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Seriously. Can you imagine trying to hire a skilled professional who has put years of effort into acquiring a skill when you won't pay them any more than a reta

Seriously. Can you imagine trying to hire a skilled professional who has put years of effort into acquiring a skill when you won't pay them any more than a retail cashier?

T2_t2 9y ago
It depends on the mix of roles in a company I guess, but animal farm comes to mind here: all worker-owners are equal (but some are more equal than others). What happens when the company expands? Do the new employees get equal shares? But these are positive-negatives, i.e. the harm is done by being successful. When the company starts to fail, what then? What happens when a company needs to downsize? Which of the worker-owners will survive, and under what conditions? Will it be political, e.g. we all vote, so the 7 PAs who everyone loves get to stay, but the entire sales department gets voted out? What about if departments vote together? Seems very sketchy. Ironically, the ability to survive failure is why our system perpetuates. In the hard times, hard choices can be made that are individually distasteful, but required. Evolution is driven by the non-dying breeding, and corporate evolution is similar, with company structures that can navigate the bad times - much more than maximise the good times - the ones most likely to be replicated.
rayiner 9y ago
In a world where that was the expectation for everyone, sure. Professional jobs are a hell of a lot more interesting/rewarding than being a cashier. I don’t think you’d have programmers quitting to do service work if they weren’t making more money.
- wyager 9y ago
  If I didn’t get paid more to do programming than to do a mindless low-effort job like cashiering, I would absolutely switch to being a cashier and use my mental energy on my own time for my own goals. Salaries already price in the “interestingness” of jobs.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    If I didn’t get paid more to do programming than to do a mindless low-effort job like cashiering, I would absolutely switch to being a cashier and use my mental energy on my own time for my own goals. Well, I wouldn't. Dealing with the general public would drain way more of my mental energy than programming. Which leaves us with two anecdotes.
    - gremlinsinc 9y ago
      yeah fuck that... I'm a developer because I'm an introvert, and overweight and want to sit on my ass and NOT talk to anyone all day... anyone who'd rather stand on their feet and do mindless drudgery because they can is insane... My idea of the perfect worker co-op is where cashiers/programmers earn the same but that 'same' is above market value for the top level employee... so say devs go for 100k, cashiers also get 100k. Since there's no CEO/board/etc demanding 10 million/yr+ each then there's plenty to split.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Since there's no CEO/board/etc demanding 10 million/yr+ each then there's plenty to split. Not really; the thing with the rich is that there aren't that many of them. Take the top 1% - their average income (including the people making billions) is $1.15M. Let's redistribute $1.1M of those. ($1.1M * (1% of population)) / population = 1% of $1.1M = $11k. So each person only gets $11k extra.
        rayiner 9y ago
        The top 1% earn 20% of all income. If you got rid of them, everyone could get a 20% raise. E.g. cashier goes from $30,000 to $36,000. Much less to split than people assume.
        dctoedt 9y ago
        > everyone could get a 20% raise So even the people in the 90th- to 99th percentiles would get a 20% raise?
- closeparen 9y ago
  If I were going to live like a starving artist regardless of career choice, I would become an actual artist. There’s a reason this strategy was coupled with central-planning assignment of graduates to jobs.
- smsm42 9y ago
  How would you create such a word? For that, you'd have to forcefully suppress all voluntary exchanges at labor market, since if somebody can do something others can't, there would be otherwise lots of people offering them more money to do that special things for them. The only way to counter that is to eliminate any freedom in job assignment or distribution of benefits for a job. You can learn from a historical lesson. Do you know why medical insurance so inherently linked to the employment in the US? Because at the time of WWII, wages were fixed in a lot of places (they could pull it off since a lot of freedom suppression can pass in wartime) but employers still wanted to attract more and better workers. Thus, side benefits like employer paying medical insurance proliferated. If that were banned, there would be some other kind of compensation. Only by centrally regulating absolutely every aspect of life you could ensure this is not happening. But why would you want to live in such society? I lived in one, and it's not much fun.
gremlinsinc 9y ago
If retail cashiers and engineers at company A earn more than an Engineer at company B, then why not?
- DougN7 9y ago
  Question: why don’t all companies pay the guy in the mailroom the same as their top scientists and sales people? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not greed at the top (most of the time)
wolco 9y ago
Have you ever been on upwork?

