5 ms·

Consuming without working for it is immoral, flying privat jets and traveling more is bad for the environment. Those are not reasons in favor of higher salaries

Consuming without working for it is immoral, flying privat jets and traveling more is bad for the environment. Those are not reasons in favor of higher salaries.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago
The idea here is that they did the work up front and then saved to accumulate wealth which they could spend later. Is that immoral to you?
- melenaboija 3y ago
  That is your idea, my idea here is that it is immoral to pay insane amounts of money to keep promoting inequality which in some cases, as flying jet planes, also involves having more power to dismantle the planet we all live in.
- danbruc 3y ago
  Yes. If you work for 10 years and then just consume stuff for the rest of your life without lifting a finger, stuff for which other people work all day long to produce it while at the same time probably not enjoying a quality of life anywhere near yours, that is deeply unjust and I consider it immoral to desire such a life.
  - stvswn 3y ago
    But what if I inherited it?
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Let me guess your take on folks who never work, are able bodied/minded but live off the state.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      You should not be able to do that, the system should discourage it. But I think one likely has to tolerate this to some extent because trying to completely eliminate it will probably negatively affect people that rightfully claim such benefits, for example having to constantly prove that they are eligible.
  - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
    Ok, so capitalism isn't your thing. Fair enough. I wonder where the limits are though. What if I save up and take a month off? Is that immoral? What about 6 months? A year? Or do I have to have some justification for it that you find acceptable (like having kids or mental health, etc?) Or is it just immoral to not be constantly working while other people are working?
    - danbruc 3y ago
      To a first approximation, you work for one hour, you get to consume stuff that requires one hour of work to produce. I don't care if you work your ass off for some time and then retire early or if you work very little or very much as long as your consume at most a proportional amount.
      - lex-lightning 3y ago
        What about different working conditions? Is one hour in a coal mine the same as one hour as an actor? What if a person has a debilitating illness that prevents them from working but is also expensive to take care of?
        danbruc 3y ago
        Come on, people have written thousands of pages about economy over centuries, I wrote a few sentences here. Of course there are differences between working conditions, individual abilities, and whatnot, that is why I wrote to a first approximation. You are not really expecting that I say something about every possible aspect and edge case in the comments here? Let us justify why some high ranking managers deserve to retire wealthy after a couple of years while their employees at the factory floor have to work for the rest of their lives while never coming close to the wealth of their higher management.
        lex-lightning 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - lex-lightning 3y ago
    I would have paid double my taxes over my career if the US would spend it on elevating the poor. But asking me to not retire, to give away my savings to very few people? What, that’s not ethical. What if I made a lot, but spend very little? Shouldn’t that weigh in, if your issue is consumption level? What if in my early retirement, I go around lifting people up in non-monetary ways? What if my job earned me a lot of money but was ultimately doing something I found socially harmful? I should continue working to the detriment of my mental health and against my principles? We can elevate the poorest and decrease the amount of work the median/average person must do. keyword references: degrowth, UBI
