Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

["Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
news:bhp1k4$6c9$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> Chad R. Meiners <crmeiners@hotmail.com> wrote:
> :
> : "Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote in message
> : news:bhld8s$6v5$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de...
> :> Chad R. Meiners <crmeiners@hotmail.com> wrote:
> :> : While I did make $10 once for programming a neighbor's VCR, I would
> : hardly
> :> : call that 'type' of programming a profession ;-)
> :>
> :> I a sense though it is, here.
> :
> : What?!!?
>
> In the following sense.
> If you help some neighbour or friend installing the lates RPC
> patch, once, or twice, then in a non-technical sense this isn't
> professional work, for sure.

Okay. Thank you ;-)

> If organisations rely on cheap students' work to keep the computer
> network running, then this is professional work, but not professional
> payment, insurance, etc.

Well sure--I won't argue that a student cannot become a professional network
administrator and get underpaid.

> Walls in students' hostels are regularly painted by a handful of students
> who will receive payment which seems lower than what painters would get.
> Students are not painters in general, and this isn't charity
> work either.

> Painters can't do their job because students are in a
> position that allows them to be cheap.

So what?  It keeps the painters on their toes.  Anyway perhaps the
experience will allow one of the students to take up a profession in
painting.

> If in a city like Cologne (about 1Mio inhabitants) students would have
> to be regular employees, instead of working for just the "cash of this
evening"
> the estimate is that the Cologne gastronomy would break down immediately.
> (Professional waiters and students will pay quite different sums to health
> insurance companies, and students usually do not pay for liability
insurance
> because that is done by their parents for the whole family, for example.)
>
> If a student sees a handful of EUR for the delivery of some program
> or service, he or she doesn't think that much about how this sum is
> sufficient for a living as a professional. I see them as freelancers
> but they charge much less, which is part of what companies find
> attractive.
>
> The effect of this kind of work, and employment, is that those who
> do this work as their profession (programmers, painters, ...)
> suffer from price dumping on the labour market.

Then the professionals will need to offer something more than the students.
Don't worry though, the students will eventually becomes professionals and
have to deal with the students, too ;-)  An interesting social problem, but
one that we should take to email if you care to.