What if everyone intelligent would go on strike

[Ghost of the dead horse]

... Kinda like the neutral economic planners in communism who in the absence of market mechanisms figure out the prices that should prevail and the transactions that should be made?

Nothing like that at all, away with the straw men! Information exchange would be between 3 free parties. Efficient analysis and knowledge of the business is essential for free market.

 

[Economica]

Nothing at all, away with the straw men!

It was no strawman (though I do apologize for my facetiousness); I was arguing that the value of information is generally impossible for third parties to ascertain.

Returning to your business plan example, exactly how do you propose to get a neutral third party to correctly valuate the flaw you have found and wish to sell to management?

 

[Athenian200]

Santtu: I understand your statement from a purely logical/goal-oriented perspective, but I think you're neglecting people's desires, and only thinking about financial gain. Furthering knowledge is more important to humanity as a whole than simply earning money. If you only want money, I'm sure you'll find a way to earn it with the kind of mind you have.

 

[ptgatsby]

Eh, this one isn't complicated.

Too many actors to form coherent bargaining agreements without significant risk of defect; the defector in this case gains increasing amounts as fewer defect, dramatically increasing their incentive to defect.

Oh, and smart people like to show off.

And there are a lot of them.

And no one needs them to survive.

But they need to eat.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Too many actors to form coherent bargaining agreements without significant risk of defect; the defector in this case gains increasing amounts as fewer defect, dramatically increasing their incentive to defect.

Realistic argument. If the "information sale" would become more commonplace, it would be easier to find acceptable guidelines for "useful information" and it's value.

Oh, and smart people like to show off.

Yeah, that's the downfall of my system.

And no one needs them to survive.

But they need to eat.

Funny, but uses false dictomy. There is a middle ground in using smarts and doing nothing, one that you neglected.

 

[ygolo]

I was going to respond with something else, but then this trading platform for IP came to mind (from a lecture I saw a while back).

http://asia.stanford.edu/events/fall06/slides/061109-kwok.pdf
http://asia.stanford.edu/events/fall06/slides/061109-rosenberg.pdf

It is very industry (and region) specific, but I wonder if a more general version could be brought to fruition in the future.

Actually, this comes from a whole series on how to manage technological IP (in particular when dealing with Asian countries)

Intellectual Property Management for Technology Businesses in Asia: Fall 2006

EDIT: I was going to say that I could become an IP troll and just patent every idea I could think off and hire a lawyer to settle patent law suits or win claims. But I would not find it rewarding, and would be shutting myself off from opportunities to test and refine my ideas.

 

[ptgatsby]

Funny, but uses false dictomy. There is a middle ground in using smarts and doing nothing, one that you neglected.

Not really. If you take a certain % of the population defined as smart... say... the top 5%... they produce nothing but means. 95% of the population can maintain society just fine.

Striking is hard work. Your families need to eat... you don't want to lie around doing nothing. There is no war chest.

The significant difference between common unions and any form of "smart" union is a lack of common work. A union can hold a city hostage (say like NY garbage workers)... but smart people don't influence day to day life.

It'd be different if you used "technical worker" (egad, the internet is down!), but again, a highly diversified group with extremely high chance of defection. Smart people, as a group, don't produce any one thing in particular that the world needs. They may drive improvement... but they'll starve before many people will care... or be replaced before we even know they are missing.

They have no bargaining power and that is why it will always fail. They can't hold people hostage - they don't build systems for the most part, they don't run systems. No one depends on them.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Concentrate on the message, not one word in the title. You'll notice that I wrote a lot of things that do not match the pattern of doing a regular strike in standard dictionary definition.

Bargaining skills are learnable. Only rarely do people utilize their extreme possibilities to get the maximum profit of anything. What I see is that a) bargaining skills, b) will to use them, when put together, may be used to extract a greater profit per unit of work given, up to the point where there are alternatives that are a better deal for the buyer. As cleverly pointed out, information trade is asymmetric - one may know it's good, but the knowledge of that may not be transferrable without revealing the information, and losing the merchandise. I am sure that utilizing NDA's and other legal instruments better, more information could be TRADED instead of being GIVEN AWAY FREE, because of perceived trouble involved in trading. Yet, points a and b would do good in such a hard sale. The methods are there, learnable in almost any crappy book for junior salespersons.

I remember reading from a study where some people just chose to haggle with their salary in their job interview, whereas others did not. Other factors balanced, men chose more often to demand a greater salary than initially offered, and there was some percentage quoted about the average "pay rise", too.

I am unable to provide for guide to bargaining/negotiating in here, but I trust you all to know that such skills exist. Also, bargaining can't be done with non-existing merchandise. It can also be done to a point where the deal suggested is mutually benefitial, even if marginally so - and the best available deal offered for both participants.

It's silly to assume too perferct a competition anyway, with idealized systems. There's a cost to find replacement in many cases. This means that a person who's done better work than he/she should have, as written in the contract, just takes a time to notice the good negotiating position he/she has (involves a,b). This may mean noticing that the person can realistically get a pay rise of 3% only, because there is an equally bright person in the department, who could learn to do same tasks in a month.

It's also unrealistic to use lines of thinking, "if that would make an improvement, it would have already been done". Like any changes couldn't ever be made anywhere.

