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Sanitary workers do get paid decently for unskilled workers. People don't and shouldn't get paid based on some nebulous "how valuable their job is to society".

Sanitary workers do get paid decently for unskilled workers. People don't and shouldn't get paid based on some nebulous "how valuable their job is to society". That ignores supply and demand. The fact is we have more people that WANT to work as janitors than their are actual janitorial jobs, and so the wage gets driven. Whereas there are tons of people that need investors and can't find them (as anyone who gets even a modest windfall will quickly find out.) Or in other words, remove a random janitor from the world and the job will quickly be filled and life will go on. Remove a random investor and entire businesses will disappear/not be founded and the world will be noticeably worse off.

vbuwivbiu 9y ago
If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature, and they do so according to the weather of their emotions.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Houshalter 9y ago
  >If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Society wouldn't disintegrate without sanitary workers. It would get grosser, with people forced to do their own plumbing and dump their own trash. And even if all sanitary workers united and went on permanent strike, they could be quickly replaced within a few months. As I said, there's no shortage of people able and willing to do that job. If investors all quit we'd be fucked. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. No new investments. No new businesses. No new jobs. The economy stops growing. People can't buy cars or homes because there is no one to lend them money. Businesses can't get loans to invest in new more efficient processes, or new factories, or whatever. And no one can just come in and replace them, because it requires a lot of money and risk tolerance among other things. >Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature Not some law of nature, but economics. The prices of things are not arbitrary, they are set based on how strongly people value that thing divided by the supply. If you have a huge supply of people who can do a job, then the wage isn't going to be very high. And this is a good thing. It creates incentives for people to take the jobs that are most demanded. There is a big demand for programmers and a short supply. If a sanitary worker can switch to programming, the economy would be a bit more efficient. At the moment we need slightly more programmers and slightly fewer sanitary workers. If everyone did this it would eventually equalize and they would pay the same.
  - cannonedhamster 9y ago
    While I agree with your generally well-written reply, one point of contention I have is that of prices being set by markets. We don't live in a laissez-faire market society. We live in a society with many government enforced monopolies that limit supply arbitrarily and which routinely changes rules that limit consumer rights without any real recourse due to the massive power imbalance of the wealthy versus those not wealthy. Taken as a whole our current economic system is little more than a way to protect those who already have the most protection in the system. Second thought is in relation to economics. Economics is not some hard science where there can truly be said to be any kind of actual laws discovered. Supply and demand pricing isn't even a firm reality as marketing can vastly dictate market results. We really and truly are in the infancy of understanding economics as it ties so heavily into human psychology and unpredictable events.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  > Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous? Supply and demand are concepts we invented to help us better understand how markets work. They are purely descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive). They are quite effective at describing important aspects of market dynamics, which is why they are used so much. Of course, they are far from capturing all of the complexities of human commerce, but they are still incredibly useful.
- teilo 9y ago
  Supply-and-demand describes the value that humans place on goods and services that by their very nature are not infinite. In that, it is a description of human behavior, and because it is based on human action in aggregate, acts as a law of nature just as surely as if there were some "nebulous" unseen force determining the economic outcomes of a society. To change the law of supply and demand would require changing human nature itself, and human nature as it relates to the supply of goods and services, has been constant for all of recorded history.
  - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
    The hidden-hand is a myth. Humans lie and cheat and use psychology to manipulate groups (negating your assumption that "in aggregate" there's such a thing as wisdom of crowds - there's isn't).
    - teilo 9y ago
      Certainly they do. That is why societies make laws. I am not a Randian.
      - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
        people lie and manipulate without getting caught - the law is always behind the cheaters. Add to that the irrationality of humans and the idea that the market optimizes the values of goods & services is a myth: prices are arbitrary. (and I am not a communist)

vbuwivbiu 9y ago

If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature, and they do so according to the weather of their emotions.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Houshalter 9y ago
>If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved. Society wouldn't disintegrate without sanitary workers. It would get grosser, with people forced to do their own plumbing and dump their own trash. And even if all sanitary workers united and went on permanent strike, they could be quickly replaced within a few months. As I said, there's no shortage of people able and willing to do that job. If investors all quit we'd be fucked. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. No new investments. No new businesses. No new jobs. The economy stops growing. People can't buy cars or homes because there is no one to lend them money. Businesses can't get loans to invest in new more efficient processes, or new factories, or whatever. And no one can just come in and replace them, because it requires a lot of money and risk tolerance among other things. >Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature Not some law of nature, but economics. The prices of things are not arbitrary, they are set based on how strongly people value that thing divided by the supply. If you have a huge supply of people who can do a job, then the wage isn't going to be very high. And this is a good thing. It creates incentives for people to take the jobs that are most demanded. There is a big demand for programmers and a short supply. If a sanitary worker can switch to programming, the economy would be a bit more efficient. At the moment we need slightly more programmers and slightly fewer sanitary workers. If everyone did this it would eventually equalize and they would pay the same.
- cannonedhamster 9y ago
  While I agree with your generally well-written reply, one point of contention I have is that of prices being set by markets. We don't live in a laissez-faire market society. We live in a society with many government enforced monopolies that limit supply arbitrarily and which routinely changes rules that limit consumer rights without any real recourse due to the massive power imbalance of the wealthy versus those not wealthy. Taken as a whole our current economic system is little more than a way to protect those who already have the most protection in the system. Second thought is in relation to economics. Economics is not some hard science where there can truly be said to be any kind of actual laws discovered. Supply and demand pricing isn't even a firm reality as marketing can vastly dictate market results. We really and truly are in the infancy of understanding economics as it ties so heavily into human psychology and unpredictable events.
dwaltrip 9y ago
> Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous? Supply and demand are concepts we invented to help us better understand how markets work. They are purely descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive). They are quite effective at describing important aspects of market dynamics, which is why they are used so much. Of course, they are far from capturing all of the complexities of human commerce, but they are still incredibly useful.
teilo 9y ago
Supply-and-demand describes the value that humans place on goods and services that by their very nature are not infinite. In that, it is a description of human behavior, and because it is based on human action in aggregate, acts as a law of nature just as surely as if there were some "nebulous" unseen force determining the economic outcomes of a society. To change the law of supply and demand would require changing human nature itself, and human nature as it relates to the supply of goods and services, has been constant for all of recorded history.
- vbuwivbiu 9y ago
  The hidden-hand is a myth. Humans lie and cheat and use psychology to manipulate groups (negating your assumption that "in aggregate" there's such a thing as wisdom of crowds - there's isn't).
  - teilo 9y ago
    Certainly they do. That is why societies make laws. I am not a Randian.
    - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
      people lie and manipulate without getting caught - the law is always behind the cheaters. Add to that the irrationality of humans and the idea that the market optimizes the values of goods & services is a myth: prices are arbitrary. (and I am not a communist)