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> Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need

> Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need to approach those jobs differently? So you want to pay your cleaning personnel the same wage as a heart surgeon? Don’t you think that such high wages will eventually just raise prices?

lexicality 5y ago
Surely the point of the market is that you need to pay for things based on how difficult it is to get them? Contrived example. Say you have some toilets you want cleaning and you decide to offer the job for $5 an hour + tips from toilet goers. The only person that agrees to do it is some homeless dude. You're not very happy about this, but no one else showed up so you go with it. Then two weeks later the city offers $5/hr UBI and the homeless guy immediately quits. "But wait, if you were scrubbing the toilets you get $10/hr + tips!" you say to him, and he says "ok cool but I'd rather beg on the street" and walks out This means that $10/hr is actually significantly too low for cleaning toilets and the only reason this guy agreed to do it for $5/hr is he would have literally died otherwise You can say "hey, a guy scrubbing toilets should definitely not make more than me, a big important programmer! My job's way harder" but would you scrub toilets for your current salary? I don't think I'd want to. Equally my company could probably give me a 10% pay cut and I'd complain about it but keep doing my job. I like programming. However, the sad truth is society needs people to clean toilets and sweep the streets significantly more than it needs me to write React code for some website. If every cleaner in the world quit simultaneously, it'd be utter chaos. If every frontend dev in the world quit it'd be annoying but no one would die. So why do we pay cleaners so little?
- chii 5y ago
  > So why do we pay cleaners so little? I'll counter with an example which might illustrate. If you were at a desert, and dying of thirst, you would pay absolutely anything for water. You would not pay anything for diamonds at all. But in normal circumstances, water is cheap, so cheap, that it's almost not metered. Diamonds, however, is still fairly expensive (even artificial ones). Why do we pay so little for water, when it's so essential? Why do we pay so much for diamonds, when it's basically useless cept for being shiny?
  - lexicality 5y ago
    > Why do we pay so little for water, when it's so essential? Because the government says water has to be cheap? There are quite a lot of places in the world where water is not cheap, but where I live there are laws that govern how much it can be sold for. There are certain things that people will pay literally anything for, such as water, food, healthcare etc because they'll die otherwise. Usually the government will step in and set a maximum price for these things to try and make sure people don't die because overall that's bad for the economy. No one's going to die from a dirty toilet though > Why do we pay so much for diamonds, when it's basically useless cept for being shiny? I read a really interesting article about the "diamonds are a girl's best friend" advertising campaign but I can't find it now. The summary is "because the people that own the diamond mines say they're worth it and everyone just goes along with the lie because it makes them feel nice"
Already__Taken 5y ago
That's such a strawman as to be dishonest and bring bad faith to the discussion. _nobody_ but you is saying that. By the same logic if a heart surgeon for some reason wanted to drive an uber you think they are getting paid $1000+ now? Why would anything about this change? prices will fluctuate by supply and demand. I could buy 100$ bottles of wine but don't because that's dumb. If I had a million I still wouldn't.

lexicality 5y ago

Surely the point of the market is that you need to pay for things based on how difficult it is to get them? Contrived example. Say you have some toilets you want cleaning and you decide to offer the job for $5 an hour + tips from toilet goers. The only person that agrees to do it is some homeless dude. You're not very happy about this, but no one else showed up so you go with it. Then two weeks later the city offers $5/hr UBI and the homeless guy immediately quits. "But wait, if you were scrubbing the toilets you get $10/hr + tips!" you say to him, and he says "ok cool but I'd rather beg on the street" and walks out This means that $10/hr is actually significantly too low for cleaning toilets and the only reason this guy agreed to do it for $5/hr is he would have literally died otherwise You can say "hey, a guy scrubbing toilets should definitely not make more than me, a big important programmer! My job's way harder" but would you scrub toilets for your current salary? I don't think I'd want to. Equally my company could probably give me a 10% pay cut and I'd complain about it but keep doing my job. I like programming. However, the sad truth is society needs people to clean toilets and sweep the streets significantly more than it needs me to write React code for some website. If every cleaner in the world quit simultaneously, it'd be utter chaos. If every frontend dev in the world quit it'd be annoying but no one would die. So why do we pay cleaners so little?

chii 5y ago
> So why do we pay cleaners so little? I'll counter with an example which might illustrate. If you were at a desert, and dying of thirst, you would pay absolutely anything for water. You would not pay anything for diamonds at all. But in normal circumstances, water is cheap, so cheap, that it's almost not metered. Diamonds, however, is still fairly expensive (even artificial ones). Why do we pay so little for water, when it's so essential? Why do we pay so much for diamonds, when it's basically useless cept for being shiny?
- lexicality 5y ago
  > Why do we pay so little for water, when it's so essential? Because the government says water has to be cheap? There are quite a lot of places in the world where water is not cheap, but where I live there are laws that govern how much it can be sold for. There are certain things that people will pay literally anything for, such as water, food, healthcare etc because they'll die otherwise. Usually the government will step in and set a maximum price for these things to try and make sure people don't die because overall that's bad for the economy. No one's going to die from a dirty toilet though > Why do we pay so much for diamonds, when it's basically useless cept for being shiny? I read a really interesting article about the "diamonds are a girl's best friend" advertising campaign but I can't find it now. The summary is "because the people that own the diamond mines say they're worth it and everyone just goes along with the lie because it makes them feel nice"

Already__Taken 5y ago

That's such a strawman as to be dishonest and bring bad faith to the discussion. _nobody_ but you is saying that. By the same logic if a heart surgeon for some reason wanted to drive an uber you think they are getting paid $1000+ now? Why would anything about this change? prices will fluctuate by supply and demand. I could buy 100$ bottles of wine but don't because that's dumb. If I had a million I still wouldn't.