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Another great quote, this one from the late Christopher Hitchens: "As a fiction writer, she's absurd. But if you're young and not particularly wanted and not particularly brilliant, reading Atlas Shrugged provides all the feelings of compensation one might need for any period of terrifying inadequacy."
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"So 3 pirates want to split the money in the Banana Stand..."
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Job Recruiters == Used Car Salesmen
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There's no "accidentally" about this. The manager decided to hire him during the phone interview. Everything else is just gaming the office bureaucracy to get what he wants.
thedailywtf.com readers are not the only ones with disdain for "the process"
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If he accepts it and then quits after 6 months, he will spend the next 10 years explaining to HR people why he left his first job so quickly -- that is, those HR people who will ask instead of just shoving his resume to the bottom of the pile.
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Technical correction on point 4: There is less total useful work being done, because Karl is now no longer able to fish or maintain huts because he is too busy making marks on banana leaves, deciding who should get which bananas leaves, and monitoring the conversations of the other islanders to be sure that no one is engaged in hate crimes against Larry, like complaining that he doesn't work.
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Yes, because idealistic young people leap on capitalism because they're naive and simplistic. But it's impossible to imagine idealistic young people leaping on socialism because they're naive and simplistic: obviously they only turn to socialism because they have carefully studied the issues involved and concluded that this is the moral and pragmatic way to go. Socialism is SO grounded in hard facts, rational evaluation of human behavior, and empirical analysis.
In general, people who disagree with you must think that way because they are blindly following some demagogic leader, or their professed ideas are all a cover for selfishness and bigotry, or some such. But people who agree with you obviously think that way because they have carefully analyzed the facts and thought things through to their logical conclusion.
Seriously now. Even if you are absolutely convinced that someone is wrong, can't you at least consider the possibility that he arrived at his conclusions by honest evaluation and reasonable thought?
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RE the second interview: Ok, I wasn't there, so maybe the story doesn't give the full sense of how the interview went. But a manager makes a mistake in an interview, you try to correct him and he brushes you off. So what?
Suppose the situation was reversed. You talked to a manager over the phone. In the course of the interview you asked him a couple of questions about the company. Then you are called in for a second interview. You ask one of the same questions, forgetting that you already asked it. Perhaps you are getting this interview confused with an interview with another company. He points out that you already asked this question. Sure you had not, you brush him off.
The company decides not to make you an offer because they conclude you are an idiot who cannot remember what he's already asked. You could submit this as a "Tales from the Interview": "They wouldn't hire me just because I forgot and asked the same question twice!"
Every job interview I've ever gone on where there was more than one interviewer, I've been asked the same questions over and over. Why couldn't they just talk to each other and share the answers? If you meet the same person twice, it's not startling to suppose he might be confused about which questions he already asked. I just don't see how it's that big a deal.
I could see this being a minus. If there were twenty things wrong with the company, yeah, this might tip the score. But if otherwise it looked like a good job, I wouldn't see this as a deal-breaker.
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5 pirates can split 100 coins down the middle with their swashbucklin' swords and each pirate gets whatever the hell they want.
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I would have taken the second job because it would be easy to fool the damn ass manager any time you wanted.
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No, the next alternative is dead-99-0-1-0.
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To be fair, if you're wondering why [some work of fiction] by [author who writes only fiction] is wrong, it's entirely reasonable to expect that the articles would look more like literary criticisms than philosophical treatises.
TRWTF is that this article didn't include any amusing HTML comments or links to cornify.js.
(Captcha: opto -- I'd like to opto out of Randian politics.)
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Here's where she has it wrong. Her philosophy requires everyone to act first in his/her own self interest. But, in the real world, a lot of people are idiots.
She assumes there will be consequences for those that act against their self interest, which will persuade them to act differently. But those consequences cannot always come fast enough to prevent the collapse of the entire system.
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I think what a lot of people are missing is that in an employment situation it's a business situation where both sides are accepting a relationship. For those of you asking why the potential employees are rejecting the jobs clearly are assuming this is strictly one sided (or perhaps you think it should be).
I did the same thing once. When I was once looking for some work, I was directed to a web page with a quiz on C programming. It was fraught with errors. Multiple choice questions with no correct answer, mis-leading questions, questions that revealed that the writer knew C, but only very badly. From the phone interview, I knew the test was created by their top guy; someone I'd have to answer to. I did not need that kind of agony.
I already went through the above with one job. My manager was a BASIC programmer. He didn't understand the ternary operator, so he banned its use. The upper management insisted the work be done in C, but that didn't sit well with him. He created a collection of macros named PRINT, BEGIN, and END as replacments for printf and { and }. (As you can guess, there were dozens of other replacements.) The company was growing, so the influx of experienced C programmers grew and he never could get control of them to force his "standards." Heck, citing employees for insubordination on the issue would have been liking giving speeding tickets at the Indy 500. (That company and my observations during my brief tenure there should be good for at least 2-3 DWTFs.... time to fire up e-mail.)
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Btw, Ayn Rand fans, do please hijack this section to tell us all about your lives as captains of industry carried aloft by her moral syllogisms, lest anyone think that you're just the usual insignificanrt antisocial nerds trying to compensate for your lack of recognition from the plebeian masses.
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You are my hero.
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They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown -- Carl Sagan
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Disclaimer: I don't agree with Randian philosophy either.
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I had an interview at a Microsoft-wannabe place once.
They asked the cliche riddle of "Where is the one place you can walk south one mile, west one mile, and north one mile, and end up exactly where you started?"
The traditional answer is the North Pole.
