We could swing in the other direction and consider hedge fund managers instead of ditch-diggers if you worry that ditch-diggers are too low status :-)
However I think the issue is a bit different. The original question was how to build a community successfully driven by status. Once we switch to jobs we are talking about money and power—pure status becomes secondary.
Besides, academia seems to me to be a poor example. Its parts where advancement doesn’t give you much in the way of money and power—that is, social sciences—became quite dysfunctional and the chasing of status leads to bad things like an ever-growing pile of shit research being published as “science”.
Once we switch to jobs we are talking about money and power—pure status becomes secondary.
Possibly, though I suspect status is more important relative to money in motivating employees than is commonly thought.
Its parts where advancement doesn’t give you much in the way of money and power—that is, social sciences [...]
I’m not sure you get a lot more money and power from advancement in other areas of academia. (Unless you count coaching the football team, in US universities. Plenty of money there.) It seems to me that there are better explanations if the hard sciences are less dysfunctional than the soft.
Whether things like
an ever-growing pile of shit research being published as “science”
are evidence that the academic community isn’t driven successfully (whether by status or by something else) depends on what you take to be the actual goals of academia as an institution. I agree that if we take those goals to be research that actually uncovers truths, and education that actually improves the minds and the lives of the educated, it’s debatable how well academia does.
We could swing in the other direction and consider hedge fund managers instead of ditch-diggers if you worry that ditch-diggers are too low status :-)
However I think the issue is a bit different. The original question was how to build a community successfully driven by status. Once we switch to jobs we are talking about money and power—pure status becomes secondary.
Besides, academia seems to me to be a poor example. Its parts where advancement doesn’t give you much in the way of money and power—that is, social sciences—became quite dysfunctional and the chasing of status leads to bad things like an ever-growing pile of shit research being published as “science”.
Possibly, though I suspect status is more important relative to money in motivating employees than is commonly thought.
I’m not sure you get a lot more money and power from advancement in other areas of academia. (Unless you count coaching the football team, in US universities. Plenty of money there.) It seems to me that there are better explanations if the hard sciences are less dysfunctional than the soft.
Whether things like
are evidence that the academic community isn’t driven successfully (whether by status or by something else) depends on what you take to be the actual goals of academia as an institution. I agree that if we take those goals to be research that actually uncovers truths, and education that actually improves the minds and the lives of the educated, it’s debatable how well academia does.
I think power is more important than commonly thought, but I accept that it’s not easy to disentangle it from status.
You do in some, notably law and business. And yes, I’m not saying that’s the main explanation why soft sciences do so much worse than hard ones.