this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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Aren't Connections/Networking the death of the Invisible Hand? (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 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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[–] tradclasstruggle@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours 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.