Wednesday, Jan 30, 2008
wealth gap has still to go to the extreme
The Telegraph: Hedge funds: The new global super powers
But if someone has a facility for complex analysis, wouldn't the world be a better place if they deployed their talents on solving climate change or using the new science of genomics to find cures for fatal illnesses?
Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 03:19 PM (432 views) Add Comment
10 Comments
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1. george monsoon said...
S2r1 -
Yes they could better the world, but that wouldn't pay to support their mistress and their BMW x5
2. Icarus said...
So many scientists and engineers drawn away from socially useful work to go into financial engineering - another reason to be sceptical about the benefits of the financial services sector.
3. drewster said...
I agree with George. Salaries in science are terrible. A half-decent used car salesman can earn more, and a mortgage-backed security salesman can earn even more. Just scan through the job pages of New Scientist - "Wanted, PhD-qualified genius. £18k. Based in affordable Cambridge or Surrey."
Or how about this:
Graduate Recruitment Survey 2003: The median starting salary for graduates working in science, research & development was the lowest of all the sectors at £18,500, This compares to £35,000 for ####, the top salary earners.
(Go on, take a guess what the #### is. The answer can be found here.)
4. handle_it said...
It's just money. I know people that have basically destroyed their lives in pursuit of fiat currency. Real wealth isn't material.
5. shipbuilder said...
This touches on a pet subject of mine. Capitalism retards progress. The reason why scientists make no money is because they make no money - finding a unified theory doesn't get dollars in the bank. Think about it - capitalism is intrinsically short sighted - the easiest path to the money will always win and groundbreaking risk will always lose as it's not 'marketable'. 'Progress' is adding a camera to a mobile phone or a touch screen. 'Progress' is having rain-sensitive wipers on a car - merely 'delighters' as they are called. The car still has rubber tyres, four wheels and a IC engine, same as 100 years ago. Alternative energy is so badly developed because oil has been so cheap and easy. There are one or two exceptions - drugs being one. The new Large Hadron Collider at CERN, that most of the worlds physicists are wetting themselves about had a budget of 2.6 billion Swiss francs (I think about £1.2bn). How much was used to bail out Northern Rock?
6. lvmreader said...
@shipbuilder;
Take a look at this article in the weekend FT:
Cash for Answers
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a4040a4e-c7bd-11dc-a0b4-0000779fd2ac.html
By Tim Harford
Published: January 25 2008 19:32 | Last updated: January 25 2008 19:32
In 1737, John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker from Yorkshire, stunned London’s scientific establishment by presenting an idiosyncratic solution to the most important and notorious technological problem of the 18th century. He was hoping to win a then-fabulous prize of £20,000 (about £5m today) for anyone who could devise a way for a ship’s navigator to determine its longitude and therefore its position at sea. Harrison’s approach was to build a clock that would keep Greenwich time faithfully; by comparing local time (measured using the position of the sun) with the time in London, the navigator would know how far east or west the ship had sailed. The theory was sound, but given the rolling of ships and changing temperature and humidity, the leading scientists of the day – including Sir Isaac Newton – reckoned that a sufficiently accurate clock would be impossible to build. Harrison proved otherwise.
The longitude prize, sponsored by the British government, was not unique. Prizes were also offered in France for a functional water turbine, and for a method of preserving food for Napoleon’s armies. The latter prize quickly inspired the tin can, more of a blessing than food snobs might acknowledge.
7. lvmreader said...
How about this one:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/162259/187604/206711/executivesummary
8. lvmreader said...
What if a group of engineers had got together to produce a solution to road congestion, using mathematics and techniques learned from investment banking?
What if they also found a way to mitigate the short term destructive effects of short-term hyper-capitalism?
What if they had a way to reduce greenhouse gases, make taxi travel more efficient, safer for driver and passenger, cheaper and available to all people in all places while making every single community economically more productive?
Would that be interesting?
9. Coldlizard said...
Sadly, there are very few industrial research jobs in the UK for us phds to go into. I turned down a hedge fund for half the salary, because I want to *achieve* something in life, and work in a human environment. All the hedge fund wanted me to do was make software quicker, so they could trade with a response of 0.6s instead of 0.8s, and thus beat their competitors. Cog in the machine or what? How does a 0.2s trade give some company somewhere the capital it needs for its business? Plus they all seemed slightly crazed or psychotic, and they (quote) 'calculate the exact monetary contribution of every employee on a daily basis, so you can see exactly how you are doing'.
I just don't understand where all this money comes from :)
10. shipbuilder said...
It's the legacy of a society obsessed with money, looks and celebrity. When you can charge 10 times as much for goods by putting a designer label on them and making them look good, why would you innovate? In days gone by the scientists and engineers were the heroes, the most respected in society along with artists, writers, craftsmen and the like. I guess when you can earn a lifetime's money by appearing on TV or in a few magazines, actually putting effort in loses its appeal somewhat. Add in a lifetime of being taught by society to look after no.1 and shaft or be shafted, it's probably no surprise where we are.