Seriously. Can you imagine trying to hire a skilled professional who has put years of effort into acquiring a skill when you won't pay them any more than a retail cashier?

T2_t2 9y ago

It depends on the mix of roles in a company I guess, but animal farm comes to mind here: all worker-owners are equal (but some are more equal than others). What happens when the company expands? Do the new employees get equal shares? But these are positive-negatives, i.e. the harm is done by being successful. When the company starts to fail, what then? What happens when a company needs to downsize? Which of the worker-owners will survive, and under what conditions? Will it be political, e.g. we all vote, so the 7 PAs who everyone loves get to stay, but the entire sales department gets voted out? What about if departments vote together? Seems very sketchy. Ironically, the ability to survive failure is why our system perpetuates. In the hard times, hard choices can be made that are individually distasteful, but required. Evolution is driven by the non-dying breeding, and corporate evolution is similar, with company structures that can navigate the bad times - much more than maximise the good times - the ones most likely to be replicated.

rayiner 9y ago

In a world where that was the expectation for everyone, sure. Professional jobs are a hell of a lot more interesting/rewarding than being a cashier. I don’t think you’d have programmers quitting to do service work if they weren’t making more money.

wyager 9y ago
If I didn’t get paid more to do programming than to do a mindless low-effort job like cashiering, I would absolutely switch to being a cashier and use my mental energy on my own time for my own goals. Salaries already price in the “interestingness” of jobs.
- icebraining 9y ago
  If I didn’t get paid more to do programming than to do a mindless low-effort job like cashiering, I would absolutely switch to being a cashier and use my mental energy on my own time for my own goals. Well, I wouldn't. Dealing with the general public would drain way more of my mental energy than programming. Which leaves us with two anecdotes.
  - gremlinsinc 9y ago
    yeah fuck that... I'm a developer because I'm an introvert, and overweight and want to sit on my ass and NOT talk to anyone all day... anyone who'd rather stand on their feet and do mindless drudgery because they can is insane... My idea of the perfect worker co-op is where cashiers/programmers earn the same but that 'same' is above market value for the top level employee... so say devs go for 100k, cashiers also get 100k. Since there's no CEO/board/etc demanding 10 million/yr+ each then there's plenty to split.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Since there's no CEO/board/etc demanding 10 million/yr+ each then there's plenty to split. Not really; the thing with the rich is that there aren't that many of them. Take the top 1% - their average income (including the people making billions) is $1.15M. Let's redistribute $1.1M of those. ($1.1M * (1% of population)) / population = 1% of $1.1M = $11k. So each person only gets $11k extra.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        The top 1% earn 20% of all income. If you got rid of them, everyone could get a 20% raise. E.g. cashier goes from $30,000 to $36,000. Much less to split than people assume.
        dctoedt 9y ago
        > everyone could get a 20% raise So even the people in the 90th- to 99th percentiles would get a 20% raise?
closeparen 9y ago
If I were going to live like a starving artist regardless of career choice, I would become an actual artist. There’s a reason this strategy was coupled with central-planning assignment of graduates to jobs.
smsm42 9y ago
How would you create such a word? For that, you'd have to forcefully suppress all voluntary exchanges at labor market, since if somebody can do something others can't, there would be otherwise lots of people offering them more money to do that special things for them. The only way to counter that is to eliminate any freedom in job assignment or distribution of benefits for a job. You can learn from a historical lesson. Do you know why medical insurance so inherently linked to the employment in the US? Because at the time of WWII, wages were fixed in a lot of places (they could pull it off since a lot of freedom suppression can pass in wartime) but employers still wanted to attract more and better workers. Thus, side benefits like employer paying medical insurance proliferated. If that were banned, there would be some other kind of compensation. Only by centrally regulating absolutely every aspect of life you could ensure this is not happening. But why would you want to live in such society? I lived in one, and it's not much fun.

gremlinsinc 9y ago

If retail cashiers and engineers at company A earn more than an Engineer at company B, then why not?

DougN7 9y ago
Question: why don’t all companies pay the guy in the mailroom the same as their top scientists and sales people? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not greed at the top (most of the time)

wolco 9y ago

Have you ever been on upwork?