Shortage of Scientists or lack of job opportunities?

[Rezwan]

From this article, “The Real Science Gap“:

Business leaders have cried “scientist shortage,” but scores of thousands of young PhDs are laboring in US university labs as low-paid temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist.

Systemic problems. Our nation’s brightest young people have no incentive to pursue science. Very depressing.

[Breakable]

Fusion power would inject plenty of resources into the economy to over-employ every person on the planet in creative positions.
Why cant the every politician, scientist and business man see that all the solutions lie in solving the energy problem?

[Aeronaut]

Breakable wrote: Fusion power would inject plenty of resources into the economy to over-employ every person on the planet in creative positions.
Why cant the every politician, scientist and business man see that all the solutions lie in solving the energy problem?

They have incredible amounts of inertia to overcome in their business plans and stockholders’ profitability expectations. Unless FF sales forces offer nearly 100% financing, 1 million sales will suck a trillion dollars out of Wall Street’s control in the short-term, and then almost that much annually. This is sure to invite political shenanigans to protect the status quo, and then things can get brutal in a hurry.

Imagine Wall Street going back for another round of “too big to fail” money. >:(

[kieran]

This is how i see things playing out.

If focus fusion or similar works it will lead to a rapid reduction in the cost of energy in all forms. This leads to deflation. What is currently causing inflation is the price of raw materials which is directly linked to oil prices.

The current obsession with trying to control labour prices as a means of controlling inflation, is and in my opinion now and always has been a fallacy. There is at the moment a huge over supply of labour and with all excessively competitive markets is leading to huge inefficiencies. (Don’t believe this try see what happens to a genetic algorithm when the selection is to strong).*

So what do our governments do when confronted with rapid deflation? They will print money. Unfortunately they will ( for flawed ideological reasons give it to the rich in the form of bonds) all this will do is drive up equity prices. The rich don’t generally spend their money they hoard it, this is why they tend to be rich. A bubble will ensue and the within a couple of years collapse.

Faced with mass unemployment ( over supply of labour), asset bubble ( Quantitative easing giving money to the wrong sector of society) and deflation they will have to do what they should have done in the first place and pay the unemployed to work through printing money (Simply paying the unemployed a living wage will still be to politically unacceptable though they will have to do this when true Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) comes along). There is less competition for work more demand for services so life is generally easier for a while until A.I.

If fusion or solar does not succeed in producing cheep energy the cartels that control energy will continue to simply grow richer at every one else expense. When they get too greedy cause a recession approximately every 10 to 20 years until it all runs out.

* What happens is there is loads of unskilled, semi skilled, unproven skill workers chasing too few vacancies for these workers. The employers that have those vacancies and the customers that buy from them and inflict onerous terms on the workers that manage to secure a vacancy. It requires time, finances and the cooperation of an employer to become a highly skilled worker and those workers that do get employed are because of their week bartering position unable to secure this. Hence highly skilled workers are few in number and can charge a hefty premium and incredible inefficient market as highly skill works are much more productive.

[Aeronaut]

kieran, I don’t get the part about the rich getting that way by hoarding. My understanding is that they get that way by reinvesting otherwise idle capital to (hopefully) make more to invest. A lack of leadership could make it look like hoarding, which would also be dumb because it makes the hoarded money even more taxable.

The scenario you described above sure looks like it’s straight out of Obama’s playbook,imo, designed to socialize America.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: kieran, I don’t get the part about the rich getting that way by hoarding. My understanding is that they get that way by reinvesting otherwise idle capital to (hopefully) make more to invest. A lack of leadership could make it look like hoarding, which would also be dumb because it makes the hoarded money even more taxable.

The scenario you described above sure looks like it’s straight out of Obama’s playbook,imo, designed to socialize America.

You got that right. Unless the rich manage to hoard without using banks or investing, then their money is in effect loaned to someone(s) who believe they can do something productive and profitable with it, more than enough to pay the interest costs.

The chaos in government financial policies currently, plus the haphazard loading of ancillary costs (mandatory HC, huge new reporting requirements reaching down into very small firms, etc.) has made corporations gun-shy about using their on-hand capital. There’s enough of that sitting side-lined to get a lot of balls rolling, but fear of getting hung out to dry is preventing its use.

At least the timeline for FF to affect the economy is not decades or worse. It would be nice if it were immediate, but I have hopes that news of viable unity-plus generation will start to kick some of the stops loose within a year or two. I’m not so concerned about the Wall Street factor as you seem to be; consider that every dollar not spent on “old” plant and processes is freed up for the new. The physical implementation of FF will be an immense “stimulus” with wide knock-on effects all on its own; the acceleration of general economic and productive activity freed up by its knock-down of energy costs will be the second, larger, wave.

kieren, calling that “deflationary” is like calling all productivity increases deflationary. What really happens is that the quality and value and sophistication of products and services increases faster than the input costs go down, which maintains demand and general price levels.

