The piece, I think, conflates 'low defect rate' and 'high IQ' - in my experience this isn't really true. The 'defect rate' of an individual is incredibly local to whatever task is being done. There are plenty of lowish IQ people who are low defect rate because they're willing to follow rules and defer to smarter people when they are confused. Notice how the intuition pumps are all either active malice or people who are staggeringly stupid. They are also rare and newsworthy events, if they were common enough they wouldn't be newsworthy!
The general claim it makes (some people much better at others at various things) is true, of course.
I am confident there are/were many factories like the pakistan one in there run and staffed by people who would be A in america. Culture is a big thing!
All of that combined makes the idea that some countries have a ton of As and others have a ton of Bs and others have a ton of Cs not really true imo. IQ is a much more relevant metric I think.
The fact that japanese have better machines than pakis could just as well be explained by their stronger labour laws instead of the assertion that expensive machines only become economical with high quality workers. Only the flip flops are the hint of incompetent workers, the remaining bad conditions in the pakistani factory can all plausibly result from the owner investing as little as he can get away with and cheap wages (for whatever reason) allowing him to get away with less automation.
Especially together with the frequent assertions that people are unequal, IQ statistics for the countries would've been more rigorous evidence for the author's thesis.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago·Edited 8mo ago
Interesting, good post. I made a post about similar ideas a few days earlier albeit much less thoughtfully and well-formed. It's an odd feeling to have someone write the exact same thing you were thinking about but better.
In game theory, there are a bunch of simple strategies like 'switch from always cooperate to defect if the other guy defects first'. But when you introduce uncertainty, if there's a chance of mistakes (pressing cooperate and getting defect) then things get more complicated. Depending on the rate of error, some strategies that would otherwise be uncompetitive become workable - always cooperate can actually compete in some cases!
I reckon that introducing uncertainty worsens the case for immigration. In the real world we can't quite be sure whether someone's credentials are real, whether their education is legit and earned, what sort of standards they'll work at... until we employ them. Skill levels are hard to determine since everyone wants to look as skillful as they can. Ascertaining skill is sort of possible but not perfect in a single nation-state since you can tell what a good resume looks like, what a good university is, you can pick up on diction and various personality facets in interviews since you know your countrymen best. And people are less likely to lie and cheat extensively and expertly if there's no great financial incentive to do so.
But if your income and quality of life is rising fourfold if you get the job or the university admission, then you'll try a lot harder to get in! You'll pull strings, draw on connections, pounce on places where incentives are imperfectly aligned. There are real problems with cost-cutting outsourcing resulting in lower quality products, in illegible factors that are hard to ascertain beforehand. We can imagine how changing the error-rate alters the dominant strategy from the employer's point of view. And then there are political factors that make it harder to sort people by skill level. Right now in Australia there's 'same work, same pay' legislation being discussed. Some people do the same work much better than others and logically deserve more pay.
Right now in Australia there's 'same work, same pay' legislation being discussed. Some people do the same work much better than others and logically deserve more pay.
Seems to me like it would be easy to do an end-run around this by giving high performing employees a slightly different job title while they're still doing the same work.
Isn't this what bonuses were originally intended to be? Do better/more/higher quality work, get a reward?
I've never worked a job where "bonuses" were part of it and you got them at the end of the year regardless of what you had done, so I probably have a completely different view to people where "bonuses" are just a way around providing compensation without incurring tax. 'Yeah of course I get my yearly bonus, that's part of my salary package'.
[...] providing compensation without incurring tax.
In what country does this work? In the US, at least, bonuses are taxed as ordinary income. (They're included along with salary and tips in box 1 of the W-2 form that the employer files with the IRS.)
