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Obviously I reject the framing. I have never felt exploited by my employers, nor do I feel entitled to a share of the profits beyond what I negotiated when I to

Obviously I reject the framing. I have never felt exploited by my employers, nor do I feel entitled to a share of the profits beyond what I negotiated when I took the job.

tehjoker 3y ago
You may not have felt it, but profit comes from the value you generate beyond what you are paid. That's exploitation, and it is an objective reality. You may not have abused, which is different and tends to get people more immediately angry. Edit: You may not feel entitled to earn what you make, but others might just call that loser talk and no capitalist would ever say that.
- dionidium 3y ago
  You’re describing the labor theory of value, which you present as undeniable fact, but which of course is the subject of one of the most salient and contentious debates of the last century.
  - metabagel 3y ago
    No, they are saying that labor generates profit. That’s different than saying that the value of something is the labor value.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Except, the return on capital input is what generates the profit. Labour extracts the entire return on labour input for itself. Of course it does. Why would labour settle for anything less than every last cent (within some reasonable margin of error) of value that it produces? Labour is highly mobile and holds all the power. Labour is able to produce value even without capital. Capital, on the other hand, doesn't function without labour. You are simply not going to keep labour around to maintain capital operation if you don't give back all the labour value it produces. In practice, we can also demonstrate that this is the case as even when unions roll into town – which really reenforces how much power labour wields – you never see the needle move more than small percentages that are within the margin of error. A $10 per hour job might be able to push for $11 per hour, but never does a $10 per hour job suddenly jump to a $100 per hour job.
- signatoremo 3y ago
  > profit comes from the value you generate beyond what you are paid Does that mean company is exploited by its workers if it generates no profit? If you simply mean the company underpay its employees, how can you come to that conclusion? Looking at market values? Lines of code? > it is objective reality. Care to elaborate? business give people jobs, and therefore the business becomes an exploiter? Objectively
  - happyraul 3y ago
    To exploit means to reap some benefit. If there's no profit, there's no exploitation, I guess. A profitable business is absolutely exploiting its workers, that's what exploit means.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > but profit comes from the value you generate beyond what you are paid. Maybe centuries ago that was true. In the modern economy, workers are already extracting the full amount of value they generate[1]. Profit for a business comes from the additional value its capital is able to generate on top of the labour value. [1] Within reason. The market is never perfectly efficient. Sometimes workers see slightly less – sometimes slightly more – but not anything hugely out of line.
  - kaibee 3y ago
    > from the additional value its capital is able to generate on top of the labour value. Can you provide a concrete example of capital generating value without the involvement of any labor?
    - randomdata 3y ago
      I don't understand the question. How could capital create additional value on top of labour if labour was not involved?
    - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      Automation. Pay for materials to be delivered to a factory, automated processes deliver it, factory makes X and packages it, automation delivers to your door. Not all the way there, but surprisingly close. Let's face it: labor is soon to be obsolete. All economic models that include labor will become antique notions, similar to factoring in horsepower. Gonna be a rough road: all folks in power can think of is, how to keep workers slaving away at something, anything, so long as they don't revolt.
