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Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by eptcyka on Monday February 27, 2023 @08:38AM (#34956221)
Ultimately, these systemic inefficiencies are financially supported by people, the public at large.
Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by luckylion on Monday February 27, 2023 @09:30AM (#34956803)
At different rates though. You can absolutely choose not to pay the lazy-tax and buy from a different vendor that doesn't employ an army of people who do nothing, you can even build whatever it is you need, but you can't easily choose to not pay the taxes that the government collects for the same purposes.
Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by eptcyka on Monday February 27, 2023 @10:00AM (#34957162)
Pretty sure Atlassian has a lower per-employee efficiency than what a smaller startup providing a product in the same market would have, but there might be specific sticky features in the Atlassian product that make it difficult for one to migrate. The effective market hypothesis is great at finding local maxima.
Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by luckylion on Monday February 27, 2023 @10:29AM (#34957499)
Likely, yes, but it's "do I want to work around this", not "there's no way". There's enough people getting fed up with Atlassian that "Like Atlassian X, but sane" could be a category.

There's basically no way you can start a new state if you'd want to opt out of the existing ones, and even moving from one to another is quite the undertaking. Imagine Atlassian saying "sure, you're free to stop working with and paying us, but we believe that we've been instrumental in building your company, and we believe that entitles us to 20% of your company if you want to work with someone else".

Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by eptcyka on Monday February 27, 2023 @11:17AM (#34958170)
You might find it ethical to not use a superior product to try and force the world to be more like the one described by the efficient market hypothesis, but I definitely don't believe this is on the to-do list of people who get stuff done and get promoted to make impactful changes in their organization.
Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by thomastjeffery on Monday February 27, 2023 @10:14AM (#34957325)
Can you really? Are you sure? I sincerely doubt it.
Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by epups on Monday February 27, 2023 @11:06AM (#34958001)
Even if that were true, and I don't think it is, there are millions of jobs that are subsidized with public money and the public has no meaningful choice in them. Think defense contractors, public sector consultants, etc.
Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by luckylion on Monday February 27, 2023 @11:39AM (#34958512)
"Jobs paid for by public money" and "completely unproductive jobs paid for by public money" are not the same though.

But even if it actually was millions of completely unproductive jobs, I fail to see how that would be an argument for adding a few dozen millions more and not a reason to get rid of the ones that exist and cost us money that we could otherwise invest into important things that are currently underfunded.

Re:Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless by epups on Monday February 27, 2023 @01:24PM (#34960034)
Because they are not jobs. They would free up people to other pursuits, in the hope at least a few of them would be useful. It would also be a massive boon to those who cannot make ends meet.

I wasn't making the argument that every government job is useless, I was simply reminding that it's not true that unproductive private jobs can be weeded out simply with competition or customer care.