I remember seeing this done regularly when my company submitted the immigration forms for workers. The purpose of the form was to prove that me (the immigrant) is necessary to the company and no American can be hired instead of importing a filthy foreigner. Obviously, since the company has been employing me for years already, they wanted me to keep working for them, only in the US (and same for other people they were relocating). So they made a job description matching our jobs and skills exactly, so the chance there would be a person with the same skills and experience (who also would see the ad and want to apply) is negligible. Of course, it worked - they published the ads, waited the appropriate time, nobody applied, and they honestly wrote in the immigration forms that people they want to relocate are unique and irreplaceable.
Another common practice is adding qualifiers - you've got Engineer, then Senior Engineer, then Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineering Fellow, and you can go on with it forever, and obviously each of these is a totally different job.
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
Yes, but also no. It's definitely practice to over-specify it towards a specific person and that gives the person a giant edge. But if a super-star scientist (relatively speaking) comes around and applies for the job, they will often be hard-pressed to turn them down. This is quite rare however, and generally benefits the institutions (either they get exactly the person they want, or some kind of super-star).
I think it's a good thing (probably being an immigrant skews my perspective, but still I think it's an objectively good thing). I understand the fears about importing cheap labor worsening conditions of current workers, and maybe sometimes it is true. But I don't think academia is the place where it is true. I didn't spend much time in academia to have relevant experience but in general that seems to be the case.
Currently the bill in question is still in the drafting stage. A consultation paper has been put out with the express purpose of working through finnicky issues like this.
So currently it's not exactly clear how they're going to structure it to avoid loopholes and enforce compliance. But I would expect the Fair Work Commission to play a large role in whatever design ultimately gets chosen. It's very unlikely that enforcement will be left to private lawsuits.
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Notes -
The piece, I think, conflates 'low defect rate' and 'high IQ' - in my experience this isn't really true. The 'defect rate' of an individual is incredibly local to whatever task is being done. There are plenty of lowish IQ people who are low defect rate because they're willing to follow rules and defer to smarter people when they are confused. Notice how the intuition pumps are all either active malice or people who are staggeringly stupid. They are also rare and newsworthy events, if they were common enough they wouldn't be newsworthy!
The general claim it makes (some people much better at others at various things) is true, of course.
I am confident there are/were many factories like the pakistan one in there run and staffed by people who would be A in america. Culture is a big thing!
All of that combined makes the idea that some countries have a ton of As and others have a ton of Bs and others have a ton of Cs not really true imo. IQ is a much more relevant metric I think.
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what a great article. wish i had written it . so called 'bottleneck people'-- those who make life harder for the rest of us.
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The fact that japanese have better machines than pakis could just as well be explained by their stronger labour laws instead of the assertion that expensive machines only become economical with high quality workers. Only the flip flops are the hint of incompetent workers, the remaining bad conditions in the pakistani factory can all plausibly result from the owner investing as little as he can get away with and cheap wages (for whatever reason) allowing him to get away with less automation.
Especially together with the frequent assertions that people are unequal, IQ statistics for the countries would've been more rigorous evidence for the author's thesis.
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Just so nobody credits me with better writing skills than I actually possess, I am NOT the author of this piece.
But it captures and clarifies many things I have already thought.
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Nice post, thanks for writting it
I am NOT the author, but it was too good not to share.
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Interesting, good post. I made a post about similar ideas a few days earlier albeit much less thoughtfully and well-formed. It's an odd feeling to have someone write the exact same thing you were thinking about but better.
In game theory, there are a bunch of simple strategies like 'switch from always cooperate to defect if the other guy defects first'. But when you introduce uncertainty, if there's a chance of mistakes (pressing cooperate and getting defect) then things get more complicated. Depending on the rate of error, some strategies that would otherwise be uncompetitive become workable - always cooperate can actually compete in some cases!
I reckon that introducing uncertainty worsens the case for immigration. In the real world we can't quite be sure whether someone's credentials are real, whether their education is legit and earned, what sort of standards they'll work at... until we employ them. Skill levels are hard to determine since everyone wants to look as skillful as they can. Ascertaining skill is sort of possible but not perfect in a single nation-state since you can tell what a good resume looks like, what a good university is, you can pick up on diction and various personality facets in interviews since you know your countrymen best. And people are less likely to lie and cheat extensively and expertly if there's no great financial incentive to do so.
