A Quote from Anandtech member Corn on executive compensation got me wondering if..

[Ornery]

Well, on the positive side, it's been a rather decent thread, hearkening back to the old General Non-Hardware days. Outstanding posts mixed in the bunch! Sorry to keep harping on the "World Owes Me A Living" theme, Red. I'll have to find a new tack.

I agree we've thrown ourselves on a treadmill, working dawn to dusk to buy ourselves rewards for working from dawn to dusk... It has put us where we're at though, and I wouldn't trade our lifestyle for anywhere else in the world, at any point in history. Funny thing is, my 60 plus hour per week job is hanging by a thread. I've been kicking around what other sort of employment would suit me. Once in a while Moonbeam's notions come to mind. I start thinking about living in a tent in the wilderness... for about a nanosecond!

All joking aside, it would be nice to get off the treadmill, but I can't see it. I also can't see running that treadmill and being the Hari Krishna type individual Moonbeam is alluding to. I keep thinking, once I'm sated, once I've gotten my share I'll be much more giving and "Socialistic". Maybe I'm just kidding myself. Seems nobody is ever satisfied, least of all me!

 

[tcsenter]

Funny thing is, my 60 plus hour per week job is hanging by a thread. I've been kicking around what other sort of employment would suit me. Once in a while Moonbeam's notions come to mind. I start thinking about living in a tent in the wilderness...for about a nanosecond!

You forget holding hands and singing Kumbaye-ah (sp?) around the campfire, group hugging, burning inscents, getting in touch with one's inner spirit while being "one with the universe". I'm talking CREEPY, man!

 

[Moonbeam]

I'll say more later, but quickly I wanted to say to Athanasius that whereas you seem to think you have disappoint me with corporate kudos, you don't at all. Your post was a strike as far as I'm concerned.

Also to you Ornery. I love you. I love your courage, your honesty, and your Orneryness. You expose yourself and I like what I see. I don't know what Corn thinks I'm doing, but I think it has something to do with getting people to lay out their ideas and question them up against stuff like what Athanasius says just in the off chance that opportunities for fresh paths might open. You say you are never satisfied and he talks about some weird contentment. Could it be something real and worth knowing about?

tcsenter, don't get carried away with the mocked stuff. Imitation is also taken to be the sincerest form of flattery. I'm really not focused on you. I care about the issue. I'm against competition, remember, the lazy wild eyed Kum Ba Yah singer.

 

[Ornery]

Wow, that made my day, thanks!

I do feel more altruistic after a nice long rest. Long, laborious hours in this heat tends to make me, uh... ornery! My dad is the same way. After he retired, he had these grandiose plans to basically "teach a man to fish" and the like. He even joined Habitat For Humanity and jumped in up to his neck right out of the chute. I had to snicker under my breath when he later explained to me how disappointed he was that the local "poor" couldn't be bothered to help build a new home for themselves. The house he helped build ended up being for an immigrant German or Russian couple, who were more than willing to meet their end of the requirements for the home.

I've thought about sharing my knowledge with inner city kids or whoever might be interested, but that's about as far as it got. Lots of red tape and everybody would think your motives are shady. As if I ever even came CLOSE to following that up...

Hell, I'm lucky if I have time to pass my knowledge on to my own boys! BTW, that's exactly what my dad WAS kicking around doing, and that's what he did find to be true. He'll probably end up teaching at a local trade school and get paid for it.

These days, vocational training is frowned upon by parents and school counselors who direct students into college prep, where in reality, few make it. Here is an answer for students in need of direction, but many people "...assume that it is separate from general education, has little educational value, and should be replaced by a predominantly academic curriculum. At best vocational courses are expected to provide students who are not college bound with minimal training for low-status jobs at entry level." We're shortchanging these kids by trying to avoid pigeon holing them. Sheesh...

 

[Moonbeam]

Well gee whiz Michael, You got me all confused, I realize you said I could voice an opinion, but you turned right around and told me to keep out of how much you make. Naturally I assumed the cognitive dissonance there was all yours, but I figured what the hay, the second remark sounds like the truer to how you really feel. I explained that that was silly because I don?t set your salary so the only alternative I can see is that you contradict yourself. As to buggering off, you have quite an imagination. I just wanted to reflect back to you the same viewpoint you were expressing to me. To me, ah heck off means get lost, mind your own business, stay out of whether I get in evolved in setting your salary. If my request seem absurd, it?s only because yours was too. Reading all that sexual in-your-endo into it is nice and all, and if it convinces you that I?ve failed some test you?ve fabricated in your mind, knock your self out. I always fail tests. I?ve discovered over a lifetime of living that people are always looking to pigeon hole you into this or that prefabricated category they carry with them into which they can cast you if you say something that makes them question themselves. All such tests are there, expressly designed to be failed. I am famously disappointment to people, a huge let down, an incredible failure.

