5 ms·

"employers would simply be glad to pay them based on their productivity." I honestly mean no offense, but that sentiment indicates a spectacular misunderstandi

"employers would simply be glad to pay them based on their productivity." I honestly mean no offense, but that sentiment indicates a spectacular misunderstanding of capitalism.

vrotaru 5y ago
Why do you think the capitalist pay programmers so much?
- omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
  Because they don't have an alternative. If the supply of programmers was as large as the supply of minimum wage workers pay would drop significantly.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    That is exactly what capitalism is about. Prices being driven by supply and demand. Companies certainly try to pay the minimum they can get away with, just like workers look for jobs that pay them the maximum they can find. Companies are not generous (although some claim they are), and workers aren't either. But the competition drives the prices and, in the case of jobs, the salaries. If you are productive, you'll be in demand, and you'll be paid handsomely. If you are productive but live in communist Soviet Union, you'll get very close to whatever else gets in a similar job.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
      I think you're thinking of a Market Economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy Capitalism is about the private ownership of the means of production and profits. But yeah, competition for labor (and other things) via differences in wages are attributes of a market economy. Capitalism can be a healthy part of this, but sometimes it isn't. Crony capitalism for instance can provide companies the opportunity to collude so they can artificially suppress wages, which distorts the market economy for labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- ido 5y ago
  Nobody is "glad" to pay programmers that much - they pay as little as they can get away with, which for programmers happens to be a higher floor.
- decebalus1 5y ago
  Because they 'currently' have no choice. Give it a few more decades..
credit_guy 5y ago
Not when we are talking about $15 vs $26 per hour. If you think there are workers out there whose productivity is $26/hour, but who can't find work at more than $15/hour, then you can truly disrupt the market and hire all these workers for $20/hour and become rich. PS: it looks like the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 [1], not $15. You can become richer. [1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage
- pydry 5y ago
  >If you think there are workers out there whose productivity is $26/hour, but who can't find work at more than $15/hour, then you can truly disrupt the market and hire all these workers for $20/hour and become rich. How? If their productivity is $26 / hour but their market rate is $15 / hour, by paying them $20 / hour you'll just post lower profits than companies that pay them market rate.
  - VRay 5y ago
    The workers will leave all the other companies and work for you, so those other companies will be dead in the water and/or stuck raising their own workers' pay to compete At least, that's how it was supposed to work in theory.. Now that we see people out there going for improved wages/jobs in line with good capitalist doctrine, the business owners are all screaming in rage about a "labor shortage"
    - pydry 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure Walmart would prefer to post higher profits than to drive the local hairdressers out of business and have more job applicants than they know what to do with.
    - bena 5y ago
      Yeah, but there's a soft form of collusion going on. If we live on an inescapable island of 1000 people, and I have 200 jobs, and you have 200 jobs, and Bob has 200 jobs, then the fact that you and Bob pay twice as much doesn't matter. You guys only need 400 workers, total. Those 600 other workers will be left to compete for the 200 jobs I have. I still get to name my price. And once you see that I can undercut labor costs due to this, it makes no sense for either you or Bob to continue paying twice as much as I do. And let's not pretend that if you don't have the very best workers, you can't compete. First of all, you can't identify the best. You hope to get lucky, but in reality, you're going to be paying not the best, but those adequate enough to perform the job reasonably well. COVID assistance has changed the game. Because before, the choice was to have a job or starve homeless. You'd take almost anything in desperation. Remove desperation and people stop acting desperate.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
It indicates the major flaw of capitalism: It has no moral compass whatsoever. Its a vicious meat grinder. I think the comment is quite insightful, in the employers might think one thing while the realities of capitalism dictate another.
- dnautics 5y ago
  s/capitalism/the universe/g Anyways, your statement is not true. Capitalism absolutely has a moral compass, it had the moral compass of the consumptive patterns of society; if that compass points the wrong way then either we must take a hard look at ourselves, or, think about what policies are twisting consumptive patterns to go the wrong way.... Probably a bit of both.
  - BuckRogers 5y ago
    The consumers don't drive much. They just exist in the environment they were born into. The idea we vote with our money doesn't hold much water when the system is rigged with regulations set by the largest corporations to their own benefit. Keeping out competition. And that's just never going to stop either, so the economic system needs examined, not hoping for some sort of libertarian awakening. To make this worthwhile to continue at all, this conversation first needs to clearly define capitalism. Capitalism is not the free market. Markets existed long before capitalism. Capitalism is exclusively paying people less than the value they produce, to create a profit for the employer. To rectify that economic system's moral compass, you create incentives to moving towards worker-owned enterprise. Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each. To own a share you have to actively work there. That model resolves most issues with capitalism. Worker's unions also resolve it, but in a less ideal way as the tension between employer-employee still exists. Which is just a slightly kinder model as master-slave, or lord-serf. Not sure about the universe comparison. The universe is chaotic entropy as far as we know, but assigning human misery- that we actively create, to the universe is a bit much.
    - dnautics 5y ago

