Why don’t we have a Matt Levine for every industry?

November 30, 2024 12:55 AM

You have a filter with many layers: you need areas which fulfill a stringent set of conditions for such an educational newsletter, and you need a very unusual sort of individual, someone who is expert in the area and has preferably gotten their hands dirty, who is good enough to work professionally in it, but who also is capable of explaining it well, at a beginner level, many times, endlessly without burning out or getting bored, because of their intense interest in the area (but again, not quite intense enough to make them go do it instead of write about it).Each step here filters out most candidates, and by the end, there’s just not that much left. from Why So Few Matt Levines? [Gwern Branwen]
posted by chavenet (2 comments total)

Very interesting. It makes me more thankful for the newsletterists* I follow in other fields, who manage to produce explanations and insights despite everything that could get in their way.

* great word
posted by vincebowdren at 3:19 AM on November 30 [1 favorite]

Teaching or writing about something will also usually pay much worse: Matt Levine is doubtless compensated handsomely by Bloomberg—assuming he bothers to negotiate with them at all or they are not foolish enough to nickel-and-dime him & risk losing him to competitors like Substack—but probably not as handsomely as if he had kept rising through Big Law. [...] So you have a serious problem: anyone good enough to be ‘the Matt Levine of an area’ is also under considerable pressure to not be him.

Bingo.

We lose so many teachers and artists and writers and musicians and creators and etc. to "having to make ends meet". They can't develop or even practice their craft because they have to pick up an extra shift at Trader Joe's to make rent that month or they're too burnt out from their moneymaking job and can't focus. Or they give up their passion job because it doesn't pay enough and they can't keep up.

I ordinarily would say that this is a US capitalism thing, but honestly I'm not sure there's any place where artists and educators and teachers are really paid what they're worth.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:25 AM on November 30