You can find the definition of ah heck off here if you care to look: http://www.geocities.com/johangambolputy/Python_Dictionary.html

But what I find interesting is that you have nothing to say about the children at the bottom of the sea. You get all fired up about anal sex that isn?t there, but completely ignore what is on topic, how executive compensation can be inversely proportional to real values. How about taking a crack at that issue, dofus. Just kidding, right Red?

Now what to say to Corn. I liked this part:
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?LOL, this is an amazing thread. Obviously, from Moonie's posts, especially the most recent, I was spot on regarding the envy of people not earning a CEO paycheck causing them to proclaim the "unfairness" of it all. Moonie wraps his under the cloak of "what's more important for society, shouldn't that matter most for compensation"?

Maybe so.?
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The stuff about Tom Cruise is irrelevant. One absurdity does not cancel another. I don?t know about Infos, but I know you know nothing about me so comments directed at imagined hypocrisy on my part are silly and quite surprising. If you want to generalize, do so.
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Tscenter:

?Moonbeam, your mockery only wound up producing a most ridiculous post that just reinforces how zaney and weird you really are. Do you realize that? Moreover, it shows your intellect does not run nearly as deep as you like to pretend it does, given that you've resorted now to mockery vs. actually attempting to address in earnest anything I've written. May I take that to mean you have no response because you're beaten?


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Do I realize that! Well I remember when I started posting and Russ made the comment, look what he calls himself as if I had unwittingly fallen into some hole. Among the many, I think, rather interesting ways of looking at my name, there is one that corresponds nicely with your description. I?ll leave it to the more subtle types to dig for other interpretations, but yes as it happens, I do realize it and many other corollary things. I realize, for example, that the fear of being different is one of the ways that people are turned into sheep, one of the ways children are humiliated into controlable normalcy, the way to keep people from thinking. Eew, you?re weird. I like to do what Corn talks about, live my beliefs to the small extent offered here to be out there for people like you to shoot at.

As for my intellect, I would have to say that maybe you are doing what I predicted you would do, dancing with figments of your own manufacture. I will be quite happy to assume the role of an idiot if what you call intellect is in fact intellect. Like I said, I?m not in a contest. You are projecting intellect onto me for reasons I can only guess at. I do know thaqt it?s tough to argue with the truth. On that basis I?ll agree, I?m a tough cookie to debate. I think I said that what you called mockery was a demonstration of how the world has taught you the inside out upside down version of reality. I just turned it around so you could see it from another side. You see, I actually address things you?ve written, but not in the way you think I should, but according to my lights. You go on as follows:

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?So, let's recap, your problem isn't with capitalism, or the free market, your real problem is that you live in a world where very few people agree with your whacky view of things and you're bitter about it? You feel like a fish out of water, eh? You're just soooo much more sophistikated then us dumb material worshippers, you have so much more 'depth' where we just be narrow minded and shallow bottom-dwellers not worthy of your adoration and respect. You're 'enlightened' and we're just backwards fools. Hmm, they have a word for this kind of person...its not coming to me right now.?
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I?m not important. My point is that capitalism is a catastrophe because it manages scarcity on the basis of perceived value. Wonderful, wonderful. I?m saying that it is a disaster because value is perceived linearly instead of holistically. What does it matter if I?m a three eyed goose. Truth doesn?t care who says it, does it? Which brings us to your final point:
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?Well what then, since we live in a free and open society, would you have for us to "remedy" the materialism in Western society? Bring back the Iron Curtain? Start imprisoning people for trying to sell something??
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First off I wouldn?t want you defining the alternatives. Some other wise poster already pointed out the silliness of the alternatives you guys posit. More debating with your own figments?..

Clearly, I focus on what is the meaning of value. Athanasius has a post there that addresses that issue and it goes pretty much ignored. Others have said some cool stuff too. I?m in to examining the unexamined assumptions that underpin normalcy, the common opinion, the status quo, the gospel the accepted. Isn?t it all a bunch of crap? The first step in doing something about what is, is to see it for what it is. It really does depend on what is is. Seeing changes it automatically. I just want to shine a little light on stuff.

 

[tcsenter]

I?m not important. My point is that capitalism is a catastrophe because it manages scarcity on the basis of perceived value. Wonderful, wonderful.

ALL VALUE IS 'PERCEIVED', so this isn't any defining characteristic of capitalism. No matter what you might replace it with, the same could be said of it just as well.