      - tehjoker 3y ago
        The US is a consumer paradise service economy because capitalists shifted manufacturing outside of the US. It's still happening all over the world. We are sitting in the imperial core and our lifestyle is a non-replicable model that is struggling to service 4% of the world, maybe more if you include Europe. People in the US have consumer items, pointless dictatorial jobs, and insane stress from having the welfare state stripped for parts by venture capitalists. We aren't even enjoying what we have even though materially, a good fraction of the population have more than so many others. If you lose your pointless job, you lose your home, healthcare, and transportation and are considered a surplus person. These are all political choices.
- cornel_io 3y ago
  I guess it comes down to your definition of "exploitation", whether that's bad, and whether you consider employment to be a mutually exploitative arrangement (which I could get behind, though I think it's not a bad thing). If the employer is paying you more than the value you would generate without being attached to them, then you're benefitting from that substantially. If your earning potential would be $1/hr on your own, but by joining ABC Corp you are leveraged and can earn them $3/hr and be paid $2/hr, then is that exploitation? To me that seems like a fair exchange that is mutually beneficial and grows the pie for everyone. And to be clear, ultimately the fact that you can earn more when attached to a business derives from the fact that you are able to wield and command some of the resources that the business is capitalized with, which you otherwise would not have access to. The immediate objection will be that the surplus value is not typically fairly split between the employer and employee; maybe in some cases that's true? But from what I've seen, that's not as true as it may sound at first. The majority of people are able to earn essentially zero unless they are attached to a Real Job(tm), because most people at least in modern society have absolutely no idea how to optimally generate value on their own: there's a reason people get so upset when they're laid off or fired, it's far from trivial to figure out how to make your own money, it's much easier to just find another job. And the margin on labor costs are typically not >50% in most industries, which means that the actual divvying of surplus value is not really that abusive, it's a lot closer to the situation I mentioned in the first paragraph than most anti-capitalists would suggest. I'm sure a lot of people would reject my framing altogether, and argue that it's only because we live in a capitalist society that it's so hard to get by without joining a company, or they'd argue that even if my logic holds workers deserve a lot more than an equal split of the surplus value, but I think this at least explains where a lot of us who do think capitalism works are coming from. It's not an unconsidered position, even if people disagree with the underlying moral framework.
  - tehjoker 3y ago
    I think a problem with what you said is that you are evaluating how much someone can earn in comparison to a race to the bottom with other workers. The proper comparison is how much money the business is making as a whole. One thing to keep in mind is that the US GDP is ~20T, if everyone made an equal amount before taxes, that would be somewhere around 120k (a little more or less as workers are about half the economy). You can see from that comparison that the level of exploitation is far higher than than you supposed.
metabagel 3y ago
In general, there is usually a power imbalance which prevents most prospective employees from negotiating effectively for their compensation. You don’t feel that power imbalance. Good for you! But, you don’t seem to recognize that anyone else’s lived experience might be different than your own.

