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are you arguing that there is a moral difference between hiring someone to clean your house and hiring someone to change the oil in your car? or are you arguin

by lsc 11y ago

are you arguing that there is a moral difference between hiring someone to clean your house and hiring someone to change the oil in your car? or are you arguing that consuming services provided by workers who are paid $12-$15/hr is immoral in and of itself, regardless of the service in question?

mcguire 11y ago
I was replying to: "I know large numbers of educated professionals who clean their own homes but would be happy to pay $10-15/hour to have this problem solved. (I pay well over $15/hour, and need to turn to overseas folks for virtual labor.) Talking about the problem of human labor being obsolete during a time of labor scarcity is like worrying about mars being overpopulated." My interpretation of which is that yummyfajitas feels that labor is scarce and therefore overly expensive at $15/hour.
- lsc 11y ago
  >My interpretation of which is that yummyfajitas feels that labor is scarce and therefore overly expensive at $15/hour. Okay, I can see that. Your response was kind of an aggressive way of putting it, but yes I agree that it is kind of rude to complain that the market rate for menial labor is higher than you'd like, and to say that there is a labor shortage when the prevailing wage for unskilled work is still below what a reasonable standard of living costs, considering what that means for the less fortunate. On the other hand, it's pretty reasonable to say "I'll by services up to $x per hour, but not above that." This is a lot of the 'basic income' debate, because obviously, giving people survival-level money is going to dramatically decrease their willingness to do unpleasant jobs for survival level money. Personally, I kind of like that, as it removes a lot of what I think of the consent problem of capitalism... remove the threat of starvation, yes, and some people won't work at all, sure, but you also remove the moral comparison between work and slavery, and a lot of the anguish and ethical issues that come with firing someone. On the factual side of things, I wonder where parent commenter lives; as far as I can tell, it's pretty easy to get the cheaper sort of manual labor done for $15/hr in silicon valley. If you are paying more than that for a cleaning service, either you are a generous employer willing to pay above market wages (perhaps to secure a trusted person over the long term) or you are using a service that is eating up most of the difference.

by lsc 11y ago

mcguire 11y ago

I was replying to: "I know large numbers of educated professionals who clean their own homes but would be happy to pay $10-15/hour to have this problem solved. (I pay well over $15/hour, and need to turn to overseas folks for virtual labor.) Talking about the problem of human labor being obsolete during a time of labor scarcity is like worrying about mars being overpopulated." My interpretation of which is that yummyfajitas feels that labor is scarce and therefore overly expensive at $15/hour.

lsc 11y ago
>My interpretation of which is that yummyfajitas feels that labor is scarce and therefore overly expensive at $15/hour. Okay, I can see that. Your response was kind of an aggressive way of putting it, but yes I agree that it is kind of rude to complain that the market rate for menial labor is higher than you'd like, and to say that there is a labor shortage when the prevailing wage for unskilled work is still below what a reasonable standard of living costs, considering what that means for the less fortunate. On the other hand, it's pretty reasonable to say "I'll by services up to $x per hour, but not above that." This is a lot of the 'basic income' debate, because obviously, giving people survival-level money is going to dramatically decrease their willingness to do unpleasant jobs for survival level money. Personally, I kind of like that, as it removes a lot of what I think of the consent problem of capitalism... remove the threat of starvation, yes, and some people won't work at all, sure, but you also remove the moral comparison between work and slavery, and a lot of the anguish and ethical issues that come with firing someone. On the factual side of things, I wonder where parent commenter lives; as far as I can tell, it's pretty easy to get the cheaper sort of manual labor done for $15/hr in silicon valley. If you are paying more than that for a cleaning service, either you are a generous employer willing to pay above market wages (perhaps to secure a trusted person over the long term) or you are using a service that is eating up most of the difference.