Wholistic value, as you've called it, occupies an expansive grey area where nothing is easily or objectively defined nor would there be any consensus of views unless you deliberately 'engineered' your 'panel' to all be like-minded. The economics of this so-called 'linear' valuation is complicated and often controversial enough, how nightmarish would it be to add a thousand new, vague, and subjectively defined factors to account and control for?

For example, how do you place a 'value' on a forest? What criteria will we be limited to? Is the aesthetic value of a forest going to be included? How the hell do you calculate aesthetic value? Will personal value be included? How the hell do you calculate the personal satisfication someone receives from a forest?

How would the necessity of housing affect this valuation of a forest, from which trees may be cut to build homes? Its nice when you have a home, and so you can say "stop cutting all the trees down, I already have a home!" What about those who don't? Live under a bridge?

I could go on...

 

[WoundedWallet]

Moonbeam, first of all, capitalism is not the root of our problems. It is actually the freest form of economic system that we have devised.

Taken from dictionary.com "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market."

So far so good.

The problem comes with the methods used to ensure sustained "development", as the market wishes. Be that in the form of the destruction of a forest, a rebate not honored or a cooked accounting book.

Second, as you probably know, we, humans, are a dispersed bunch searching for some order. In our history, Kings, Religions, Armies and now Corporations (KRAC) have provided us with the order we need to feel safe.

We, in general, are not very educated. We also have to spend too much time dealing with our own social or physical inadequacies. So the proposal to create a personal set of "values" to establish our own order becomes a extremely difficult task, only achieved by a few lucky ones. The vast majority, buys the pre-packaged order and defends it with their life.

So we live in a world defined by the values of the KRACs of each society. That will probably never change. Unless a new form of societal power is developed in the future. Like one where the geeks rule

That doesn't mean one needs to shut up and conform. One just needs to know which battles can be won.

Of the four KRAC institutions, the Corporation seems to be the only one that allows some freedom of competition. So all you need to do to change the world is to create a corporation that will spread your set of values. How far your values will go will depend on the success of your corporation and how much the corporation sticks to your values.

Many people have started corporations with their values in mind, but most got corrupted in the road to success. I think the next God will be the guy that manages to lead a corporation to absolute success while keeping his values intact.

I'll work for you if you think you can do it

 

[Corn]

I don?t know about Infos, but I know you know nothing about me so comments directed at imagined hypocrisy on my part are silly and quite surprising. If you want to generalize, do so.

Be honest for a moment Moonbeam. Are you trying to tell me you don't go to, or rent movies? Are you also claiming that you don't purchase music (or maybe you just "steal" it)?

Perhaps you haven't intended to be hypocritical, hell, perhaps you didn't even know it, but by virtue of the two examples (out of many I might add), you are supporting the very thing that is your complaint.

It's all about truth Moonbeam. Today you learned something about yourself, try to improve yourself with that knowledge. I'll cut you some slack for not comprehending the ramifications that giving your local movie theater $8.50 (every time you vegetate to the latest Meg Ryan flick) has on your principles.

Just don't let it happen again.

 

[Moonbeam]

tcsender, all well and good, but who says the answer is to replace capitalism because it perceives false values. Why not replace false values with real ones, just for example.

Wounded, I'm sure linuxboy has a fancy term for the kind of reasoning that says that capitalism is the best we've ever done so you can't argue with it and while I don't know what to call that kind of thinking I know a lot of people are infected with it. At least I think I've got some company in the wacky department. Maybe tcsenter will go after you for a change.

You are right Corn. I can't remember when I last bought a piece of music. I took a vow long ago never to never to do so. Naturally I lift my music from the internet now, but it isn't stealing because I'm prevented from buying it anyway. I don't go to movies and who's Meg Ryan?

I know, I know, you want me to be honest. OK OK. While I don't fork over money hand and fist to the entertainment industry, nothing like hyperboly, my above statement wasn't far from the truth, I do take others to see films because it entertains them. I enjoy it too, because as a student of truth, I need to understand people from the inside out just as well as from the outside in. My entertainment, therefore, is all for research. I enjoyed the Matrix, for example, because it illustrated so well, what I have been saying, that humanity is asleep in a bottle on a shelf somewhere being milked, dreaming it's awake. But you don't really start to wake up till you get flushed.

The trick is to be in the Martix, but not of the Matrix.

 

[Russ]

I hope you guys realize that Moonie is, in reality, a pot-bellied 50 year old gun-toting six-pack swilling sheet wearing Harley riding right-wing whackjob truck driver from the back woods of Arkansas that's just been yanking your chains all this time.

Russ, NCNE