geeks

Daniel Davies d_squared_2002 at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Sep 19 09:49:23 PDT 2000


--- jeradonah <jeradonah at flashmail.com> wrote (among other things): >


>and you are continuing to try to plug the brave new
>world into
>your old paradigm. you just don't get it. the world
>is not
>your father's playground anymore. *you* didn't get
>your job
>because of the credentials you offered, *you* got
>your job
>because you knew how to think. credential that!
>your weary ole credentialing process worked in the
>industrial
>age, because all that labor required was basically
>rote (sp?).
>the knowledge base could be measured. it *could* be
>credentialed. and while there are rote tools
>available for
>coding and hacking, they are basically meaningless.
>information is free. it is knowledge that we value.
>(love to
>hear how you could credential that!)

Credentialisation has nothing to do with whether "knowledge" can be measured, as Carroll and Kelley have pointed out. Nish, clish, nada. Credentialisation has everything to do with a bunch of insiders exclusing a bunch of outsiders from the profession in order to keep their own wages high. Even neoclassical economics realises this (the Lindbeck & Snower model, if anyone cares). Case in point; my job as a stock analyst. This requires that I be able to chat a plausible line of bullshit about companies. It most definitely does not require that I be able to handle Radon-Nikodym derivatives or any other such mathematics. But I wouldn't have got my job if I couldn't at one point calculate them, because I had to in order to get my MBA, and I needed my MBA to get my current job. That's how credentialisation works; it's all about artificially raising the bar to keep the supply artificially small. And if you think geeks are too lovely people to do this, have a look at the H1B campaign sometime soon.

It's got nothing to do with computer skills and knowledge being something special, and everything to do with intimidating outsiders to keep the inside clique together.


>no time, dear. you already know that. and if you
>can't argue
>the point, then there is no point. i would prolly
>take itapart, as well...

Errrrr, yeah, calling women "dear" is another good way to intimidate outsiders and keep the clique together. We don't even pull that shit on trading floors these days, by the way.


> since you heaped so much contempt on this, do you
> view workers
> as capitalists? or are you willing to admit that
> the capitalism
> examined and explained by marx is archaic? (capital
> and the
> tools of production are mere resources in today's
> world; it is
> the *thinker* who adds value, creates profit, who
> makes the
> enterprise...)

Sorry to be the one to break this, but there's nothing really special about your position in the economy that wasn't there for the attorneys, doctors and clerks of Marx's era, and he's already pigeonholed you.

cheers

d^2

____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list