You may remember Aaron Clarey — also known as “Captain Capitalism” — as one of the random manospherians interviewed for the cinematic abomination known as The Sarkeesian Effect. I don’t quite remember if he made it into the final cut of the official, er, “film.” He definitely did appear in Davis Aurini’s bootleg version, pontificating about the alleged lack of ethics in American journalism while, for some unknown reason, wearing a cravat.
Turns out that Mr. Clarey’s definition of “ethics” is a rather unique one.
On Monday, Clarey encouraged his blog readers to take advantage of a unique opportunity to earn some sweet, sweet cash — helping students cheat their way through college by writing their essays and term papers for them.
Clarey posted a pitch from his apparent pal Aleksey Bashtavenko, the head of something called Academic Composition, who started off by thanking Clarey for sending so many aspiring , er, ghostwriters his way in the past.
I’d like to personally thank Aaron and all of you who follow his blog Captain Capitalism, you guys have been the main driving force behind the recent growth of our enterprise.
After a slow summer, “Alex” reported,
we’re definitely getting much busier and this may well be our most lucrative semester yet.
Quite a few people have inquired about job opportunities with us and we weren’t able to receive help from all of you. Yet, we could definitely use all of the support we can get. Within a month, we will be entering the busiest juncture of the academic year and it will last all the way through the end of 2016.
As you can see, he’s all about the high-quality prose.
Alex, who claims his “full-time writers earn over $3,000 per month,” also has some job openings in the Craigslist spamming “subcontracting” department as well.
We’re also looking to expand our ranks of Craigslist subcontractors. Many of you have been posting for us regularly and invariably, this helped us get to where we are today. We pay $5 for each lead our subcontractors generate and another $1 for each day your ads have been live.
Presumably Clarey is getting paid for posting this. Is there anyone in the manosphere who isn’t some kind of grifter?
@Kupo
I love freethought blogs. Which blog is brony’s? I usually read pz, affinity, Shiv, and death to squirrels. 🙂
@Neremanth
Just following standard troll procedure of ignoring the questions you don’t want to answer, and concentrating on the sillier things people say.
Of course things went to insults after continuing in that vein for quite some time.
“What is the store of value if it’s not labor?” answered with a wall of text about fiat currency, which seems to boil down to “the store of value is not just based on labor given the existence of fiat currency”. Perhaps he got that from the cheating essay site?
Also, I’m getting the desire to find Fiat currency based on oddly designed compact cars.
@Megalibrarygirl
It’s http://freethoughtblogs.com/primatechess/ or you can just link on his nym. 🙂
Found one, now to see if I can embed properly…
@Sinkable John
The above is a comma splice.
To correct this sentence, the comma could be replaced by a period (in that case, the next word would be capitalized), a semicolon, a colon, or a long dash (an em dash).
@Josh
Long time lurker here who wanted to chime in with some support.
When the Great Recession hit, my job as a data analyst was basically phased out of every medium-to-large company in my area.
I spent the first year trying to find a similar job with no effect. Spent the second year applying back to the Buyer/Planner job I had before.
Third year I got discouraged and fell to alcohol until my SO threatened to leave me. Rightfully so.
Four and five year was the battle against the employment gap.
Then finally I found someone who gave me a chance… And I’ve been working for a year in a new field and excelling.
The point is that the job search can get rough, even soul crushing but never give up, some one will eventually give you a chance.
