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The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

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Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#111

Post by HyperSane »

armchairhacker wrote: post #33

Roughly how much "work" does every person in the world need to do so that every person in the world can live a minimal but decent lifestyle? Of course, some people will want and take more than "decent", some people are disabled so its unreasonable to expect and unfair to demand for them to contribute the same amount, some people genuinely like to work all sorts of jobs (including hard labor), and speaking of, there a…

GDP/hour of labor is a really interesting metric. For the US it is about $75/hour.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#112

Post by M95D »

HyperSane wrote: post #111
armchairhacker wrote: post #33

Roughly how much "work" does every person in the world need to do so that every person in the world can live a minimal but decent lifestyle? Of course, some people will want and take more than "decent", some people are disabled so its unreasonable to expect and unfair to demand for them to contribute the same amount, some people genuinely like to work all sorts of jobs (including hard labor), and speaking of, there a…

GDP/hour of labor is a really interesting metric. For the US it is about $75/hour.

Romania has the second highest GDP/h in EU. Why? Because of undeclared employment / illegal work.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#113

Post by NoThisIsMe »

WalterBright wrote: post #101
WaxProlix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they get to keep what they earn. And 'earn' what they're allowed -- 'earn' is kind of a weasel word in that sentence.

It is not a weasel word. If free market workers were only "allowed" some money, they would all be working at minimum wage. I personally know many working for well into 6 figures. It's under a non-free market system where the government sets your non-negotiable pay, i.e. what you're "allowed".

"What they earn" only has meaning with respect to some wage; if one works a job at some wage then what they earn is just a matter of arithmetic, no matter if that wage is set by a government, a monopolistic employer, "the free market", or something else.

A more interesting question is: how should we as a society set wages to best benefit society? Your answer, I gather, is to leave it to the market. I'm not sure what my answer is, but I do believe the current state of affairs ain't it. For one, I believe the guys that pick up the garbage (an essential and incredibly unpleasant, dangerous, and physically demanding job) should make at least as much as a software developer. If the market disagrees, then that's a small hint that maybe markets aren't the end-all-be-all of economic organization.

Try to transcend for five seconds the decades of propaganda you've sustained -- capitalism is not a law of nature hits bong.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#114

Post by slim »

throwaquestion5 wrote: post #74

This is from 140 years ago but feel very modern "The manufacturers have lost their bearings and know not which way to turn. They can no longer find the raw material to satisfy the lawless depraved passion of their laborers for work. In our woolen districts dirty and half rotten rags are raveled out to use in making certain cloths sold under the name of renaissance, which have about the same durability as the promises…

The age of obsolescence

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#115

Post by Natsu »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #107
least wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made a clear rebuttal to my original comment, supported by what Marx wrote. I'd ask that you take ownership of your own argument rather than shifting it over to Marx. Your assertion was this: > Extending this to all labor is evidently disingenuous as the argument is contingent on the exchange of money and I hope at this point, given the above, you can see why. In order for me to agree with your assertion, I'd hav…

Take a step back for a moment. The point your making is that wage slavery shouldn't exist as an interesting or separate category because all organisms have to work to live. This is like saying that sex trafficking isn't conceptually important because species must reproduce to survive. It's so wildly beyond the pale that it's difficult to categorize it as a particular breech of logic other than simply and fundamentall…

I think you'd have better luck by explaining your ideas further, rather than simply trying to associate ideas with emotionally charged words like 'slavery' or 'sex trafficking' by writing them next to things you dislike.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#116

Post by WalterBright »

NoThisIsMe wrote: post #113
WalterBright wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a weasel word. If free market workers were only "allowed" some money, they would all be working at minimum wage. I personally know many working for well into 6 figures. It's under a non-free market system where the government sets your non-negotiable pay, i.e. what you're "allowed".

"What they earn" only has meaning with respect to some wage; if one works a job at some wage then what they earn is just a matter of arithmetic, no matter if that wage is set by a government, a monopolistic employer, "the free market", or something else. A more interesting question is: how should we as a society set wages to best benefit society? Your answer, I gather, is to leave it to the market. I'm not sure what…

Your scheme of society (government) deciding everyone's wages. Many times. It doesn't work out very well. In fact, people in those societies are always trying to get into the US, where wages are set by the market.

BTW, you're free to donate whatever you feel is just to your garbageman.

> Try to transcend for five seconds the decades of propaganda you've sustained

Are you sure I'm the one affected by decades of propaganda?

For one thing, you appear to subscribe to the Labor Theory of Value, where someone's effort and time determine their wage, rather than what actually happens is what one produces that determines their wage. The LToV has been thoroughly discredited. It's pretty easy to discredit:

Consider someone digging a hole in the ground. He works hard, sweat pouring off his body. Then, he fills it in again. What value has he produced? Nothing. What would you pay someone to do such a thing? Nothing. I bet you pay for results, not sweat, when you pay someone to do something for you.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#117

Post by matkoniecz »

kazinator wrote: post #42
heavyset_go wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage labor is an imposition on people by people with power, wage labor is not a natural law or state of being. It is not unlike feudalism in that respect.

