It rewards stupidness, cutting corners, lying to people. Capitalism has created an economy driven by forced/planned obsolecence of hardware, literal gambling with rich people just betting against other businesses, industries and entire nations.
Basing our world around a system that on average funnels the least empathetic, most callous, greedy and power hungry psychopaths and sociopaths to positions with the most influence surely cannot possibly backfire in a major way for the rest of us.
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.
The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves.
You would think, but actually there's been some recent research that I think has interesting conclusions. The example, which is semi-related, is performance as a manager. When promoted using merit based, people tended to perform worse bcz they are promoted based on past performance in unrelated roles. When promoted randomly, the people who excelled at being a manager stayed in that position, and outperformed others who were promoted based on merit.
The point being, you don't know who's going to be good at something based on past performance in unrelated roles. We've built an entire system based on that concept, and it's not really that surprising that it doesn't work that well. If I can find the research article again, I'll link it.
Market socialism maybe. Look up mutualism and anarcho-syndicalism.
But personally I don't think we need to do that. It's to each according to need, not to each according to ability. We shouldn't give people less because they're disabled or more because they're abled.
Once we can meet everyone's needs, then we can start talking about how to allocate the surplus. But I trust a society that takes cade of its people more than I trust us, in our current state, to have the right ideas about how that should work.
Problem is information. If you really need someone else to provide a good or service for you, then almost certainly you don't know enough about said good or service to accurately gauge the providers skills and quality.
So by and large, we have to rely on what others say to indicate relative value. So the people most confident and/or most manipulative tend to win because they are the best at sounding good.
"Just give". You know things don't just spontaneously materialize right? Someone has to work to make them. Why would anyone put in effort to do that if you'll "just give" them to someone else? That's why all those collectivist ideas failed every time they've been tried.
Communism worked in Australia for 65,000 years. It was classless, stateless, moneyless. Wealth was distributed from each according to ability, to each according to need.
See, David Graeber interviewed a lot of people who work in "bullshit jobs". Jobs that serve no useful purpose to anyone, and even the person doing the job thinks it's pointless. People who tick boxes all day, or who look busy without doing anything, or who get a paycheck even though the company has forgotten about them.
Graeber expected the people working bullshit jobs to be very happy with how they've beaten the system, but most weren't. Most were depressed. People have a fundamental need to help others; to be useful to society. If they didn't, they would have gone extinct long ago. People who work bullshit jobs are unhappy. People who work meaningful, important, and prosocial jobs tend to be satisfied with themselves. Their moral needs are being met.
That's the mistake capitalism makes. Capitalists think you need to scam people into working by withholding food and water and shelter. They don't believe in human rights, they believe in using these necessities to control people. They think greed is human nature.
But Indigenous Australians have known full well for 65,000 years that people want to be good. And they have used their vast science of psychology and sociology and politics to engineer a system which makes the best use of that natural impulse, driving people to do good. That's successful communism.
Do you have a time machine/some secret aboriginal 65000 year old journals or did you manage to figure all this out from stone tools and cave paintings?
It was classless, stateless, moneyless.
Most primitive societies were/are. If that's communism then it only provides empirical evidence that it doesn't work very well as it did not survive to this day and it's been outcompeted by capitalist societies. Literally natural selection.
from each according to ability, to each according to need
This is why communism is immoral and ineffective. When you say "from each according to ability" you demand that people do what they do best and do it as well as they can, regardless of their own interests, ambitions or desires. Are you a muscular guy, sorry comrade, science division is full, you'll fit in better at the manual labor camp. Do you like to paint and sing, too bad, society demands your talents at the nuclear research facility. You're burned out and don't feel like giving your 100% right now, think again, we only care if you're able, not if you're willing. In capitalism you get to choose what you want to do with your life, of course, the more useful that thing is to others the bigger your reward, but it's ultimately your choice.
It also assumes that you can accurately gauge someone's abilities and needs. If Leonardo da Vinci lived under communism he likely would have never discovered his talents in science, engineering and mathematics as he would have been forced solely into artistry after his predispositions for it manifested at a young age. Conversely, you can't tell if someone is really unable to work and to what capacity. I can guarantee you that if all negative repercussions of it were removed, given a choice between going to work and giving it your all vs faking an illness to stay home and play videogames, a very large portion of the population would choose the latter, you don't even need to think about it to figure it out.
"To each according to need" works great until there isn't enough to go around, and that's when real human nature shows itself. We are not hive animals like ants or bees who have been genetically programmed through haplodiploidy to put the good of the hive above their own. We are pack animals, we only care about the pack to the extent that it benefits us as individuals. Given a choice between the good of the pack at the expense of themselves and their family or their own and family's good at the expense of the pack, humans will choose the latter ~90% of the time. I'm sure even those ancient aboriginal communists you made up would hide away some nuts and berries for themselves and their families instead of sharing them with the whole tribe when resources were tight.
See, David Graeber interviewed a lot of people who work in "bullshit jobs". Jobs that serve to useful purpose to anyone, and even the person doing the job thinks it's pointless. People who tick boxes all day, or who look busy without doing anything, or who get a paycheck even though the company has forgotten about them.
Graeber expected the people working bullshit jobs to be very happy with how they've beaten the system, but most weren't. Most were depressed. People have a fundamental need to help others; to be useful to society. If they didn't, they would have gone extinct long ago. People who work bullshit jobs are unhappy. People who work meaningful, important, and prosocial jobs tend to be satisfied with themselves. Their moral needs are being met.
People have their interests, ambitions and desires, for some it will be helping others and being useful to society and for others it will be something else of no use to anyone but themselves. There's plenty of amateur musicians, coders, lego builders, bird watchers, chess players, bloggers, photographers, painters, sportsmen, bodybuilders, speedrunners... whose work benefits absolutely nobody but their own satisfaction, and yet they're their happiest when they get to do those things. If people had a fundamental need to be useful to society then everyone who ever retires would be absolutely miserable and nobody would do it of their own volition.
That's the mistake capitalism makes. Capitalists think you need to scam people into working by withholding food and water and shelter. They don't believe in human rights, they believe in using these necessities to control people. They think greed is human nature.
Greed is human nature. We exist in the world of finite resources, we evolved in the world of finite resources to survive in the world of finite resources. We evolved to accumulate, compete for and preserve resources. That's why laziness, theft, gluttony and greed exist. It's literally our nature, not the only part of it, altruism and charity exist of course but it always comes second to personal benefit.
Also, you're not withholding anything. Things don't just materialize, you either earn them or they aren't yours. You can only speak of withholding if someone agreed to give you something and then went back on their promise. Someone not giving you free food, water or shelter (which btw every developed country does, there's plenty of food banks and homeless shelters and water doesn't even need mentioning) isn't withholding anything from you. If you want water go to a river or catch rain/dew, if you want food plant some or forage, if you want shelter build one (or pay someone more qualified to do it, you know, the capitalist way).
But Indigenous Australians have known full well for 65,000 years that people want to be good. And they have used their vast science of psychology and sociology and politics to engineer a system which makes the best use of that natural impulse, driving people to do good. That's successful communism.
Humans are the one species not bound by natural resources. Humans evolved big brains to invent ways to change nature and improve methods of resource generation. The First Australians literally terraformed the land to make more food, without needing European style farms. You're calling them primitive because you have no idea about their technology. You and the people who taught you just made an assumption based on the colour of their skin.
Greed is not human nature and white supremacy is pseudoscience.
Sports, kinda. It's possible to go unrewarded with them, but it's very hard to go rewarded without them.
If you mean economic system, not really. Capitalism rewards having capital over everything else, communism (if we ignore the flawed attempts and go for theory) rewards everyone equally irrelevant of how hard you work or what your skills are. Though being skilled in something that's actually pleasant as a job is a reward in itself as you won't have to work manual labour.
Don't know about sports even. Probably at least a base level to get on the threshold of celebrity, but then they can lean on personality and antics rather than performance in their sport.
Okay, you're right on that too. But outside of super high earning sports that have a lot of entertainment factor (mostly team sports involving balls), it really is all about your performance. You don't get to do track and field at the Olympics based on your personality for example. Though it would be hilarious if you could!
