a lot of ad hoc work for other people.
With startups, you can fail (and try again); in academia, if you fail, you fail.
In short: with startups, if something is not working (or you totally lost belief in it), you can quit a project without quitting startups for good. In academia, if you want to stay, you often need to stay in a miserable conditions 1-3 more years (e.g. to finish PhD, postdoc, etc), just not to get kicked out for good.
Moreover, with startups, you can start your group being 20, without anyone's blessing.
Change universities (Europe) would cost me at least a year, plus scrapping all previous progress. Plus, with getting a poor recommendation letter (more than likely when resigning) I would need to go a tier down.
I envied software engineers, who (if things do not work) could change their place in mater of weeks... and have money to support them for much longer, if there were need.
I know people who change, but it was never a trivial thing. (Maybe except when within a department.)
Now (living as a freelancer) I lover the freedom and flexibility. And, curiously enough, I get more of intellectual inspiration.
I blame Levitt.
1)Drug gangs don't have an excess of lazy administrative support staff.
2)Drug gangs actually have to deliver some drugs at some point.
3)The politics of drug gangs are less vicious and there is better teamwork.
What sort of solution could one imagine? Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.
1. http://www.tau.ac.il/~algazi/mat/Goffman--Cooling.htm
2. http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2002/10/31/cooling-the-...
"My own knowledge comes from universities, both in the United States and Britain. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide." http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-decl...
Articles like this indundate the reader with chart upon chart. High-res pictures with a scope too narrow to find serious solutions. What do these charts leave out?
But why not? If academic work is for the benefit of mankind, there should be a desire in society for that kind of research[0].
This desire is only muted because of commercial interests having increased influence (directly and indirectly) over academia.
[0]Perhaps there is a mismatch in what we mean by 'kind of research' here. But this is a political point as well - the kind of research that has long-term benefits to society should be exactly the kind of research that furthers academic careers.
I was preempting a response that I often hear when this debate comes up, which is that "the market" will fix the problem of underemployed PhDs. This often turns into an argument that research that has "practical value" (as judged by the general public) is somehow more important than that which does not. On Hacker News I sense that it's common to read "PhD" as "STEM PhD," and the response is "it's fine, they can just find positions in the industry."
This logic tends to fall short when applied to the humanities in general, and external (non-university) funding for humanities research is shockingly less than those in STEM fields. The National Endowment for the Humanities has an annual budget of $167 million, and the National Science Foundation, compared to $7 billion for the NSF (numbers from Wikipedia). Humanities research often tends to get mocked in debates on public funding: "Why are we, the taxpayers, paying this person to go look through archives in Germany looking for fragments of music by Robert Schumann?"
The humanities do not, in general, have "practical application," at least if practical application means monetary value (as it often does). As 1stop notes in a sibling, humanities research is often research for the sake of culture, or for the sake of research itself. I got into my field because I love it, but also because I think there is inherent value in knowledge. The number of people who will read my dissertation could likely all enjoy a meal together, but for those few people it matters deeply.
So there is some long-term benefit to society for humanities research (other people, likely also scholars, can benefit from it later), but it's not a benefit that's easily quantified. In today's society, this is a problem without a clear solution, and it's an attitude I see a lot on HN (with constant talk of valuation and whatnot).
I feel comfortable taking the opposite position - if work with a practical application is worthwhile it should be commercially viable and we don't need to make any special effort to fund it academically - corporations and capitalism will surely cover it.
On the other hand, the humanities require investment that corporations are less willing to make - therefore the public should make more effort to fund these.
At least in Computer Science, the alternative is to simply go into industry at a company that will let you continue publishing, and get a paper out every year or two. Lots of people have successfully made the transition back into academia after a post-PhD stint in industry.
You won't be able to net a position at a top R1, but plenty of universities (and esp. colleges) would be happy for someone a few years out from a solid Ph.D. but with a strong industrial background and track record of (perhaps ad junct) teaching and/or moonlight researching. Especially if you stay in industry long enough that you don't need a six figure salary.
Congratulations on successfully navigating that transition, BTW.
Most delivery driver jobs here pay $150-200/day depending on how busy the line is, and the people that work them usually aren't looking to move up instead they want cash wages for easy work, since most have records and can't get decent paying jobs anywhere else. The article is correct almost all these guy's still live with their parents. There were only 2 guys I knew that actually thought they could move up and make big money while the rest of us accepted we were only ever going to make $200/day and were essentially contractors, we were never privy to any gang internal business.
