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That's not how markets work. People will still clean the toilets, but the supply of toilet cleaners will fall, while demand stays the same or even increases, me

That's not how markets work. People will still clean the toilets, but the supply of toilet cleaners will fall, while demand stays the same or even increases, meaning that prices will increase. The result is not that nobody will clean toilets. It's that those who do will be paid more. (And other effects: There will be increased demand for technological alternatives to hiring toilet cleaners and innovation in that area, for example. Or alternatives to toilets might become more popular. Etc.) You are correct, things will become more expensive. But so what? It doesn't really matter, because everyone in this hypothetical society is wealthier. For example, the price of hiring a janitor in San Francisco is outrageously expensive compared to hiring someone to clean in, say, a poor township in South Africa. But the people in SF are wealthier, so it doesn't matter. And the janitors are wealthier, too: They make $40k/year in SF, $4.5k/year in Cape Town. Similarly, the average janitor in SF possesses much more wealth not only than their counterpart in South Africa, but also more than almost anyone living 100 years ago. Because society has created more wealth. Your model of how things work is subtly based on the fixed pie fallacy, which assumes that total wealth cannot increase, and that if there are gains in one area, there must be tradeoffs elsewhere. Which is not true. Rich people don't have strong incentives to keep poor people poor.

jerojero 4y ago
I'm not really saying people aren't better off than they were 100 years ago. Of course they are! If we look at education and health indicators a baby born today is on average much more likely to live to old age compared to 100 years ago. Things are better. Let me make that clear. But it is also very easy to dismiss inequality that does exist. Society has created more wealth and a significant part of it has gone to developing nations but reality is that most of that wealth has concentrated and continues to concentrate in developed nations. There is always a push for more equality, it used to be the case that only rich people could live to old age and now a lot more people can do that. It used to be the case that only rich people could read and now 85% of the world can read. But... take a look at the things you interact with in a daily basis and trace back the labour that was put in them. Remember the scandal about apple using child labour to build iPhones 10 or so years ago? And what's the situation now. How much of our goods come from extremely underpaid people. Yes the cost of living is less but thats not all, living conditions in those countries are much worse than our developed nations, working conditions are awful. Society has created more wealth that's for sure, but we (in developed nations) could be a little less comfortable and trade some of that for a more equitable distribution of power and money. But in reality. We don't do that, not even in our nations... Well not in the USA anyway. If you look at statistics about different racial groups in America there is a clear division on who is doing which jobs. I guess maybe I ought to rephrase things a little bit. It's not that rich people want to keep poor people poor it's that they want to keep them significantly less wealthy than they are. Like it or not, no one wants to do janitorial work, and we don't want to pay janitors a lot of money. Why? Because our society is structured in such a way where what we value the most is kind of hyper intellectual specialised labour that not many people can do. I.e. we value rarity more than we value onerousness. And that's a choice. Europeans are much more equitable in that regard, and for sure a lot of their engineers end up working in the USA. But overall their society seems to be much more comfortable for the median family. These are choices we make as societies. Also, doesnt California have some of the highest percentages of homelessness in the USA anyway? Though this is a multi faceted problem, a big thing is that those 40k that the janitor might earn is still not enough to live comfortably in such a city with such huge disparity of incomes. For every engineer that lives their regular life, there are probably hundreds of people that are required to sustain that mode of life. But does the engineer produce enough value to offset that? I don't think so, for one, we ought to think of the climate change impact of living such lives. I think I can summarise my position as this: although we have progressed a lot and we are capable of producing a lot of very specialised wealth. This comes at a societal and natural cost that we can't really afford. Just because we can doesn't mean we should, I believe we ought to scale down and have everyone be lifted more equitable. Everyone wants everyone to be rich, but that's not possible considering the cost of "being rich" in modern times. And the decision we've made is instead of lowering the bar of what it means to be rich we have a big spread where some people at the top are extremely wealthy (and this goes for entire countries) and the others on the bottom are not. We are progressing, yes, but some of us have progressed incredibly faster than others. And I will say, we have done so at their expense in most cases.
- csallen 4y ago
  I agree with everything you said and think it's more-or-less true, except for the last paragraph. You said, "And the decision we've made is… we have a big spread where some people at the top are extremely wealthy… and the others on the bottom are not." To me that seems like you're implying the latter is a result of the former, that the rise of rich people/countries is what forces others into poverty. That's the fixed pie fallacy, and it's not actually true. (However, perhaps that's not what you're saying, and I'm misinterpreting.) It's true that some people and places are progressing faster and further than others, but progress is progress. So many of the factor jobs we consider crappy, for example, are huge improvements over the previously available jobs in those places. I do agree there is something distasteful and of course unfair about the disparities in wealth, living conditions, and working conditions, and more can and should be done to help the less fortunate on earth. But I don't think agree that the way to do that is to scale down. To my mind, the chief benefactor of people worldwide is technology: printing, reading, electronics, cheap crops, democracy, healthcare advancements, etc. Technological innovations have ended millennia of stagnation when it comes to human suffering (e.g. famine), lifted billions out of poverty, and improved human happiness. And those innovations are chiefly the result of economic systems that create competitive markets that incentivize innovation. The resulting inequality is a small price to pay, to my mind.
creatonez 4y ago
Why does it matter if the janitor makes more money when they are likely still struggling just as much due to high cost of living? The whole "humanity is way more wealthy than in the 1600s because consumerism is at an all time high" thing doesn't make sense after basic inspection of the idea. In the year 2150 there will be impoverished single mothers who are working three jobs to pay off the loans for their spaceship. Just because they have a personal spaceship and they get to do hard labor in the laser mines doesn't mean they aren't permanently trapped at the very bottom of a rigid and oppressive class structure.
- csallen 4y ago
  You're analyzing everything in relative terms, which makes it seem like being at the bottom of the totem pole is an equivalent experience in any society or time period, because the bottom is the bottom. This isn't true. From a high level, self-reported happiness has an extremely strong correlation with a country's GDP. On a personal level, the average impoverished person in a developing country like South Africa has a much worse lived experience than the average impoverished person in America. You would be hard pressed to find a San Francisco janitor who wants to switch places with a Capetonian one, or a 2150 single mother who wants to switch places with an 1850 single mother. It's not just consumerism that's at an all time high. It's wealth. It's technology. It's ease of life. It's leisure time. It's healthcare. It's the ability to communicate with others. These things don't just come out of nowhere. They're created (by capitalistic markets) because people like them and they improve their lives.
  - creatonez 4y ago
    That progress has nothing to do with capitalism. Almost any economy can create technology. Even the soviet union's ridiculous bureaucracy was able to bring rapid world-changing technological progress to some of the most under-developed siberian wilderness. Describing it in what you call "relative terms" describes the unjust exploitation, the shackles that chain people while pretending to free them. The shackles that prevent all this progress from actually allowing people to work less (examine this: did "leisure time" actually continue to increase after the industrial revolution took us out of farming? or did it level off everywhere except for outliers like germany and france?)

