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They've swallowed an ideological fallacy that simply working your pants off for long hours means you will win. The USSR had the same disease, if they just worke

• pjc50 5y ago
  > the work they are doing is worth 4x as much This is a purchasing power parity argument; moving people around in London is "worth" more because they have more money, and money that is more valuable on the global exchange rate market.
  • owlmirror 5y ago
    You must ask yourself what is the reason that people in London have more money. Purchasing power is not something that manifests itself out of thin air, as well as exchange rates of money. An economy in which the people have multiple times the purchasing power must do something right. And moving people in that economy around is more valuable than moving people elsewhere.
    • z2 5y ago
      For instance, having a century headstart in industrialization and fast economic growth? It actually returns to a longer scale version of having accumulated wealth through working a long time... Also taxi driving isn't exactly the most efficient of markets to compare value. London taxi drivers for example have a unique barrier to entry to become a taxi driver via an onerous road memorization test ("The Knowledge"), and that has nothing to do with the general British economy "doing something right."
      • akomtu 5y ago
        What headstart? Africa existed when vikings were roaming the European waters.
        • kansface 5y ago
          The industrial revolution started in Britain.
          • akomtu 5y ago
            Why didn't Africa start it a century before? Otherwise it sounds like "industrial revolution" was like a deity that chose to descend onto Brits.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • hippari 5y ago
      I believe the comparison isn't adequate here since the British got massive advantages after WW2.
      • simonh 5y ago
        Britain came out of WW2 deeply fcuk'd. We'd lost the Empire, owed the US a crapton in loans, and then were economically smothered under a nationalisation programme that wiped out UK manufacturing competitiveness. At least we got the NHS (no small thing) and a passable social security system out of it. The economy we have today is the one Maggie re-engineered in the 1980s. Even the Blair government had the good sense to not dare touch it.
        • patrickk 5y ago
          Britain subsequently benefited from transforming itself from an imperial power to a financial power. Good documentary on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uM2cdhfAGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uM2cdhfAGA This is the reason that there's so many rich Russians knocking about e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/p83ljc/offshore_advisor_chris_samuelson_roman_became_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/p83ljc/offshore_adv...
          • bserge 5y ago
            They were a financial power long before. It kinda came with the territory, being a global empire. They did well to hold on to it, though.
          • 7sidedmarble 5y ago
            How can you look at the history of the British trade companies and not see how intertwined imperialism and what we today call 'finance' are?
        • pjc50 5y ago
          > Britain came out of WW2 deeply fcuk'd. We'd lost the Empire, owed the US a crapton in loans, and then were economically smothered under a nationalisation programme that wiped out UK manufacturing competitiveness. .. and on all those metrics China came out much worse (the civil war, no marshall plan, proxy war with the US, communism), as well as not having the massive advantage of having been an industrial power long before the war. This article dates the takeoff to 1978 (Deng), which seems reasonable: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-2016/chinas-rapid-rise-from-backward-agrarian-society-to-industrial-powerhouse-in-just-35-years https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/a... Perhaps the question should be "at what date in the future do we expect the cost of a taxi in London and one in Beijing to equalize"?
    • Swenrekcah 5y ago
      It is more profitable, not more valuable in any usual sense of the word. By the same token you could say that moving money for the mafia is more valuable than preventing violence and disease in poorer societies.
      • simonh 5y ago
        Profits are customers saying thank you for the value they are getting. So, London is a criminal enterprise that provides no real value, or is parasitic, or at least it's reasonable to compare it to one? I suspect the root issue here is what we consider to be value, or what activities are valuable and how value is generated. The common critique of capitalism is based (often unknowingly) on the Marxist theory of value which sees the vast majority of economic activities as parasitic of value, particularly financial activities, and if that's the issue here sure I'm quite willing to debate on that.
        • selfhoster11 5y ago
          > So, London is a criminal enterprise that provides no real value, or is parasitic, or at least it's reasonable to compare it to one? As a former Londoner, absolutely yes. London as a city is extremely parasitic, especially when it comes to time and standard of living. It does provide value when you're either so poor or find it so hard to get a job that working there provides you enough value, or you earn such "screw you" money that you can afford to live a comfortable life there. But for anyone outside of those groups, it's best avoided unless you're just visiting for the sights.
        • Swenrekcah 5y ago
          Moving money for ruthless violent people is profitable if done right, but value destroying for society. Value, whether measured in safety, shelter, nourishment, entertainment, ownership, infrastructure, sense of belonging or whatever you wish, is best built when you can trust the people around you and thus focus your efforts on what is valuable rather than trying to prevent being hurt or robbed. Note that above I didn’t count money as valuable, since it isn’t intrinsically.
    • lozenge 5y ago
      It might be something to do with the centuries of colonialism where the natural resources, labour and human lives of entire countries was stolen for the economic benefit of the United Kingdom.
    • smokey_circles 5y ago
      >You must ask yourself what is the reason that people in London have more money As an African that's an easy answer. They stole it. Before you all go clutching your pearls: it's beyond impractical to even suggest paying it back nor would I even want to think about that. Not an option. not suggesting it. But don't pretend it's because you're special. You stole it. Just own it.
      • throwaway210222 5y ago
        > As an African that's an easy answer. They stole it. As another African, your logic and morality are a disgrace.