Uhm, General Anxiety Disorder* has yet to be included in the government (SSA)”Categories of Impairments” listings which are used to determine whether a person qualifies for disability payments or SSI. Now, someone can have a diagnosis of anxiety disorder AND one of the conditions/diseases likely to result in death within 12 months/disorders in a relevant impairment category, and that *will* qualify them for disability payments or SSI. If all the faux-news right-wing jerks would quit claiming that people get disability for things they literally cannot get disability for because there are rules on what qualifies that must be followed, that it’s *easy* to get disability (if you consider years of waiting, tons of paperwork, having to get a lawyer oftentimes who will then get their money for ‘helping’ you via a percentage of whatever your disability benefit payment is each month, being denied a couple of times and having to start the whole process all over, needing extensively detailed documentation from drs and others who have knowledge of your condition and have treated you for it when you probably haven’t been able to afford a doctor or treatment for a long time because you’re disabled and out of work and the ACA is only just starting to help people in this predicament to not have to go to the emergency room for anything medical….easy….good lord I’d hate to know what you think ‘hard’ would be.) or that people who get disability benefits are living the good life on that sum along with all the ‘free stuff’ they’re supposedly getting (reality: they’re not). Hell, they can’t even try and save a bit for all the future expenses they’ll have to face without any of the usual means that people who are employed full-time in a job that includes benefits and a 401K once they’re eligible for social security. This is even after the recent legislation passed in 41 states (? so far?) that allows those who were disabled before age 26 to open ABLE accounts which are similar to 529s/higher ed savings accts but the money can be used for ‘any qualified disability related expense’ which is broadly defined in this case. Of course right now only 3 states have their program up and running and only 2 of those accept enrollments by residents of other states which have yet to establish a firm schedule for starting up a program of their own (each state that has passed legislation on ABLE is responsible for setting up a program). Parents with intellectually disabled children worried about what would happen to their child when they were gone and knew that the expenses would only increase over time are to thank for this small positive change. Still, disabled individuals unable to have resources easily liquidated into cash over $2000/$3000 if a couple are still facing a bleak future as they age if they weren’t disabled before 26…then maybe it would be less common for people to go around repeating these claims as though they’re factual.
*I am not saying that anxiety is not a legitimate diagnosis or that it doesn’t get in the way of having a full and productive life for some with the diagnosis, or that medication used to treat it is available on the same basis as an OTC like tylenol or ibuprofen is – to all.
@ Paradoxical Intention
ebay? Plenty of copies. Also available via the Playstation Store.
That, along with Chrono Cross was one of those must-play titles I never got around to. Too bad neither got a PAL region release.
Wwwelp. I tried to make him interesting, but leave him alone for like five minutes and he ends up smearing poo all over the walls and getting put into the time-out corner. Just like a spoiled toddler. Sorry everyone!
@Paradoxy
Yes, I remembered you’d said it before 🙂
The author in question was a witchcraft oriented one – she’s not on the list you linked but that’s probably because she’s French. What I’ve read of hers doesn’t really fall into the cranky category but I’ve heard about other things – seems most people think that “some of her work is to be avoided, the rest is great”, but I dunno about that.
Incidentally, I think she lives pretty close to here. Takes pride in being “the last witch in Allier” but I’ll happily doubt that claim. Not least because I know three others, they just don’t write books.
Re : atheism
Ya I’m of the freethought flavor as well. The “anti-SJW atheists” (What the hell does being a reactionary have to do with atheism ? Rational much ?) piss me off big time but I’m glad for PZ.
Re : troll
I have a good epitaph for him !
(Yeah it just doesn’t get old)
@Megalibrarygirl
My blog is “Primate Chess”. I just started and want to post more often but I’ve been overwhelmed by too many things.
Edit: looks like Kupo already got it.
@Brony and Kupo
I’m checking it out right now. Thank you, I enjoy finding new stuff to read. 😉
@PI
The longest I was ever unemployed was about 8 months, which sucked but I live with family so my main problem was feeling guilty about my own inability to contribute to our finances. I’m glad you managed to find something after so long!
Also, seconding your opinion on FF7.
@Deimos Masque
I appreciate the support, thank you. I just did a phone interview yesterday, and they said my application was sent to the hiring manager. So, fingers crossed!
And I’m glad you managed to find something yourself. Your time unemployed sounds a lot tougher than mine!
@Josh
That’s great news, I’ve got my fingers crossed for you.
