
Young people are funneled into fields that don’t reward risk-taking - mooreds
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-30/old-people-have-all-the-interesting-jobs-in-america
======
JamesBarney
This article frames the questions as "Why are young people entering safe
fields?". But the fields they mentioned are not just low risk, they are also
high paying. But the answer to the question "Why are smart young people going
into low risk high reward occupations over high risk low reward occupations?"
is pretty obvious.

If you think more young people should be spending their time doing research
and development and less people should be doing management consulting then the
answer is simple. Subsidize it.

~~~
Hoasi
> But the answer to the question "Why are smart young people going into low
> risk high reward occupations over high risk low reward occupations?" is
> pretty obvious.

Indeed, but it also highlights something that may be less obvious, and that is
the proper allocation of reward. The deeper question is: why do we
systematically undervalue the very fields that contribute the most to society?
Careers in education, healthcare, research, and less stable creative ventures
should not need subsidies if we acknowledged their inerrant long term value.

~~~
jerf
"The deeper question is: why do we systematically undervalue the very fields
that contribute the most to society?"

The answer for most of them is simple: oversupply. Being a teacher is
generally something a lot of people want to be, and especially for K-12,
almost by definition, the intellectual bar is "finished K-12 reasonably well".
(If you read curricula for teaching schools, you'll find that while teachers
are generally educated maybe a year or two's worth past the high school level
in their chosen teaching subjects, that's generally it for the requirements.)
Accomplishing the "bullet point" objectives of being a teacher is not a
difficult enough bar to filter out enough people.

(I phrase it that way to forstall hiking the goalpost to the sort of
astonishing, life changing teacher whose slightest jiggling of their eyebrows
inspire students to new heights of knowledge and curiousity. Those may not be
all that common, but that's not the bar in question. Most teachers are pretty
close to average.)

When you imagine yourself in the role of teacher (the inspiring kind, I'm
sure) or researcher (who is, of course, hot on the trail of the cure of
cancer, not researching some workaday research question), it's easy to imagine
how you should be paid more. But if you put yourself in the position of paying
for these things with _your money_ , and you offer $100,000/yr to be an
elementary school teacher in some medium-sized town in the country because
wouldn't that just be awesome, and you get your first 10,000 applications
today with another 10,000 coming tomorrow, it's not long before you start
thinking "Hmmm.... maybe I don't have to part with _quite_ $100,000/yr to fill
this position.... maybe $90,000 isn't such a bad idea, and I can use that
$10,000 to do some other $WORTHY_THING..." (Or... maybe I could use this money
to hire _two_ teachers....)

It's easy to imagine how someone else should pay teachers three or four times
more... it would be a lot more challenging if you were the one doing it.

~~~
zepto
Setting the bar low _is_ undervaluing teaching.

~~~
jerf
That's another thing that may feel good to say, but trying to manifest it in
practice is really difficult. What more can you ask for from, say, a middle-
school algebra teacher other than that 1. they know the material well enough
to teach it 2. they are capable of maintaining basic classroom discipline and
3. they are conscientious enough to grade papers and run the mechanics of a
classroom and 4. don't have some sort of other spoiler disqualifier here like
being abusive or pathologically impatient or something?

Maybe a better way of phrasing it wouldn't be to say that the job of teacher
is "easy" per se, but that it's something built into our genes. Teaching is a
thing humans _do_ , like talking or throwing, as a subset of our general human
bonding skills. Being a decent teacher is obviously a bit more exclusive than
"able to talk", but it's just not that exclusive in our species, it's a widely
shared skill that has been selected on for many tens or hundreds of thousands
of years. It's hard to imagine a stable economic situation where it isn't
something we have an oversupply of.

~~~
zepto
It may be something we just ‘do’ but there is enormous variation in method and
skill and use of materials and technologies. And we can today do things we
couldn’t do even 20 years ago.

In this way it’s comparable to cooking, which is also something we just ‘do’.

The bar can be set as high as we want.

------
lordnacho
What happened to student loans? I don't see that mentioned, yet you'd think
the main reason people pick a high paying job with good fallbacks is to be
able to service the loan. Same reason why we don't get more people taking a
chance and starting a new business.

I also get the feeling there's an issue with skills recognition. Everyone has
a lot of paper saying they know machine learning or finance, but very few
people are confident they can identify someone who actually knows these
skills. So we fall back on credentialism, and every job seeker knows that, and
acts accordingly.

You can't say "tech" is where innovation happens, that's a tautology. Technos
actually means new stuff. If I invent a new horse carriage, I've created new
horse carriage tech. What might be more of a question is why software, or why
batteries, or why mobile phones.

