[concretethrow]

Here is a good example of what MBA's can do.

First, go to Disneyland and look at the ticket prices. They're really high, right? On a per-day basis?

So next you price out the season passes. You do the math and you find that if you are going 6 or 7 days in a year or less, you are better off without the season pass. If you are going 8 or more days ( for instance ), the season pass makes more sense.

So you do the math and think about it some more. 7 or 8 days sounds reasonable, my family will enjoy it, right?

The next thing you know, you are happily shelling out $1000 per family member, thinking of all the happy times you will have and all the money you are going to save.

[drb91]

I’m having difficulty understanding you. Is this a scenario where you’re arguing for or against MBAs? It either sounds like you’re arguing a) MBA teaches you grade school reasoning or b) an MBA teaches you to maximize your revenue stream by providing pricing structures that encourage people to spend more than they want. In either case I’d rather work with someone with a wider skill set providing someone people do want and are willing to pay for.

[squarefoot]

I think the context is vital here. In the ideal situation of 5 people hungry and the only shop in town with exactly 5 sandwiches ready, nobody loses: shop sells, people eat, workers get paid. But in this world there are more products and services around than people wanting to buy them, so people have to be convinced, and engineers usually are really poor at lying.

A revealing sign that an engineer isn't running that shop would be the production climbing to 50 sandwiches. The same 5 people would be fooled into buying all of them by advertising, special discounts etc, then they would eat 5 each instead of 1 becoming obese, thus helping the medical business, and throw away the rest helping the trash collection and disposal business.

[drb91]

> But in this world there are more products and services around than people wanting to buy them, so people have to be convinced

Or, the products could shut down, or lower their prices. If there’s no demand, why put energy into making demand rather than making something people want? It’s the lowest bar of achievement in this society; while I understand money can be a powerful motivator, this lowers the value of the entire work force.

[bicubic]

That's literally the endgame of capitalism.

Capitalism is, and always has been, about reaching a state where supply exceeds demand. One could argue that once a business reaches that stage, they can put up a Mission Accomplished banner and fire most of their workforce. But because of how wealth is distributed, workers always need to be working so they're incentivized to extend the work and market as long as possible.

The same mechanism is responsible for the situation where institutions tasked with solving a certain problem (crime, cancer, etc.) invariably end up perpetuating the problem so they can continue existing.

You think some shmuck MBA setting up a devious pricing structure at Disneyland is bad? Consider that the US has more empty houses than homeless people, and more unsold cars in lots than people who lack reliable transportation.

[drb91]

Agreed! A good reason not to like capitalism.

[squarefoot]

Or implementing limits to it so that we get mostly the good of it.

[baddox]

That calculation sounds extremely obvious to someone with no MBA or sales/marketing experience whatsoever. I’m confident that MBAs or experiences people in those roles do a heck of a lot more than calculations like that.

[yalph]

I am not that confident.