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which is the reality for most minimum-wage jobs. its purpose is to keep that wheel spinning. Is the wheel of the cryptocurrency miner, or the wheel of the land

which is the reality for most minimum-wage jobs. its purpose is to keep that wheel spinning. Is the wheel of the cryptocurrency miner, or the wheel of the landlord or business owner really that different?

detuur 9y ago
No, very much the opposite. Most minimum-wage jobs are actually the one that specifically create or add value. When you work as a fruit picker, for every fruit you pick you just added value into the economy. With every figurative swing of the pickaxe a miner creates value from where was previously a rock wall. Every carefully-timed cycle of 43 seconds a Chinese factory worker turns a box of components into its much more valuable sum of those parts. Minimum wage jobs are exactly the class of jobs where we can be certain that value was created. Much of the higher-level jobs is just making sure that that value doesn't spoil, that it doesn't go lost, that it can make its way around the economy to enable further value creation (at the hand of another minimum wage job) as soon as possible. Some higher-level jobs like engineer can amplify the value creation by designing new tools for the job, but the value itself still stems from the actions of those manual labourers.
- gus_massa 9y ago
  [Slightly off-topic] > Some higher-level jobs like engineer can amplify the value creation by designing new tools for the job, but the value itself still stems from the actions of those manual labourers. This is a nice variation of the Chinese Room argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room Who is creating the value, the one that is writing the instruction or the one that is following blindly the instructions? [In real life it's more complicated because the designers have feedback from the operators and also because usually the instructions are underspecified.]

detuur 9y ago

No, very much the opposite. Most minimum-wage jobs are actually the one that specifically create or add value. When you work as a fruit picker, for every fruit you pick you just added value into the economy. With every figurative swing of the pickaxe a miner creates value from where was previously a rock wall. Every carefully-timed cycle of 43 seconds a Chinese factory worker turns a box of components into its much more valuable sum of those parts. Minimum wage jobs are exactly the class of jobs where we can be certain that value was created. Much of the higher-level jobs is just making sure that that value doesn't spoil, that it doesn't go lost, that it can make its way around the economy to enable further value creation (at the hand of another minimum wage job) as soon as possible. Some higher-level jobs like engineer can amplify the value creation by designing new tools for the job, but the value itself still stems from the actions of those manual labourers.

gus_massa 9y ago
[Slightly off-topic] > Some higher-level jobs like engineer can amplify the value creation by designing new tools for the job, but the value itself still stems from the actions of those manual labourers. This is a nice variation of the Chinese Room argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room Who is creating the value, the one that is writing the instruction or the one that is following blindly the instructions? [In real life it's more complicated because the designers have feedback from the operators and also because usually the instructions are underspecified.]