~~~
Kalium
I think you've definitely hit on part of it. People want to pay off those
loans.

That said, a high-paying job can pay off your average student loan (~$31000)
in 5-7 years without too much grief. What comes next tends to be that people
find they like the lifestyle enabled by a low risk high income.

~~~
gowld
A high paying job can pay off off $31K in 1-2 years.

------
blablablerg
With the squeezed out middle class and no safety net when your parents aren't
rich yeah please take the risk to spend your life priced out the housing
market, or worse living out of your car working two jobs living paycheck to
paycheck, one medical encounter away from financial disaster.

Yeah take risks, sound advice for the young people.

------
wpasc
(Old headline for reference: "Old People Have All the Interesting Jobs in
America")

I think the title of this of this piece is poor and doesn't reflect a great
question buried in there.

The piece reflects on how many high achieving young people choose finance,
management consulting, and law and laments how those positions are low risk,
high reward. The author implies it would be better for America in the face of
slowing scientific progress to see young, smart individuals employ their
skills in fields like chemistry or materials science.

A great question to be had is what can be done to encourage people to
undertake high risk, high reward fields? I agree with the authors point that
in a prisoners dilemma style way, at any given point in a young smart persons
life, they may be inclined to undertake those professions (consulting, law,
finance).

An important question to be asked covered by a poor headline

~~~
sjg007
There is (or maybe was) a pipeline of grad students imported from India and
China that are taking this risk. It makes no sense for highly qualified and by
that I mean "academically educated" Americans to pursue PhDs in the sciences.
Even the masters programs are largely foreign students since that is a way to
get an H1B.

~~~
tensor
If you don't have a masters or PhD you aren't "highly qualified and
academically educated." And undergrad is a basic degree these days, and you
aren't considered to be an academic having gotten one.

I don't see what the fact that master's and PhD programs are filled with
foreign students has to do with whether or not it makes sense to get a higher
degree. Most of the brilliant people in North America are immigrants.

~~~
sjg007
>I don't see what the fact that master's and PhD programs are filled with
foreign students has to do with whether or not it makes sense to get a higher
degree.

It's more competitive, low pay during school and lower odds of a well paying
job at the end.

------
elchief
Gee, I wonder why Millenials, who got burned so very hard in 08, are avoiding
risk

~~~
cryoshon
yep. if the choice is "taking a risk" and burning down your meagre savings
without the promise of a payout, or grinding away at a low-risk and low-reward
job, the choice is exceedingly clear for most people.

you need slack capacity to take risk. millenials haven't ever had it, and
they've repeatedly recieved strong economic signals to carefully hoard any
slack they can find rather than risk it to get more.

------
lovich
>It might be better for the country if more of these individuals started
businesses...

It's subtle but I think this is an important sentence in the article. The US
has gone further and further down a path that signals to every young person
that they are on their own. The safety nets are being eroded, and politicians
are signaling that they want to erode them more. The young adults are paying
into systems like Social Security that they expect to never benefit from,
while the older generations keep voting to ensure that they get the benefit
and the younger generations can deal with the fallout.

Why would any intelligent young person whose weighing the pros and cons, take
a risk that might be a net benefit for the country, when the country wont help
them in return?

------
commandlinefan
> Why are so many people in top positions, whether in the public or private
> sector, so old?

... because they're the most experienced? When in human history has this not
been the case? And what in the world makes you think this isn't the way it
should be?

~~~
zbobet2012
The thing that's different in now vs then, is that the span of the average
human life (and the underlying span of healthy operation) has increased an
enormous amount... in a single lifespan.

This means those occupying the "top" jobs have a much, much, much longer
tenure than their predecessors.

This is coupled with massive consolidation in industry and politics meaning
there is less and less of those jobs in the first place.

Hence much of the dissatisfaction of the younger generation.

~~~
dx87
My wife tutors at a college, and she said the same thing about the professors
there. She said that most of them looked well past retirement age, and some
could barely stand up on their own or talk loud enough for a class to hear
them. Meanwhile, the younger people who want to teach are stuck being adjunct
professors with no job stability or benefits, or working as tutors grading
papers and picking up the slack for teachers that refuse to retire.