And yes, my unemployment run went pretty bad but it had more to do with the time and location at first.
After that the issue was more one of the employer prejudice against the “over qualified” Even my current boss said in our first interview “You know I can’t pay you anywhere near you’re last salary.”
For some reason many employers seem baffled by the idea that you may “just want to work” and don’t care if you make the same money as the last job you had.
My father faced a similar challenge when he was let go from his Operations Manager position. Fortunately, he also found a person who understood that he was applying to the lower paying job because he wanted to work.
@JS – Oh, it’s fine. My comment was intended to be self-deprecating, along the lines of “why on earth would anybody possibly not want to engage with me when my post is a giant wall of text for them to wade through?” It was long, and I wouldn’t have really expected even a non-troll to read it all through and respond to all the points. And he had a lot of other people asking him things, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t time for him to engage with them all, even if he hadn’t been banned. (Just to be clear though, the deprecation only referred to my own post: I didn’t mean to suggest there was any good reason why he didn’t respond to the two people I quoted in particular.)
________________
On the whole labour and the value of currency topic, what I find hard to understand is why people always view it as natural, correct, and the only way that things could be that the price for a person’s labour is what it’s worth to the buyer, not the seller. (This is used to justify dramatically unequal wages: they are unequal because different people’s labour is worth different amounts to the people who pay for it, due to their differing skills. If wages were set according to how much the labourer valued the time spent working that they could have been using to do something else – not the only alternative way of doing things, or necessarily the best in any sense, but just speaking hypothetically – then I would imagine there’d be a lot more equality as people surely don’t vary so much in that.)
I mean, I understand why that currently is how it works. More unemployed people than vacancies and people needing to work more than employers need vacancies filled leads to the employers being able to dictate the terms. I am also open to the possibility that this is the only system that does work: I’m not an economist so I honestly don’t know whether or not something else would be viable (though I certainly hope so). I just don’t understand why the price employers are prepared to pay is unquestioningly taken as by definition the fair price for the time given up and the effort expended, so that people talk about the very highly waged having “earned” their salary and expect that to provide the decisive point that wins their opponents over in discussions about taxation or reducing pay inequality.
It’s more complicated than that.
In an environment of perfect competition (lots of sellers with identical or interchangeable products – some labor markets also work like this) the price is going to be close or at the economic cost of production. Economic costs include a “normal profit” which is the profit the seller requires in order to keep the means of production in production. If you don’t make at least X profit on your corn/widget/labor, you just won’t bother working your land/capital goods/precious self because you can’t meet your personal needs with that income, so there’s no point. If the price is too low and you can’t get by, you’ll look for some other way to monetize your resources and withdraw from the market. This leaves buyers with a reduced pool of goods/labor from which to draw, resulting in the price being bid up, and higher prices draw some sellers back into the market. The end result is a price that results in just enough profit for the sellers to get by, and no more.
Most markets do not operate in an environment of perfect competition. The other extreme is the monopoly, which results in profit maximization. Note that anything higher than a normal profit is “economic rent,” which is economic waste. Utilities have near-perfect monopolies, which is why they are tightly regulated to keep prices near the normal-profit level, or simply run by the state.
The control that buyers have over a market (and this goes for both goods and labor) is that they want to pay the lowest price possible, and the number of sellers in the market and their relative levels of normal profit are what determine what that price will be. It generally works well for individuals in the goods-and-services market, as competition drives down prices for consumers, but not so well for individuals in the labor market, where the same mechanisms drive down prices for employers.
