3 ms·
> The wage clearly has to be somewhere between the minimum wage in the country and 100% of the value (okay, perceived value) that the worker generates for the e
by throwdecro 5y ago
> The wage clearly has to be somewhere between the minimum wage in the country and 100% of the value (okay, perceived value) that the worker generates for the employer.
As long as companies can keep finding investors to bankroll them, workers can be paid more than the value they generate.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoJust think of them as generating entertainment value. There is no steady state in which a worker can be paid more than the value he creates. As long as that state continues, value is being destroyed, and whoever is paying the worker will ultimately run out of willingness or, failing that, ability to pay.
- alisonkisk 5y agoValue is being transferred, not necessarily destroyed. VCs subsidized consumers to pay workers to provide a product or service, is value creation.
- Ericson2314 5y agoCapitalism already fails to exist without leverage and with a fixed supply of money. The equilibrium you speak of is already fiction.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoAdam Smith didn't live in Silicon Valley. That kind of thing didn't happen in his world.
- dboreham 5y agoKirkcaldy. I grew up there. Not so different from Sunnyvale.. E.g. http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/microprocessor_history.htm http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/microprocessor_history.htm
- dredmorbius 5y agoAdam Smith literally hired James Watt, inventor of the eponymous Watt Steam Engine, and created a position for him, at the University of Glasgow. Literally bankrolled the guy who launched the Industrial Revolution. And ... managed to scarcely mention his invention at all in Wealth of Nations. For a book that's considered to be the foundation of modern economics, he utterly misses the major factor driving growth through the 19th and much of the 20th century: coal-fired steam power. Even today, coal-fired steam (through turbines rather than pistons) drives much electrical generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoSo? Did James Watt generate more value than he cost?
- dogma1138 5y agoThe workers still generate a perceived value which is what the investors are investing in even if the company cannot capitalize on that value fully in a given time.
- sudosysgen 5y agoOnly because the investors believe that the workers they are paying are generating even more value than they are comfortable exchanging for it.