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Aren't Connections/Networking the death of the Invisible Hand? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by tradclasstruggle@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml

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I've noticed that currently kids in University are told to Network, so they can have Connections when they get to the job market. Which, you know, fair enough, it's better advice than whatever non-sense I got in my time.

The thing is, however natural these things are, as a social mechanism, are they implicitly saying that the invisible hand is utter bullshit? We all know it is, but from the liberal point of view.

I mean, if it isn't your degree, skills, etc. what gets you the job, but your network, you're admitting so called merit is a dead end. The invisible hand isn't choosing you, it's the very visible strings attatched to you that must buy your way into the job market, right?

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[–] CanaryFeigned@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Invisible hand is a concept explicitly invented to explain away the contradictions of the "Free market" and it's for the people who lack class consciousness.

Like let's say we have a group of 10 friends and they all come up with 1 business idea. 1 of those ideas remains open after few years and 9 of them fail. Why? "Invisible hand"

Even if you network under "free market" there's still the underlying class interests. Relationships usually do not form cross-class because of those underlying class interests. I can be a Homeless person with 9/10 Charisma and still end up on the streets.

To a libertarian the explanation is simple: "Invisible Hand" that's why. Or it's corruption.

But you can't incentivize equality because it would "Make people lazy" all you can do is have a state guard the Capital and let the "invisible hand" sort it out.

[–] tradclasstruggle@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

You're right, and I admit I was referring to the "free market" and not really to the invisible hand. Which still translates to, the job market clearly not being remotely free but heavily biased.

[–] CanaryFeigned@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

That's alright and you aren't wrong in the sense that a lot of Sociology tries much harder to escape Marxism than it tries to invent anything new.

It's how you end up with the likes of "Game theory" Like look at this:

Source: https://napkinfinance.com/napkin/game-theory/

This is to replace Marx's theory of class. One of the many attempts.

So instead of thinking about what the worker wants we strip ourselves down to individuals.

Let's use this as an example to show why Game Theory is so nasty and return to Networking, what even is that? Well it's not friendships, it's relationships specifically with monetary incentive in mind. Under Game Theory these relationships are treated as a math problem. If you fall behind and it's better off to lay you off, you're off the hook. It doesn't matter, to the Capitalists, if it hurts social trust in the long run, the police is there to protect Capital.

I think we're at a point where bourgeoise have been sniffing their own farts for so long they might not be aware of the long term consequences and they've lost sense of their own capabilities. Otherwise it makes no sense how Iran still stands, that was not the plan.

[–] tradclasstruggle@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Now this is an unexpected take, and granted you might be right, but I always understood the prisioner's dilema as a restricted view of relations between individuals at very similar status, or in this case of the same class in similar circumstances.

I did see an old Richard Dawkins documentary's about this many years ago, before we became a massive prick, and it did inform my view of this particular thought experiment. But I always took the tit-for-tat response to it, as an indicator of reasonable response to people on the level with you. Obviously, your manager/boss/etc will rarely give you a favourable answer, to begin with, or when it does it's with the prospect of getting something extra out of you, it's more of a prisioner-warden relationship.