Obviously I reject the framing. I have never felt exploited by my employers, nor do I feel entitled to a share of the profits beyond what I negotiated when I took the job.

tehjoker 3y ago

You may not have felt it, but profit comes from the value you generate beyond what you are paid. That's exploitation, and it is an objective reality. You may not have abused, which is different and tends to get people more immediately angry. Edit: You may not feel entitled to earn what you make, but others might just call that loser talk and no capitalist would ever say that.

dionidium 3y ago
You’re describing the labor theory of value, which you present as undeniable fact, but which of course is the subject of one of the most salient and contentious debates of the last century.
- metabagel 3y ago
  No, they are saying that labor generates profit. That’s different than saying that the value of something is the labor value.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Except, the return on capital input is what generates the profit. Labour extracts the entire return on labour input for itself. Of course it does. Why would labour settle for anything less than every last cent (within some reasonable margin of error) of value that it produces? Labour is highly mobile and holds all the power. Labour is able to produce value even without capital. Capital, on the other hand, doesn't function without labour. You are simply not going to keep labour around to maintain capital operation if you don't give back all the labour value it produces. In practice, we can also demonstrate that this is the case as even when unions roll into town – which really reenforces how much power labour wields – you never see the needle move more than small percentages that are within the margin of error. A $10 per hour job might be able to push for $11 per hour, but never does a $10 per hour job suddenly jump to a $100 per hour job.
signatoremo 3y ago
> profit comes from the value you generate beyond what you are paid Does that mean company is exploited by its workers if it generates no profit? If you simply mean the company underpay its employees, how can you come to that conclusion? Looking at market values? Lines of code? > it is objective reality. Care to elaborate? business give people jobs, and therefore the business becomes an exploiter? Objectively
- happyraul 3y ago
  To exploit means to reap some benefit. If there's no profit, there's no exploitation, I guess. A profitable business is absolutely exploiting its workers, that's what exploit means.
randomdata 3y ago
> but profit comes from the value you generate beyond what you are paid. Maybe centuries ago that was true. In the modern economy, workers are already extracting the full amount of value they generate[1]. Profit for a business comes from the additional value its capital is able to generate on top of the labour value. [1] Within reason. The market is never perfectly efficient. Sometimes workers see slightly less – sometimes slightly more – but not anything hugely out of line.
- kaibee 3y ago
  > from the additional value its capital is able to generate on top of the labour value. Can you provide a concrete example of capital generating value without the involvement of any labor?
  - randomdata 3y ago
    I don't understand the question. How could capital create additional value on top of labour if labour was not involved?
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Automation. Pay for materials to be delivered to a factory, automated processes deliver it, factory makes X and packages it, automation delivers to your door. Not all the way there, but surprisingly close. Let's face it: labor is soon to be obsolete. All economic models that include labor will become antique notions, similar to factoring in horsepower. Gonna be a rough road: all folks in power can think of is, how to keep workers slaving away at something, anything, so long as they don't revolt.
    - tehjoker 3y ago
      The US is a consumer paradise service economy because capitalists shifted manufacturing outside of the US. It's still happening all over the world. We are sitting in the imperial core and our lifestyle is a non-replicable model that is struggling to service 4% of the world, maybe more if you include Europe. People in the US have consumer items, pointless dictatorial jobs, and insane stress from having the welfare state stripped for parts by venture capitalists. We aren't even enjoying what we have even though materially, a good fraction of the population have more than so many others. If you lose your pointless job, you lose your home, healthcare, and transportation and are considered a surplus person. These are all political choices.
cornel_io 3y ago
I guess it comes down to your definition of "exploitation", whether that's bad, and whether you consider employment to be a mutually exploitative arrangement (which I could get behind, though I think it's not a bad thing). If the employer is paying you more than the value you would generate without being attached to them, then you're benefitting from that substantially. If your earning potential would be $1/hr on your own, but by joining ABC Corp you are leveraged and can earn them $3/hr and be paid $2/hr, then is that exploitation? To me that seems like a fair exchange that is mutually beneficial and grows the pie for everyone. And to be clear, ultimately the fact that you can earn more when attached to a business derives from the fact that you are able to wield and command some of the resources that the business is capitalized with, which you otherwise would not have access to. The immediate objection will be that the surplus value is not typically fairly split between the employer and employee; maybe in some cases that's true? But from what I've seen, that's not as true as it may sound at first. The majority of people are able to earn essentially zero unless they are attached to a Real Job(tm), because most people at least in modern society have absolutely no idea how to optimally generate value on their own: there's a reason people get so upset when they're laid off or fired, it's far from trivial to figure out how to make your own money, it's much easier to just find another job. And the margin on labor costs are typically not >50% in most industries, which means that the actual divvying of surplus value is not really that abusive, it's a lot closer to the situation I mentioned in the first paragraph than most anti-capitalists would suggest. I'm sure a lot of people would reject my framing altogether, and argue that it's only because we live in a capitalist society that it's so hard to get by without joining a company, or they'd argue that even if my logic holds workers deserve a lot more than an equal split of the surplus value, but I think this at least explains where a lot of us who do think capitalism works are coming from. It's not an unconsidered position, even if people disagree with the underlying moral framework.
- tehjoker 3y ago
  I think a problem with what you said is that you are evaluating how much someone can earn in comparison to a race to the bottom with other workers. The proper comparison is how much money the business is making as a whole. One thing to keep in mind is that the US GDP is ~20T, if everyone made an equal amount before taxes, that would be somewhere around 120k (a little more or less as workers are about half the economy). You can see from that comparison that the level of exploitation is far higher than than you supposed.

metabagel 3y ago

In general, there is usually a power imbalance which prevents most prospective employees from negotiating effectively for their compensation. You don’t feel that power imbalance. Good for you! But, you don’t seem to recognize that anyone else’s lived experience might be different than your own.