Well said. But: > Just look at how the correlation between wages and productivity disappeared in the 1970s. Isn't this explained by computerization? The '70s

Well said. But: > Just look at how the correlation between wages and productivity disappeared in the 1970s. Isn't this explained by computerization? The '70s? That's when Stallman was mucking around at MIT, right? Computers were happening! Say 30 workers' productivity can now be reached by 1 worker at a computer. The company lays off 25, leaving only 5 workers. Those 5 workers are generating 150 workers' productivity for the company. But they're only getting 5 workers' salary (there has been no salary increase). Boom -- wages:productivity used to be 1:1, and now it's 1:30. Consider how it also makes no sense FOR those 5 workers' salary TO increase significantly. Why should you pay them 30 times more than their pre-computerized peers? Their jobs may actually be easier than before, hours of indexing and searching replaced by filesystems and `grep`. Is that unethical? This also attacks the "we thought computers would mean we would get 2 hour workdays" meme. Equivalently to inflating their wages, why would you decrease their work hours? These are things that, in the name of "ethics", can only be forced by unions or the government, depending on your level of adventurousness toward economic policy. (And your level of confidence in being able to arbitrate ethics. The communists were very hubristic about that one.)