Guild Economics, where you only ascend to leadership with experience in your trade. I don't like the idea that some kid out of university could be assigned manager of an industry they didn't even study for. Realistically, 90% of the workforce does not need to have gone to uni and we could reorganise society around apprenticeships instead.
in germany the apprenticeship system is very advanced and you can apprentice your way to a bachelor's equivalent with further study to a master's equivalent. that's how most trades work here. apprentices do part time studying at a trade school and part time working the trade over multiple years simultaneously, with exams issued by the school and for example a chamber of industry. it's very effective at turning students into effective workers, and if you find the right job you've got good prospects for a lifelong career, but obviously it does not teach you to doubt the system. of course there are also usually no "unnecessary" courses that would take away from an apprentice's focus. i think it's a decent balance, and you can always educate yourself on the state of the world in your free time.
with a master's in carpentry you can start your own carpentry business. as a bachelor you're only allowed to work in other people's businesses. to get there you'll have to pass wtitten and practical exams, for example building specific things to spec
That sounds really good. I didn't have as much of a good experience with a government program, which consisted of the company giving me one example, then sending me right off to work, without giving a fuck if their products turn out well, or if I learn anything.
Still working here, still don't know most things, because asking gets you the low-skilled tasks.
We can value education without commodifying it the way we've done. In my opinion, the current system rewards diploma mills and devalues education anyways.
I think education should be both inexpensive and completely voluntary, so that the only 'reward' for going to school is the knowledge you leave with.
Well if we're imagining a better world anyways, why would anyone have three jobs?
The current system creates luxury for some at the cost of creating poverty for others. I think the best course of action would be to stop doing that - then education could be about learning instead of about earning.
I think school itself should be a million times harder, i.e actually mean something, and university should either be easier or just not pushed onto 100% of the workforce like it is in Britain, Spain, America, Ireland and Canada et cetera.
Also second baguette fish - in my country we have "degree apprenticeships" where you go to university alongside doing work for a company, and it seems appropriate because it effectively highlights where people are even needed in this completely oversaturated made up economy.
In fact since public education is shaped by the regime ("the regime" = WHICHEVER system is in power, be it democracy, organised anarchy, monarchy, capitalism or communism), education will usually be catered towards supporting the regime in some way. If the regime does not control education at least a little bit, it leaves roo, for other pressure groups - organised minorities - to manipulate education, thus reducing Current Regime's staying power and providing a foot-in for themselves
Wow who would have thought the research in current regime would indicate that current regime is correct! You can tell the research is unbiased because it was published by current regime. Only in current regime can research be unbiased, thank god for current regime.
This was done by Italian researchers, no affiliation with the U.S. government.
Again. Regime. Current regime, which likes organisations run by very specific people in a very particular way, has investigated itself to find that "NOBODY DOES IT BETTER!"
No, because it would be up to people to assess talent/hard work/skill and people are imperfect.
Also would you even want that system? Reward a bunch of John Henrys for killing themselves when their work should be done by machines? Reward artists for art that no one can appreciate? Reward skill that doesn't ultimately benefit anyone?
in small, communal societies, people would be assigned to the tasks they're best at. humans lived this way for millenia before industrialism and common education standards. i lived on a small commune for an internship, we had people who specialized in: maintenance, caretaking (animals), medicine, cleaning, etc
Well you could also ask if that's fair. People are just born with more or less talent or skill. Nothing they can do about it. Should they be rewarded for that? Or saying it the opposite way: should people be punished for something they can't change?
Life is never fair. not for humans and not for any living being.
If you try to make it fair by paying the person with lower skill same as skilled person, the skilled person won't feel the need to use their skills anymore.
To make it fair you need a magic mirror that print statistics about each person (skill level, talent level, physical strength) and use these numbers to decide who used all their abilities and who pretend to be dumb to avoid using their brain/body
I think people who are naturally better at things should can and will always be rewarded for that; we make up for the discrepancy by making sure it's not bloody torturous to live on a minimum wage job, thay there are support systems for the disabled, unemployed, and the simply unintelligent.
Reading about 1950s America it was clear that people were so comfortable that working in minimum wage jobs largrly didn't bother them. If a capitalist country can achieve that, a well-organised country can achieve even better.
Case in point - when imitation crab came out in the 80s it was freakin' delicious - tasted just like crab, and dirt cheap in comparison. But over the years they seem to have beem putting in less and less of whatever actual crab material gave it crab flavor, so now it's pretty much just nondescript fish + orange dye. A bad imitation of imitation crab. Instead of enjoying wonderful inventions like these we have to ruin them a little at a time so somebody can make a teensy bit more profit each time, until they're crap.
The thing society rewards most is already having lots of capital to throw around. No skill, talent, work ethic, or even connectedness is as important as simply having assets. Our society has regressed to reward being rich over everything else.
If you go down the list of big billionaires, most of them didn't start as billionaires. For the most part, they started out in the comfortable "upper-middle" class, like a lot of Lemmy users, and then got involved in a startup that took them to the top (edit: luck).
It's not surprising, really. If you just have inherited capital and no extra luck, the best you can do is the same 10% rate of return as everyone else. (Although coming from a rich family is both luck and connections, itself)
Our society has regressed to reward being rich over everything else.
You say that like bloodline first and then wealth was better. That is what came before.
The people at FAANGS (or whatever they're calling it now) famously start with wages that would be the absolute peak of someone else's career. Never mind comparing to an unskilled worker.
I know less about what physical/"real" engineers make in 2026, but I doubt it's changed that much.
Real engineer here, mechanical working to design medical devices like plates and screws for trauma cases.
We average around $100k across the US, and on the extreme end can top out around $200k, but that's a rare case. Typical top end is $150k with I'd say at least 12 years if experience.
Starting salary typically $70k.
This is for places that are average COL, so not San Francisco, and also not Alabama.
Yeah, that's decent. Not fuck-you money, but decent.
OP asked for any example, so I went with FAANGS, but wages there are inflated by being a bunch of monopolies all headquartered in the same place. Last I heard a senior dev in Canada makes like 60k.
Yeah, buddy, hate to bring it to you, but software engineers are not the real engineers. We're just monkeys repeating something that we barely heard of.
You can start working as a software engineer just after school. Imagine an aerospace, civil, or electrical engineer without proper education.
Okay, sure, the guy that mostly copy-pastes/vibecodes javascript is not on level with a rocket scientist. What about, like, Linus Torvalds, though? The complexity involved in a big codebase outstrips even the most complicated aircraft. Nobody's saying mathematicians aren't serious thinkers, and yet, we're putting in a whole lot of effort, with things like Lean, to catch up with coders.
They aren't accredited like "real" engineers, but that might be a matter of where we are in history more than anything. Charles Parsons didn't have to certify anything when he was building the first dreadnoughts. Both fields are about designing new technology, and that's basically what defines the word "engineer".
Someone with $10,000,000 in VOO can withdraw $450,000/year, and still compound their wealth year over year, without working at all. The absolute worst case scenario is that they start doing this at the start of a recession, like mid 2007, in which case, they would STILL be compounding their wealth year over year, with the exception of the short time it took to dip.
Simply having $10,000,000 and sitting on your ass > Being a surgeon.
Oh yeah, and that's all before taxes.
So yes, to some extent, society rewards skill. But it is FAR more rewarding to the people who already have wealth.
While these answers are correct, it's doesn't really say much about what traits are rewarded. It's kind of tautological - if we assume you've started ahead, you'll be ahead. Otherwise, it's mostly luck, with a bit of knowing the right people, which is also down to luck.
Maybe what you meant is that wealth shouldn't be permanent(-ish). Which is valid. It's just not a matter of personality, like everything else on the list in OP.
It doesn't matter. Investments do not care where the money comes from.
You worked as a surgeon for 20 years while living with parents and not paying bills? $10 million.
Your great great grandfather was a plumber and built up some wealth and your great grandfather was an electrician and built up more wealth, and... your father works in real estate and all of these people set you up with a trust fund and you start out with $2 million, and then you withdraw 100k per year to live on, doing nothig else for 17 years, and your fund slowly climbs to $10 million. Well, that's also $10 million.
You're one of Nancy Pelosi's kids and she gives you a $10 million fund on your 18th birthday? Thats $10 million.
Do you see now how having $10 million doesn't reward the traits of any of these people? It only rewards having $10 million. It does not matter how you acquired it.
