The difference is someone has to do the labor to stop you from being homeless and starving. So, either you will do labor that can compensate them- or you should do the labor to stop yourself from starving. Starvation is the natural state of humanity
No sufficiently sophisticated political ideology is against labor (capitalist work is not synonymous with labor). On the contrary, most anti-capitalist ideologies are extremely pro-labor.
The question isn’t whether we need labor, that’s reductive and (currently) we obviously do. The question is how should labor be treated. Right now labor is a commodity to be bought and sold by capitalists. If we instead setup a system that decommodified labor, outlawing renting of humans (just as we have with buying humans), then even in a market-based economy you have far better compensation for labor.
Market-value for labor in a capitalist society is done as a commodity as I’ve previously said, so the goal is to reduce the price of the commodity as far as allowable for the business owners. This means a viable path towards profitability is reducing the labor force, or cutting compensation. This is why layoffs happen when companies are doing incredibly well, to increase immediate profits.
If instead there was a democratic assembly of workers that held their interests in common, there’d be no reason to just layoff a bunch of great workers during times of good business.
In short, we don’t need two different classes with two different relationships to capital. Instead of allowing one class to rent the other, compensate them as little as possible, and pocket the surplus value, outlaw that commodification of humans and allow the market to properly compensate workers.
This isn’t an end all solution, but market socialism is a massive improvement over capitalism, and once we dismantle the parasitic owner class (capitalists, landleeches, cops, etc.) we can focus on more interesting discussions about the merits of markets in certain situations (e.g they’re good at reacting to consumer desires, they’re bad at accounting for externalized costs like climate change, etc.)
With respect to climate change, it has more to do with the property relationships of the current economic system than the market itself. If natural resources were commonly owned and people had a recognized right to their value, polluters and other people harming the environment during production would have to pay citizens collectively proportional to the social costs. Then, prices would accurately represent the social cost of pollution involved in the production of the product
Starvation is the natural state of the individual. Society separates us from that. You will find that other things are also fairly natural, such as death, disease, and exposure.
No. Capitalism requires that we ‘work’. I.e. provide output that is valuable to the capitalists. In a normal society, there are other forms of value that merit the person existing.
But also, we’re human. One of the reasons I want people to not starve is that I’m not a sociopath. So sometimes the value a person provides to society is that they’re not starving in the middle of the street. There’s value in that.
No, the owner needs to do that to stay in business. You need to provide output valuable to the owners. The owner can decide whether you need to provide value to the customers or not.
Nepotism isn’t unethical. The owner of the company has every right to do what they want with their capital. There is nothing that says the owner must act in a rational or profit seeking way. A CEO must act in a profit seeking way, but that’s because he is accountable to the owner.
It’s also not necessarily bad business practice. You seem to be suffering under the misconception that the world is a meritocracy, and the ‘best’ person for a job should get it. That’s not how any of this works in the real world.
Regardless, you seem like a creative chap. You can come up with other examples of when a business owner might keep someone on payroll that wasn’t directly to extract value for the customer and instead to provide value for other reasons. I believe you can do it.
This is false. There are many types of work that the market fails to value accurately. An example of this would be economic public goods. A producer of these will not be rewarded anywhere near the social value of what they produce
I didn’t say you’re rewarded commensurate to value brought, but rather that workers produce output valuable to consumers.
The person I was correcting misattributed what work fundamentally is, from an employer’s point of view, to represent it from a point of view that seeks to “other” the employer.
In some cases, the valuation of work by the market due to it involving economic public goods can be insufficient, so people producing valuable public goods are forced to take on another job. In the case of public goods, there is nothing for the employer to appropriate and exclude others from to charge consumers for access, so employers don’t value it despite it being valuable to consumers. I don’t believe they were mis-attributing what work is under the current economic system
Unfortunately, for the support that manages to feed people, work must be done, and not every job can find enough people that want to do it sincerely to avoid some people hating their job.
That doesn’t mean employers should get away with being exploitative and abusive, or that reform isn’t needed. But the philosophy “no one should ever have to do something they don’t want to do” is unrealistic.
I agree that there should be rewards for doing undesirable jobs. It would improve coordination.
We could have a society without employers. Everyone could be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop. Such a society would give workers control rights over the fruits of their labor, which employer-employee relationships inherently deny. This denial makes being an employer by itself exploitative and abusive. We need to abolish the property relationships of work not reform
Morally, everyone has an equal claim to products of nature and the value they add to production. Today’s economic system denies people their equal claim. If society secured people’s equal right to natural resources and their value, the notion of coercion in the post would be reduced. Therefore, the economic system’s structure causes this coercion not just nature
The difference is someone has to do the labor to stop you from being homeless and starving. So, either you will do labor that can compensate them- or you should do the labor to stop yourself from starving. Starvation is the natural state of humanity
No sufficiently sophisticated political ideology is against labor (capitalist work is not synonymous with labor). On the contrary, most anti-capitalist ideologies are extremely pro-labor.
