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Inside: Market participation is exhausting; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/pla…

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An early 20th C painting advertising a magic show, it features a mustachioed, tuxedoed conjurer beating the Devil at poker with four aces in his hand, as a giggling demon on his shoulder whispers advice in his ear and the Devil looks chagrined. The image has been altered: the Devil now has Trump hair and orange skin. The demon perched on the magician's shoulder has the face of Adam Smith.

Pluralistic: Market participation is exhausting (30 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Three plus or minus five
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This reminds me of another topic you wrote about recently: professional awe.

One reason I wanted to a university professor is for job security: I didn't want to have to constantly worry about getting the next job. In other words, I didn't want to HAGGLE over my employment, and was willing to take low pay to get it. Yet increasingly, tenure is under attack in part because of the hagglers, who demand the right to renegotiate everyone's employment.

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Artemysia
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@ThreeSigma I think you'll find it's because management want to keep cutting everyone's pay and conditions, get rid of tenure, and make as much money as possible. The coasters, those crusty tenured academics who sit there doing the same old same old, do noting to help the case against this.
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@artemis
I was astounded by the attitude of many of my feckless colleagues that they deserved their positions and were not in any way the beneficiaries of fortune or circumstance. This easily led to “I got mine” and “I’m keeping my head down until this blows over”.

Not everyone, but too many.

@Artemysia
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Artemysia
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@ThreeSigma I know personally a faculty member who claims to 'negotiate his own worth' while benefitting substantially from union action to prevent unreasonable workload increases. Cannot see their own hypocracy. Meanwhile the institution benefits from the rest of us working above and beyond, hoping do demonstrate our value, on pitiful casual wages, locked out of professional development. Academia sucks.
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@artemis
Some of this is generational, but not all. It's the same kind of survivor bias that affects billionaires.

The thing is, it comes from a fundamental security in their positions, which I can't begrudge them. I want us all to have that security. Indeed, I thought I DID have it, until the f*()ing administration decided that they had to reduce costs by removing unpopular majors like Physics.

@Artemysia
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