"employers would simply be glad to pay them based on their productivity." I honestly mean no offense, but that sentiment indicates a spectacular misunderstanding of capitalism.

vrotaru 5y ago

Why do you think the capitalist pay programmers so much?

omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
Because they don't have an alternative. If the supply of programmers was as large as the supply of minimum wage workers pay would drop significantly.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  That is exactly what capitalism is about. Prices being driven by supply and demand. Companies certainly try to pay the minimum they can get away with, just like workers look for jobs that pay them the maximum they can find. Companies are not generous (although some claim they are), and workers aren't either. But the competition drives the prices and, in the case of jobs, the salaries. If you are productive, you'll be in demand, and you'll be paid handsomely. If you are productive but live in communist Soviet Union, you'll get very close to whatever else gets in a similar job.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
    I think you're thinking of a Market Economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy Capitalism is about the private ownership of the means of production and profits. But yeah, competition for labor (and other things) via differences in wages are attributes of a market economy. Capitalism can be a healthy part of this, but sometimes it isn't. Crony capitalism for instance can provide companies the opportunity to collude so they can artificially suppress wages, which distorts the market economy for labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
ido 5y ago
Nobody is "glad" to pay programmers that much - they pay as little as they can get away with, which for programmers happens to be a higher floor.
decebalus1 5y ago
Because they 'currently' have no choice. Give it a few more decades..

credit_guy 5y ago

Not when we are talking about $15 vs $26 per hour. If you think there are workers out there whose productivity is $26/hour, but who can't find work at more than $15/hour, then you can truly disrupt the market and hire all these workers for $20/hour and become rich. PS: it looks like the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 [1], not $15. You can become richer. [1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage

pydry 5y ago
>If you think there are workers out there whose productivity is $26/hour, but who can't find work at more than $15/hour, then you can truly disrupt the market and hire all these workers for $20/hour and become rich. How? If their productivity is $26 / hour but their market rate is $15 / hour, by paying them $20 / hour you'll just post lower profits than companies that pay them market rate.
- VRay 5y ago
  The workers will leave all the other companies and work for you, so those other companies will be dead in the water and/or stuck raising their own workers' pay to compete At least, that's how it was supposed to work in theory.. Now that we see people out there going for improved wages/jobs in line with good capitalist doctrine, the business owners are all screaming in rage about a "labor shortage"
  - pydry 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure Walmart would prefer to post higher profits than to drive the local hairdressers out of business and have more job applicants than they know what to do with.
  - bena 5y ago
    Yeah, but there's a soft form of collusion going on. If we live on an inescapable island of 1000 people, and I have 200 jobs, and you have 200 jobs, and Bob has 200 jobs, then the fact that you and Bob pay twice as much doesn't matter. You guys only need 400 workers, total. Those 600 other workers will be left to compete for the 200 jobs I have. I still get to name my price. And once you see that I can undercut labor costs due to this, it makes no sense for either you or Bob to continue paying twice as much as I do. And let's not pretend that if you don't have the very best workers, you can't compete. First of all, you can't identify the best. You hope to get lucky, but in reality, you're going to be paying not the best, but those adequate enough to perform the job reasonably well. COVID assistance has changed the game. Because before, the choice was to have a job or starve homeless. You'd take almost anything in desperation. Remove desperation and people stop acting desperate.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

It indicates the major flaw of capitalism: It has no moral compass whatsoever. Its a vicious meat grinder. I think the comment is quite insightful, in the employers might think one thing while the realities of capitalism dictate another.

dnautics 5y ago
s/capitalism/the universe/g Anyways, your statement is not true. Capitalism absolutely has a moral compass, it had the moral compass of the consumptive patterns of society; if that compass points the wrong way then either we must take a hard look at ourselves, or, think about what policies are twisting consumptive patterns to go the wrong way.... Probably a bit of both.
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  The consumers don't drive much. They just exist in the environment they were born into. The idea we vote with our money doesn't hold much water when the system is rigged with regulations set by the largest corporations to their own benefit. Keeping out competition. And that's just never going to stop either, so the economic system needs examined, not hoping for some sort of libertarian awakening. To make this worthwhile to continue at all, this conversation first needs to clearly define capitalism. Capitalism is not the free market. Markets existed long before capitalism. Capitalism is exclusively paying people less than the value they produce, to create a profit for the employer. To rectify that economic system's moral compass, you create incentives to moving towards worker-owned enterprise. Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each. To own a share you have to actively work there. That model resolves most issues with capitalism. Worker's unions also resolve it, but in a less ideal way as the tension between employer-employee still exists. Which is just a slightly kinder model as master-slave, or lord-serf. Not sure about the universe comparison. The universe is chaotic entropy as far as we know, but assigning human misery- that we actively create, to the universe is a bit much.
  - dnautics 5y ago