I don't want to be obtuse, here, repeating myself more than necessary, but this bit was important:
Maybe what you meant is that wealth shouldn’t be permanent(-ish). Which is valid. It’s just not a matter of personality, like everything else on the list in OP.
FWIW my best guess for how OP would have ended it, is "it rewards being evil". Usually that's where people go.
I guess luck isn't really a personality trait, either, but it's what you can personally have that allows you to climb relative to other people with the same start.
I've noticed a trend amongst most Musk defenders now and general billionaire simps. They have the emotional maturity of a13 year old, they never really grew up in high school so are so stunted developmentally they're a decade behind at the least.
No system in existence and outside existence would reward artists even if it is specifically designed to reward artists. it's a monkey's paw bullshit trap.
To quote the article itself "Jenny Dagg, a Maynooth University sociologist who studied the scheme, said it was a win for all but noted that eligible artists could not live solely on the weekly payments, which were considered supplementary income."
one way or another this kind of stuff always ends up being a scheme with heavy bias towards metropolies.
The c suite isn't in the example, but I wonder how many executives are engineers or scientists. But if an engineer is doctor enters the c suite, do they stop being engineers or doctors
I work in healthcare. Majority c-suite at hospitals, clinics, or practices have both a science masters or doctorate AND a business degree. Same goes for directors and most managers.
Healthcare is one of the largest industries. So you'd be excluding tens of thousands in Manager and above.
They do stop being engineers and doctors, because now their job title is different? A doctor is someone that practices within their field, as with an engineer. They may still carry the qualification, and to a degree the skills necessary to be an engineer and doctor again, but that's not their job any longer, thus not the appropriate title.
In terms of their skillset? Probably not immediately (skills may deteriorate due to lack of use over time). In terms of what they will be doing as part of the job, and how they use their skillset? To a certain degree, I would say yes.
Well if you want to be really cynical you could say "when one gets successful enough," and that makes sense to me - at T Swift or Ed Sheeran's level of success, the global music tours make their workday a matter of planning things out and negotiating - and they're so successful that they have a bunch of people to do it for them already!! So it is at that point, where your workday goes from actually writing songs to just reusing what you've written.
Sensibly though, you could say they are both. People can be 2 things at once. One of the most famous "architects" in the world is Bjarke Ingels but he actually just owns the company; his training is in illustration rather than architectural design. He is a creative, and it informs his practice and what he actually approves, but a large part of being recognised as an architect is actually from doing the non-architect part of it.
The reason Mardukas specifically says Taylor Swift is more capitalist than musician though is something very precise to Taylor swift: her career was launched by her dad, a big finance guy, who pushed her work onto all his clients when she was just a kid. Taylor went from being marketed as a country musician to being a pop musician. He explicitly didn't want her to have to work very hard in life and felt confident he could engineer a following for her. She must be richer than him now, so it worked better than expected.
If you earn your musician wings from having them bought for you, you have not ascended the bardic steps to stardom, but floated up in a hot air balloon instead.
Their salaries are great in America but only as good as finance professionals, who are then in the system of money manipulation (not saying they're all crooks) and hence receive pointers on how to re-invest their wealth; Doctors and engineers on the other hand are often too busy to even think about investment, making more money from their money.
Doctors can do well, but I've never heard of a billionaire doctor. Engineers do well, but they're not billionaires. Both doctors and engineers work hard, but not in the same physically demanding, body-harming way that laborers work. Laborers can even be paid deceptively well, with construction labor sometimes paying something like triple the minimum wage. But the cost to the laborer is paid with body breaking down, and you can bet that job-site they're contracted for doesn't provide health insurance. So they accumulate injury, breaking down their body, thus limiting how much of that physically taxing job they can do. So, in effect, they're not being paid nearly enough. Because the pay doesn't compensate their loss of bodily function. Think of it like an NFL defensive lineman. They're paid very well, but their body takes a huge toll. A lot of former NFL players are not doing well, despite their huge initial earnings.
Just to add in, that a CEO definitely doesn't work as hard as their hardest working employee, and the avg. CEO pay is roughly 325 times that of their average worker.
Capitalism rewards the best at gaining power. All systems are subject the vulnerability of people seeking power instead of wisdom. Even American Democracy.
You said “even”, which for literate people means that what follows it has some particular advantage when it comes to not being whatever came before the “even”. The US is the epicenter of global capitalism; it’s the first to go, no the last.
The funny thing is we don’t even have capitalism. Capitalism has a free market which we do not have. We have a corporatocracy. Our laws are made by and for corporations. Everything is meant to give them an edge in society and decisions are made to benefit them.
It rewards grifters, exploiters, the cruel and greedy. It rewards the worst of human nature. It’s a cynical system that rewards unnatural inclinations like resource hoarding and anti-social behavior. That’s why the capitalists stopped at nothing to crush communism. Even if in practice communism had a lot of faults, it’s underlying philosophy spoke on solidarity amongst the working class. Capitalism thrives on taking for the few and weakening and dividing the masses. It’s always been a broken unsustainable system. Today it’s hurdling us towards destruction with AI, destruction of the natural world, and oppression to protect the monsters lusting for more power.
Being rich isn't the greatest reward. And not feasible. Only the few can ever be rich.
Demanding a society where an economic system makes the virtuous rich is mental.
An economic system should be measured by the quality of life and productivity by the society. And it's ability to consume said wealth. I.e. china is failing their citizens, badly. So is Germany in their psychosis of exporting.
Please explain where China is failing their citizens? We cannot even afford houses in the West anymore, while they have 95 % homeownership rate in China. And there are many more examples like that.
China's domestic consumption is very low, their exports are much greater than their imports, i.e. they provide the world with goods without sufficient compensation. Their population should be doing better and being wealthier. Their consumers are using real estate as an investment vehicle creating an enormous housing bubble. Home ownership is ridiculously expensive and there are mostly very small apartments at high rates. They are famous for constructing highly speculative ghost towns.
As soon as the promise of wealth in age starts to falter china may change fundamentally. And it seems like that may be coming soon rather than later.
I’m sorry, I have to say that some of your points sound like decade-old red scare topics:
The housing market got already deflated years ago. The Chinese government famously declared back then that "Houses are for living, not for speculation." Prices still fall, with developers taking most of the pain, not families.
China has now a homeownership rate of ~96%. A number unheard of in the West.
Many mocked ghost towns are now economic hubs. Some stalled, but the trend is repurposing.
Per capita disposable income grew 5.4% annually during the 14th Five-Year Plan.
You’re right when it comes to exports: Dependency is a real challenge and also diplomatically not helpful. But at least the government says to address it. I cannot remember a time that Germany ever acknowledged that their export surplus is harmful?
Instead of predicting its downfall, we should start questioning our own political and economic system in the West. There seems to be much to learn from a socialist market economy like China.
Okay that's fair, let me try that again: Even on a per capita basis China is doing pretty well for itself. You can also compare other countries here (this is basically a poverty index so the lower it is the better).
I mean, that's how you get good standards of living. You can also look up its GDP per capita, which isn't high but is definitely respectable. In that case though you can look up China's HDI. There's just no metric by which China is failing the majority of its citizens (emphasis on majority; of course Uighurs for example will feel differently).
It also doesn't punish an export economy without domestic consumption
That doesn't make sense though. Exports bring in money which can be used to import stuff or for domestic consumption. A strong export economy leads to good standards of living.
That's not correct. E.g. Germany has consistent exported way more goods and services than it has imported. A healthy economy is not an automatism from being good at shipping stuff off shore. There is no gain from building a car if you buy the materials ship the car and have money left over. You do actually have to spend that money. There is no good in owning money. That's how economies die and cost of e.g. housing explodes.
I mean, Germany has one of the highest standards of living in the developed world despite being weighed down by East Germany so clearly it's working out for them. Stuff like the housing crisis is hitting the whole developed world all at once, so it's not like Germany is special there.
But surely being rich (i.e being comfortable and having the freedom to explore new enterprises) is the best reward that society en large can give you; the best and only appropriate award that the government can provide you for your skilled labour. It has also historically been very effective at getting society to innovate and improve.
