[KGIII]

They may be smart, but they are still humans. You can't ethically assign them to career paths based on some vision of social good. That goes against the whole free agency thing and I'm pretty sure we've decided it's a horrible way to treat people.

That's well over the line into dictator territory. The results never match the predictions in the brochure. That's pretty much a sure fire way to get a tribunal convened at the Hague or a not-friendly visit from a SEAL team.

[Houshalter]

Capitalism already assigns people career paths. How is that any more ethical? Not many kids grow up saying "I want to work on Wall Street" or "I want to make better targeted advertising." They go into those careers because they offer piles of money, and the jobs they might want to do don't. We could fix that.

[KGIII]

No, it doesn't assign them, they choose them. Many people don't decide on a career path based on the greatest salary potential, but on things they enjoy, problems that interest them, and places they want to be.

We are humans, not unthinking machines.

[Houshalter]

I think empirically people do choose jobs because of money. Otherwise why would Wall Street firms pay so well to attract talent? Why would people go to work there if they didn't care about money?

[KGIII]

That's a very small number of people, not all of whom are well paid. The work is intellectually stimulating and has the ability to have far-reaching impacts.

I think you're confusing empirically for being significant numerically. I will offer a counter for your Wall Street example, look at how many go into teaching.

[Houshalter]

>That's a very small number of people, not all of whom are well paid.

By 2006 about a quarter of MITs entire graduating class went to Wall Street. Some firms were offering $400K salaries to junior level positions. They weren't just taking huge numbers of people, but the ones they were taking were the best of the best. Other companies at the time had a terrible time recruiting anyone because they couldn't compete with that kind of money.

The problem with this is I don't think these firms are actually doing anything productive for society. The amount of work, money, and resources that go into getting a nanosecond edge for high frequency trading is just obscene. And all of the stuff they develop must be kept top secret and under NDAs. So even if they invent something cool by chance, they can't share it with the world or let anyone else benefit from it.

[KGIII]

Yes, there are many more smart people than just those st MIT. I hold a Ph.D. (Applied Mathematics) from MIT. I've never even been to Wall Street, even as a tourist. I worked in traffic modeling, because the domain had interesting problems to solve and the opportunity to leave a mark was there.

Wall St. doesn't even employ that many people, in total. I'd also be curious as to how many remained working there.

Now, to remind us of the subject, we're discussing how it is immoral to determine career paths for other people. To be clear, I have no issues with providing incentives to get people to select a career. I'm good with that. However, demanding or forcing is right out.

People incentivized are still exercising free will when they choose to do so. Capitalism isn't determining their career paths. You could offer $75/hour to people to eat horse poop and you're still not going to get a lot of takers. People choose their careers for many reasons other than expected salary.

If they chose with salary as the criteria, we'd have no teachers. We'd have no researchers. We'd have no field scientists. Nobody would work for the government. We'd have few artists, few musicians, few authors.

People choose their career for many reasons, salary sometimes isn't even in the top three reasons. Of course, some people do so for monetary reasons. I'm not sure they are actually the most suited for the job.

The next time you go to get emergency medical treatment, do you want someone who is there for the paycheck, or do you want someone who is there because they want to save lives?

Now, your final paragraph... You don't think they are doing anything productive for society. I'm not sure why that's a problem. We are not the arbiters. There are very few jobs that someone won't point to and say the people performing those jobs aren't productive. Usually, they are Ayn Rand fans but I'll assume you're not one.

They create wealth. They create a system that enables transfer of wealth. They enable companies to be partially owned by the public. They increase the incomes of those who employ them. They enable people to retire comfortably. They enable employees by getting them greater value for their share of the company.

In short, they do lots of things that are considered productive. If I made you $10,000 in profit per day, you'd probably think I was pretty productive. I know the reverse is true.

Anyhow, your last sentence kind of draws a more complete picture for me. First, you speak of insisting people do certain kinds of work which you decide the priority of. That struck me as misguided, but I was willing to see it through. Now, you're lamenting that you're not being given the output of someone else's investment.

You can't ethically own humans. Insisting they do only certain tasks and then wanting the output of their labor is, well, treating humans as if the are your property. That is not okay, at least according to my morals.

If I'm misreading you, feel free to explain. However, it looks like you initially wanted to make people, smart people, do certain kinds of work. You've since added that you think paying them above average is like forcing them, that they are equal. You're now asserting that their labor output shouldn't belong to them.

Err... That sounds remarkably like slavery.