@Deimos Masque
Yeah, the interview I got had a question like “Why did you apply with us?” And I was stumped for a moment because I thought “I need a job” was obvious. And after that they were telling me I’d make slightly less than my old job like they were afraid it would be a deal breaker. I wasn’t sure why they thought that might matter to an unemployed person, but whatever. 😀
@Policy of Madness –
Thanks for that, that makes sense and was interesting. But that’s still an explanation of why people are paid what they are, not an explanation of why this is seen as being the fair value of their labour. It deals with economics, but my interest was in morality. Not why some people earn vast sums but whether it’s “only right and just” that they do. Like I said, I’m prepared to hear that nothing else would work, but even if that’s the case that doesn’t explain why it’s fair. It’s like the example of the water seller in the middle of the desert, who can probably get a million pounds a bottle from desperate people who happen upon the stall – but that doesn’t mean a million pounds is a fair price or the true value of the water.
It hadn’t occurred to me that things are the other way round for the individual in their capacity as a consumer than in their capacity as an employee, but that makes a lot of sense and it’s an interesting point.
@ Policy of Madness –
Sorry, I’ve realised you weren’t actually trying to address the fairness question, just to provide a better explanation than what I wrote about why things are as they are. So thanks for that! It was very helpful.
I think the thing with employers worrying about prospective employees making less than their previous jobs or being overqualified is that they see you as potentially “difficult” and a high risk to quit. They expect you to be disgruntled and always watching for a better opportunity. I don’t think they’re stumped by the fact that someone is willing to take any job.
@Neremanth
The fairness thing has two components. The first is the reality component: this is the way things are, and probably the only way they can be unless human beings fundamentally change or society transforms into something that I can’t even adequately imagine right now.
The second is the just-world component. People want to believe that the world is inherently just, that there is justice in what happens. Many religions bake this into their dogma, but even people who aren’t religious are susceptible to just-world bias. If the world is just, then people get what they deserve, and they deserve what they get. People want to believe that, and most people in my experience actually do. This is the origin of the way we excuse the misbehavior of the wealthy and powerful, but crack down hard on the misbehavior of the poor. The wealthy and powerful must just be better people, because the world is just, and justice would not allow terrible human beings to prosper.
It’s a fallacy, but it’s a very common one. I think you’ll find that most people haven’t thought their morality all the way through, and just fly by the seat of their pants when they decide what is fair and what is not fair. Therefore, it’s easy for the just-world fallacy to lead someone to believe that one person deserves a high salary (because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t get one) and another person does not (because if they did deserve one, they would have one).
@ Policy of Madness
Well, that makes a lot of sense. I was kind of expecting someone to answer “why do people think that’s fair” with some argument that it is fair (whether sincerely putting forward one they believed themself or simply outlining what people who think it’s fair would say), but an explanation that operates at a less conscious level answers my question very well too. Thanks.
(The reality component doesn’t logically preclude anyone from saying “this is the way it has to be, but we totally admit it’s not fair”, but I guess the just-world component deals with that.)
@Neremanth
You will definitely get arguments that it is fair. The story is that the people with the giant salaries are higher-contributing to society, that they generate more social good than the people who flip burgers. You can immediately see a problem, because “social good” is usually measured as “shareholder value,” and even that isn’t valid because companies that pay their CEOs tens or hundreds of millions of dollars often don’t get much shareholder value for the money. They argue that they need to give these people massive payouts to attract and retain the talent (implying that they deserve the massive payout) but then the company fails to prosper. Often this is due to what’s called the principal-agent problem (the agent, the CEO, has different priorities from the principal, which is the company) so that huge paycheck doesn’t even accomplish what it’s supposed to accomplish.
But if it did? Shareholder value is a very poor proxy for social benefits, yet the equation between the two goes mostly unchallenged. This is a bias inherent in economics as a field – that social good is best measured in terms of money – and economics as a field has an enormous influence on Western society.
Some months after I got my current job, I was told that the fact that I had been at my previous job almost ten years and only left because the entire office was closed down was a fairly strong factor in the hiring decision: it indicated that I was unlikely to jump ship at the first interesting offer that came along.
(Where I work does a whole lot of customization work for particular customers, so having the person who did a particular customized setup five years ago still available for questions can be a very good thing…)