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Servants Without Masters

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Re: Servants Without Masters

#31

Post by lacampbell »

newhotelowner wrote: post #25
empath75 wrote: post #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 soci…

Is it really that case? Having maid is pretty common in bay area. They come in once or twice a week to clean your house, and do laundry. There are many people I know had someone come and cook meals for them on weekdays. I moved from bay area to Ohio for a business. I bought a used Jeep from a dealership out of town. The salesman that sold me the car lives where my hotel is. He would pick up/drop off my car from my bu…

The Singapore/Hong Kong/Taiwan style arrangement is for the maid to live in with you. Conditions are often pretty harsh, ie passports are with-held, phones are confiscated, and they have one day off a week. Not really comparable to a once or twice a week visit from the maid.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#32

Post by x3haloed »

x3haloed wrote: post #28
temporaryvector wrote: post #4

I 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…

Yes. Using a system takes partially out of the equation, which is more fair, especially in cases where huge numbers of the involved.

Sorry, it takes 'partiality' out.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#33

Post by x3haloed »

x3haloed wrote: post #30

I feel Ike the feeling of being served on our society has everything to do with economic equality. There are professions that pay more or less, and people with professions that pay more are able to afford services that people with lesser paying professions can provide. Using words like "profession" and "service" tend to imply that these are normal, usual things that happen in "free" societies, a.k.a. capitalistic soc…

Hmm... Maybe I've been stuck by a realization: there is no such thing as a free society, only societies where you can or cannot choose your master.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#34

Post by creaghpatr »

empath75 wrote: post #9
Swizec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even the assistants often times have their own assistants, very common in Hollywood.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#35

Post by eevilspock »

empath75 wrote: post #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 soci…

> who can both walk across the street and afford the same level of service

The people (often of color) who work in the back of the nice restaurants everyone with means loves to eat at can't afford to eat there, much less live near their work.

The nannies who take care of the children of high earners (enabling them to be high earners and avoid the stress of a big chunk of parenting) can't afford to have nannies for their own kids. In fact, they often end up having less time with their own children than they do with their "masters" kids.

I could go on and on.

Your cherry picking the waitstaff (usually white people, who get high tips) and baristas makes your argument better; though I'm sure most baristas will disagree with you. Making coffee in a rather social setting is a rather nice job where you interact with customers, and can be fun (I've done it). What about the janitors, who usually work at night, alone, cleaning our toilets (I've done that too)? It is very alienating. If you did that for a year, the stuff Marx wrote about stops being some intellectual hocus pocus and actually starts to ring very very true.

What about the farm workers that pick your strawberries and blueberries for that $14 plate of pancakes?

Again I could go on and on.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#36

Post by narrator »

empath75 wrote: post #29
newhotelowner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that case? Having maid is pretty common in bay area. They come in once or twice a week to clean your house, and do laundry. There are many people I know had someone come and cook meals for them on weekdays. I moved from bay area to Ohio for a business. I bought a used Jeep from a dealership out of town. The salesman that sold me the car lives where my hotel is. He would pick up/drop off my car from my bu…

> Having maid is pretty common in Bay Area I did say it requires grotesque levels of income inequality. In all seriousness, a maid service coming in once a month is not the same thing as having live in servants.

One of the problems with live-in servants is this is likely to create an employer/employee relationship between you and your servant which creates a massive tax, liability and paperwork headache. That's why it's far less common in the U.S.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#37

Post by gfody »

> we’ve settled on the greater of the two evils

in retrospect it'll've been the smoothest option for our eventual transition to submitting to algorithm/machine bosses. first get comfortable submitting to humans acting like machines, then replace them with machines.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#38

Post by asdasdafsg »

x3haloed wrote: post #30

I feel Ike the feeling of being served on our society has everything to do with economic equality. There are professions that pay more or less, and people with professions that pay more are able to afford services that people with lesser paying professions can provide. Using words like "profession" and "service" tend to imply that these are normal, usual things that happen in "free" societies, a.k.a. capitalistic soc…

You are mistaken. Exploitaition supposedly occurs because of unequal workplace relationships that lead to workers producing above what is the market value of their labor. Marx did not deny a free and equal labor market, although he treated the notion with some contempt. The closest thing you're referring to is the notion of commodity fetishism, but applied to labor as a commodity.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#39

Post by _bfhp »

I like the job Nathan Robinson did on this topic with his essay "Service With A Smile" at Current Affairs:

> In every restaurant, except a buffet (and I am not pro-buffet), I feel like an aristocrat who pays someone to put on his clothes for him. I know I can supposedly mitigate this by being polite and tipping well. But it’s the whole concept of paying someone to feed me that I don’t like. Yes, obviously, it’s better if I pay someone well than if I pay them badly, and better to be appreciative than abusive. It doesn’t make any more of a difference to my gut reaction, though, any more than it would if I found out that the millionaire who pays a valet to tie his cravats for him is extremely generous in compensating said valet.

Re: Servants Without Masters

#40

Post by rahimnathwani »

x3haloed wrote: post #30

I feel Ike the feeling of being served on our society has everything to do with economic equality. There are professions that pay more or less, and people with professions that pay more are able to afford services that people with lesser paying professions can provide. Using words like "profession" and "service" tend to imply that these are normal, usual things that happen in "free" societies, a.k.a. capitalistic soc…

"If everyone earned the same living, then there would be very little serving happening"

So, if lawyers and surgeons' compensation were similar, lawyers would do their own operations, and surgeons would represent themselves in court?

You seem to be arguing that, if all specialisations have equal market value, then there are no/few gains from specialisation.

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