        • notpachet 5y ago
          Why? I think there's a definite argument to be made that a large part of the West's foundation of economic power is rooted in a history of colonialism and global oppression.
          • throwaway210222 5y ago
            > a large part Yip, they sure stole a lot of stuff - as of course did the Mongols and the Aztecs who are now dirt poor. In addition, the Ventians and Swiss never colonised anyone and are/were dripping cash. But your comment is already a lot more nuanced than the OP's lazy clichéd statements. A hell of a lot of their wealth also came from, amongst other things: - individual rights - e,g, Magna caerta - no theft involved - invention of limited liability corporations - cadastas and private property rights (no theft involved) - common law based on precedent (no theft involved) - investment in mechanised warfare (to keep what they made and stole, see Mongols above) - etc. etc. Once only has to compare Singapore (colonised by British and Japanese) with Ghana since independence in the 1960s. Singapore has no water, no resources, no power, is surrounded by hostile neighbours, but is absolutely loaded. Ghana is resource rich and dirt poor. You can decide for yourself who implemented the list above and who did not. You can also guess who is going to keep digging the hole they are in. But I guess in certain progressive circles, "they stole it" passes for a rigourous analysis. [ And they get the bonus of claiming the moral high ground of being the perpetual victim ]. The OP should read Hernando de Soto instead.
    • bserge 5y ago
      They had a ~200 year headstart and furthermore, they helped establish the current systems worldwide.
    • burnished 5y ago
      Uh, rampant theft? Colonialism? Why are so many other countries historical artifacts located in London, again?
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• lozenge 5y ago
  Careful now - why does a cosmetic surgeon in London s exclusive Harley Street earn £1,000,000 while a doctor restoring sight and correcting cleft palate and fistula in Africa earns 5% as much? Do you think their work is worth less?
  • simonh 5y ago
    Of course there are different forms of value that are not fungible. Moral or human value as independent of financial value. The point I'm making is that the £1m came from somewhere. Now yes sometimes it came from a Mafia sex slave operation or whatever, but those are minuscule edge cases on the scale of say the UK economy. We're talking about the economy in general and what makes on economy more valuable than another one in economic terms.
    • pjc50 5y ago
      > sometimes it came from a Mafia sex slave operation or whatever, but those are minuscule edge cases on the scale of say the UK economy A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, after a while the money laundering starts to add up: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/uk-losing-fight-money-laundering-it-can-still-win-if-we-want/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/uk-losing-fight-money-l... The UK economy offers a unique mix of commercial fairness and predictability, achieved by a comparatively incorruptible commercial court system, with disinterest in where the money actually comes from provided it isn't UK crime. Whereas in China, for good and ill, billionaires are not above the state and can get clobbered when they become politically inconvenient. Such as Jack Ma. (A question nobody is asking in this thread: what's the relative price of a taxi in, say, Lowestoft? What does that say about the regime there?)
      • simonh 5y ago
        Stuff like that sucks, absolutely, but again it's not a huge factor to the UK economically. That money passed through, it didn't land in the UK. The impact on us economically was probably in the 10s of millions. Total Russian investment into the UK is only about 1% of all foreign investment, which itself is 20% of GDP. So 0.2% of our economy is linked to Russia at all.
• solaarphunk 5y ago
  They earn 4x more because the world is not truly flat, and there are artificial/natural barriers which hamper competition such as; movement of humans, scarcity of taxi medallions along with fixed pricing, input costs of a taxi ride (cost of living, gasoline + subsidies/taxes), labor laws etc.
• rvba 5y ago
  USSR was never efficient. People literally did not care about their jobs. Especially after stalinism ended, many did the absolute minimum. Since everything was state owned it was owned by nobody - so nobody cared about maintenance, workers often stole from their companies, did not show to work because they stood in queues.. They had sayings like: "doesnt matter if you lie or stand,you will get 3 thousand at the end" (what meant that there were no rewards for those who worked harder). There could have been some islands of efficiency (perhaps in closed cities where workers could get accused of being spies if they didnt try hard enough) but for generic workers efficiency did not matter. And I dont even write about inefficiencies of central planned system itself, where rewards did not come from market forces + falsified statistics on top, so nobody even knew the truth. Even the communists knew that their system is inefficient, which you can see in many places. For example in "aquarium" novel by Suvorov one of the spies talks how they run out of meat and bread, but the system got so inefficient that it run out of people to murder. USSR didnt work people harder. Political prisoners yes, but the normal people were incredibly ineffective. Even films made during communism laughed at that.
  • stayfrosty420 5y ago
    Sounds a lot like many very large multinationals to me. People don't get fired because managers don't want to expose themselves to the possible legal ramifications, so they just move them to a place where they can cause as little damage as possible.
    • dron57 5y ago
      It's a very apt comparison to large multinationals, but this one had hundreds of millions of "employees". So you can imagine how little people cared about their jobs.
• the-dude 5y ago
  Baumol's cost disease : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease
• deleted 5y ago
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• rocknor 5y ago
  > They do quite legitimately earn 4x as much because the work they are doing is worth 4x as much A London taxi driver is not paid more because his work is somehow more valuable than a Beijing taxi driver's, it's just because everything in London is expensive. That's just basic economics. Read an economics book. How did everything in London get so expensive? Read a history book about the last few centuries. Seems like you're just some typical western chauvinist with no real argument.