tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post2820083559715717488..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Loyalty pointsPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-3443785889091628662012-10-01T19:53:32.667-04:002012-10-01T19:53:32.667-04:00Not to sound like a hippie, but probably the great...Not to sound like a hippie, but probably the greatest success is to make as much money as will fulfill most of your desires while doing something you enjoy doing. A PhD program isn't just success for people who do well in school, but people who want to keep doing school, i.e. keep learning new things and talking about them and producing knowledge. At least until the financial crisis, if you did well in school through college -- say, graduated high in your class at an Ivy or equivalent -- the popular next step wasn't more school but to be recruited by investment banks or consultancies, paid lots of money to works lots of hours, doing something that you wouldn't want to try to keep a classroom of freshman awake by talking about. So that's only success if you find such work interesting or if you're the kind of person (lucky? unlucky?) who doesn't find any work interesting and thus is best off finding whatever work is most remunerative.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-27334882455627826392012-10-01T16:35:18.032-04:002012-10-01T16:35:18.032-04:00I actually think doing well in school and being su...I actually think doing well in school and being successful are not very much correlated at all. I was raised to think doing well in school = success, and did as well in school as possible, and now I realize that, if my goal had actually been fame and fortune, I probably should have been doing other stuff with my time than getting an A+ in physics. <br /><br />I'm currently in a PhD program, which is success for people who do well in school, but it means I have to eventually ruthlessly compete with hundreds of other smart people for a stressful job that pays $70,000 a year and requires all-nighters until one's 50s. Sometimes I wonder if actually we're really stupid and the joke is on us.Brittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-66524437841229624762012-10-01T14:50:47.341-04:002012-10-01T14:50:47.341-04:00I found the obit particularly compelling in the ar...I found the obit particularly compelling in the aristocrat-beats-meritocrat genre because it noted Sulzberger's being a crap student -- a high school dropout, in fact, who enlisted in the WWII army at 17 -- and didn't indicate any general high IQness about him, but was nonetheless praising his tenure as publisher/ CEO. There also were several mentions of how people who feel the Times is a family trust and obligation behave differently than those who treat it as a pure profit-making business. <br /><br />It reminded me of the rightwing blogosphere's fondness for tracking the NYT share price as though it has some connection to the quality of reporting -- ugh, the kind of people who figure whatever movie makes the biggest box office must be the "best." Which in turn reminded me of a discussion with UVa alums about the WSJ's outlier position on President Sullivan's brief ouster and the Journal's complete lack of understanding about how the values that guide a university and its board are simply not identical to those of a for-profit corporation and its directors. <br /><br />People like David Brooks think the meritocracy is just a matter of running the educational maze correctly, but I think there's a strong tendency in America to measure merit by money, and sometimes to think that those who make money should reap rewards beyond the money itself. I was really annoyed by even the faint suggestion in <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/09/incentives?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/youbuiltthatwhy" rel="nofollow">The Economist</a> that public praise is owed to the financially successful. <br /><i>But there may also be a real disagreement about just what a healthy system of capitalism needs to function. Is public praise part of the machinery, necessary to make entrepreneurialism work? It may be; that could be part of a culture of entrepreneurial capitalism that raises the status of business people and leads to more dynamism. And what about social obligations among those who follow incentives to wealth? Is the system purely transactional? If there is an erosion in a feeling of social responsibility among the rich, does that change the hydraulics in the system so that entrepreneurial capitalism no longer does what we want it to do? And must government then step in to tweak the dials? </i>PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-76760400335330728562012-10-01T11:19:40.300-04:002012-10-01T11:19:40.300-04:00PG,
I'm not *that* not thrifty that I'm m...PG,<br /><br />I'm not *that* not thrifty that I'm much helping the economy. (She says, finishing the 90-cent bagel that, on this busy day, may end up being breakfast and lunch, washed down with thermos coffee.)<br /><br />Re: nepotism at the NYT, well, yes. The obit would fall into the "aristocracy" category.<br /><br />CW,<br /><br />The WWPD post at the root of this was one on the RNC and DNC, but the short answer is that Romney is kind of selling himself as a beneficent patrician (in which case his privilege *is* the selling point), but also not quite immune to the politician's compulsion to claim ordinary roots. The ordinariness falls flat, as even Ross Douthat was prepared to admit. But the YPIS angle here is a bit unusual, because the GOP claim is almost that *because* Romney comes from a political family, he was born to lead. (PG, like the NYT-leadership example!) So even if we'd be more impressed by Obama's trajectory, if the point isn't being impressed with a person but having the best leader, the GOP claim is, in part, that for Romney, this sort of thing comes naturally. Is how I interpret it.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-64004574429554755282012-10-01T09:41:39.474-04:002012-10-01T09:41:39.474-04:00Can you work Romney into your forthcoming post? He...Can you work Romney into your forthcoming post? He seemed to claim in that secretly recorded video that he was no more privileged than any other American. It so much more unbearable than if he'd simply acknowledged that he'd had some advantages in life and had made good use of them (which would be quite credible, he has accomplished much more than most people regardless of their background).CWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12017769120170921143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-33098197868552932522012-10-01T02:59:58.859-04:002012-10-01T02:59:58.859-04:00If you buy American, you're probably helping O...If you buy American, you're probably helping Obama's chances of reelection, which largely depend on how voters feel about the economy. Savings would NOT help. So at least there's political virtue in your lack of thrift.<br /><br />Re: the upcoming meritocracy vs aristocracy post, I commend the NYT obit for Sulzberger to your attention.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com