    - danbruc 3y ago
      My point is very simple and we do not have to discuss all the edge cases. Working x hours and consuming stuff that took y hours to produce where y is much larger than x is unjust. All the rest are details.
      - lex-lightning 3y ago
        You are morally and intellectually superior.
      - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
        Are you saying time has objective value? If it took me 50 hours to whittle a doll from a piece of wood, I deserve 50 times the hourly salary of whomever buys my doll? I think that's really stupid, just like the labor theory of value.
      - jedberg 3y ago
        I make widgets. I work 8 hours and make 8 widgets. In my spare time I make a machine to make widgets for me. I've finished my machine, and it can make 16 widgets in 8 hours as long as I turn the crank. So I sit and turn the crank for 8 hours a day and make 16 widgets. Am I immoral yet? I just doubled my productivity for the same amount of work. Now I pay someone to turn the crank for me. They work 8 hours and I give them 8 widgets, and I keep the other 8. They are doing the same 8 hours of work that I was doing, and I do nothing but make sure they keep turning the crank. Am I immoral now? Why? I built the machine and I get 8 widgets a day out of it, the same amount I got when I was building them by hand. The crank turner also gets 8 widgets in 8 hours, the same amount I was producing by hand. So the crank turner does less work for the same output, I do no work for the same output. But both of us have the same resources as my competitor who makes 8 widgets by hand. Is it moral for the crank turner to exchange their 8 widgets for his? What about me?
  - Gormo 3y ago
    How bizarre it is to have strongly prescriptive opinions about other people's time-value preference, and then to mistake those opinions for moral principles.
ZoomerCretin 3y ago
They are reasons for higher salaries. You just disagree that they justify those salaries.
- danbruc 3y ago
  Yes, there are reasons for differing salaries and they have important functions. But at some point those justifications stop to make sense and it is really just about exploiting your position to grab as much as you can for yourself.
  - bitfilped 3y ago
    How is demanding your fair market value exploitation? Do we really need to take pity on companies grossing massive incomes while simultaneously not paying their fair share of taxes?
  - thwarted 3y ago
    Has there ever been a union that pushed for lower compensation for it's members? A union advocating/negotiating for as much as it can for its members is exploiting its position in the same way.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      No, trying to get a better compensation is not per se the issue. In a hypothetical company where the management takes home all the profits and the workers make minimum wage, moving to a more fair distribution of the profits involves less money for the management and more money for the workers.
everfree 3y ago
By that logic, do you consider it immoral to spend lottery winnings?
- danbruc 3y ago
  Good question, but I would ad hoc say no. In the case of a lottery people willingly gamble with some money they earned. In case of management salaries they just take a share of the money for which all the thousands of workers on the factory floor worked.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
Why do you believe they didn't work for their salaries?
- danbruc 3y ago
  I did not say that they did not work for their salaries.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    You did. Not directly, but you implied it.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      Okay, I see how can read it like that. What I meant is that consuming after you stopped working for it is immoral, or alternatively earning so much that you can keep consuming but stop working.

