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> If compensation could be a direct output of an algorithm ... people could agree that this person is being paid fairly Nope. Then they would start accusing t

by abtinf 9y ago

> If compensation could be a direct output of an algorithm ... people could agree that this person is being paid fairly Nope. Then they would start accusing the algorithm of being racist, sexist, otherist. They would cite institutional bias - bias so pervasive everyone has it even while no individuals do - and demand the algorithm be tweaked for their favored lobbyists. The problem with pay transparency is not that it doesn't work; the problem is that the entire concept is immoral and evil. How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction. No one else should care about your income; they should focus on maximizing their own value and find those for whom their services are the most valuable. The kinds of benefits valuable to an individual are unique: everyone has a different in background, life choices, purpose, and capability. There is no way to account for the fact that person A values work that involves travel, while person B is interested in work with a predictable schedule; and it is improper for person B to look at person A's compensation and make judgements about their own compensation, not because it is impossible to analyze all of the factors, but because person B must decide their own purpose and work toward it. This is simply another manifestation of the inequality debate. Equal is Unfair is a great book that unpacks the issues of inequality: https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Unfair-Americas-Misguided-Inequality/dp/125008444X https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Unfair-Americas-Misguided-Inequ...

09094920394314 9y ago
>The problem with pay transparency is not that it doesn't work; the problem is that the entire concept is immoral and evil. How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction. so how does this differ from any other good/transaction where we DO share prices? Why is it not immoral and evil that I can compare prices between amazon and walmart? All the problem you describe can be resolved by employers either justifying themselves to their employees like adults, paying more, or the employees quitting. All of which are free market actions, the first of which having the added bonus of humanising the relationship. The only downside: you can't just treat your employees like "human resources" and get away with it as easily. You need to treat them as people
- abtinf 9y ago
  The difference is that every individual is unique in their ability to create value and their compensation preferences. A product on Amazon has a market price - the thing being exchanged is an objective, metaphysical fact and people assign it a value. In areas of labor where the uniqueness of individuals is less of a factor, you will generally find that pay transparency is the norm. This is often unskilled/low-skilled labor in jobs that cannot offer meaningful non-pecuniary compensation. But most people do not work in such jobs, and even in most manual labor jobs there is a strong element of applying your mind to do good work. As such, your purpose as an individual is much more important. Pay transparency detrimental to you, as an individual. To live a happy life, you must figure out your own purpose and use your mind to achieve it. Happiness is not the result of income, nor is money required to be happy. Your happiness is a function of the achievement of the values you have defined for yourself. If you allow the income of others to influence your decision making, you are only hurting yourself. You should not leave a job that is satisfying in its essentials - that is, it fits with your purpose, you do meaningful work - merely because you discover someone else makes more; that would only hurt you. You don't know - can't know - their purpose, their value, their preferences, that lead to their income and work environment.
  - 09094920394314 9y ago
    >Pay transparency detrimental to you, as an individual. To live a happy life, you must figure out your own purpose and use your mind to achieve it. Happiness is not the result of income, nor is money required to be happy. Your happiness is a function of the achievement of the values you have defined for yourself. If you allow the income of others to influence your decision making, you are only hurting yourself. You should not leave a job that is satisfying in its essentials - that is, it fits with your purpose, you do meaningful work - merely because you discover someone else makes more; that would only hurt you. You don't know - can't know - their purpose, their value, their preferences, that lead to their income and work environment. How about we let people judge that themselves? It's everyones job not to hurt themselves, so how about we make sure everyone has as much information as the most powerful in the room. Otherwise, let's make the top 1% "happier" and impose a 100% tax on all income more than 3 standard deviations