"... by pretty much any standard the work that an excellent teacher does is positive-sum for society — the more great teachers there are the more well-educated kids we'll have and the better off we'll all become. By contrast the work that excellent lawyers do mostly consists of zero-sum battles to outwit other excellent lawyers. And yet the work of teachers is much less rewarded financially then the work of people in legal and financial occupations that have lower social returns." Vox
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This is something I've wondered about. Any thoughts?
"...on the neoclassical theory poor countries that successfully get rich should do so by liberalizing their financial systems, running trade deficits, and importing foreign money until over time they build up enough capital for the marginal productivity of labor to increase. In practice, successful catchup stories (first in Japan, then in Singapore and Taiwan and Korea, now in China) work the other way around — countries use financial repression and run trade surpluses to develop increasingly sophisticated local businesses." Vox
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"Ressler and Thompson dubbed their plan the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. The scheme involved some radical proposals. People could work from home absolutely anytime they felt like it, without needing a reason or excuse. There would be no such thing as a sick day or a vacation allotment—employees could take off as much time as they wanted, whenever they saw fit. Perhaps most provocative: All meetings would be optional. Even if your boss had invited you. Don’t think you need to be there? Don’t come.
In return for this absolute freedom, workers would need to produce. Bosses would set macro expectations (e.g., increase sales by 10 percent) and then assess the results without micromanaging (e.g., keeping tabs on who arrived at the office earliest in the morning or left latest at night). If the goal was met, there were no complaints from your boss about that Tuesday afternoon you spent at your kid’s soccer game. If the goal wasn’t met, no amount of face time around the office would substitute for the lack of results." Slate
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I spent 28th April to 5th May in Tankwa Karoo for Afrika Burn. My "gift" was to set up shop along a well-travelled road - the "Binnekring" - in a deckchair, with an umbrella and a sign saying "Ask Me Anything".
Many people came up to me to ask questions, and to listen to the questions others were asking. I attempted to answer any question I received as honestly as possible, including saying "I don't know". I also wrote down all the questions as best I could. Some of the questions quoted here are paraphrases, and I also missed writing some down if I received a large number in a short space of time. What follows is a transcription of my actual notes, in the order I wrote them down. Some of the questions following each other were asked by the same person, but I leave it to the reader to infer logical connections between them. I have also left uncensored the (thankfully very few) instances of bigotry and personal rudeness. Dean's Assorted Thoughts
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This is something I've wondered about. Any thoughts?
"...on the neoclassical theory poor countries that successfully get rich should do so by liberalizing their financial systems, running trade deficits, and importing foreign money until over time they build up enough capital for the marginal productivity of labor to increase. In practice, successful catchup stories (first in Japan, then in Singapore and Taiwan and Korea, now in China) work the other way around — countries use financial repression and run trade surpluses to develop increasingly sophisticated local businesses." Vox
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"Ressler and Thompson dubbed their plan the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. The scheme involved some radical proposals. People could work from home absolutely anytime they felt like it, without needing a reason or excuse. There would be no such thing as a sick day or a vacation allotment—employees could take off as much time as they wanted, whenever they saw fit. Perhaps most provocative: All meetings would be optional. Even if your boss had invited you. Don’t think you need to be there? Don’t come.
In return for this absolute freedom, workers would need to produce. Bosses would set macro expectations (e.g., increase sales by 10 percent) and then assess the results without micromanaging (e.g., keeping tabs on who arrived at the office earliest in the morning or left latest at night). If the goal was met, there were no complaints from your boss about that Tuesday afternoon you spent at your kid’s soccer game. If the goal wasn’t met, no amount of face time around the office would substitute for the lack of results." Slate
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I spent 28th April to 5th May in Tankwa Karoo for Afrika Burn. My "gift" was to set up shop along a well-travelled road - the "Binnekring" - in a deckchair, with an umbrella and a sign saying "Ask Me Anything".
Many people came up to me to ask questions, and to listen to the questions others were asking. I attempted to answer any question I received as honestly as possible, including saying "I don't know". I also wrote down all the questions as best I could. Some of the questions quoted here are paraphrases, and I also missed writing some down if I received a large number in a short space of time. What follows is a transcription of my actual notes, in the order I wrote them down. Some of the questions following each other were asked by the same person, but I leave it to the reader to infer logical connections between them. I have also left uncensored the (thankfully very few) instances of bigotry and personal rudeness. Dean's Assorted Thoughts
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"But the cyclists are probably in the right here. While it's obviously reckless for them to blow through an intersection when they don't have the right of way, research and common sense say that slowly rolling through a stop sign on a bike shouldn't be illegal in the first place." Vox
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More on the culture of internal authoritarianism in the DA, centred on the departure of Lindiwe Mazibuko. Business Day
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I have problems with this article, notably in its distinction between begging and "legitimate" ways of making a living, but it at least *attempts* to offer some nuance. Synapses
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"Roland Anderson, a retired biologist from the Seattle Aquarium, tells author Katherine Harmon Courage that octopuses are the “smartest invertebrate,” and to prove the point, he lists a set of very human traits:
They are a predator, they go out to find food, they build dens and then modify them, they use tools, they use spatial navigation, they have play behavior, they recognize individual people.
In one experiment, Anderson and his colleagues gave a female giant Pacific octopus named Billy a plastic bottle of herring with a childproof cap. In 55 minutes, she figured out that she needed to push and turn the lid simultaneously and was able to open it; with practice, she could do the trick in five minutes." Weekly Standard
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"Hampton Creek’s CEO, Josh Tetrick, wants to do to the $60 billion egg industry what Apple did to the CD business. “If we were starting from scratch, would we get eggs from birds crammed into cages so small they can’t flap their wings, shitting all over each other, eating antibiotic-laden soy and corn to get them to lay 283 eggs per year?” asks the strapping former West Virginia University linebacker. While an egg farm uses large amounts of water and burns 39 calories of energy for every calorie of food produced, Tetrick says he can make plant-based versions on a fraction of the water and only two calories of energy per calorie of food — free of cholesterol, saturated fat, allergens, avian flu, and cruelty to animals. For half the price of an egg." MIT Technology Review
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