The question isn’t whether we need labor, that’s reductive and (currently) we obviously do. The question is how should labor be treated. Right now labor is a commodity to be bought and sold by capitalists. If we instead setup a system that decommodified labor, outlawing renting of humans (just as we have with buying humans), then even in a market-based economy you have far better compensation for labor.
Market-value for labor in a capitalist society is done as a commodity as I’ve previously said, so the goal is to reduce the price of the commodity as far as allowable for the business owners. This means a viable path towards profitability is reducing the labor force, or cutting compensation. This is why layoffs happen when companies are doing incredibly well, to increase immediate profits.
If instead there was a democratic assembly of workers that held their interests in common, there’d be no reason to just layoff a bunch of great workers during times of good business.
In short, we don’t need two different classes with two different relationships to capital. Instead of allowing one class to rent the other, compensate them as little as possible, and pocket the surplus value, outlaw that commodification of humans and allow the market to properly compensate workers.
This isn’t an end all solution, but market socialism is a massive improvement over capitalism, and once we dismantle the parasitic owner class (capitalists, landleeches, cops, etc.) we can focus on more interesting discussions about the merits of markets in certain situations (e.g they’re good at reacting to consumer desires, they’re bad at accounting for externalized costs like climate change, etc.)
With respect to climate change, it has more to do with the property relationships of the current economic system than the market itself. If natural resources were commonly owned and people had a recognized right to their value, polluters and other people harming the environment during production would have to pay citizens collectively proportional to the social costs. Then, prices would accurately represent the social cost of pollution involved in the production of the product
Starvation is the natural state of the individual. Society separates us from that. You will find that other things are also fairly natural, such as death, disease, and exposure.
How so? Isn’t the point of this meme that you have to work in society (in general) to not starve?
No. Capitalism requires that we ‘work’. I.e. provide output that is valuable to the capitalists. In a normal society, there are other forms of value that merit the person existing.
But also, we’re human. One of the reasons I want people to not starve is that I’m not a sociopath. So sometimes the value a person provides to society is that they’re not starving in the middle of the street. There’s value in that.
This is false. You need to provide output that is valuable to your consumers
No, the owner needs to do that to stay in business. You need to provide output valuable to the owners. The owner can decide whether you need to provide value to the customers or not.
Example: Nepotism.
Because unethical acts that are bad business practice are such a great example.
Nepotism isn’t unethical. The owner of the company has every right to do what they want with their capital. There is nothing that says the owner must act in a rational or profit seeking way. A CEO must act in a profit seeking way, but that’s because he is accountable to the owner.
It’s also not necessarily bad business practice. You seem to be suffering under the misconception that the world is a meritocracy, and the ‘best’ person for a job should get it. That’s not how any of this works in the real world.
Regardless, you seem like a creative chap. You can come up with other examples of when a business owner might keep someone on payroll that wasn’t directly to extract value for the customer and instead to provide value for other reasons. I believe you can do it.
I can think up all sorts of things, but that doesn’t make those things good business practice.
This is false. There are many types of work that the market fails to value accurately. An example of this would be economic public goods. A producer of these will not be rewarded anywhere near the social value of what they produce
I didn’t say you’re rewarded commensurate to value brought, but rather that workers produce output valuable to consumers.
The person I was correcting misattributed what work fundamentally is, from an employer’s point of view, to represent it from a point of view that seeks to “other” the employer.
In some cases, the valuation of work by the market due to it involving economic public goods can be insufficient, so people producing valuable public goods are forced to take on another job. In the case of public goods, there is nothing for the employer to appropriate and exclude others from to charge consumers for access, so employers don’t value it despite it being valuable to consumers. I don’t believe they were mis-attributing what work is under the current economic system
Unfortunately, for the support that manages to feed people, work must be done, and not every job can find enough people that want to do it sincerely to avoid some people hating their job.
That doesn’t mean employers should get away with being exploitative and abusive, or that reform isn’t needed. But the philosophy “no one should ever have to do something they don’t want to do” is unrealistic.
I agree that there should be rewards for doing undesirable jobs. It would improve coordination.
We could have a society without employers. Everyone could be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop. Such a society would give workers control rights over the fruits of their labor, which employer-employee relationships inherently deny. This denial makes being an employer by itself exploitative and abusive. We need to abolish the property relationships of work not reform
Morally, everyone has an equal claim to products of nature and the value they add to production. Today’s economic system denies people their equal claim. If society secured people’s equal right to natural resources and their value, the notion of coercion in the post would be reduced. Therefore, the economic system’s structure causes this coercion not just nature
Thank you for articulating this very important distinction!