So you want neurosurgeons to be rich enough so they can stop being neurosurgeons for their deed of becoming neurosurgeons? Sure they should be well off enough. But they typically are just normal people.
Rant: Scientists aren't fundamentally better. They just have learned how to do science. That's not particularly hard or admirable and virtually everyone could do it.
It is being made hard due to societal decisions such as high study costs etc. but that doesn't make them superior.
What you think neurosurgeon should be worse compensated so that they'll continue being neurosurgeon?? They won't even become neurosurgeon in the first place if you don't offer to pay them well!
You have your concept of incentives completely backwards - you're looking at methods of fear to motivate people to take part in a completely voluntary aspect of society. People can leave the country, not work at all, or get different jobs. You need to pay neurosurgeon well.
I do not see neurosurgeon leaving en-masse currently and they are the best paid in the medical profession right now. They instead reach tenureship quickly and then focus on training more neurosurgeon, which is less stressful for them and just as well paid, or almost as well paid.
And because of the existing high pay incentive, LOADS of people are training under them to become surgeons. Ergo the system works.
You are trying to solve problems where no problem exists because too much communist theory has you thinking that everything has to be symmetrical - but society is not symmetrical
Rant: Scientists aren’t fundamentally better. They just have learned how to do science.
Yes they are fundamentally better at what they do - science - which is why they are paid more for what they do - science - because other people, generally speaking, cannot do it. I also do not see doctors as scientists strictly speaking, they're something even more valuable.
is being made hard due to societal decisions such as high study costs etc. but that doesn’t make them superior
This is not the reason jobs like doctoring and engineering are paid better and you probably know that, deek down. Look at free lectures on the subject matter if you need to prove it to yourself. It's essentially supply and demand, which is a fundamental law of the universe.
A artisan is also a highly skilled trade and is performed by intelligent people who also took risk in their career.
My issue is with people commiserating the working man for they did not manage to do neurosurgery. People not respecting but looking down upon the plebs.
Capitalism rewards ability to provide perceived value measured in $. If people perceive your product/service to be of greater or equal value to them than the $ amount (the work they had to do to earn it) you're asking for it , then they'll pay for it.
you can increase perceived value through manipulation. Shrinkflation, cutting your product with something cheaper and worse, paying your employees less, lobbying the government to cut your costs, or punish your rivals, etc. All of these things increase perceived value, through fooling (defrauding) your client base. If you were doing it with a luxury good, well that's one thing. But in capitalism, we're seeing this being done with necessities. Food, water, healthcare, education, transportation, internet, a place to live.
Yes, thoes are some of the options you have. Markets are to some extend composed of fraud, despite this they're still the most efficient instrument to reward value generation.
Try some. You might be surprised. Next door neighbor's kid is working as laborer and making over $60 an hour. Just got hired a few weeks ago. Trades are also considered labor work and they pay great.
Not seeing how creating value is rewarded. I know a lot of people who create valuable things, but for some reason, their boss is rewarded the most, without actually creating the value.
How do the massive profits from vulture (venture) capitalism fit into this notion? They are only ever manipulating debt, bankrupting a business, selling it's assets. What value did they create? As with CEO's vs their workers, it's the worker that is creating the product, thus the value, why is the CEO paid 325 times more than the person creating the product?
182 Comments
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 115 pts · 3d
It rewards stupidness, cutting corners, lying to people. Capitalism has created an economy driven by forced/planned obsolecence of hardware, literal gambling with rich people just betting against other businesses, industries and entire nations.
MoffKalast@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 3d
Basing our world around a system that on average funnels the least empathetic, most callous, greedy and power hungry psychopaths and sociopaths to positions with the most influence surely cannot possibly backfire in a major way for the rest of us.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 3d
It will be studied in the far future the way we study monarchy or the Roman Empire.
village604@adultswim.fan · 5 pts · 3d
Assuming we survive the extinction event we caused.
hanrahan@slrpnk.net · 29 pts · 3d
The self attribution fallacy
https://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works · 26 pts · 3d
Is there any system that reward talent, hard work or skill ?
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 29 pts · 3d
In theory yes but in practice greedy leeches have found their way
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 3d
If you try to do that you need metrics for evaluation and then you get people gaming the metrics. One example is academia.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 3d
You would think, but actually there's been some recent research that I think has interesting conclusions. The example, which is semi-related, is performance as a manager. When promoted using merit based, people tended to perform worse bcz they are promoted based on past performance in unrelated roles. When promoted randomly, the people who excelled at being a manager stayed in that position, and outperformed others who were promoted based on merit.
The point being, you don't know who's going to be good at something based on past performance in unrelated roles. We've built an entire system based on that concept, and it's not really that surprising that it doesn't work that well. If I can find the research article again, I'll link it.
Edit: found it
Aqivex@fedinsfw.app · 4 pts · 3d
What's surprising to me isn't that the random promotion system works over the performance in past unrelated roles system...
What's surprising to me is that you practically never see the only other logical conclusion used in the business world much.
Aptitude testing.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
True I honestly find the random promotion thing to be super unintuitive, and would struggle to do it if I was in a position to make those decisions.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 9 pts · 3d
Market socialism maybe. Look up mutualism and anarcho-syndicalism.
But personally I don't think we need to do that. It's to each according to need, not to each according to ability. We shouldn't give people less because they're disabled or more because they're abled.
SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 3d
^ this.
Once we can meet everyone's needs, then we can start talking about how to allocate the surplus. But I trust a society that takes cade of its people more than I trust us, in our current state, to have the right ideas about how that should work.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Problem is information. If you really need someone else to provide a good or service for you, then almost certainly you don't know enough about said good or service to accurately gauge the providers skills and quality.
So by and large, we have to rely on what others say to indicate relative value. So the people most confident and/or most manipulative tend to win because they are the best at sounding good.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 0 pts · 3d
Just give disabled people food and housing lmao.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I would say it would be good if everyone could at least be secure in those, but life is more than food and housing.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 1 pts · 2d
Oh, I mean the other meaning of "just". I mean give us food and housing because it's so easy. Not give us food and housing and nothing else.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 3d
"Just give". You know things don't just spontaneously materialize right? Someone has to work to make them. Why would anyone put in effort to do that if you'll "just give" them to someone else? That's why all those collectivist ideas failed every time they've been tried.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 2 pts · 3d
Communism worked in Australia for 65,000 years. It was classless, stateless, moneyless. Wealth was distributed from each according to ability, to each according to need.
See, David Graeber interviewed a lot of people who work in "bullshit jobs". Jobs that serve no useful purpose to anyone, and even the person doing the job thinks it's pointless. People who tick boxes all day, or who look busy without doing anything, or who get a paycheck even though the company has forgotten about them.
Graeber expected the people working bullshit jobs to be very happy with how they've beaten the system, but most weren't. Most were depressed. People have a fundamental need to help others; to be useful to society. If they didn't, they would have gone extinct long ago. People who work bullshit jobs are unhappy. People who work meaningful, important, and prosocial jobs tend to be satisfied with themselves. Their moral needs are being met.
That's the mistake capitalism makes. Capitalists think you need to scam people into working by withholding food and water and shelter. They don't believe in human rights, they believe in using these necessities to control people. They think greed is human nature.
But Indigenous Australians have known full well for 65,000 years that people want to be good. And they have used their vast science of psychology and sociology and politics to engineer a system which makes the best use of that natural impulse, driving people to do good. That's successful communism.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2d
No it didn't
Do you have a time machine/some secret aboriginal 65000 year old journals or did you manage to figure all this out from stone tools and cave paintings?
Most primitive societies were/are. If that's communism then it only provides empirical evidence that it doesn't work very well as it did not survive to this day and it's been outcompeted by capitalist societies. Literally natural selection.
This is why communism is immoral and ineffective. When you say "from each according to ability" you demand that people do what they do best and do it as well as they can, regardless of their own interests, ambitions or desires. Are you a muscular guy, sorry comrade, science division is full, you'll fit in better at the manual labor camp. Do you like to paint and sing, too bad, society demands your talents at the nuclear research facility. You're burned out and don't feel like giving your 100% right now, think again, we only care if you're able, not if you're willing. In capitalism you get to choose what you want to do with your life, of course, the more useful that thing is to others the bigger your reward, but it's ultimately your choice.
