Nurses, teachers, charity workers, IEPs, game devs.

These are all jobs where people sign up for the job. Whether it’s altruism or genuine passion. They’re willing to compromise and put up with less pay and harder working conditions.

But because they’re willing to compromise, these people are pushed to their limit. With not only low pay and shit conditions, but higher-ups which actively exploit their altruism and passion. “If you don’t work, patients / children are going to suffer!” coming from the same beaurocracy which created the situation where a) they suffer or b) you work extra hours.

They’re being pushed past the limit in fact, which is why there’s now a nursing and teaching shortage despite these actually being popular fields. A lot of people want to work these professions, they just don’t want the jobs.

This is the same reason why startups often phrase what they are trying to do as "change the world" and not "become filthy rich" to their employees.

I think most startups (at least originally) did start out as ‘change the world’. When you find out that changing the world is kinda hard, ‘become filthy rich’ starts to sound like a good alternative.

They'd be structured differently if they were truly about changing the world, instead of just being vehicles for wealth accumulation.

Absolutely. And you'd see much less hypergrowth mindset, and a willingness to go slow, steady, and do it right.

How would the structure change?

Not a single professional investor does so on the basis of “change the world”. Maybe “create a monopolized market”, that’s a changed world.

You're just falling for the propaganda.

As a startup person, I like the startups where the spiel is “Get filthy rich by changing the world” the most. As long as I get to partake in the riches.

I've had good rapport with those who are honest about their startups being businesses, as they're usually also the same types who understand that working for them is just a job, and that a job at a startup comes with its own risks, as well.

People that go out of their way to say that their startups have a higher mission make me uneasy. I don't know if they're just trying to convince others that they're running something other than for-profit businesses driven by expected returns on investment for investors, or if they truly believe it themselves. It's either borderline manipulation or delusion, and neither are something I want to hitch myself to.

I can think of a couple of companies whose public face represents "Get filthy rich by changing the world". Tesla, for one. Maybe SpaceX too.

Oh, no, that reads like I just turned into a Musk fanboy. Surely there's got to be some non-Musk company that I can add to that list?

> Surely there's got to be some non-Musk company that I can add to that list?

Biotech startups? Develop a cure for horrible disease X (save lives, give people a few more years with their families, etc–feels good?)–and then get rich selling that cure.

I think Blue Origin's messaging is in principle similar to SpaceX (Bezos wants to save the environment by moving manufacturing to orbit, etc.) It is just that SpaceX rather obviously delivers on that message, and has grown rich delivering; Blue Origin hasn't delivered much yet, and it is hard to grow rich prior to delivery–but maybe, give them a few more years, they'll finally get their act together, and they'll become more SpaceX-like.

It seems to be the case that if you give someone a bunch of money, they'll stop wanting to change the world for the better. There are thousands of billionaires who could each end hunger and homelessness but have chosen not to.

The resources available to nation states dwarf those of billionaires, and it’s they’re specific actual job to do it, yet they too have failed to end hunger and homelessness. Bill Gates has sunk untold billions into humanitarian aid and its a drop in the ocean.

Eventually, you start looking into why the governments fail to end hunger and homelessness. Then, people start calling you a tankie.

Because hunger and homeless ness were of course unknown under Stalinism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...

I'm not seeing anything about homelessness in the article you linked to. Just for perspective, here's the opposite side of the coin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communist_mass_killings

As a regular person, I like startups where the spiel is "Have a fabulous life and be pretty comfortable while doing things that even after some serious devil's advocacy seem as if they might make the world a better place".

I was impressed when I met the founders of Gaikai (a zero-day network game distribution system later bought by Sony), and asked them what the goal was. Answer: "Buy an island". Honesty has its merits.

I had a VP at a large company who was sharing her background. When she talked about her failed start up she said "we did it cause we wanted to be MILLIONAIRES... and that didn't work out so here I am".

It was funny and personable. Still one of the better VPs I remember.

Bit of a false distinction to me.

Because how to get filthy rich is by changing (improving) the world.

Hahahaha you are so funny!

Oh, my sweet summer child.

It's one way to do it, not the only or simplest one? And once someone had done it, they tend to transition a bit to exploitation mode because why not (they think)? Is my impression

Yeah - the problem is that "a dream fuffilling job" without major filtering like med or law school effectively has a "virtual compensation" from desirability of the job. We see the reverse for (potentially literally) shit jobs or in ill repute. The economy accounts for your feelings but it cannot care about them.

Pretty sure most ppl become nurses for other reasons

They become nurses because it's a relatively easy (two years at a CC) to become an RN, and the pay is pretty good.

