- William is as passionate and insightful about commercial media as anyone I know.
- He has worked in IT since undergrad and is now going to law school.
In light of (1) and (2), I'm having a hard time with the free market's efficient allocation of resources.
3 comments:
Why not just combine the two?
Doubtless I will do precisely that at least for the start of the next phase of my career, but I don't believe that's what Trav is talking about.
Trav- an efficient free market does not necessarily mean that every individual will end up doing what they feel most passionate about or even what they are best at doing. Rather, a free market will seek a configuration where it is either most efficient or most productive (you chose) as whole. If you want to look at this in terms of individuals: the reason I don't do what, for example Greg Chwerchak, does is that it would not be Kaldor-Hicks efficient for me to do so. By the theory there are other people whose participation in that market and my exlusion from market creates a sum postive such if you compare the the net gain for those people and the net detriment to me.
That said: I got involved in the IT industry because I thought it would change the world in exactly the way that I saw commerical media change the world: it would change the way people thought about stuff.
I can't say that this didn't happen, and I can't say that it didn't happen in a way that I thought that it would happen.
Having said all of that, I remember trying to write a short screenplay. It was the most terrible cr*p ever.
Will, I appreciate the econ lesson. My point was as much about the mechanism (free market) as the end state (efficiency). How, is it claimed, that free markets reach efficiency? Through individual-level interactions. Whoever is best at making and selling bread is preferred by cutomers. That baker gets the highest profit. Lesser bakers must accept lesser profit, until the marginal baker realizes that he can make a better living as an undertaker. Comparative advantage says that relative, not absolute, skill is what matters, but the free market nonetheless points towards people working where their greatest talent lies.
I write all this never having seen you manage a network, had you defend me in court, or read your cr*p screenplay.
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