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So we need some people to either be unemployed or paid dirt for the system to work? And you question why the world is moving towards communism and not against i

So we need some people to either be unemployed or paid dirt for the system to work? And you question why the world is moving towards communism and not against it?

ben_w 6y ago
Not what he said. Imagine for a moment we’re talking about combustion engines rather than people. A turbocharged V8 is more powerful than a 2-stroke chainsaw engine. Which one do you use if you’re building a go-cart which will never exceed 15 mph — the small light cheap one, or the massive heavy expensive gas-guzzler? Even this analogy doesn’t necessitate the poor stay poor: which engine do you start with when you want to learn how engines work?
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  Yes. Even in economics class, analogies galore. We bunch people into convinient terms like labour because it's easier to work with. Till this day we have no idea how to model "labour" since people are niether cattle nor logs of wood. Nothing about their actions suggests linearity or regularity. Lets take offshore employees. Early days it was fun. The employees offshore were cheap and not prone to complain. Yippeee. Now we find out that no, these people are earning nothing, they have to send money home and live in apartments barely bigger than a US family bathroom. Their idea of boss isn't a senior with loads of experience - boss is someone who cracks the whip and lays threats to their livelihood daily. The quality of work plummets and big corps have to hire onshore at exhorbitant consultant fees to fix the mess, which may never really get fixed because why would a consulting firm want to lose a client for being too good?
- yunohn 6y ago
  This is a really horrible analogy, which says that all people in developed countries are inherently better than those in developing countries.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    No. Rather “better” isn’t a useful word in cases like this — that’s why the go-cart analogy. You should not even want to use a V8 in a go-cart even with an unlimited budget.

So we need some people to either be unemployed or paid dirt for the system to work? And you question why the world is moving towards communism and not against it?

ben_w 6y ago

Not what he said. Imagine for a moment we’re talking about combustion engines rather than people. A turbocharged V8 is more powerful than a 2-stroke chainsaw engine. Which one do you use if you’re building a go-cart which will never exceed 15 mph — the small light cheap one, or the massive heavy expensive gas-guzzler? Even this analogy doesn’t necessitate the poor stay poor: which engine do you start with when you want to learn how engines work?

vagrantJin 6y ago
Yes. Even in economics class, analogies galore. We bunch people into convinient terms like labour because it's easier to work with. Till this day we have no idea how to model "labour" since people are niether cattle nor logs of wood. Nothing about their actions suggests linearity or regularity. Lets take offshore employees. Early days it was fun. The employees offshore were cheap and not prone to complain. Yippeee. Now we find out that no, these people are earning nothing, they have to send money home and live in apartments barely bigger than a US family bathroom. Their idea of boss isn't a senior with loads of experience - boss is someone who cracks the whip and lays threats to their livelihood daily. The quality of work plummets and big corps have to hire onshore at exhorbitant consultant fees to fix the mess, which may never really get fixed because why would a consulting firm want to lose a client for being too good?
yunohn 6y ago
This is a really horrible analogy, which says that all people in developed countries are inherently better than those in developing countries.
- ben_w 6y ago
  No. Rather “better” isn’t a useful word in cases like this — that’s why the go-cart analogy. You should not even want to use a V8 in a go-cart even with an unlimited budget.