~~~
commandlinefan
> well past retirement age

I'll be working well past retirement age, not necessarily because I won't want
to retire, but because there's no way I'll be able to afford it.

~~~
imtringued
Most pension systems assume x years of payments. Just because people are
getting older doesn't change the fact that the money won't last. Therefore the
retirement age gets adjusted upward until it is average life expectancy - x
years of retirement.

------
neonate
[http://archive.md/A5VGy](http://archive.md/A5VGy)

------
Ancalagon
The trend I've noticed is most good opportunities (and even plenty of the
less-good ones) now have ridiculous amounts of red tape and frankly
gatekeeping. Just to become a hairdresser in Arizona requires expensive and
time-consuming schooling (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars). And
that's just one example of what I would consider a fairly average-skill-level
position, nevermind doctors, lawyers, or engineers.

------
dcole2929
I mean people are still working until they can't but that time period is
getting longer and longer. Partly out of boredom, partly because retirement is
a pipe dream for a lot of people. But the end result is the same, the higher
level jobs are rarely if ever vacated so committing to those fields with the
goal of making it to the top is unrealistic. Combine that with the boom in
working population, more educated, more gender diverse now with woman a much
more significant portion of job seekers and you get the current status quo.
Highly paid, very safe job fields are the ideal option for the young. It's
certainly no easier to make it to the highest levels in safer fields but you
will be far better compensated along the way as you try and likely enjoy a
better quality of life too.

------
selfishgene
Answer: Repeal the exclusionary zoning laws in this country's most overpriced
real estate markets that are making it so difficult for young people to
purchase their first homes. In fact, the regressive zoning laws are
artificially inflating the price of many older folks' homes, which is
precisely what is allowing them in many cases to pursue the more creative,
higher risk career paths.

According to his Wikipedia page, Tyler Cowen is a committed free-market
ideologue who still believes in the "meritocracy myth" (also formerly known as
the "American Dream").

Got news for Cowen, this country's economy has long moved on since the days
back when he earned that Harvard PhD!

As a next semester reading assignment for Cowen, I'd like to suggest Thomas
Piketty's book _Capital in the Twenty-First Century_.

~~~
mooreds
I found Piketty convincing, but Professor Cowen did not:
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/wh...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/why-
i-am-not-persuaded-by-thomas-pikettys-argument.html)

------
molteanu
There are some very nice opinions here about going the Quixote way and coming
out empty-handed with good reasons against it.

This is one of the reasons I read HN daily, most of the time going straight
for the comments and not to the article itself.

So thank you all who contribute and pour your hearts out around here!

------
dirtybirdnj
If you are rich it is easy to take risks. If you have to work at a frustrating
you hate job 9-5 and somehow find the energy to keep working on side projects
it will take exponentially longer to reach viability versus someone who has
the financial opportunity to work on it full time.

Young people are not rich. No shit they aren't taking risks because they
either have no capital / opportunity to do so... or they are busy turning the
gears for minimal payment without any promise real career advancement.

~~~
WilliamEdward
This is the real answer, unfortunately it is lost on the majority of
hackernews who were probably wealthy enough as young people to not have to
worry about things like this.

------
crispyambulance
Almost afraid to ask... what is considered "old" ?

~~~
Psyladine
Current Generation +2, so the X'ers right now (born 1966-1981)

~~~
stanferder
> the X'ers

The last generation to know freedom from planned activities during their
school years.

~~~
war1025
I'm solidly in the Millennial bracket and the closest thing I had to "planned
activities" before I was old enough to pick them myself was Little League
during the summers.

Then again, I grew up in rural Iowa, and I've heard cultural trends take a
decade or so to make their way from the coast all the way inland.

But I think some of it is also just a matter of what you are focusing on. I'd
guess there are plenty of kids growing up similarly unsupervised as in the
past, they are just more out of sight than before.

------
scarejunba
95% of academia is unnecessary. The part that makes this notably different
from Sturgeon's law is that we know which parts that is and if we ever go
through a resource crunch we'll find out.

Ask yourself how you'd allocate money as the sum available becomes less and
less. The answers are obvious.