It also assumes that you can accurately gauge someone's abilities and needs. If Leonardo da Vinci lived under communism he likely would have never discovered his talents in science, engineering and mathematics as he would have been forced solely into artistry after his predispositions for it manifested at a young age. Conversely, you can't tell if someone is really unable to work and to what capacity. I can guarantee you that if all negative repercussions of it were removed, given a choice between going to work and giving it your all vs faking an illness to stay home and play videogames, a very large portion of the population would choose the latter, you don't even need to think about it to figure it out.
"To each according to need" works great until there isn't enough to go around, and that's when real human nature shows itself. We are not hive animals like ants or bees who have been genetically programmed through haplodiploidy to put the good of the hive above their own. We are pack animals, we only care about the pack to the extent that it benefits us as individuals. Given a choice between the good of the pack at the expense of themselves and their family or their own and family's good at the expense of the pack, humans will choose the latter ~90% of the time. I'm sure even those ancient aboriginal communists you made up would hide away some nuts and berries for themselves and their families instead of sharing them with the whole tribe when resources were tight.
People have their interests, ambitions and desires, for some it will be helping others and being useful to society and for others it will be something else of no use to anyone but themselves. There's plenty of amateur musicians, coders, lego builders, bird watchers, chess players, bloggers, photographers, painters, sportsmen, bodybuilders, speedrunners... whose work benefits absolutely nobody but their own satisfaction, and yet they're their happiest when they get to do those things. If people had a fundamental need to be useful to society then everyone who ever retires would be absolutely miserable and nobody would do it of their own volition.
Greed is human nature. We exist in the world of finite resources, we evolved in the world of finite resources to survive in the world of finite resources. We evolved to accumulate, compete for and preserve resources. That's why laziness, theft, gluttony and greed exist. It's literally our nature, not the only part of it, altruism and charity exist of course but it always comes second to personal benefit.
Also, you're not withholding anything. Things don't just materialize, you either earn them or they aren't yours. You can only speak of withholding if someone agreed to give you something and then went back on their promise. Someone not giving you free food, water or shelter (which btw every developed country does, there's plenty of food banks and homeless shelters and water doesn't even need mentioning) isn't withholding anything from you. If you want water go to a river or catch rain/dew, if you want food plant some or forage, if you want shelter build one (or pay someone more qualified to do it, you know, the capitalist way).
Ok, cool story bro.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 1 pts · 2d
Humans are the one species not bound by natural resources. Humans evolved big brains to invent ways to change nature and improve methods of resource generation. The First Australians literally terraformed the land to make more food, without needing European style farms. You're calling them primitive because you have no idea about their technology. You and the people who taught you just made an assumption based on the colour of their skin.
Greed is not human nature and white supremacy is pseudoscience.
OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
That's how it works right now. The whole world collectively works to enrich the few. Enough people are convinced they're working for themselves.
I'd rather my hard work go to people who need it than some asshole who wants another yacht.
It's all optics.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 2d
Yes, I also think most taxes are bullshit and a real hindrance on the human spirit of discovery and entrepreneurship.
MoffKalast@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 3d
Academia, sometimes.
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
That is true. Sometimes. But then again the people with the most funding get the most papers and recognition. But agreed.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 3d
Sports, kinda. It's possible to go unrewarded with them, but it's very hard to go rewarded without them.
If you mean economic system, not really. Capitalism rewards having capital over everything else, communism (if we ignore the flawed attempts and go for theory) rewards everyone equally irrelevant of how hard you work or what your skills are. Though being skilled in something that's actually pleasant as a job is a reward in itself as you won't have to work manual labour.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
Don't know about sports even. Probably at least a base level to get on the threshold of celebrity, but then they can lean on personality and antics rather than performance in their sport.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 2d
Okay, you're right on that too. But outside of super high earning sports that have a lot of entertainment factor (mostly team sports involving balls), it really is all about your performance. You don't get to do track and field at the Olympics based on your personality for example. Though it would be hilarious if you could!
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
Guild Economics, where you only ascend to leadership with experience in your trade. I don't like the idea that some kid out of university could be assigned manager of an industry they didn't even study for. Realistically, 90% of the workforce does not need to have gone to uni and we could reorganise society around apprenticeships instead.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 3d
No, don't be anti-education. Uneducated people make easy prey.
baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 3d
in germany the apprenticeship system is very advanced and you can apprentice your way to a bachelor's equivalent with further study to a master's equivalent. that's how most trades work here. apprentices do part time studying at a trade school and part time working the trade over multiple years simultaneously, with exams issued by the school and for example a chamber of industry. it's very effective at turning students into effective workers, and if you find the right job you've got good prospects for a lifelong career, but obviously it does not teach you to doubt the system. of course there are also usually no "unnecessary" courses that would take away from an apprentice's focus. i think it's a decent balance, and you can always educate yourself on the state of the world in your free time.
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 3d
Genuinely curious, what would a bachelors level or masters equivalent for a carpenter be?
baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 3d
with a master's in carpentry you can start your own carpentry business. as a bachelor you're only allowed to work in other people's businesses. to get there you'll have to pass wtitten and practical exams, for example building specific things to spec
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 3d
That sounds really good. I didn't have as much of a good experience with a government program, which consisted of the company giving me one example, then sending me right off to work, without giving a fuck if their products turn out well, or if I learn anything.
Still working here, still don't know most things, because asking gets you the low-skilled tasks.
SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 3d
We can value education without commodifying it the way we've done. In my opinion, the current system rewards diploma mills and devalues education anyways.
I think education should be both inexpensive and completely voluntary, so that the only 'reward' for going to school is the knowledge you leave with.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 3d
No you create such a divide. Try learning with 3 jobs
SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 2d
Well if we're imagining a better world anyways, why would anyone have three jobs?
The current system creates luxury for some at the cost of creating poverty for others. I think the best course of action would be to stop doing that - then education could be about learning instead of about earning.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
I think school itself should be a million times harder, i.e actually mean something, and university should either be easier or just not pushed onto 100% of the workforce like it is in Britain, Spain, America, Ireland and Canada et cetera.
Also second baguette fish - in my country we have "degree apprenticeships" where you go to university alongside doing work for a company, and it seems appropriate because it effectively highlights where people are even needed in this completely oversaturated made up economy.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
bro, even with education they are easy prey. There simply is no getting around the bell curve of humanity here.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
In fact since public education is shaped by the regime ("the regime" = WHICHEVER system is in power, be it democracy, organised anarchy, monarchy, capitalism or communism), education will usually be catered towards supporting the regime in some way. If the regime does not control education at least a little bit, it leaves roo, for other pressure groups - organised minorities - to manipulate education, thus reducing Current Regime's staying power and providing a foot-in for themselves
plyth@feddit.org · 1 pts · 3d
As make educated people, because they can't judge their education, neither before choosing nor after being formed.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d
Actually, the research says to do that
Promoting people into leadership positions based on past unrelated experience does not make better managers and leaders.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d
Wow who would have thought the research in current regime would indicate that current regime is correct! You can tell the research is unbiased because it was published by current regime. Only in current regime can research be unbiased, thank god for current regime.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Knock it all you want. This was done by Italian researchers, no affiliation with the U.S. government.
Edit Here's the actual research paper It's pretty short actually
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d
Again. Regime. Current regime, which likes organisations run by very specific people in a very particular way, has investigated itself to find that "NOBODY DOES IT BETTER!"
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Okay, we seem to be in a bit of a loop here. I'm going to go do something else with my time. Talking to you is a waste of time.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d
One day you'll understand :)
CannedYeet@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
No, because it would be up to people to assess talent/hard work/skill and people are imperfect.
Also would you even want that system? Reward a bunch of John Henrys for killing themselves when their work should be done by machines? Reward artists for art that no one can appreciate? Reward skill that doesn't ultimately benefit anyone?
toxicbubble@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
in small, communal societies, people would be assigned to the tasks they're best at. humans lived this way for millenia before industrialism and common education standards. i lived on a small commune for an internship, we had people who specialized in: maintenance, caretaking (animals), medicine, cleaning, etc
BandanaBug@piefed.social · -3 pts · 3d
Well you could also ask if that's fair. People are just born with more or less talent or skill. Nothing they can do about it. Should they be rewarded for that? Or saying it the opposite way: should people be punished for something they can't change?