jerojero 4y ago

I'm not really saying people aren't better off than they were 100 years ago. Of course they are! If we look at education and health indicators a baby born today is on average much more likely to live to old age compared to 100 years ago. Things are better. Let me make that clear. But it is also very easy to dismiss inequality that does exist. Society has created more wealth and a significant part of it has gone to developing nations but reality is that most of that wealth has concentrated and continues to concentrate in developed nations. There is always a push for more equality, it used to be the case that only rich people could live to old age and now a lot more people can do that. It used to be the case that only rich people could read and now 85% of the world can read. But... take a look at the things you interact with in a daily basis and trace back the labour that was put in them. Remember the scandal about apple using child labour to build iPhones 10 or so years ago? And what's the situation now. How much of our goods come from extremely underpaid people. Yes the cost of living is less but thats not all, living conditions in those countries are much worse than our developed nations, working conditions are awful. Society has created more wealth that's for sure, but we (in developed nations) could be a little less comfortable and trade some of that for a more equitable distribution of power and money. But in reality. We don't do that, not even in our nations... Well not in the USA anyway. If you look at statistics about different racial groups in America there is a clear division on who is doing which jobs. I guess maybe I ought to rephrase things a little bit. It's not that rich people want to keep poor people poor it's that they want to keep them significantly less wealthy than they are. Like it or not, no one wants to do janitorial work, and we don't want to pay janitors a lot of money. Why? Because our society is structured in such a way where what we value the most is kind of hyper intellectual specialised labour that not many people can do. I.e. we value rarity more than we value onerousness. And that's a choice. Europeans are much more equitable in that regard, and for sure a lot of their engineers end up working in the USA. But overall their society seems to be much more comfortable for the median family. These are choices we make as societies. Also, doesnt California have some of the highest percentages of homelessness in the USA anyway? Though this is a multi faceted problem, a big thing is that those 40k that the janitor might earn is still not enough to live comfortably in such a city with such huge disparity of incomes. For every engineer that lives their regular life, there are probably hundreds of people that are required to sustain that mode of life. But does the engineer produce enough value to offset that? I don't think so, for one, we ought to think of the climate change impact of living such lives. I think I can summarise my position as this: although we have progressed a lot and we are capable of producing a lot of very specialised wealth. This comes at a societal and natural cost that we can't really afford. Just because we can doesn't mean we should, I believe we ought to scale down and have everyone be lifted more equitable. Everyone wants everyone to be rich, but that's not possible considering the cost of "being rich" in modern times. And the decision we've made is instead of lowering the bar of what it means to be rich we have a big spread where some people at the top are extremely wealthy (and this goes for entire countries) and the others on the bottom are not. We are progressing, yes, but some of us have progressed incredibly faster than others. And I will say, we have done so at their expense in most cases.