Gangs no longer hold drugs when corner selling (where you make the most money, selling by the point at full street value), they pay an addict in drugs to do this while they run security watching over the operation to prevent robberies. Street enforcer is where you start if you want to move up since you are essentially managing operations instead of just a delivery boy. You also hang around the top people as they call on you to come along to jack rival operations. These thugs get a lucrative percentage when they steal drugs off other crews and pass them down to the delivery lines to sell so are making real money, since it seemed every enforcer in my little dope crew was bombing around in a Porsche Cayenne customized to be bullet resistant with hidden compartments installed to hide their handguns, lived in huge houses by themselves and were always decked out in latest heatbag designer clothes. I don't remember any of these guys being broke, and technically they are the lowest rung on the gang hierarchy since the drivers are just contractors.
That was back in 2005 though, and now the vast majority of gangs are not handling any product here. Their income model is intimidation and extortion. It's far easier to wave a gun around on the street and tax everybody in the drug business than it is to put in work building up a line or managing operations. They don't even steal each other's lines anymore, just demand a percentage of the profits. As a result street violence has actually declined, since jackings and hits decreased and most beefs are now solved by passing money over a table. These independent dealers are also way better at selling drugs than gangs, so bring in much more money and the dominant gang that taxes them also offers protection from robbery (we are robbing you to offer our robbery prevention services).
This gangster method is more profitable, has almost no startup costs besides needing vehicles and guns, is much harder to prosecute since they never are directly involved in narcotics trade, and has an endless recruitment pool inside prisons to replenish ranks faster and with tougher recruits. It's also how all those Mexican border cartels operate. They are merely taxing the smuggling routes into the US skimming the shipments of Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. Those cartels have to build manufacturing, supply chain and retail while paying off politicians and police while the thug at the border just needs a gun, and is impossible to get rid of since they hold down their territory hard.
tl;dr Stepping into a gang as the new lowest position pays much more now, and is almost a guaranteed ladder to better positions since narcotics handling has all been outsourced as drug dealers are good at being drug dealers, and gangsters are good at being thugs.
Even worse, when the heat on the streets is so hot during a war from all the shootings and police are everywhere, not much business can happen so the extortion crews turn to contract hits for income. For $10-15k you can pay them to kill off one of your rival drug dealers, potential informants or even people in your own delivery crew so you can move up and take their place. So while they are fighting off a rival takeover they are also open for local business dropping bodies all over the streets and blaming it on the invading gang, which police then turn their attention to, and are getting paid while the rivals/cartels are bleeding money. Eventually they have no choice but to give up the dispute to save their own business from extinction, much like how businesses have to settle in court when defending against government lawsuits and can't afford too much delay.
What is really surreal about the black market is after these violent outbursts everything is simply settled by a payment of back taxes owed and you just go back to work like nothing happened. One of the enforcers who managed us was shot at repeatedly by somebody he knew living in the same immediate neighborhood during one of these wars and next week it was all cleared up above us by whoever was in charge and beefs squashed. He'd still see the guy on a regular basis, no hard feelings, only business.
If you get all of this, you'll probably be able to navigate grad school just fine...
The film industry is similar, you work for low wages, hoping you will make it to the big time.
So is athletics, work for free at college, hope you make it to the NFL or wherever.
This pattern may be more common than most realize.
May be true but also could be that the person who decides to sell drugs for less than they could make at McDonalds couldn't even land a job at McDonalds or any other traditional employment. Similar to how many people go into business for themselves because they are not cut out to work for anybody else. It's not all about money and future prospects.
Sounds like apprenticeship as well.
Why do people put up with it? Because its very difficult to leave and start a competing enterprise. There's either a contract that locks you in or licensing that locks you out.
Or you need government funding to compete with those who have government funding, so you must suck up to the powers that be, who are all in bed together.
BTW, I'm not sure I believe the drug dealer/actor/pro athlete thought really applies to academia--even if it's true that PhD degrees in many fields probably don't have a great ROI and aren't likely to result in a tenured position.
[1] I don't know the numbers but I have no reason to think a lot of people, especially from better programs, are forced out during internship or residency.
Interesting. If I didn't know any better, I thought he was describing the situation with many tech startups. The investors have all the money, the founders are the only ones with any hope of making good money, and the rest just serve as cannon fodder in the investors' and founders' games. This actually seems to be a common pattern in quite a few other industries as well, and from the perspective of an established business owner, is the ideal structure of any business.
No. New, better systems are automatically adopted only if they help the establishment. Anything that question the privileges of those currently in power will meet heavy resistance (or inertia).
Academia moves very, very slowly. Stuff remains unchanged for centuries, just because that's the way it's always been done.
For instance, the lecture model was adopted when books were hand-written and very expensive -- basically the lecturer (in some institutions, actually called "reader") would read the text very slowly and distinctly, while the students would copy it down verbatim. At the end of the term the students would have their own copy of the text.
We've had printing presses for quite some time now, but the lecture lives on.
Law and religion are similar. Note that those institutions also still retain many medieval trappings, both intellectual and physical (robes, funny hats, etc.)