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 3d
Life is never fair. not for humans and not for any living being.
If you try to make it fair by paying the person with lower skill same as skilled person, the skilled person won't feel the need to use their skills anymore.
To make it fair you need a magic mirror that print statistics about each person (skill level, talent level, physical strength) and use these numbers to decide who used all their abilities and who pretend to be dumb to avoid using their brain/body
plyth@feddit.org · 1 pts · 3d
That's if you force people to work. If you let them choose freely, most will align with their skills because it is the most rewarding.
BandanaBug@piefed.social · 1 pts · 2d
True I'm not saying it'd be the best option or anything. Just something to think about. Should live be fair or not? Also, it's not black and white.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
I think people who are naturally better at things should can and will always be rewarded for that; we make up for the discrepancy by making sure it's not bloody torturous to live on a minimum wage job, thay there are support systems for the disabled, unemployed, and the simply unintelligent.
Reading about 1950s America it was clear that people were so comfortable that working in minimum wage jobs largrly didn't bother them. If a capitalist country can achieve that, a well-organised country can achieve even better.
BandanaBug@piefed.social · 2 pts · 2d
Very true. That's a way to deal with it for sure. Social safety nets are an important part of developed civilisation.
plyth@feddit.org · 1 pts · 3d
The capitalist country achieved that to convince people of capitalism. It was highly motivated.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Capitalism =/= People getting reimbursed for work. Capitalism =/= the existence of a monetary system
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 3d
Capitalism rewards fraud. It's the true american way.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 3d
Case in point - when imitation crab came out in the 80s it was freakin' delicious - tasted just like crab, and dirt cheap in comparison. But over the years they seem to have beem putting in less and less of whatever actual crab material gave it crab flavor, so now it's pretty much just nondescript fish + orange dye. A bad imitation of imitation crab. Instead of enjoying wonderful inventions like these we have to ruin them a little at a time so somebody can make a teensy bit more profit each time, until they're crap.
kamen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
The boiling frog metaphor comes to mind.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 3d
It also rewards putting words like Freedom and Liberty in the names of laws that restrict freedom and liberty.
x0x7@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
We need MAFA. Make America Free Again.
The problem is both parties hate freedom when it suites them. Which is most of the time.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 3d
No, it also rewards authors of protect-children-laws with underage sex
tatterdemalion@programming.dev · 10 pts · 3d
It's in the name. Capitalism rewards capital.
jdr@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 3d
I'm all of those and I'm super rich
mEEGal@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 3d
an yet, you're on lemmy with the rest of us...
fake and possibly gay
jdr@lemmy.ml · 22 pts · 3d
hansolo@lemmy.today · 12 pts · 3d
Hey, we all love you if you're gay. Fake, however, that's unforgivable.
jdr@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 3d
Oh shit
mEEGal@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
just kidding, homie
Meron35@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 3d
Capitalism rewards capital. It's literally in the name.
notsure@fedia.io · 8 pts · 3d
Do you have money? No? fuck you
notsure@fedia.io · 9 pts · 3d
as a product of generational wealth, money is not good
notsure@fedia.io · 1 pts · 3d
...the problem is I'm allowed to think about it and bitch without any agaency...
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 3d
This implies neurosurgeons aren’t talented
jj4211@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
Well, it's not rocket science...
0x0@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 3d
Spoken like a true butthurt neurosurgeon
Batman@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
Surely matters how we measure talent.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 3d
Gamblers
BilliamBoberts@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
And nepotism
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Mostly nepotism tbh. Stock market is only gambling for the masses, Wall Street has enough information that it's no longer gambling for them.
gogonan@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
*inside traders
NABDad@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
Capitalism rewards the lucky and the sociopathic.
SailorFuzz@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
I need more upvote power.
Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
German saying: "a good horse only jumps ass high as it must."
There are no bonus points for clearing the hurdle with space to spare. You have to jump high enough, but no more.
notsure@fedia.io · 4 pts · 3d
...why did they lock Leonardo DaVinci in a tower?...fucking rhethoric....
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 4 pts · 3d
Surgeons and engineers make bank last I checked, so that's a bit of a funny example. Markets do reward in-demand practical skills.
What societies (in general) really reward is dumb luck and networking, though.
adjectivenoun@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
The thing society rewards most is already having lots of capital to throw around. No skill, talent, work ethic, or even connectedness is as important as simply having assets. Our society has regressed to reward being rich over everything else.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 0 pts · 3d
If you go down the list of big billionaires, most of them didn't start as billionaires. For the most part, they started out in the comfortable "upper-middle" class, like a lot of Lemmy users, and then got involved in a startup that took them to the top (edit: luck).
It's not surprising, really. If you just have inherited capital and no extra luck, the best you can do is the same 10% rate of return as everyone else. (Although coming from a rich family is both luck and connections, itself)
You say that like bloodline first and then wealth was better. That is what came before.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 3d
Ehm mister or not,
What engineers does society in 2026 reward? Last time I checked everyone is fucked
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 3d
The people at FAANGS (or whatever they're calling it now) famously start with wages that would be the absolute peak of someone else's career. Never mind comparing to an unskilled worker.
I know less about what physical/"real" engineers make in 2026, but I doubt it's changed that much.
Atropos@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
Real engineer here, mechanical working to design medical devices like plates and screws for trauma cases.
We average around $100k across the US, and on the extreme end can top out around $200k, but that's a rare case. Typical top end is $150k with I'd say at least 12 years if experience.
Starting salary typically $70k.
This is for places that are average COL, so not San Francisco, and also not Alabama.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 3d
Yeah, that's decent. Not fuck-you money, but decent.
OP asked for any example, so I went with FAANGS, but wages there are inflated by being a bunch of monopolies all headquartered in the same place. Last I heard a senior dev in Canada makes like 60k.
JaceTheGamerDesigner@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 2d
A senior dev in Canada also makes 6 figures.
But some recruiters label beginner positions as senior for whatever reason.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 2d
Well, maybe the guy I was talking to was underpaid. It's definitely a lot less than in the 'states, though.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 3d
Yeah, buddy, hate to bring it to you, but software engineers are not the real engineers. We're just monkeys repeating something that we barely heard of.
You can start working as a software engineer just after school. Imagine an aerospace, civil, or electrical engineer without proper education.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 3d
Okay, sure, the guy that mostly copy-pastes/vibecodes javascript is not on level with a rocket scientist. What about, like, Linus Torvalds, though? The complexity involved in a big codebase outstrips even the most complicated aircraft. Nobody's saying mathematicians aren't serious thinkers, and yet, we're putting in a whole lot of effort, with things like Lean, to catch up with coders.
They aren't accredited like "real" engineers, but that might be a matter of where we are in history more than anything. Charles Parsons didn't have to certify anything when he was building the first dreadnoughts. Both fields are about designing new technology, and that's basically what defines the word "engineer".
5318008@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2d
Median salary for a surgeon is $450,000/year.
Someone with $10,000,000 in VOO can withdraw $450,000/year, and still compound their wealth year over year, without working at all. The absolute worst case scenario is that they start doing this at the start of a recession, like mid 2007, in which case, they would STILL be compounding their wealth year over year, with the exception of the short time it took to dip.
Simply having $10,000,000 and sitting on your ass > Being a surgeon.
Oh yeah, and that's all before taxes.
So yes, to some extent, society rewards skill. But it is FAR more rewarding to the people who already have wealth.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 2d
Yeah, but how do you get 10 million dollars?
While these answers are correct, it's doesn't really say much about what traits are rewarded. It's kind of tautological - if we assume you've started ahead, you'll be ahead. Otherwise, it's mostly luck, with a bit of knowing the right people, which is also down to luck.
Maybe what you meant is that wealth shouldn't be permanent(-ish). Which is valid. It's just not a matter of personality, like everything else on the list in OP.
5318008@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 2d
It doesn't matter. Investments do not care where the money comes from.
You worked as a surgeon for 20 years while living with parents and not paying bills? $10 million.
Your great great grandfather was a plumber and built up some wealth and your great grandfather was an electrician and built up more wealth, and... your father works in real estate and all of these people set you up with a trust fund and you start out with $2 million, and then you withdraw 100k per year to live on, doing nothig else for 17 years, and your fund slowly climbs to $10 million. Well, that's also $10 million.
