Servants Without Masters
write.as
Servants Without Masters
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Re: Servants Without Masters
#2> It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me.
>And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me.
In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of societal and legal inequality. That isn’t the case when ‘being served’ by waitstaff or a barista, who can both walk across the street and afford the same level of service you got from them at a different establishment.
Re: Servants Without Masters
#3It’s not obvious, then, why “inverse Confucianism” has taken hold.
Probably at least in part because humans tend to actively reinforce pecking order. Institutions will let you escape it.
Humans will actively seek to put you back in your "place" and maintain the status quo where they are socially superior to you.
If you graduate college and get a better job, the college is okay with that. So is society, so long as you pay your student loans.
But mentors, masters, etc want to remain above you, even if they have to tear you down to keep their superior position. And it's really poisonous, insidious stuff to deal with.
Re: Servants Without Masters
#4I mostly agree with this description of the current western institutions, but I don't agree with the conclusion he came to as to why we accept these institutions.
The same way he points out that a human master can disregard their incentives in the interest of their subordinates, they can just as well disregard the interests of their subordinates and even their own incentives for some kind of personal enjoyment.
I don't think we picked the greater or the lesser of two evils, I think we picked the more consistent of two evils. If it were possible to plot "good" and "evil" on an axis, and if we were to plot to plot "human masters" and "uncaring system" on this axis, we'd see two bell curves. Maybe the mean of the "uncaring system" is farther towards the "evil" end of the axis, but the curve would have a very sharp peak, while the "human masters" bell curve would be a lot shallower, with a lot of variance.
I think we chose the systems we have now, or more correctly, the systems we have now are the way they are (nobody consciously chose them) because we as a society prefer things predictably kinda bad, rather than having the possibility of things being really bad or really good, this is made even worse when the outcome is decided by the whims of a person and not pure chance. At least when the system is predictable, we can plan around the bad parts, and introduce a system of checks and balances in an attempt to shift the mean more towards the "good" side. A benevolent dictator might be better than the best democracy, but a malevolent dictator is way worse than the worst democracy, for the majority of the people at least.
Re: Servants Without Masters
#5The faceless interaction with a Starbucks worker is associated with their freedom to switch between different worksites. In a culture where you have to have a personal relationship with your servants, they have less power to engage in the market. Yes, they're interchangeable to you and to Starbucks, but Starbucks and you are interchangeable to them.
Anyone who works in the service industry can tell you that their customers are terrible. Could you imagine how bad it would be if the proverbial lady demanding to speak to the manager was the manager?
Re: Servants Without Masters
#6> It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me. >And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me. In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of soci…
> In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of societal and legal inequality.
If the master has 10x the income of their servant, that means they are spending only 10% of their income on the servant. I.e., that's a manageable proportion to spend for the significant time-savings that having a servant represents.
The US (and many other countries) have income inequalities that far exceed a factor of 10. Honestly if the divide between the lowest and highest income was a mere 10x, I would not be worried about inequality at all.
And I can't agree with "driven by high levels of societal and legal inequality" either. While high societal and legal inequality certainly exist (and probably help somewhat), the concentration of capital is, I think, mainly caused by more fundamental market forces. Synergy, anti-competitive practices, barriers to entry, economies of scale, mergers, and so on. Lobbying for laws that entrench existing corporations is one of the factors, that could fall under "societal and legal inequality", but I think capital would concentrate even without that, albeit slightly slower.
Re: Servants Without Masters
#7I mostly agree with this description of the current western institutions, but I don't agree with the conclusion he came to as to why we accept these institutions. The same way he points out that a human master can disregard their incentives in the interest of their subordinates, they can just as well disregard the interests of their subordinates and even their own incentives for some kind of personal enjoyment. I don…
> I don't think we picked the greater or the lesser of two evils, I think we picked the more consistent of two evils. ... A benevolent dictator might be better than the best democracy, but a malevolent dictator is way worse than the worst democracy, for the majority of the people at least.
Yup. With all due respect for reactionary philosophies, this is why we still vote for our leaders, instead of going with the Confucian way and asking the gods for a king to rule us.
Re: Servants Without Masters
#8> It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me. >And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me. In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of soci…
Funny, a personal servant makes us uneasy, but a personal/executive assistant does not. What’s the difference? They’re both employees and both are being paid to do tasks that need to get done but aren’t worth their boss’s time.
Is it the extra indirection of the salary coming from company instead of personal coffers that does it? What if the person hiring the assistant has 100% ownership of the company like in the case of a small business?
Re: Servants Without Masters
#9> It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me. >And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me. In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of soci…
Funny, a personal servant makes us uneasy, but a personal/executive assistant does not. What’s the difference? They’re both employees and both are being paid to do tasks that need to get done but aren’t worth their boss’s time. Is it the extra indirection of the salary coming from company instead of personal coffers that does it? What if the person hiring the assistant has 100% ownership of the company like in the ca…
Generally the executive assistant is paid for by the company and he or she works for the company, just like the executive does. In fact there are lots of management types who don’t make significantly more that their assistants do.
Re: Servants Without Masters
#10> It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me. >And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me. In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of soci…
Funny, a personal servant makes us uneasy, but a personal/executive assistant does not. What’s the difference? They’re both employees and both are being paid to do tasks that need to get done but aren’t worth their boss’s time. Is it the extra indirection of the salary coming from company instead of personal coffers that does it? What if the person hiring the assistant has 100% ownership of the company like in the ca…
When I had a corporate job, the administrative assistant to the big boss in my department had real power as de facto gatekeeper and seemed to be quite well compensated.
It's a role that would have been called secretary at one time. The title change was intended to show more respect and try ditch some historical social baggage for such jobs.