She was wrong that she was better, but society still failed her by having nothing more productive for her to do than cleaning rental apartments, and no means of providing income/retraining in the event that there was no suitable work for her.
120 IQ people should not be doing 80 IQ work. This isn't about "better"; it's about suitability to the work. When the 120-IQ person is doing 80-IQ work, it's an injustice for two reasons. 1) She's bored, miserable, and underpaid relative to what she'd be earning in a functional society. 2) The 80-IQ people who want and enjoy jobs cleaning apartments now have her as competition, and can be paid less and treated worse.
Some people of high intelligence are not suited to what you would probably call high IQ work.
I know someone who was extremely intelligent, way above 120 IQ. She couldn't handle an academic research job because she wasn't self motivated or curious. She couldn't handle a job in finance because of the stress. So she's now teaching calc, a job which is most likely 20-30 IQ points below her, and is reasonably happy doing so.
That's just two jobs. I'm sure there other jobs where she could use her IQ that aren't as pointless as academia or stressful as finance where she could make use of her intelligence.
Teaching high school math is, all considered, a pretty good job. I'm not saying that anyone deserves their ideal job, or the "right" job for their IQ level (which for a 140+ would probably be research). I'm saying that something is seriously wrong if people who are smart enough to get advanced degrees are cleaning hotel rooms. Either society is failing, or too many people are getting advanced degrees (obviously, both are true).
I'm really curious why you consider research to teaching to be an acceptable step down, but editing documents to manual labor is not an acceptable step down.
Is it simply because teaching (like research) is still done by white NYT reading liberals, whereas manual labor can be done by religious mexicans who like to watch cockfights?
Teaching is about as creative as waitressing. You learn to play games and make people like you in the hopes that they will reward you after your service is complete (tips, student evaluations).
As for salary, teaching at university pays less than many lower skilled jobs (e.g., waitress at high end restaurant, plumber, MTA worker).
Ah, so we simply need to match people with work "suitable" for them?
Socrates also wondered about how best divide labor. He couldn't come up with a good argument, so he proposed to invent a lie:
Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are our brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. . . . But as all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. . . . if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are raised to honour, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the state, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?
I think you should just ignore his 'IQ' comments and treat it as people having skills. She has skills/training/knowledge that she gained in university and on the job before being forced to work other jobs that exercise none of her skills. We don't necessarily need to 'match people with their skills' in Futurama-esque "job-chip" type way, but isn't it a waste of resources to have her spend time and money gaining skills/knowledge that will never be put to use?
But can you decide that the skills/knowledge she's gained as a house cleaner were worthless?
In the real world this person is probably going to get a writing job eventually and when she does her perspective on life is going to be her most valuable asset. As this article shows that perspective was changed, likely for the better, from the fact that she was forced to clean houses for a while.
You can't plan out people's lives and make everything fair and even-keel. There are going to be bumps in the road like recessions and there's no way you can tell what impact that will have on people and that's exactly why you shouldn't try.
I'm all for society making sure people don't starve to death or go homeless but beyond that you have to let nature run it's course
> In the real world this person is probably going to get a writing job eventually and when she does her perspective on life is going to be her most valuable asset.
Probably?
What fraction of folks with that degree ever sell anything that they've written, let alone make a living writing?
In the real world this person is probably going to get a writing job eventually and when she does her perspective on life is going to be her most valuable asset.
A lot of industries claim that they value well-roundedness, but the fact remains that her experience cleaning is going to be valued at zero in determining the jobs and assignments that she gets.
120 IQ people should not be doing 80 IQ work. This isn't about "better"; it's about suitability to the work. When the 120-IQ person is doing 80-IQ work, it's an injustice for two reasons. 1) She's bored, miserable, and underpaid relative to what she'd be earning in a functional society. 2) The 80-IQ people who want and enjoy jobs cleaning apartments now have her as competition, and can be paid less and treated worse.