from the median eh? //edit: I saw in another comment, you talked about pay transparency not making the wages rise. It might now. But then it will cause people to quit jobs where they are not valued, increasing their happiness. //edit2: also, you sidestepped the question. Humans are not as unique as random numbers, amazon goods are not all the same. If there are 5 brands of battery, we don't say it is immoral to share the prices and compare because "each brand carries its unique and special history". It's a battery, 5V, X watt, Y $. Likewise, if I get hired to design a product, they don't care about my extensive research in japanese mud ball culture. I'm a project designer, education X, working hours Y, pay Z, expected outcome for the company Z*(1+some positive number).
trowawee 9y ago
> How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction. If one party in a negotiation has extensive knowledge of the market and the other has a deliberately obfuscated view of the market, there is no way to have an equal negotiation. Which is what companies have relied on for years to systematically underpay certain classes of people.
- abtinf 9y ago
  > there is no way to have an equal negotiation This is true in every negotiation in every part of your life. What does equality even mean in such a context? Epistemologically, there is no way for you to have enough context about either the other party or the other party's other counter-parties to inform your negotiation in a meaningful way. The only facts available to help you price your services are what others will pay for it, but this is not the same as pay transparency. Pay transparency is the price of other people's services, not yours, and it doesn't take into account your context. Ethically, only you can know the value of the transaction - which is not the same as the amount of money exchanging hands. By that standard, employers are nuts to ever employ anyone, since employees don't pay their employers (except in North Korea and some unions). Only the employer can know the value they get out of you, in the totality of benefit your provide - though even then their information is very limited. And only you can know the value you get from your employer - again in the total benefit they provide both in cash and non-pecuniary factors. To put it another way, you wouldn't ask for the same income from, say, Pornhub, Phillip-Morris, Google, and Watsi. So why do you think those companies should treat their employees like an undifferentiated mass of goop?
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    > To put it another way, you wouldn't ask for the same income from, say, Pornhub, Phillip-Morris, Google, and Watsi. Is this outlook shared by many people? I've never even considered altering my salary expectation based on the company.
    - abtinf 9y ago
moduspol 9y ago
I agree with your first paragraph, but I'm not sure about the second one. My instincts tell me that labor is something with a price like anything else, and (aside from claims of unfairness) more transparency is better. The end result over time would presumably be the price of labor (salaries) would more closely resemble actual market value. But I also consider myself to be a high performer, and the last thing I want when negotiating a raise is my boss to have to think about how the rest of the team will feel about it. I want him to care only about whether or not my services are worth it for the price I'm asking. And that just won't happen if it's all transparent.
- abtinf 9y ago
  I think people believe that pay transparency will result in increasing wages. This has never happened in economic history. You cannot make two people equal by raising the low producer, you can only cut down the high producer. When train transport prices were regulated because local trains were more expensive than long haul trains, the result was the raising of long haul prices.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    Pay transparency would raise aggregate wages and cut into profits - i.e. it would reduce the take home pay of the non-producer (the shareholder).
  - consz 9y ago
    >This has never happened in economic history. Incorrect, CEO pay rapidly increased once the executive compensation of public companies was published.
neilwilson 9y ago
"How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction." No it isn't - because it allows you to command more of society's resources for yourself over others. So it is very much a matter for others - and you have to justify yourself to them because you want them to make stuff for you. If you are paid more than me, and I think I'm worth more than you I will make my case or test the job market to see if I'm right. Relative value is exactly what the world is about. That's why prices in stock markets are published.
consz 9y ago
Ultimately, I feel your argument boils down to "the context of my peers in my profession is not entirely identical to my own, therefore I can't use any information (such as their salary) to inform my own context". This seems obviously false, so surely I must be misunderstanding?

