3 ms·

> but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable Why should we do something so wrong? Consider Derek Jeter and me.

by anamax 16y ago

> but at the same time considering the 100% effort from everyone to be (nearly) as valuable Why should we do something so wrong? Consider Derek Jeter and me. No matter how much effort I put in as a baseball player, I'm not going to approach him on his worst day. And that's true even if I was 10 years younger than he is. Some people are better than others at some things. Their effort is more productive. Ignoring that is dumb. And then there's the problem that not all things are equally valuable, so even if two things take an equal amount of effort, that doesn't tell us that they're equally valuable.

rue 16y ago
I do not consider professional athletes to bring anywhere near the "value" currently ascribed to them (lots of sports fans prefer college/amateur sports anyway) but that is sort of beside the point: I never said to ignore people's relative strengths and weaknesses. Derek Jeter probably can't do [whatever it is you do] as well as you can — nor should he try if he's found his niche. You both are probably both examples of highly skilled workers, and there are also jobs which require less skill that nevertheless must be done. We could further argue that absolutely everybody has something in which they would be considered high-skilled if they realised it and developed their skills but even that is not really necessary for the thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). The second part of that pre-counterargument is the motivation for excellence. Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses, most of whom seem to do stuff out of sheer joy of doing it. I'm willing to entertain a pre-counter-counterargument, but some historical analysis would be welcome. [1] Beyond a reasonable level of comfort and in a society which does not require you to hoard loot to ensure survival of progeny, and certainly not at the levels where you could not even conceivably spend it all.
- anamax 16y ago
  > thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). Your assertion that all necessary work is roughly equally valuable is wrong. And then you compound the error by ignoring supply. (It's unclear whether you're ignoring demand as well.) > Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses That's irrelevant because few people are geniuses, so it doesn't much matter what motivates them. I get it that you think that you're not motivated by money and think that other people shouldn't be, but the brain-power going into high-wealth fields suggests that money does have some motivating power.

by anamax 16y ago

rue 16y ago

I do not consider professional athletes to bring anywhere near the "value" currently ascribed to them (lots of sports fans prefer college/amateur sports anyway) but that is sort of beside the point: I never said to ignore people's relative strengths and weaknesses. Derek Jeter probably can't do [whatever it is you do] as well as you can — nor should he try if he's found his niche. You both are probably both examples of highly skilled workers, and there are also jobs which require less skill that nevertheless must be done. We could further argue that absolutely everybody has something in which they would be considered high-skilled if they realised it and developed their skills but even that is not really necessary for the thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). The second part of that pre-counterargument is the motivation for excellence. Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses, most of whom seem to do stuff out of sheer joy of doing it. I'm willing to entertain a pre-counter-counterargument, but some historical analysis would be welcome. [1] Beyond a reasonable level of comfort and in a society which does not require you to hoard loot to ensure survival of progeny, and certainly not at the levels where you could not even conceivably spend it all.

anamax 16y ago
> thrust of my pre-counterargument which is that from the perspective of the entire society, all necessary work is roughly equally valuable regardless of whether it can be done by 1 or 999 people out of 1000 (or million). Your assertion that all necessary work is roughly equally valuable is wrong. And then you compound the error by ignoring supply. (It's unclear whether you're ignoring demand as well.) > Personally I do not think that wealth[1] is really a factor for geniuses That's irrelevant because few people are geniuses, so it doesn't much matter what motivates them. I get it that you think that you're not motivated by money and think that other people shouldn't be, but the brain-power going into high-wealth fields suggests that money does have some motivating power.