[Brian H]

For a long-running riff on the real-life experiences and priorities of PhD science students, read back thru the annals of Phdcomics.com. The author dropped out of his program a few years ago, and now makes a living off the strip and books, I believe.

[Breakable]

Aeronaut wrote: kieran, I don’t get the part about the rich getting that way by hoarding. My understanding is that they get that way by reinvesting otherwise idle capital to (hopefully) make more to invest. A lack of leadership could make it look like hoarding, which would also be dumb because it makes the hoarded money even more taxable.

The scenario you described above sure looks like it’s straight out of Obama’s playbook,imo, designed to socialize America.

Thats the question:Invest in what? The biggest ROI might not be most beneficial for society. Actually if we believe in former world bank president, usually the crappiest projects get green light.
I think the government thinks it is easier to transfer wealth in large quantities, so instead of millions of transactions a few thousand each (supporting the entrepreneurs) it likes to do a few transactions in thousands of millions (support the banks) and the banks that receive this low interest government guaranteed loans just re-loan it at much-higher rates to stupid projects that they don’t care about pocketing the difference. So it is a very lucrative middle man position. I think in this age of technology we should have the means to eliminate it, but the question is how hard it is. My computer should explode any second now….

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote:
…
Thats the question:Invest in what? The biggest ROI might not be most beneficial for society. Actually if we believe in former world bank president, usually the crappiest projects get green light.
…

I gather the World Bank was (is?) captive of a very centrist overall policy, and have always tended to support projects that coincidentally are easy for the local kleptocracy to rip off. It arguably has done some good, here and there, but is likely responsible for the survival of some pretty toxic regimes, too.

[Aeronaut]

You’ve done it again, Brian! Kleptocracy is right up there with Dopenhagen. 😆

Seriously, though, if IIUC, cash is disbursed in large blocks to simplify bookkeeping and control. It’s easier and cheaper to control a few institutions than millions of experiments. It also avoids the appearance of the Fed building an enormous bureaucracy whose mission would be to compete with the establishment.

I’m reading a hardcover book right now called Multipliers, which I highly recommend to anybody who wants to build a 21st century organization of any size. The gist is that if you reinvest in creating positions which harness every person’s native genius(es)- what they do without thinking is any big deal while others struggle at that task- you’ll get a true 110%. It seems that an environment can be created where people grow their IQ as they solve progressively more challenging problems.

Thus the best ROI turns out to be growing a company to create positions where displaced workers can shine again. This has to be done despite having Obama in the Whitehouse, imo.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut, “multipliers” looks like an interesting read.

Breakable wrote: I think the government thinks it is easier to transfer wealth in large quantities, so instead of millions of transactions a few thousand each (supporting the entrepreneurs) it likes to do a few transactions in thousands of millions (support the banks) and the banks that receive this low interest government guaranteed loans just re-loan it at much-higher rates to stupid projects that they don’t care about pocketing the difference. So it is a very lucrative middle man position. I think in this age of technology we should have the means to eliminate it, but the question is how hard it is. My computer should explode any second now….

This is the “transaction cost” problem. Per Webster and Lai (“Property Rights, Planning and Markets”):

Order emerges in cities as individuals seek to avoid the costs of private transaction, or more generally, the costs of voluntarily co-operating over production and consumption activities (transaction costs). Transaction costs explain the patterns that arise in market-driven cities. In particular, they explain organizational order; institutional order; proprietary (ownership) order,; spatial order; and public domain order.

Also

Institutions emerge to reduce transaction costs and more generally, the costs of voluntary co-operation. Markets are institutions that reduce the costs of organizing a multitude of individual transactions. Government edicts, policy and regulations are institutions that reduce the costs of collective transactions.

And then;

Resource values, transaction cost, exclusion costs, institutions, property rights and public domain-private domain boundaries constantly shift within cities. They are all interrelated and spontaneously co-evolve. They do so with local interactions (for example, a plot of land changes use because a neighboring plot has changed use); and global interactinos (for example, government or an entire industry adapts its behavior and rules). Interactions happen in space and in time, thus making cities complex systems in which the outcome of any planned action is largely unpredictable.

Actually, I will pursue this theme in a new post on Gov 2.0.

[Rezwan]

OK. Posted it. Here’s the link – this post on Gov 2.0.

[Author]

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