I'm tired. About the "failed business plan scenario", we would need a new method to prove arbitary pieces of information without giving the solution away. It's possible in strictly mathematical issues with something known as "zero-knowledge proofs", but they are unsuitable to prove arbitary things written in natural language. Rather than making it a proof issue, it would work better as a contract issue. Again, no new methods are needed. Just some guts to negotiate rather than giving away for free. It's nothing more complicated than that the persons supervising you are usually better in negotiations and managerial skills. Learning a bit of those and THEN presenting the ideas helps to get most money out of it.

 

[ptgatsby]

Concentrate on the message, not one word in the title. You'll notice that I wrote a lot of things that do not match the pattern of doing a regular strike in standard dictionary definition.

Any witholding of service is a strike. The point being that "intelligent" people don't have the ability to withold service at any level. They have no bargaining power. That, and it doesn't make any real sense. If I come up with a good idea in a meeting, I share it. I don't share it and my stock goes down, day after day - a non-contributor. I eventually leave and have no chance to sell my idea, therefore it has no value to myself.

We call the people that do that contractors... the negative side of contractors.

The only way what you suggest is possible is with collective bargaining power. Otherwise you are simply replaced. In short, the pressure to work (demands on people) are greater than their ability to withold, which means no wide scale bargaining through systemic means - an innate lack of incentive. Only artificial social agreements would leverage their bargaining power sufficiently for them to be in a position to withold services.

Try working 8 hours in a technical company during any project peak time. Try never contributing at work unless they pay you. See how long either opportunity continues to manifest itself.

We still have a general strike going on here. People are being crushed as a result of it. If there is an economic downturn - a likelyhood greater than 50/50, and these people will be ground down to nothing. That's the sad reality. Smart idea folks or blue collared hard workers have the exact same pressures... and exact same ramifications.

Just as I'm good at what I do and have seen a significant increase in my "value" for the last five years and expect a similar increase over the next five, I hold no illusion that my bargaining power is remotely close to ever witholding a single good idea, or worth selling individually. And when they say they need something done, I get it done - free time or not. Even if no one in the company was willing to do it, somewhere, a competitor would. And the company would lose. It would either kick my ass to the curb and find someone else, or the entire company would fold. Unions, or social agreements like that, may protect the crub-kicking, but it can also cause the company to fold. Big companies like GM are going through it... as a self-correction, the auto unions have dramatically lost power as well. Both sides are now losing at full speed.

My situation is no different, as a semi-technical worker, than my dad - a CFO/management accountant. Position, smarts... these things don't really matter, at least until you reach a small enough group that mutual assistance can be assumed.

 

[Economica]

Hey Santtu, did my post #22 drown in the following posts...?

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Hey Santtu, did my post #22 drown in the following posts...?

No it did not. I wrote a response and got worried over the length of it, so I saved it for editing.

It was no strawman (though I do apologize for my facetiousness); I was arguing that the value of the information is generally impossible for third parties to ascertain.

Returning to your business plan example, exactly how do you propose to get a neutral third party to correctly valuate the flaw you have found and wish to sell to management?

Hmm, I think I now see the weakness of my position. Third party is often taken to mediate and to supervise the process, but not in the role of evaluating the value. If it would be done, it would require much study into the two sides in question, perhaps the presence of a lawyer knowledgeable in contract law, and/or perhaps a business expert studying the issue, the company and interviewing the participants, and the writing of non-disclosure agreements on the top, perhaps.

On the other hand, there is a role that a third party could fullfill. There was a story on my local newspaper, with someone from the Chamber of Commerce complaining how many small business owners are tricked into "corporate fusions" and "collaborative projects" where the smaller business owner just shares their know-how, and the bigger defects. Some of these could be avoided with having people to be more educated about the risks involved. I don't think there's any final solution to be done any time soon, but some improvements would be possible, most of all in negating the risks involved.

If possible, the (legal) expert might be used in enforcing sanctions against the other party, if it uses the information without paying. This approach may not always be possible.

Other chance would be to set an agreed system and interpretation for it, where both could mutually agree on a set of standards. For example, "I'll show you a sub-group of demographics which has demonstratably increased intent to buy certain kind of consumables we manufacture. I'll announce the a) type of consumable and b) the sub-group upon payment. I have expert testimony that this accounts for approximately $100,000 of improved sales during this fiscal year, given the situation of our company, provided that same marketing effort is given to this group as well as your other main demographic groups. If you use this information, you may not increase your marketing expenses on this group this year, or increase the coverage of your existing marketing plans to this group, unless if you pay the information arbitrator $4000, and $6000 the employee who brought this issue to your attention."

Far-fetched but servers to illustrate. The expert would verify that the secret parts of the deal hold, and that the information meets the standard that is set in the binding contract.

I think that many kind of processes would have to be created to go through different kinds of "information sales". It would still be much more efficient to recognize people's contributions on the spot. THis could happen just inside one company. Upper management may have the ability to find out the things that are done well in the lower level, and could reward anyone showing actually good initiative (not something that can't be put to practice). So in this case it would just be needed to know more about the chain of command, not to use any special negotiation tactics.

My example was so contrived that I think I wouldn't be able to come up with solution to the first business scenario, as I think it's even much harder. My best bet would be to learn the fine line between these two situations: one where you've made a positive impression with unexpected use of intellectual skills, and one where you "over-impress" to the point of giving away for free.