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The difference between patronage jobs and real jobs

December 30 2010 at 10:54 AM
  (Login advancedatheist)
Veteran Member


Response to Don't understand the basis for the cult following.

 

I'll use Austrian economists as an example.

When a hecto-millionaire or billionaire hires an attorney, an accountant or even an auto mechanic (to maintain his auto collection), that individual has to do useful work (draw up contracts, prepare tax returns, rebuild engines, etc.), and he could probably get a job doing those things somewhere else based on the market value of his knowledge and skills.

By contrast, Austrian economists usually can't get real jobs in academia or think tanks based on their own merits as scholars (the competitive market for economists considers Austrian economics a fringe doctrine), so they have had to seek pretend-jobs from rich patrons like the Koch brothers.

In other words, Austrian economists talk a good game of individualism, self-reliance and market discipline for others; but when it comes to their own livelihoods, they become clients and lickspittles to whichever rich guy offers to write them a check every month, and in return they publish the sorts of pseudo-scholarship the rich guy likes.

Now, my example sheds some light on why I hold Eliezer Yudkowsky and Patri Friedman's respective message-machines in suspicion: Both of these guys apparently draw incomes now as clients of Peter Thiel, instead of having to produce something useful in a competitive market. So, naturally, they have an incentive to say what their patron wants to hear, despite Eliezer's slip-up about the female franchise.

 
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