csallen 4y ago
I agree with everything you said and think it's more-or-less true, except for the last paragraph. You said, "And the decision we've made is… we have a big spread where some people at the top are extremely wealthy… and the others on the bottom are not." To me that seems like you're implying the latter is a result of the former, that the rise of rich people/countries is what forces others into poverty. That's the fixed pie fallacy, and it's not actually true. (However, perhaps that's not what you're saying, and I'm misinterpreting.) It's true that some people and places are progressing faster and further than others, but progress is progress. So many of the factor jobs we consider crappy, for example, are huge improvements over the previously available jobs in those places. I do agree there is something distasteful and of course unfair about the disparities in wealth, living conditions, and working conditions, and more can and should be done to help the less fortunate on earth. But I don't think agree that the way to do that is to scale down. To my mind, the chief benefactor of people worldwide is technology: printing, reading, electronics, cheap crops, democracy, healthcare advancements, etc. Technological innovations have ended millennia of stagnation when it comes to human suffering (e.g. famine), lifted billions out of poverty, and improved human happiness. And those innovations are chiefly the result of economic systems that create competitive markets that incentivize innovation. The resulting inequality is a small price to pay, to my mind.

creatonez 4y ago

Why does it matter if the janitor makes more money when they are likely still struggling just as much due to high cost of living? The whole "humanity is way more wealthy than in the 1600s because consumerism is at an all time high" thing doesn't make sense after basic inspection of the idea. In the year 2150 there will be impoverished single mothers who are working three jobs to pay off the loans for their spaceship. Just because they have a personal spaceship and they get to do hard labor in the laser mines doesn't mean they aren't permanently trapped at the very bottom of a rigid and oppressive class structure.

csallen 4y ago
You're analyzing everything in relative terms, which makes it seem like being at the bottom of the totem pole is an equivalent experience in any society or time period, because the bottom is the bottom. This isn't true. From a high level, self-reported happiness has an extremely strong correlation with a country's GDP. On a personal level, the average impoverished person in a developing country like South Africa has a much worse lived experience than the average impoverished person in America. You would be hard pressed to find a San Francisco janitor who wants to switch places with a Capetonian one, or a 2150 single mother who wants to switch places with an 1850 single mother. It's not just consumerism that's at an all time high. It's wealth. It's technology. It's ease of life. It's leisure time. It's healthcare. It's the ability to communicate with others. These things don't just come out of nowhere. They're created (by capitalistic markets) because people like them and they improve their lives.
- creatonez 4y ago
  That progress has nothing to do with capitalism. Almost any economy can create technology. Even the soviet union's ridiculous bureaucracy was able to bring rapid world-changing technological progress to some of the most under-developed siberian wilderness. Describing it in what you call "relative terms" describes the unjust exploitation, the shackles that chain people while pretending to free them. The shackles that prevent all this progress from actually allowing people to work less (examine this: did "leisure time" actually continue to increase after the industrial revolution took us out of farming? or did it level off everywhere except for outliers like germany and france?)