3 ms·
"fair" and "deserving" have the same problems. It's just adding unnecessary moral dimensions. What's fair is whatever both parties mutually agreed to. If you ag
by imgabe 5y ago
"fair" and "deserving" have the same problems. It's just adding unnecessary moral dimensions. What's fair is whatever both parties mutually agreed to. If you agreed to be paid $X and employer pays you $X, then that's fair. Whether they might have possibly agreed to pay you $X + %10 or $X + 20% or whatever is irrelevant. What they're paying other people is also irrelevant. You saw the number, you said "ok" and that's that.
If you were theoretically willing to pay $5 for a gallon of milk and you walked into a store and they were selling it for $2, I'm sure you wouldn't insist they take the extra money. It's the store's job to figure out how much to charge for milk. It's your job to figure out how much you're willing to charge for your labor.
- merrywhether 5y ago"What's fair is whatever both parties mutually agreed to" You could argue there's an important caveat of symmetric information around this interaction if you want to talk about fairness. Asymmetric information is frequently considered an unfair advantage (see insider trading) but is also recognized as the source of much profit (see auction winner's fallacy), but you have to at least recognize that employers by and large have a huge information advantage in the labor market currently.
- imgabe 5y agoThere's also asymmetric information with the milk. I don't know what it cost for the producers, or how much the store paid wholesale. Maybe it's only $0.05 a gallon on their end. Who knows? The only thing that matters is if the retail price is something I can afford and am willing to pay. It's true that employers are privy to a lot more salary information than employees. I know I said what other people are paid is irrelevant, which I think it is in terms of fairness, but you should be (and, legally at least, in the US, are) free to take that information into account when deciding what you'll accept. It's still up to you to make that decision and hold employers to it. They aren't going to offer up higher salaries out of the kindness of their heart or some sentimentality about fairness.
- inetknght 5y ago> The only thing that matters is if the retail price is something I can afford and am willing to pay. Unfortunately that's not quite true. Milk (and other foodstuffs) are a requirement to live. People are "willing" to pay more for that because they don't really have many other options. So it's ripe for abuse.
- DarylZero 5y ago
- aspenmayer 5y agoAgreed. By this logic, if it can even be called that, no one could ever be taken advantage of, because they agreed to be defrauded.
- imgabe 5y agoIf you agree to take a job for $100k, and your colleague decided to hold out for $120k, who exactly is defrauding you? Salary negotiations are not fraud. Fraud involves being promised something and not getting what you agree to. If someone says they’ll give you X in exchange for Y and then they do exactly that, that isn’t fraud.
- aspenmayer 5y agoInalienable rights cannot be signed or bargained away, even if the rights-holder wills it. One cannot agree to slavery or indentured servitude in USA.
- DarylZero 5y agoNow change the numbers to $8k and $9k.