However, given a little thought, there is also an infinite series of concentric rings (> 1 mile, and <= (1+(1/2pi)) miles I think) around the south pole, where you can walk towards the pole, do a whole number of laps, then walk one mile north to your starting point.
They refused to understand that possibility, and I don't think they were just seeing how well I would stick to my position (because I didn't budge from it)
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I second that. I'm way into my career and if an offer like came up and I turned it down, it would certainly not be because a busy manager mixed up some names.
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The only reason I can see for Rand stuff not being in the fiction/literature part of a normal bookstore, is that it is so incredibly badly written. For a philosophical tome you kind of forgive/expect it to be hard going, so it's a natural home. It's turgid, incoherent, switches from narrative to dry lecturing and back haphazardly, there's no overarching structure / narrative arc, etc etc.
Admittedly, I've only read Fountainhead (didn't see the movie, natch) and Atlas. Which make up the vast bulk of her sales, and are definitely in the Fiction, not the Philosophy shelf of a decent bookshop.
Even the 'pirate' puzzle already shows Rand is wrong on her fundamental assumptions: the absurd outcome is only due to the assumption that humans/pirates are coldly logical. The rise of cooperation/altruism in everything from bacterial colonies, human and animal societies, and game theoretic models is another good indication. She doesn't even have a grasp nor explanation for occasional 'you scratch my back & I'll scratch yours' opportunistic cooperation.
Also:
Where did socialism suddenly come from?! Or is this your entry in the "Weakest Strawman of the Year" competition? It has the same logic as "You're against Stalinism? Then you support Nazism!". I know it's the endorsed American view that you're either with or against 'Us', but do grow up, the world is not Boolean. (Not even extended-Boolean with an 'unsure', 'file-not-found', 'etc' category.) No, that train has left the station. A long time ago.Admin
The only reason this failed is because all 4 of them were stupid enough to not realise that banana leaves are huge and much heavier than gold coins
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This is probably because you were wrong about. The final step is to walk north one mile. There is no place from which you can move north, and reach the south pole when you're any distance away from the south pole.
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Bah. At 14, I was reading Dune and Zelazny. LotR was kids stuff.
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Much of Philosophy is just fiction that people take a bit to seriously.
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Clearly. I mean, not once in the entire history of man has someone who worked their ass off ever starved to death or died penniless.
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The holy books of many religions are also frequently located in the non-fiction section. That does not make them so.
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Well, you know that's only a hypothetical example.
In the real world, one of the five (let's call him Bill) has, through fair means & foul, managed to amass 90% of all the gold coins.
Three of the remaining four, needing gold coins to trade, want to do work for Bill to earn them. Bill says, "Sure, but I'll only give work to the lowest bidder."
The others are so desperate to get coins, that Bill not only gets his own needs fulfilled, but hires others at a discount to do the work that he gets paid gold coins for in the first place, taking 50-90% of all the income generated.
The end result is that Bill lives a life of luxury, ends up with an even higher proportion of the coins, the 'middle class' get barely enough to scrape by on, and Larry spends his days poring through the trash heap, eating scraps and hoping like hell someone will throw out a blanket before winter arrives...
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My God, you're right. Why have I not seen it before? Your explanation has made things so obvious! We just leave Larry and Karl in charge of all the banana leaves and their enormous and growing wealth will naturally trickle down on all of us, yes?
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To those who pointed out that capitalism is flawed because people don't always act in their own best interests: you're absolutely right! In fact, you are so correct that you've also found the reason why socialism and communism don't work either!
Capitalism isn't perfect. It just sucks less that the alternatives. But by itself, it is not enough.
And that is where Ayn Rand fails. She does a great job of explaining how Big Government is always doomed to failure, but her answer is overly simplistic.
A successful society needs to respect private property and the right to keep the fruits of your own labors, but it also must encourage voluntary charity to the poor. Once "charity" becomes an "entitlement," (something you are "entitled to") then everything goes to hell like Ayn says. If it's a voluntary gift from those who are successful to those down on their luck, that entitlement mentality (envy, really) is less likely to trap the poor. It's a self-correcting system: if they stop being grateful for the charity of others, that charity is likely to dry up.
However, if the "charity" comes from the government, then it's your right, dammit! I don't need to work, just gimme my moneys!
This attitude is not sustainable, and it's bankrupt nations around the world.
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Five pirates download 100 tunes. How many tunes did each get.? How many years did each get.?
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If she wore a T-shirt when interviewing me, it would be dirty by the time she went home. But she'd still get the job!
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Socialism was never going to work because of its underlying essence: "from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need".
The reason it would never work is because, while resources are limited, desires are not.
Even if it had lasted a thousand years (and it didn't get antwhere near that), that would still be a piss in the ocean compared to civilisation itself.
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Same thing happened to me a few months ago. Polite, flirting, happy to help, up till I stalled on making a decision (I was waiting on another offer), and downright hostile when I said that I wasn't interested.
Even went so far as to call the company and get them to call me directly. I had no issues with them, but the recruiters hostility has turned me off recruiters ever since.
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No, they were all caught up in a dawn raid by the RIAA, and even their 20 Linden Dollars didn't help them get out of it.
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No, but desire does not magically disappear when socialism is instituted. Pretending otherwise is just as simplistic as pretending that everyone is purely greedy or complete knowledge of the entire market is possible.
As a Rand fan (really an Adam Smith fan, which I find simplified as well, but Rand provides a simplified version of Smith...), I put forth the following claim: Both her perspective of capitalism as well as the ideas of socialism are simplistic. I further put forth, having read Marx' Communist Manifesto, that communism was a grab for power and an attempt to make the workers revolt against the investors.
If you've never read them, I strongly recommend reading all sources mentioned. It's illuminating.