Consuming without working for it is immoral, flying privat jets and traveling more is bad for the environment. Those are not reasons in favor of higher salaries.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago

The idea here is that they did the work up front and then saved to accumulate wealth which they could spend later. Is that immoral to you?

melenaboija 3y ago
That is your idea, my idea here is that it is immoral to pay insane amounts of money to keep promoting inequality which in some cases, as flying jet planes, also involves having more power to dismantle the planet we all live in.
danbruc 3y ago
Yes. If you work for 10 years and then just consume stuff for the rest of your life without lifting a finger, stuff for which other people work all day long to produce it while at the same time probably not enjoying a quality of life anywhere near yours, that is deeply unjust and I consider it immoral to desire such a life.
- stvswn 3y ago
  But what if I inherited it?
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Let me guess your take on folks who never work, are able bodied/minded but live off the state.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    You should not be able to do that, the system should discourage it. But I think one likely has to tolerate this to some extent because trying to completely eliminate it will probably negatively affect people that rightfully claim such benefits, for example having to constantly prove that they are eligible.
- ifyoubuildit 3y ago
  Ok, so capitalism isn't your thing. Fair enough. I wonder where the limits are though. What if I save up and take a month off? Is that immoral? What about 6 months? A year? Or do I have to have some justification for it that you find acceptable (like having kids or mental health, etc?) Or is it just immoral to not be constantly working while other people are working?
  - danbruc 3y ago
    To a first approximation, you work for one hour, you get to consume stuff that requires one hour of work to produce. I don't care if you work your ass off for some time and then retire early or if you work very little or very much as long as your consume at most a proportional amount.
    - lex-lightning 3y ago
      What about different working conditions? Is one hour in a coal mine the same as one hour as an actor? What if a person has a debilitating illness that prevents them from working but is also expensive to take care of?
      - danbruc 3y ago
        Come on, people have written thousands of pages about economy over centuries, I wrote a few sentences here. Of course there are differences between working conditions, individual abilities, and whatnot, that is why I wrote to a first approximation. You are not really expecting that I say something about every possible aspect and edge case in the comments here? Let us justify why some high ranking managers deserve to retire wealthy after a couple of years while their employees at the factory floor have to work for the rest of their lives while never coming close to the wealth of their higher management.
        lex-lightning 3y ago
        [flagged]
- lex-lightning 3y ago
  I would have paid double my taxes over my career if the US would spend it on elevating the poor. But asking me to not retire, to give away my savings to very few people? What, that’s not ethical. What if I made a lot, but spend very little? Shouldn’t that weigh in, if your issue is consumption level? What if in my early retirement, I go around lifting people up in non-monetary ways? What if my job earned me a lot of money but was ultimately doing something I found socially harmful? I should continue working to the detriment of my mental health and against my principles? We can elevate the poorest and decrease the amount of work the median/average person must do. keyword references: degrowth, UBI
  - danbruc 3y ago
    My point is very simple and we do not have to discuss all the edge cases. Working x hours and consuming stuff that took y hours to produce where y is much larger than x is unjust. All the rest are details.
    - lex-lightning 3y ago
      You are morally and intellectually superior.
    - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
      Are you saying time has objective value? If it took me 50 hours to whittle a doll from a piece of wood, I deserve 50 times the hourly salary of whomever buys my doll? I think that's really stupid, just like the labor theory of value.
    - jedberg 3y ago
      I make widgets. I work 8 hours and make 8 widgets. In my spare time I make a machine to make widgets for me. I've finished my machine, and it can make 16 widgets in 8 hours as long as I turn the crank. So I sit and turn the crank for 8 hours a day and make 16 widgets. Am I immoral yet? I just doubled my productivity for the same amount of work. Now I pay someone to turn the crank for me. They work 8 hours and I give them 8 widgets, and I keep the other 8. They are doing the same 8 hours of work that I was doing, and I do nothing but make sure they keep turning the crank. Am I immoral now? Why? I built the machine and I get 8 widgets a day out of it, the same amount I got when I was building them by hand. The crank turner also gets 8 widgets in 8 hours, the same amount I was producing by hand. So the crank turner does less work for the same output, I do no work for the same output. But both of us have the same resources as my competitor who makes 8 widgets by hand. Is it moral for the crank turner to exchange their 8 widgets for his? What about me?
- Gormo 3y ago
  How bizarre it is to have strongly prescriptive opinions about other people's time-value preference, and then to mistake those opinions for moral principles.

ZoomerCretin 3y ago

They are reasons for higher salaries. You just disagree that they justify those salaries.

danbruc 3y ago
Yes, there are reasons for differing salaries and they have important functions. But at some point those justifications stop to make sense and it is really just about exploiting your position to grab as much as you can for yourself.
- bitfilped 3y ago
  How is demanding your fair market value exploitation? Do we really need to take pity on companies grossing massive incomes while simultaneously not paying their fair share of taxes?
- thwarted 3y ago
  Has there ever been a union that pushed for lower compensation for it's members? A union advocating/negotiating for as much as it can for its members is exploiting its position in the same way.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    No, trying to get a better compensation is not per se the issue. In a hypothetical company where the management takes home all the profits and the workers make minimum wage, moving to a more fair distribution of the profits involves less money for the management and more money for the workers.

everfree 3y ago

By that logic, do you consider it immoral to spend lottery winnings?

danbruc 3y ago
Good question, but I would ad hoc say no. In the case of a lottery people willingly gamble with some money they earned. In case of management salaries they just take a share of the money for which all the thousands of workers on the factory floor worked.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

Why do you believe they didn't work for their salaries?

danbruc 3y ago
I did not say that they did not work for their salaries.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  You did. Not directly, but you implied it.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    Okay, I see how can read it like that. What I meant is that consuming after you stopped working for it is immoral, or alternatively earning so much that you can keep consuming but stop working.