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Programming casino sites has value because people choose to spend the money that they earn gambling. Society decides which tasks have value and which don’t by
by d1sxeyes 5y ago
Programming casino sites has value because people choose to spend the money that they earn gambling.
Society decides which tasks have value and which don’t by whether consumers spend money on the work product produced by those tasks.
Now, society’s way of working this out isn’t perfect, but how else should we determine which jobs are adding value and which are not?
- bjourne 5y agoI reject the idea that money determines what has worth. Because believing so leads to absurd conclusions. Like dealing drugs being more valuable than taking care of sick people, or pills against male pattern baldness being more valuable than aids medicines for sub-Saharan Africans, or Jeff Bezos being a million times more valuable than me. In fact, the very idea that money is what decides worth is what got us into this mess in the first place. You ask how we should decide what jobs has "value" and which hasn't. Well, if it isn't obvious that a job has "value" then perhaps it has no value?
- d1sxeyes 5y agoObvious to whom, and how do you define ‘value’? I’m not being difficult here, these are tough questions. Allowing the market to decide value is the option we currently have, and seems to be the fairest so far. I am sure that it is not optimal, and it has flaws, but no one has yet convinced me that there is a better model.
- bjourne 5y agoWorkless societies depend on voluntarism so there is no need to precisely define value. For instance, who decided that creating Linux was valuable use of Linus Torvalds time? In situations where you really have to define value, democratic votes is fairer than "letting the market" (i.e rich people) decide.
- d1sxeyes 5y ago> Workless societies depend on voluntarism This presents a workless society as a real thing, rather than a hypothetical. I might be wrong, but I’m not aware of any workless society (apart from hunter gatherer tribes and history). If you have examples of a society that functions fully without work, then please share, I’d be interested to see how you solve volunteering for unpleasant or undesirable tasks that no-one wants.
- bjourne 5y agoThey have existed on small scales. Everything from hippie communies to Christian monasteries to Israeli kibbutzim. The reason tasks are undesirable is because the tasks are detached from people's lives. Raising kids is certainly "objectively" undesirable, yet people do it for free and at great costs. Why? Because it's meaningful.