People engage in wage labor because they find it preferable to alternatives like hunting and gathering berries. However meager is their lifestyle, it's better than what it would be under the alternatives. That's what people are slaves of: consumption. People engage in wage labor because it sustains a certain level of consumption that alternative activities wouldn't.

Not exactly, all good hunting land was terraformed into farmland/cities or become closed off areas or at least hunting was banned.

There are last scraps, but except narrow exceptions general public is not free to hunt there.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#118

Post by Natsu »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #68
luckylion wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The concept of "wage slavery" is basically, "you are not free to not earn a wage because you will starve". Slavery usually includes ownership and force. I believe "wage slavery" is mostly used today because of the connotations of slavery that the user wants to hang their idea on to, but also clearly knows that it's not really it. Like "chicken holocaust" isn't really a holocaust, even though some chicken farms are…

> Slavery usually includes ownership and force. Ownership applies very specifically to chattel slavery, and does not apply to the vast majority of extant slavery today. > I believe "wage slavery" is mostly used today because of the connotations of slavery that the user wants to hang their idea on to, but also clearly knows that it's not really it. No, it’s a much more sincere concept than that, from an analysis that…

> No, it’s a much more sincere concept than that, from an analysis that workers are forced to do labor which enriches others—in an involuntary exchange for a disproportionately small fraction of the fruits of that labor—rather than doing either the direct labor which would satisfy their own needs or the collective labor whose fruits would be shared by all.

You say that, but that's not at all how it worked when that very thing has been tried by groups like the Khmer Rouge. Who, incidentally, took people from their homes at gunpoint in Phenom Penh, forced them to work for nothing, and even stole their kids from them. You can claim that's an implementation detail, but when you point out that workers collectives have trouble working on a very small scale, that's an indictment of the idea that this idea could work on a national scale, because organizational problems only get harder the bigger you are.

And despite the Khmer Rouge ostensibly doing that for the "collective good", being marched out of your home to farm rice at gunpoint seems to me to be a lot closer to what most people think of as "slavery" than choosing an employer, choosing what type of work to do, being able to obtain free education online for nearly anything, being able to start a business of one's own (including worker collectives, if you wish), and being able to get loans to start that business. All of which are regular activities for us "wage slaves" here.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#119

Post by lordnacho »

WalterBright wrote: post #116
NoThisIsMe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What they earn" only has meaning with respect to some wage; if one works a job at some wage then what they earn is just a matter of arithmetic, no matter if that wage is set by a government, a monopolistic employer, "the free market", or something else. A more interesting question is: how should we as a society set wages to best benefit society? Your answer, I gather, is to leave it to the market. I'm not sure what…

Your scheme of society (government) deciding everyone's wages. Many times. It doesn't work out very well. In fact, people in those societies are always trying to get into the US, where wages are set by the market. BTW, you're free to donate whatever you feel is just to your garbageman. > Try to transcend for five seconds the decades of propaganda you've sustained Are you sure I'm the one affected by decades of propag…

This thread feels so odd to me. I studied economics and I understand things intellectually the way Walter does. LTV for sure does not work. The market decides things by marginalism.

But I also live in the real world and I think there's just a gigantic number of people who are paid something different from what they ought to be paid.

We may just be seeing the beginnings of it now in the UK, with lots of strikes about to happen.

I'm also well read enough to have heard all the arguments, sadly. It's the same over and over. "It's not a real free market" as the counterpart to "communism has never been tried". "People get paid their marginal product" is another one.

"If you don't like it, why don't you just pay the guy/government yourself" is another wiseass answer I've seen in these debates.

The orthodox economically literate answer somehow to me is not satisfying and needs some reassessment.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#120

Post by state_less »

WalterBright wrote: post #116
NoThisIsMe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What they earn" only has meaning with respect to some wage; if one works a job at some wage then what they earn is just a matter of arithmetic, no matter if that wage is set by a government, a monopolistic employer, "the free market", or something else. A more interesting question is: how should we as a society set wages to best benefit society? Your answer, I gather, is to leave it to the market. I'm not sure what…

Your scheme of society (government) deciding everyone's wages. Many times. It doesn't work out very well. In fact, people in those societies are always trying to get into the US, where wages are set by the market. BTW, you're free to donate whatever you feel is just to your garbageman. > Try to transcend for five seconds the decades of propaganda you've sustained Are you sure I'm the one affected by decades of propag…

I think the main thrust of the point is that we often overlook and under appreciate the people who labor on our behalf. Hopefully Covid made it more clear how essential some of the less regarded professions are.

Personally, I’d us to take care of those folks like they took care of us. The market works okay, but isn’t perfect and can miss a number of negative externalities that it doesn’t always account for - and yet the bill always comes due.

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