I certainly missed the golden parachute. Even if I hung around until I was deadwood I would not have made anything financially. No academic in Australia gets rich just out of being an academic.
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.
I beg to differ. You can make a significant amount of money as an academic in Australia if you are in the right discipline to get a market loading and be able to do consulting on the side. AU$200-300K a year is easy to achieve for these academics some are even pulling in $500K+ by the end of their career. Plus the 17% superannuation means you'll retire with a nice big pot of retirement money at the end. Very hard to find a comparable position in industry...
Well those of us in the natural sciences don’t bring in that sort of money. Given how much work and poor pay is required to get a tenured position the pay is not good.
Yes, Finance is the biggest and the money still flows. Look at all the recent hires in Finance at UNSW and UMelb who have been appointed at the Senior Lecturer level straight after PhD. Market loadings are paid in Medecine too. Probably Law as well... I've also heard that Statistics and doing Machine Learning consulting on side is good too. What surprised me the most is all the arts/sociology academics doing big consulting contracts connected to "foreign aid" work.
... That describes every job... ever. Unless you are the one stealing the resources directly from the land... in which case: Fat salaries on other peoples' property.
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.)
Most employees produce a little more to their company's bottom line, on average, than their salary+overhead. They allow the surplus to go to the employer in exchange for certain benefits -- such as security, consistency, and division of labor. A lot of people would rather make $50,000 with a 4% raise every year than make $60,000 on average but with occasional dry spells, the constantly-looming threat of not being able to find new clients, and the annoyance of having to manage your own research/dev/sales/marketing/insurance/taxes/licensing/misc paperwork.
Or people get paid their value, and we stop thinking it's okay for a select few to reap the surplus value of others... you know, kind of like how we got rid of slavery (except we didn't, we just paid a little more for it).
Both people are supposed to benefit in a transaction. Do you disagree with that? The employee getting 100% of the value is just as unworkable as the employer getting 100%. In the one extreme nobody ever gets a job because it's worthless, and in the other extreme nobody ever gets an employee because it's worthless.
Please do not be disrespectful of the people who had to suffer through slavery as slaves by comparing their position with whomever you think is a "slave" in a modern western society.
That's right, don't talk about suffering now, because it used to be way worse!
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.
"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."
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).
"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.
"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,"
Capital hasn't always been a lopsided thing. There was a time when a great number of people had access to productive land, and had the means to survive without relying on "employment".
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.
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. My perception of history is that the majority of people in post-hunter-gatherer societies have always lived under someones thumb.
"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.
> 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.
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).
Sorry about the ad-hominem in the previous post, it was a poor choice of words.
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.
"We", are the capitalists. Those who own the means of production, and use that "property" to have others work for them. They're the owners of factories, and have workers make products for them. They're the owners of land and housing, and have the tenants pay for the privilege of living there —effectively, tenants partially work for their landlord.
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.
You may not like the analogy, and the difference in scale is surely a big one, but the principle is the same. In slavery, you were prevented to quit by physical coercion. In capitalism, you are prevented to quit because if you do you and your family will starve (or at least live in poverty, on modern welfare states). The employer can pay you minimum wage for your labour, even if it generates 10x more value, because you have no choice: he has you on the palm of your hand. Submit to the conditions the capital holders dictate, or starve.
1) You are totally discounting the social safety net.
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.
1) I didn't, that's what I was referring too when I said "or at least live in poverty, in a modern welfare state"
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.
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".
Yep, you'll find fat cats in every industry. My main point is that not only is there "dualisation" like is proposed in the article but out of those who have made it into a tenured position there is another hard split between those academics that are creaming it and those that do ok.
A well established principal investigator said this to his lab during a crisis "we are out of money" meeting: "We are all in the same boat, but only I have a parachute"
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.