------
wernst
This seems like a good framing to get non-progressives behind social safety
net programs - lowering the cost of risk taking/innovation and allowing for
more ideas for the market to sort out.

~~~
frockington1
I'm a 'non-progressive' and can see you're view point. I think it is worth
exploring and I like where you're going. I can tell you that the main point of
contention will be that the government caused the inability to take risk (i.e.
subsidizing student loans and housing costs). I am however more open to social
programs when you word it like that

------
scottlocklin
Cowen: _" Start with the Ivy Leaguers. I have no rancor against lawyers,
financiers or management consultants, but the pursuit of these careers seems
like a misallocation of human creativity. Those jobs do not comprise most of
the value of the U.S. economy, so why are they such a magnet?"_

Pretty simple: the US is all about rent seeking these days. It's in the
sciences as well; most people gravitate to fashionable woo which isn't
particularly reproducible, and may fall entirely outside of the class of
falsifiable science. Look at all the noodle theorists, cosmologists and other
such wankers in physics departments. Look at the travesty that is the F35, or
the laughable efforts of the center of the tech world taking billions of
dollars to build a mile of freaking subway.

Just getting into some Ivy League hole like Harvard; there's a huge industry
of ding dongs who will set up non-profits, fake admission essays, and either
tutor or fake test results; allowing sons and daughters of the ambitious to
appear competent and useful citizens rather than parasites. This sort of
travesty doesn't select for "creative," it just breeds an "elite" of rent-
seeking sociopathic scammers.

The last 20 years of Silicon Valley/Bay Area development are effectively rent
seeking. Google and company blew up newspaper advertising while cannibalizing
newspaper content. Uber, AirBnB, etc, all the same. Really the big winners in
the Bay Area were the goddamned landlords; turning Boomer retirement dollars
invested in "new technologies" into huge returns on real estate.

There are entire books of historical philosophy and economics on this sort of
thing: Brooks Adams recognized rent seeking as deadly to civilizations.
Georgists were a similar intellectual current. I don't see it as even being
recognized as a problem. Cowen at least notes that progress has slowed; an
idea which meets with screeches of terrified denial from the "muh ipotato"
crowd. At its core, though, is a problem with rent seeking.

~~~
perl4ever
"The last 20 years of Silicon Valley/Bay Area development are effectively rent
seeking. Google and company blew up newspaper advertising while cannibalizing
newspaper content"

What do you think rent seeking is? How is quoted sentence #2 an example?

~~~
scottlocklin
"Rent seeking" is placing yourself in a position where you risk nothing,
create nothing and parasitize society. Google destroyed publishing, destroyed
many potentially profitable internet businesses and effectively risks and
creates nothing.

Most monopolies fit the definition of rent seeking blood suckers, but Google
_really_ does. The Bell System provided a useful telephone network at least,
as well as inventing the future with their research lab.

~~~
perl4ever
"placing yourself in a position where you risk nothing, create nothing and
parasitize society"

That's exactly what I think of people who destroy the value of useful words by
misusing them. However, it's not rent seeking.

------
friendlybus
Young people are taking risks. Not the majority of them.

------
CWuestefeld
The author doesn't mention what seems to me must be an important factor:
modern American society is completely geared around safety, and against risk-
taking.

Consider all the commercials about how safety is job #1, and so forth.

Or the fact that "drive safely" and "have a safe trip" seem to be pretty much
the default conversation closers.

I'd much rather that people wish me a rich, fulfilling experience than curse
me with boring safety.

~~~
PaulHoule
I dunno, driving is not a good context in which to take risks.

My impression is that the United States is remarkably good in being able to
manage risky technologies.

One example would be the development of the liquid metal fast breeder reactor.

We built the first one, it suffered a meltdown, it was small, really no big
deal. (e.g. if you have liquid sodium around, radioactive iodine is going to
react with it and the NaI dissolves in the Na or forms non-volatile molten
salt droplets.)

We build a demonstration plant at Detroit, it had a partial meltdown, they
fixed it, got it running again, decided it wasn't worth the trouble a few
years.

After that we ran EBR II which had very little trouble, and we ran the FFTF
which only got in the news because somehow Karen Silkwood died mysteriously
making fuel for it. No nukes never talk about those two because there was no
drama.

France built SuperPhenix and it was a screw-up from beginning to end. They
couldn't even build a good roof for the turbine building.

Japan was the world leader in nuclear accidents in the 1990-2010 time frame
with the criticality accident at Tokaimura and multiple problems at the Monju
reactor. There was the time that a sodium fire burned for a long time before
they noticed it, when they finally got it running again after a few years they
dropped the refueling machine on top of the reactor, took a year to pick it
up, and then lost their permit to move fuel around it.

