4 ms·

Value is relative to the labor pool. If you hired me to inject vaccines instead of a nurse, after some light training I might be able to stop 40 people from dyi

by Aunche 6y ago

Value is relative to the labor pool. If you hired me to inject vaccines instead of a nurse, after some light training I might be able to stop 40 people from dying every week rather than 50. That doesn't mean I would be 80% valuable as a nurse. I'd be providing negative value because there are plenty of nurses who are also willing to do the same job. Also, if you consider class action lawsuits as overall positive value, then necessarily both sides of the lawsuit are producing positive value.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
By “negative value“ I mean “the world would be better off if nobody did that”, not “negative relative to the counterfactual where you didn't do it”. The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed… unless we have some variety of UBI, but regardless, that's no longer capitalism; it's an inverse job auction. > Also, if you consider class action lawsuits as overall positive value I don't. But the vast majority of class action lawsuits I've seen have been valid, and the vast majority of class action lawsuits have paid out nowhere near enough to even discourage the behaviour, let alone compensate the victims. With a good class-action lawyer, class-action lawsuits just reduce your profit margin slightly, as a cost of “doing business”. I can't imagine how you could think that I think that, unless we're working off drastically different models of how the world works.
- Aunche 6y ago
  >The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed Why not? How could an economy function if it were based on real value as opposed to relative value? Farmers and water treatment engineers would all be billionaires and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers and learning about water treatment. If you drive a truck of medical supplies, you'd make millions, but if you drive a truck of consumer goods, you'd make very little, despite doing the same work.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    > and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers • There's only so much arable land, so people couldn't do this. ⋄ Thus, people who wanted to become farmers but didn't have land would either give up, or innovate things like hydroponics. • There's only so much food people need to eat. Producing more than that isn't contributing value; in this case, markets approximate that reasonably well (though with other problems, so many governments subsidise food production in some way). • People already waste a lot of resources trying to become tax-reduction lawyers or middle managers¹ or gain other high-paid, useless jobs. > If you drive a truck of medical supplies, you'd make millions, but if you drive a truck of consumer goods, you'd make very little, despite doing the same work. Good point! This hypothetical system that hasn't had hundreds of years to work out the kinks has some potential issues. I wouldn't say it's worth dismissing it out of hand because of that, though; they don't seem like fundamental problems. For instance, the current system already distinguishes between rapid medical transportation networks (e.g. organ motorcyclists) and regular ol' freight. Before trying to solve these problems, we should work out how the (magical, instant, “everyone just decides to start doing it”) introduction of such a system would change society. It's entirely possible that it would change enough to eliminate this problem, and introduce others in its place. --- ¹: Middle management isn't inherently useless – there can be useful hierarchies involving middle management, I'm sure. In my personal experience, I haven't encountered any, and popular culture agrees with me so it's decent shorthand, but if your job title is “middle management” and you have a genuinely useful job, this isn't a dig at you. (Tax lawyers, though… offence intended.)
    - Aunche 6y ago
      I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting. There isn't a middle ground between a market economy and planned economy. In a market economy, a corporation's tax-reduction lawyer is always going to make more money than a nurse. You can reduce this disparity by reforming the tax system. However, the problem is that it's not politically advantageous to do so, so nobody does it. > There's only so much arable land, so people couldn't do this. Rather than invest in stocks, people would buy a small patch of land to grow their own food. This would not be an efficient allocation of capital. > There's only so much food people need to eat. Producing more than that isn't contributing value; in this case, markets approximate that reasonably well What makes nursing any different in this regard? There certainly is a healthcare distribution problem in the US, but it's not because nurses are being paid too little. Nurses in America make the same, if not more, than nurses in the rest of the world.

by Aunche 6y ago

wizzwizz4 6y ago

By “negative value“ I mean “the world would be better off if nobody did that”, not “negative relative to the counterfactual where you didn't do it”. The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed… unless we have some variety of UBI, but regardless, that's no longer capitalism; it's an inverse job auction. > Also, if you consider class action lawsuits as overall positive value I don't. But the vast majority of class action lawsuits I've seen have been valid, and the vast majority of class action lawsuits have paid out nowhere near enough to even discourage the behaviour, let alone compensate the victims. With a good class-action lawyer, class-action lawsuits just reduce your profit margin slightly, as a cost of “doing business”. I can't imagine how you could think that I think that, unless we're working off drastically different models of how the world works.

Aunche 6y ago
>The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed Why not? How could an economy function if it were based on real value as opposed to relative value? Farmers and water treatment engineers would all be billionaires and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers and learning about water treatment. If you drive a truck of medical supplies, you'd make millions, but if you drive a truck of consumer goods, you'd make very little, despite doing the same work.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers • There's only so much arable land, so people couldn't do this. ⋄ Thus, people who wanted to become farmers but didn't have land would either give up, or innovate things like hydroponics. • There's only so much food people need to eat. Producing more than that isn't contributing value; in this case, markets approximate that reasonably well (though with other problems, so many governments subsidise food production in some way). • People already waste a lot of resources trying to become tax-reduction lawyers or middle managers¹ or gain other high-paid, useless jobs. > If you drive a truck of medical supplies, you'd make millions, but if you drive a truck of consumer goods, you'd make very little, despite doing the same work. Good point! This hypothetical system that hasn't had hundreds of years to work out the kinks has some potential issues. I wouldn't say it's worth dismissing it out of hand because of that, though; they don't seem like fundamental problems. For instance, the current system already distinguishes between rapid medical transportation networks (e.g. organ motorcyclists) and regular ol' freight. Before trying to solve these problems, we should work out how the (magical, instant, “everyone just decides to start doing it”) introduction of such a system would change society. It's entirely possible that it would change enough to eliminate this problem, and introduce others in its place. --- ¹: Middle management isn't inherently useless – there can be useful hierarchies involving middle management, I'm sure. In my personal experience, I haven't encountered any, and popular culture agrees with me so it's decent shorthand, but if your job title is “middle management” and you have a genuinely useful job, this isn't a dig at you. (Tax lawyers, though… offence intended.)
  - Aunche 6y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting. There isn't a middle ground between a market economy and planned economy. In a market economy, a corporation's tax-reduction lawyer is always going to make more money than a nurse. You can reduce this disparity by reforming the tax system. However, the problem is that it's not politically advantageous to do so, so nobody does it. > There's only so much arable land, so people couldn't do this. Rather than invest in stocks, people would buy a small patch of land to grow their own food. This would not be an efficient allocation of capital. > There's only so much food people need to eat. Producing more than that isn't contributing value; in this case, markets approximate that reasonably well What makes nursing any different in this regard? There certainly is a healthcare distribution problem in the US, but it's not because nurses are being paid too little. Nurses in America make the same, if not more, than nurses in the rest of the world.