It's easy on the body, compared to similar paid blue collar jobs, like union construction. And it seems better than office work.

Durning the AIDS crisis a lot of nurses--who could quit did. They quit because many were legitmetly scared.

Hospitals got worried, and told their marketing departments to throw out the word, "We need nurses!". Most smaller hospitals had a hard time keeping qualified egos (The Medical Doctor), and they couldn't be bothered besides doing just the bare minimum.

Let's not forget their are many classifications of nurses (RN, LVN, etc., and porely trained Candy Stripers, or cheap help, hospitals (especially union controlled) use instead of nurses. Some are not porely trained though, but nursing unions don't like competition. I'm not berating unions. Moneynot spent on help seems to go to administrators anyway.)

(I went to school with nursing students. Most were divorced. Most were around mid 30's. This was in the 90's. Now nursing is a good path to middleclass for immigrants.)

"They become nurses because it's a relatively easy (two years at a CC) to become an RN, and the pay is pretty good."

That is no longer the case and many now require 4 year bachelor programs to be hired as RN nurses. My wife has her bachelors in nursing and runs an ER and the hiring requirements includes a bachelors degree in nursing and not a 2 year degree.

I had no idea that Pournelle was claiming credit for that!

He nicked it from Robert Michels, who wrote about the Iron Law of Oligarchies in 1911: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

I was reading some old Analog magazines the other day, and man, Pournelle was one deranged man in his "non-fiction".

Leo Laporte would have him on a variety of his TWIT podcasts from time to time. I considered once coming up with a drinking game where you'd drink every time Jerry would have a sentence that included, "..when I wrote about...", but I realized you'd kill yourself.

Politically he was somewhat to the far right of Atilla the Hun

That wasn't as apparent when he was a BYTE columnist for many years but boy his website sure turned into "old man yells at clouds" although he did have serious health issues in his later years.

As somebody with experience at NASA, this made me chortle. I would NOT characterize the average civil servant that I worked with as "devoted to the goals of the organization." That includes the lowest level field organizations. Unfortunately, for the average employee, it eventually gets treated like any other job.

It's possible this dichotomy works in theory only. Being generous, it's possible they just disagree about the goals of the organization.

That’s the point. The second group, those who only care about the existence of the organisation, and the power/money it provides to them, have taken over at NASA.

As a result only those who act to increase the power/wealth at the expense of all else, such as the original goals of the organisation, get promoted and hang around. The end result, an organisation that achieves very little, and consumes huge amounts of resources, full of people who really don’t care about the fundamental goals of the organisation.

Ok, I see your point and think you're right. The quote distinguished between scientists/technicians and management. I met many in the former group who cared little about the goals of the organization, but to your point, they had been within the organization a long time.

I don't think the technician/management dichomoty is a good proxy. There are people from both groups who care about the goals more than the organization, but they not the people being given power.

Anyone who has visited planet earth and spent time here is well aware of that. The task is to prevent these people from taking and holding power.

Note that the strict formulation of this law (ie. "in _every_ case..") is profoundly anti-democratic in that it assumes no democracy can ever exist or function. Of course, I hope your household provides a good counter example (if not, then you should seek outside support).

Anyway, for those of us who still believe in democracy, it has long been recognised that the cost of it is that everyone has to be a adult who takes responsibility for basic things in life like maintaining the social fabric of the institutions you belong to in order to prevent them from being taken over by sociopaths.

So the question is, will we support medical professionals in doing this? In the UK, before COVID, when junior doctors went on strike to try and remedy the situation, the media denounced them as enemies of the people and they were completely crushed by the state (with the help of their own professional organisations like the BMJ). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4902702/

>The task is to prevent these people from taking and holding power.

And for that I completely blame the 'right' thinking, honest, hardworking nerd types - even when given the reins to power they will often not take it, because it is uninteresting work, compared the cool gadget/problem they are working on.

> in order to prevent them from being taken over by sociopaths.

Every institution has already been taken over by sociopaths. That's why it's called an "iron law", and not a mere concern.

> Every institution

+ "that is so large so there's a pyramid to climb and a bunch of sociopaths who start climbing".

Smaller orgs can get away, can avoid the iron law.

But a big country is a bit doomed

Funny you should mention unions. They seem like the only vehicle (imperfect as it may be) the first group has to keep the second group in check.

They definitely are, as long as the union itself isn't compromised by that second group.

In a healthy marketplace, walking to another job works as well.

Do we have a healthy marketplace? Specifically for nurses?

I certainly doesn’t seem it.

You just explained something I saw on many establishing subreddits!

Here's the original author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

That's why you need unions