You're one of Nancy Pelosi's kids and she gives you a $10 million fund on your 18th birthday? Thats $10 million.
Do you see now how having $10 million doesn't reward the traits of any of these people? It only rewards having $10 million. It does not matter how you acquired it.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 2d
Yes, those are some great and realistic examples.
I don't want to be obtuse, here, repeating myself more than necessary, but this bit was important:
FWIW my best guess for how OP would have ended it, is "it rewards being evil". Usually that's where people go.
I guess luck isn't really a personality trait, either, but it's what you can personally have that allows you to climb relative to other people with the same start.
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 2d
and that person with $10 million succesfully escaped being a wageslave with the help of their predecessors
x0x7@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 3d
Also, Fauci made bank off of covid. And everyone agrees he's a scientist.
adjectivenoun@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
Uhh... source?
RQG@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
It's greed, reckless and a total lack of conscience which is rewarded.
Avicenna@programming.dev · 4 pts · 3d
in before some child comes, downvotes people and bullshits about how Elon is actually very clever
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 3d
I've noticed a trend amongst most Musk defenders now and general billionaire simps. They have the emotional maturity of a13 year old, they never really grew up in high school so are so stunted developmentally they're a decade behind at the least.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d
So, they're defending Musk because he's one of them?
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 2d
Basically.
BilSabab@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
No system in existence and outside existence would reward artists even if it is specifically designed to reward artists. it's a monkey's paw bullshit trap.
Soup@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/10/ireland-basic-income-for-the-arts-scheme-becomes-permanent
BilSabab@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
To quote the article itself "Jenny Dagg, a Maynooth University sociologist who studied the scheme, said it was a win for all but noted that eligible artists could not live solely on the weekly payments, which were considered supplementary income."
one way or another this kind of stuff always ends up being a scheme with heavy bias towards metropolies.
Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 2d
I really dislike the implications here about which profession has which trait
gogonan@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
No it rewards psychopathic and megalomaniacal tendencies to a disproportionate degree, with catastrophic runaway consequences
Geobloke@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 3d
I thought engineers and doctors were the better paid professions
Artists are incredibly well paid off you get to the top of the game, like Taylor Swift or Spielberg
Not sure why you think labourers are harder working than artists or engineers
Photonic@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 3d
The point is that they’re paid much worse than the C-suite who reap the benefits of other people’s hard work.
Geobloke@aussie.zone · 0 pts · 3d
The c suite isn't in the example, but I wonder how many executives are engineers or scientists. But if an engineer is doctor enters the c suite, do they stop being engineers or doctors
Photonic@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 3d
They are 100% in the example, but rather implicitly than explicitly.
And the engineer or scientists C-suite are probably a small minority. Most are business majors.
13igTyme@piefed.social · 1 pts · 3d
I work in healthcare. Majority c-suite at hospitals, clinics, or practices have both a science masters or doctorate AND a business degree. Same goes for directors and most managers.
Healthcare is one of the largest industries. So you'd be excluding tens of thousands in Manager and above.
Photonic@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 3d
13igTyme@piefed.social · 1 pts · 3d
Photonic@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 3d
FlexibleToast@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
My company's CEO started was a software developer at the company...
jpreston2005@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d
They do stop being engineers and doctors, because now their job title is different? A doctor is someone that practices within their field, as with an engineer. They may still carry the qualification, and to a degree the skills necessary to be an engineer and doctor again, but that's not their job any longer, thus not the appropriate title.
qarbone@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 3d
Yes? If you stop doing engineering work, then you're not a practicing engineer.
(Unfortunately) you don't get paid for the work you put in, or else there'd be UBI. You only get paid for what you do, and sometimes not even that.
8uurg@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 3d
In terms of their skillset? Probably not immediately (skills may deteriorate due to lack of use over time). In terms of what they will be doing as part of the job, and how they use their skillset? To a certain degree, I would say yes.
krashmo@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 3d
Taylor Swift works hard by modern standards but she would sit in the corner and cry after a day doing the work that we make immigrants do
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 2d
going up the classes is hard, especially so for those at the bottom.
Geobloke@aussie.zone · -14 pts · 3d
You are talking out of your arse
then_three_more@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
You think she'd be ok after a 15 hour nursing home shift?
Mardukas@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 3d
Tailor Swift and the likes are more capitalism than artistry.
Geobloke@aussie.zone · -4 pts · 3d
When does one stop being an artist and turn into a capitalist
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 3d
Well if you want to be really cynical you could say "when one gets successful enough," and that makes sense to me - at T Swift or Ed Sheeran's level of success, the global music tours make their workday a matter of planning things out and negotiating - and they're so successful that they have a bunch of people to do it for them already!! So it is at that point, where your workday goes from actually writing songs to just reusing what you've written.
Sensibly though, you could say they are both. People can be 2 things at once. One of the most famous "architects" in the world is Bjarke Ingels but he actually just owns the company; his training is in illustration rather than architectural design. He is a creative, and it informs his practice and what he actually approves, but a large part of being recognised as an architect is actually from doing the non-architect part of it.
The reason Mardukas specifically says Taylor Swift is more capitalist than musician though is something very precise to Taylor swift: her career was launched by her dad, a big finance guy, who pushed her work onto all his clients when she was just a kid. Taylor went from being marketed as a country musician to being a pop musician. He explicitly didn't want her to have to work very hard in life and felt confident he could engineer a following for her. She must be richer than him now, so it worked better than expected.
If you earn your musician wings from having them bought for you, you have not ascended the bardic steps to stardom, but floated up in a hot air balloon instead.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 3d
And some of the wealthiest people alive are also some of the dumbest losers I've ever heard open their mouths.
fosho@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 3d
I'm an engineer and I still can't afford a modest house. I'm paid well but I'm far from the biggest beneficiary of capitalism.
Labourers are harder working because they typically have longer hours and work some of the worst jobs.
You, sir, are daft.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
Their salaries are great in America but only as good as finance professionals, who are then in the system of money manipulation (not saying they're all crooks) and hence receive pointers on how to re-invest their wealth; Doctors and engineers on the other hand are often too busy to even think about investment, making more money from their money.
jpreston2005@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Doctors can do well, but I've never heard of a billionaire doctor. Engineers do well, but they're not billionaires. Both doctors and engineers work hard, but not in the same physically demanding, body-harming way that laborers work. Laborers can even be paid deceptively well, with construction labor sometimes paying something like triple the minimum wage. But the cost to the laborer is paid with body breaking down, and you can bet that job-site they're contracted for doesn't provide health insurance. So they accumulate injury, breaking down their body, thus limiting how much of that physically taxing job they can do. So, in effect, they're not being paid nearly enough. Because the pay doesn't compensate their loss of bodily function. Think of it like an NFL defensive lineman. They're paid very well, but their body takes a huge toll. A lot of former NFL players are not doing well, despite their huge initial earnings.
Just to add in, that a CEO definitely doesn't work as hard as their hardest working employee, and the avg. CEO pay is roughly 325 times that of their average worker.
not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 3d
u think contrarians should be paid more?
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
Can we call them what they are; physicians. Calling them doctors undermines anyone with a Ph.D.
uen3@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 3d
Dark triad personality traits
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Capitalism rewards the best at gaining power. All systems are subject the vulnerability of people seeking power instead of wisdom. Even American Democracy.
pulsey@feddit.org · 2 pts · 2d
Especially American Democracy.
Soup@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
“Even American democracy” you mean the system/country with all the greedy tech bros in it, who it actively protects?
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 2d
I'm not interested is arguing about the distinction you fail to see.
Soup@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12h
Your lack of clarity is not my responsibility.
You said “even”, which for literate people means that what follows it has some particular advantage when it comes to not being whatever came before the “even”. The US is the epicenter of global capitalism; it’s the first to go, no the last.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 10h
But your understanding is.
Soup@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 8h
A wonderful comeback deftly avoiding the bulk of my comment because that’s where your entire argument falls apart.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 4h
If I agree with you, will you be content and go away?
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net · 2 pts · 3d
Maybe it rewards beauty? Nah, I'm not that rich...