by abtinf 9y ago

09094920394314 9y ago

>The problem with pay transparency is not that it doesn't work; the problem is that the entire concept is immoral and evil. How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction. so how does this differ from any other good/transaction where we DO share prices? Why is it not immoral and evil that I can compare prices between amazon and walmart? All the problem you describe can be resolved by employers either justifying themselves to their employees like adults, paying more, or the employees quitting. All of which are free market actions, the first of which having the added bonus of humanising the relationship. The only downside: you can't just treat your employees like "human resources" and get away with it as easily. You need to treat them as people

abtinf 9y ago
The difference is that every individual is unique in their ability to create value and their compensation preferences. A product on Amazon has a market price - the thing being exchanged is an objective, metaphysical fact and people assign it a value. In areas of labor where the uniqueness of individuals is less of a factor, you will generally find that pay transparency is the norm. This is often unskilled/low-skilled labor in jobs that cannot offer meaningful non-pecuniary compensation. But most people do not work in such jobs, and even in most manual labor jobs there is a strong element of applying your mind to do good work. As such, your purpose as an individual is much more important. Pay transparency detrimental to you, as an individual. To live a happy life, you must figure out your own purpose and use your mind to achieve it. Happiness is not the result of income, nor is money required to be happy. Your happiness is a function of the achievement of the values you have defined for yourself. If you allow the income of others to influence your decision making, you are only hurting yourself. You should not leave a job that is satisfying in its essentials - that is, it fits with your purpose, you do meaningful work - merely because you discover someone else makes more; that would only hurt you. You don't know - can't know - their purpose, their value, their preferences, that lead to their income and work environment.
- 09094920394314 9y ago
  >Pay transparency detrimental to you, as an individual. To live a happy life, you must figure out your own purpose and use your mind to achieve it. Happiness is not the result of income, nor is money required to be happy. Your happiness is a function of the achievement of the values you have defined for yourself. If you allow the income of others to influence your decision making, you are only hurting yourself. You should not leave a job that is satisfying in its essentials - that is, it fits with your purpose, you do meaningful work - merely because you discover someone else makes more; that would only hurt you. You don't know - can't know - their purpose, their value, their preferences, that lead to their income and work environment. How about we let people judge that themselves? It's everyones job not to hurt themselves, so how about we make sure everyone has as much information as the most powerful in the room. Otherwise, let's make the top 1% "happier" and impose a 100% tax on all income more than 3 standard deviations from the median eh? //edit: I saw in another comment, you talked about pay transparency not making the wages rise. It might now. But then it will cause people to quit jobs where they are not valued, increasing their happiness. //edit2: also, you sidestepped the question. Humans are not as unique as random numbers, amazon goods are not all the same. If there are 5 brands of battery, we don't say it is immoral to share the prices and compare because "each brand carries its unique and special history". It's a battery, 5V, X watt, Y $. Likewise, if I get hired to design a product, they don't care about my extensive research in japanese mud ball culture. I'm a project designer, education X, working hours Y, pay Z, expected outcome for the company Z*(1+some positive number).

trowawee 9y ago

> How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction. If one party in a negotiation has extensive knowledge of the market and the other has a deliberately obfuscated view of the market, there is no way to have an equal negotiation. Which is what companies have relied on for years to systematically underpay certain classes of people.

abtinf 9y ago
> there is no way to have an equal negotiation This is true in every negotiation in every part of your life. What does equality even mean in such a context? Epistemologically, there is no way for you to have enough context about either the other party or the other party's other counter-parties to inform your negotiation in a meaningful way. The only facts available to help you price your services are what others will pay for it, but this is not the same as pay transparency. Pay transparency is the price of other people's services, not yours, and it doesn't take into account your context. Ethically, only you can know the value of the transaction - which is not the same as the amount of money exchanging hands. By that standard, employers are nuts to ever employ anyone, since employees don't pay their employers (except in North Korea and some unions). Only the employer can know the value they get out of you, in the totality of benefit your provide - though even then their information is very limited. And only you can know the value you get from your employer - again in the total benefit they provide both in cash and non-pecuniary factors. To put it another way, you wouldn't ask for the same income from, say, Pornhub, Phillip-Morris, Google, and Watsi. So why do you think those companies should treat their employees like an undifferentiated mass of goop?
- ryandrake 9y ago
  > To put it another way, you wouldn't ask for the same income from, say, Pornhub, Phillip-Morris, Google, and Watsi. Is this outlook shared by many people? I've never even considered altering my salary expectation based on the company.
  - abtinf 9y ago

moduspol 9y ago

I agree with your first paragraph, but I'm not sure about the second one. My instincts tell me that labor is something with a price like anything else, and (aside from claims of unfairness) more transparency is better. The end result over time would presumably be the price of labor (salaries) would more closely resemble actual market value. But I also consider myself to be a high performer, and the last thing I want when negotiating a raise is my boss to have to think about how the rest of the team will feel about it. I want him to care only about whether or not my services are worth it for the price I'm asking. And that just won't happen if it's all transparent.

abtinf 9y ago
I think people believe that pay transparency will result in increasing wages. This has never happened in economic history. You cannot make two people equal by raising the low producer, you can only cut down the high producer. When train transport prices were regulated because local trains were more expensive than long haul trains, the result was the raising of long haul prices.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Pay transparency would raise aggregate wages and cut into profits - i.e. it would reduce the take home pay of the non-producer (the shareholder).
- consz 9y ago
  >This has never happened in economic history. Incorrect, CEO pay rapidly increased once the executive compensation of public companies was published.

neilwilson 9y ago

"How much money you make is, properly, strictly a conversation between the parties in the transaction." No it isn't - because it allows you to command more of society's resources for yourself over others. So it is very much a matter for others - and you have to justify yourself to them because you want them to make stuff for you. If you are paid more than me, and I think I'm worth more than you I will make my case or test the job market to see if I'm right. Relative value is exactly what the world is about. That's why prices in stock markets are published.

consz 9y ago

Ultimately, I feel your argument boils down to "the context of my peers in my profession is not entirely identical to my own, therefore I can't use any information (such as their salary) to inform my own context". This seems obviously false, so surely I must be misunderstanding?