The Zvi on media sins; The Zvi on make-work jobs; Ian Leslie says to abstain from debating the Current Thing; Ian Leslie talks with Russ Roberts about the Current Thing;
This stuff about make-work jobs is just an upside-down way of presenting the libertarian view of business regulations.
Business regulations do not exist to make the public any safer; their purpose is to make entry into the affected line of business more difficult and expensive, thus protecting the existing firms in it from competition, especially by smaller firms. The regulations accomplish this partly by burdening workers in the affected line of business with makework such as licensing and CPE, and partly by requiring them to hire "compliance specialists" whose entire jobs are makework.
AK writes: A make-work job is one that is unnecessary and leaves output unchanged, or even lower ... The theory that “this has already happened” might explain what many economists regard as disappointing aggregate productivity growth over the last fifty years.
Sample-Size of One: It's much more insidious than just compliance midwits. I recently retired from a public corporation. In broader corporate America, most paths to success (AMB high-income) runs through management. Managers in turn are paid based on headcount and budget.
Managers respond by hiring many people to deliver a fraction of their potential - poor business practices! And, most of those employees know they are de facto slackers - but they'll take the money. In this way, many BS-jobs have become institutionalized with minimally loaded employees.
BTW, if/when those slackers are promoted, they will rinse & repeat. Many professional colleagues across different industries industries report this same dynamic. Meanwhile, lots of middle managers can say no, but few can say yes. This causes incredible friction.
I know multiple people who lost jobs or job opportunities due to Twitter activity, so I disagree with Ian Leslie's claim that there are "no incentives to abstain from the game". Of course, this asymmetrical incentive to abstain if one holds a probably-true but unpopular belief, but not if one holds a more popular belief, is arguably an even bigger problem than what Leslie is concerned with.
This stuff about make-work jobs is just an upside-down way of presenting the libertarian view of business regulations.
Business regulations do not exist to make the public any safer; their purpose is to make entry into the affected line of business more difficult and expensive, thus protecting the existing firms in it from competition, especially by smaller firms. The regulations accomplish this partly by burdening workers in the affected line of business with makework such as licensing and CPE, and partly by requiring them to hire "compliance specialists" whose entire jobs are makework.
AK writes: A make-work job is one that is unnecessary and leaves output unchanged, or even lower ... The theory that “this has already happened” might explain what many economists regard as disappointing aggregate productivity growth over the last fifty years.
Sample-Size of One: It's much more insidious than just compliance midwits. I recently retired from a public corporation. In broader corporate America, most paths to success (AMB high-income) runs through management. Managers in turn are paid based on headcount and budget.
Managers respond by hiring many people to deliver a fraction of their potential - poor business practices! And, most of those employees know they are de facto slackers - but they'll take the money. In this way, many BS-jobs have become institutionalized with minimally loaded employees.
BTW, if/when those slackers are promoted, they will rinse & repeat. Many professional colleagues across different industries industries report this same dynamic. Meanwhile, lots of middle managers can say no, but few can say yes. This causes incredible friction.
I know multiple people who lost jobs or job opportunities due to Twitter activity, so I disagree with Ian Leslie's claim that there are "no incentives to abstain from the game". Of course, this asymmetrical incentive to abstain if one holds a probably-true but unpopular belief, but not if one holds a more popular belief, is arguably an even bigger problem than what Leslie is concerned with.
Great analogy to the viddui. I almost started striking myself in the heart while reading it...