But if your income and quality of life is rising fourfold if you get the job or the university admission, then you'll try a lot harder to get in! You'll pull strings, draw on connections, pounce on places where incentives are imperfectly aligned. There are real problems with cost-cutting outsourcing resulting in lower quality products, in illegible factors that are hard to ascertain beforehand. We can imagine how changing the error-rate alters the dominant strategy from the employer's point of view. And then there are political factors that make it harder to sort people by skill level. Right now in Australia there's 'same work, same pay' legislation being discussed. Some people do the same work much better than others and logically deserve more pay.
Seems to me like it would be easy to do an end-run around this by giving high performing employees a slightly different job title while they're still doing the same work.
Isn't this what bonuses were originally intended to be? Do better/more/higher quality work, get a reward?
I've never worked a job where "bonuses" were part of it and you got them at the end of the year regardless of what you had done, so I probably have a completely different view to people where "bonuses" are just a way around providing compensation without incurring tax. 'Yeah of course I get my yearly bonus, that's part of my salary package'.
In what country does this work? In the US, at least, bonuses are taxed as ordinary income. (They're included along with salary and tips in box 1 of the W-2 form that the employer files with the IRS.)
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I remember seeing this done regularly when my company submitted the immigration forms for workers. The purpose of the form was to prove that me (the immigrant) is necessary to the company and no American can be hired instead of importing a filthy foreigner. Obviously, since the company has been employing me for years already, they wanted me to keep working for them, only in the US (and same for other people they were relocating). So they made a job description matching our jobs and skills exactly, so the chance there would be a person with the same skills and experience (who also would see the ad and want to apply) is negligible. Of course, it worked - they published the ads, waited the appropriate time, nobody applied, and they honestly wrote in the immigration forms that people they want to relocate are unique and irreplaceable.
Another common practice is adding qualifiers - you've got Engineer, then Senior Engineer, then Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineer, then Distinguished Senior Staff Engineering Fellow, and you can go on with it forever, and obviously each of these is a totally different job.
I've also heard that the over-specifying thing is trivially easy to do in academia. To the point that there are basically no restrictions on importing qualified academic talent. For academia they just write job requirements looking for a person that has written on topics X, Y, and Z. And they will make each of those topics basically the title paper of the academic they want to hire. The end result being that literally only one person in the world is qualified for the job ... the person they want to hire.
Yes, but also no. It's definitely practice to over-specify it towards a specific person and that gives the person a giant edge. But if a super-star scientist (relatively speaking) comes around and applies for the job, they will often be hard-pressed to turn them down. This is quite rare however, and generally benefits the institutions (either they get exactly the person they want, or some kind of super-star).
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I think it's a good thing (probably being an immigrant skews my perspective, but still I think it's an objectively good thing). I understand the fears about importing cheap labor worsening conditions of current workers, and maybe sometimes it is true. But I don't think academia is the place where it is true. I didn't spend much time in academia to have relevant experience but in general that seems to be the case.
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I’d guess this is the kind of thing that gets enforced by lawsuits. @AshLael, any thoughts?
Currently the bill in question is still in the drafting stage. A consultation paper has been put out with the express purpose of working through finnicky issues like this.
So currently it's not exactly clear how they're going to structure it to avoid loopholes and enforce compliance. But I would expect the Fair Work Commission to play a large role in whatever design ultimately gets chosen. It's very unlikely that enforcement will be left to private lawsuits.
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https://xkcd.com/1494/
Anyone creating such a law would have already thought of obvious workarounds like this and done something to avoid them.
Absolutely not, see this: https://apnews.com/article/sesame-allergies-label-b28f8eb3dc846f2a19d87b03440848f1
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sam brinton must have read the alt-text on that comic
Low effort swipes at your outgroup are not permitted. Don't post like this please.
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Are they outlawing piecework?
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