A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Good, an MBA is just a degree in exploitation. I will fight you over this take like a goddamn racoon over the last piece of food in the dumpster.
Econ is for soothsayers, idiots, cultists and abusers, don't bother to change my mind.
the entrails say... "something, something, irrational exuberance"
I find the field is only good when combined with humanities as a focal point, e.g. economic history or economic anthropology. It needs grounded otherwise it goes full American Psycho.
Yeah, yeah, that's the problems with you entrailists, always buying into the fantasy of deciphering the economy from some gore. Now a principled economic astrologer, like myself? Well, let's just say MY portfolio has never hit red.
I am glad you say soothsayers, I have been saying for decades, and even in this comment section before getting to this comment, that macro-economics is essentially astrology for MBA bros
But what if you're right and I want to join?
People are often young and naive when they choose what to study. There are some decent people and some assholes among business majors, just like with most other groups of people if you look closely.
There are certainly nice and polite people everywhere, but decency is a matter of ethics in this context, I would say. At least that's how I'm reading it.
Like I'm a nice guy, but I'm not going to pretend it's decent of me to replace data workers with software automation, even if it's just the natural outcome of me putting my education into practice.
Had a friend who was, for whatever reason, in an ethics class where everyone else there was in business. Apparently the professor at one point told them outloud something to the effect of “oh my god, I have never seen a more unethical group of people”(heavily paraphrased, this was a decade ago).
Good and bad exist everywhere, but certain programs do certainly attract greater numbers of good or bad people than others. “How to generate shareholder wealth and make yourself rich” is going to attact a certain type of person more than other types.
Yeah but an MBA is also a post graduate degree. A huge chunk of MBAs have undergrad degrees in something like STEM or humanities.
And with the power of that knowledge they decided to specialize and get a masters of exploitation.
Everyone should have a strong base in STEM and the humanities. It irks me to no end when STEM majors can't write, communicate, or understand a wider historical context just as it irks me when humanities majors claim to not understand basic algebra or scientific concepts. It's fine to have a preference, but an expert engineer should have a passing familiarity with philosophy and ethics, just as a historian should have a passing familiarity with scientific laws and mathematics.
Then there's business majors who have no familiarity with anything at all. If I had my druthers, "business school" wouldn't even be an option at a university.
Not to knock college undergrad core curriculum, but that strong base ought to be acquired before graduating high school.
No can do, gotta teach students how to pass the tests that gives the school federal funding
That’s what I’ve been saying since I was in high school. Going into college, the first year felt like High School 2.0. My English professor outright asked, “Why are you in this class? I have nothing I can teach you.” Funny how we can take a test after admission to show us which subjects we need remedial classes for, but no test for us to opt-out of subjects that we’ve already mastered. Still gotta take our money and waste our time because, you know, “requirements.”
Edit: I’ve heard some people say there are opt-out tests some places, but that clearly isn’t the default. Not at the community college I went to.
The world is powered by a collective STEAM engine:
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics.
Arts is such a fundamental component for communicating advancements and inspiring the creativity that fuels further discoveries.
But, but KPI’s are how we know line go up.
Checkmate, artists!
The artists can assist by drawing a line that goes more up. Problem solved!
MBAs have destroyed the world. We used to have good paying jobs and affordable rent.
I'm sure there's probably a few good MBA's out there, using applied psychology to trick assholes into spending their money on the greater good.
I've never met one but, statistically, you know?
Hi, 'tis me, leftist with a business degree and minor in psychology that works in marketing. 🙃
"You know, spending money on welfare and education is a lot less expensive than prisons and having your stuff stolen."
I’ve considered working in marketing, but I refuse to use my powers for evil.
The real problem is believing there's an objective difference between art, science, humanities, etc. It's an artificial division under capitalism between what's directly useful for profit, control, etc. and what's not.
Regardless, yeah fuck business school. That's got no value to anybody.
Stem major checking in for an arts/humanities major to hold hands with
As a STEM graduate, I would much rather hold hands with an econ graduate than a business graduate. Economists can do real good for the world, while MBAs seem to be mostly harmful.
Economists can do real good for the world
If you put 10 economists in a room, you’ll get 11 opinions.
I have worked at several startups where I was like employee number ten, and you can always feel the culture shift the moment they start hiring MBAs.
Yea. I can't think of a single MBA I've met that wasn't a piece of shit.
Cause theyre literally given inflated egos about "how great your business acumen is" when really theyre morally bankrupt parasites who finished (compared to real degrees) coloring books.
Fucking finally we're talking sense.
The ownership class and their mba lackeys have done a real bang up job not only separating the two cultures, but getting them both to think through the mental model of business and profit whenever they're pondering how to practice their profession.
As an econ major with a BS, please don't lump me in with the econ majors who went to business school for a MBA. I like cool math, not venture capitalism cancer.
Prove your purity
The only thing funny about the Laffer curve is how little it now matters.
It was used to justify Reagnomics, which then immediately proved we weren't nearly as high on the Laffer curve as we assumed. Because of this, we have concrete evidence that lowering taxes on the rich doesn't increase government revenues.
Yet we're still doing that 50 years later. Despite the only vaguely scientific thing behind it proving it doesn't work decades ago.
Imagine being in a catholic family, reading the Bible, and always walking away thinking that Judas did the right thing (despite everything else the Bible says). That's US economic policy for the last 50 years.
Again!
My favorite paper published last year includes the following, now scientifically proven statements:
The preponderance of the evidence shows that rising income inequality slows economic growth [3], [4], [5], [6]. Recent analyses have shown that once one controls for wealth inequality the negative effect of income inequality on economic growth falls away as statistically insignificant, and that it has in fact been wealth inequality that has been detrimental to growth either in an inverse linear form or in the form of an inverse u-shape À la Kuznets [7], [8], [9], [10].
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003801212400003X
So economically speaking, Econ math just proved that we need to eat the rich in order to improve anything.
From the same paper above:
From a policy perspective, the ongoing increase in the concentration of wealth is one of the main socio-economic failures of our time [1]. Not only is it likely to depress economic growth in some countries, as we measure here, it has fueled social unrest, political polarization, and populist nationalism.... redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor may well be growth-enhancing in most countries
When your econ program is in a business college, they push the MBA hardcore. So glad I never entertained that.
I have a PhD in research psychology, and worked with researchers in a lot of other disciplines. I have been mansplained about topics in my field (including the topic of my dissertation) by more MBAs than any other field. More often than not they are vastly oversimplifying or just getting things completely wrong. Try telling them that though and it's like talking to a wall.
I wonder if their general incompetence at most things makes them desperate to be good at something that actually matters to the point that they feel the need to act smart about shit they don’t really understand. Especially when you think about the nature of their field and how horrible their peers are/also are it really starts to be a bad feedback loop. And then there’s the extra fun part about the kind of people that MBA programs attract in the first place.
It must be awful, them constantly having to justify their existence as parasites. I’d feel bad for them if they didn’t cause huge amounts of damage at all levels while avoiding therapy.
Yeah I do think there is something to the culture of MBA programs. All the information available for current and prospective students at my university was very much of the tone that mbas change the world. The halls of the business school were filled with famous rich people who'd visited the school or gifted money along with plaques about MBA grads and the amazing things they did. It's just full of subtle reminders about how the degree is a gateway to being some big powerful person. I'm sure that makes an impact on the students' attitudes.
