3 ms·
After 200+ years of capitalism It's now deep rooted in our society that all work is a commodity, with human labour wholly fungible. This in and of itself prett
by Guthur 4y ago
After 200+ years of capitalism It's now deep rooted in our society that all work is a commodity, with human labour wholly fungible.
This in and of itself pretty dreadful but I have been wondering recentl whether or not abstract thought is quite so. I'm not quite sure.
- robocat 4y agoCapitalism doesn’t treat people as fungible, but instead according to a power law according to their capitalist value. Rare valuable skills tend to get paid highly, with professionals in the middle somewhere. The most common skills get paid near a minimum set by regulations, and also minimum wage is set by competition - see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease High level capitalists (such as VCs) treat rare people unfungibly e.g. Paul Graham “the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders” or http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html Edit: also fungibility is by no means a capitalist idea, and it is a central concept to some non-capitalist doctrines. What is equality?
- Guthur 4y agoPaul Graham the capitalist is not Paul Graham the coder. One uses his time to produce something another uses his capital to buy others time. But also reducing to single entities misses the forest for the trees. Commodities and there exchange value is a social construct that naturally appears as we exchange goods and ultimately human labour time. The high skilled worker's cost is not just the time now but all the time spent to get to that level of expertise.