Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Self-interest is a powerful thing

Amidst all the turmoil in Europe, lots of catty back and forth between Mises.org and Brad DeLong yesterday, police crack-downs, and the general nastiness of the last couple years, this was the blog post that I read yesterday that bothered me the most. Bryan Caplan was just talking about how he got his job at GMU and the very real risk that he would have gotten a much less satisfying job.

Self-interest - not greed, but self-interest - is an incredibly powerful motivation. I'm several years out from jumping into the job market, and it still worries me a lot. Like Bryan, I have a few reassurances. I've got great connections at The Urban Institute, and I'd love to go back there or a place like that, and I'm pretty sure they'd have me. The non-advocacy think tanks are high on my list, and I think their hiring is a little less aggravating than academia (which I'm also interested in - and I'm entirely open to a public policy department rather than an economics department). I'm not as well position as Bryan was when he was on the market to jump into academia. But on the plus side I'm probably more willing to work for government - depending on the job (like Bryan I'm simply not interested in government jobs where I'd have to act against my conscience - but there's a wide range of good research and data-oriented government work).

Anyway, it's years off and I think I have good prospects for certain jobs and I'm laying the best groundwork I can. But isn't that funny that of all that I read yesterday, that post "got to me" the most?

UPDATE: And as the third commenter down on Bryan's post pointed out - notice the importance of non-wage factors in Bryan's discussion of the job market. Above a basic living standard, I think it's mostly right that other factors take a lot of precedence. If nothing else, there are incredibly important compensating wage differentials associated with whether people can drag themselves out of bed every day to do the work.

16 comments:

  1. Daniel Kuehn: Since you have a master's in public policy, I can't help but wonder this - do policy-makers recognise that decision-making is non-linear and non-additive? Have there been any explicit policy changes as a result of this recognition?

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  3. Just a reminder:

    1. Don't comment anonymously.

    2. If your comment contains nothing but insults flung at (a.) me, (b.) friends of the blog, (c.) foes of the blog, (d.) neutral parties, (e.) anyone I'm going to delete it.

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  7. OT: Sort of surprised you have as yet to comment on this: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/11/15/krugman-vs-summers-the-debate/

    Maybe I missed the comment.

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  8. Nope - haven't commented on it. Haven't looked at it in any detail - maybe tomorrow.

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  9. What struck me most about about Caplan's post was that he refused to consider putting himself in any position where real world experience (for lack of a better term) might conflict with his predetermined libertarian ideology. Staying in academia his entire life seems like a great way to avoid having any of his views about the world challenged.

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  10. Join me my fellow oppressed anonymous brethren! For we shall occupy the space that has been denied to us by the Kuehn plutocracy! We are the 99% and our voices will be heard, our words will be seen, and our hygiene will be nonexistent! Let Daniel smell us.... all over his tits.

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  11. Bryan is very fortunate that he really wants to be a cats paw for the oligarchs.

    He reminds me of Reethe Witherspoon in Election (1999). She was a hot teenage girl who really and truly liked to have sex with old men. (This leads to teacher Mathew Brodericks fellow teacher being fired and eventually Mathew himself.)

    The very last scene in the movie has Mathew as across the country working as a tour guide in the Smithsonian. He's walking by the Capitol and he sees...Reese Witherspoon getting out of a stretch limo. And its like, of course this is the prosperous future that awaited her. It was inevitable.

    I'm sure Bryan is just as oblivious to his inevitable prosperity as Reese was in the movie.

    Invisible Backhand
    http://www.reddit.com/r/CafeHayek/

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  12. I liked that so much I posted it over on econlog

    http://i.imgur.com/CnXqA.gif

    I suspected it will be deleted before the end of tomorrow.

    Invisible Backhand
    http://www.reddit.com/r/CafeHayek/

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  13. Now comes the anonymous plague.... For some reason, I think that you're going to be doing a lot of deleting, Daniel.

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  14. Just get rid of the option to post anonymously I say.

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  15. I'm not kidding, Daniel, I don't understand why Bryan's post bothered you. Is it just because you're worried about getting a job? Or is it that you're worried you'll end up working for Don Boudreaux?

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  16. Getting a job :)

    I would apply for a job in GMU's public policy department. I doubt I'll be applying to their econ department.

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All anonymous comments will be deleted. Consistent pseudonyms are fine.