Pacattack57@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
The funny thing is we don’t even have capitalism. Capitalism has a free market which we do not have. We have a corporatocracy. Our laws are made by and for corporations. Everything is meant to give them an edge in society and decisions are made to benefit them.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
All systems reward those who game them.
UsernamesAreForSuckers@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
It rewards grifters, exploiters, the cruel and greedy. It rewards the worst of human nature. It’s a cynical system that rewards unnatural inclinations like resource hoarding and anti-social behavior. That’s why the capitalists stopped at nothing to crush communism. Even if in practice communism had a lot of faults, it’s underlying philosophy spoke on solidarity amongst the working class. Capitalism thrives on taking for the few and weakening and dividing the masses. It’s always been a broken unsustainable system. Today it’s hurdling us towards destruction with AI, destruction of the natural world, and oppression to protect the monsters lusting for more power.
Pacattack57@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Gladaed@feddit.org · -1 pts · 3d
Being rich isn't the greatest reward. And not feasible. Only the few can ever be rich.
Demanding a society where an economic system makes the virtuous rich is mental.
An economic system should be measured by the quality of life and productivity by the society. And it's ability to consume said wealth. I.e. china is failing their citizens, badly. So is Germany in their psychosis of exporting.
tyra@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 3d
Please explain where China is failing their citizens? We cannot even afford houses in the West anymore, while they have 95 % homeownership rate in China. And there are many more examples like that.
Gladaed@feddit.org · 3 pts · 3d
China's domestic consumption is very low, their exports are much greater than their imports, i.e. they provide the world with goods without sufficient compensation. Their population should be doing better and being wealthier. Their consumers are using real estate as an investment vehicle creating an enormous housing bubble. Home ownership is ridiculously expensive and there are mostly very small apartments at high rates. They are famous for constructing highly speculative ghost towns.
As soon as the promise of wealth in age starts to falter china may change fundamentally. And it seems like that may be coming soon rather than later.
tyra@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 3d
I’m sorry, I have to say that some of your points sound like decade-old red scare topics:
You’re right when it comes to exports: Dependency is a real challenge and also diplomatically not helpful. But at least the government says to address it. I cannot remember a time that Germany ever acknowledged that their export surplus is harmful?
Instead of predicting its downfall, we should start questioning our own political and economic system in the West. There seems to be much to learn from a socialist market economy like China.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 4 pts · 3d
I mean, no? China is the single biggest driver of reduced poverty in the world.
Gladaed@feddit.org · 3 pts · 3d
China is among the most populus countries and your metric is susceptible to that.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 3d
Okay that's fair, let me try that again: Even on a per capita basis China is doing pretty well for itself. You can also compare other countries here (this is basically a poverty index so the lower it is the better).
Gladaed@feddit.org · 1 pts · 3d
Real gdp growth is not a good metric of wealth. It's a metric of progress(speed).
It also doesn't punish an export economy without domestic consumption, which is what I find worrying/exploitative.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 1 pts · 3d
I mean, that's how you get good standards of living. You can also look up its GDP per capita, which isn't high but is definitely respectable. In that case though you can look up China's HDI. There's just no metric by which China is failing the majority of its citizens (emphasis on majority; of course Uighurs for example will feel differently).
That doesn't make sense though. Exports bring in money which can be used to import stuff or for domestic consumption. A strong export economy leads to good standards of living.
Gladaed@feddit.org · 2 pts · 3d
That's not correct. E.g. Germany has consistent exported way more goods and services than it has imported. A healthy economy is not an automatism from being good at shipping stuff off shore. There is no gain from building a car if you buy the materials ship the car and have money left over. You do actually have to spend that money. There is no good in owning money. That's how economies die and cost of e.g. housing explodes.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 1 pts · 3d
I mean, Germany has one of the highest standards of living in the developed world despite being weighed down by East Germany so clearly it's working out for them. Stuff like the housing crisis is hitting the whole developed world all at once, so it's not like Germany is special there.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
But surely being rich (i.e being comfortable and having the freedom to explore new enterprises) is the best reward that society en large can give you; the best and only appropriate award that the government can provide you for your skilled labour. It has also historically been very effective at getting society to innovate and improve.
Gladaed@feddit.org · 2 pts · 3d
So you want neurosurgeons to be rich enough so they can stop being neurosurgeons for their deed of becoming neurosurgeons? Sure they should be well off enough. But they typically are just normal people.
Rant: Scientists aren't fundamentally better. They just have learned how to do science. That's not particularly hard or admirable and virtually everyone could do it.
It is being made hard due to societal decisions such as high study costs etc. but that doesn't make them superior.
I don't like that elitism.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
What you think neurosurgeon should be worse compensated so that they'll continue being neurosurgeon?? They won't even become neurosurgeon in the first place if you don't offer to pay them well!
You have your concept of incentives completely backwards - you're looking at methods of fear to motivate people to take part in a completely voluntary aspect of society. People can leave the country, not work at all, or get different jobs. You need to pay neurosurgeon well.
I do not see neurosurgeon leaving en-masse currently and they are the best paid in the medical profession right now. They instead reach tenureship quickly and then focus on training more neurosurgeon, which is less stressful for them and just as well paid, or almost as well paid.
And because of the existing high pay incentive, LOADS of people are training under them to become surgeons. Ergo the system works.
You are trying to solve problems where no problem exists because too much communist theory has you thinking that everything has to be symmetrical - but society is not symmetrical
Yes they are fundamentally better at what they do - science - which is why they are paid more for what they do - science - because other people, generally speaking, cannot do it. I also do not see doctors as scientists strictly speaking, they're something even more valuable.
This is not the reason jobs like doctoring and engineering are paid better and you probably know that, deek down. Look at free lectures on the subject matter if you need to prove it to yourself. It's essentially supply and demand, which is a fundamental law of the universe.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -1 pts · 3d
A artisan is also a highly skilled trade and is performed by intelligent people who also took risk in their career.
My issue is with people commiserating the working man for they did not manage to do neurosurgery. People not respecting but looking down upon the plebs.
jpreston2005@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d
If you graded the U.S.'s capitalistic system by its quality of life, we would fail miserably. According to U.S. News, we rank 30th
Gladaed@feddit.org · 1 pts · 3d
We are not american. You might be, but you are on a non specific instance. Germany ranks a shameful 11th.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de · -5 pts · 3d
Capitalism rewards ability to provide perceived value measured in $. If people perceive your product/service to be of greater or equal value to them than the $ amount (the work they had to do to earn it) you're asking for it , then they'll pay for it.
NewDark@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 3d
It rewards rent seeking and private property
jpreston2005@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
you can increase perceived value through manipulation. Shrinkflation, cutting your product with something cheaper and worse, paying your employees less, lobbying the government to cut your costs, or punish your rivals, etc. All of these things increase perceived value, through fooling (defrauding) your client base. If you were doing it with a luxury good, well that's one thing. But in capitalism, we're seeing this being done with necessities. Food, water, healthcare, education, transportation, internet, a place to live.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 3d
Yes, thoes are some of the options you have. Markets are to some extend composed of fraud, despite this they're still the most efficient instrument to reward value generation.
Tabooki2@lemmy.world · -7 pts · 3d
All the laborers I know get rewarded really well.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 3d
You really should get out more.
Tabooki2@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
Try some. You might be surprised. Next door neighbor's kid is working as laborer and making over $60 an hour. Just got hired a few weeks ago. Trades are also considered labor work and they pay great.
notSys@lemmy.cafe · -16 pts · 3d
Capitalism rewards creating value
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 19 pts · 3d
It rewards creating profit. Which is not the same thing as value. Just look at all the worthless piles of shit making profits.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
Lol. As if most rich people created anything. Legalized theft by wagedumping, monopolizing or runing the environment isn't "creating value".
MBech@feddit.dk · 7 pts · 3d
Not seeing how creating value is rewarded. I know a lot of people who create valuable things, but for some reason, their boss is rewarded the most, without actually creating the value.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
This is actually true. But value is objective. The value it creates is for those in power.
jpreston2005@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
How do the massive profits from vulture (venture) capitalism fit into this notion? They are only ever manipulating debt, bankrupting a business, selling it's assets. What value did they create? As with CEO's vs their workers, it's the worker that is creating the product, thus the value, why is the CEO paid 325 times more than the person creating the product?