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Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this valu

Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. So the issue is simply in how corporations are set up and how the stock market is designed. The entire system is designed to drain as much value out of hardworking people into the pockets of those who do not work, but simply own shares. Being able to buy and sell shares is not problematic per se, but there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. In other words, all workers of a rich company should be (relatively spoken) rich, corresponding to the value they provided to the company.

monero-xmr 2y ago
And I would say that developed western nations, including the USA, have done a pretty good job of providing subsidies and benefits for low skilled workers, so they can get on the lowest rung of the totem pole and contribute to society without starving. We specifically have food stamps, the EITC, welfare, child tax credit, housing vouchers, and so on specifically so they can provide valuable labor to society (and minimum wage is definitely a cost to businesses) and not starve.
- vaidhy 2y ago
  and I would assume you would agree that these benefits be expanded as needed and cover a larger population if necessary, right? In fact, it would correct if everyone gets these living expenses taken care of, right?
  - monero-xmr 2y ago
    No I don’t want to give free housing to rich people. I support means tested benefits. The goal is to make people self sufficient, not dependent on the government handout for life.
- organsnyder 2y ago
  Surviving in these systems is incredibly stressful and leads to trauma for both the workers and their families. The stigma, uncertainty, and bureaucracy exact tremendous tolls.
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    Try surviving in the world before those systems existed.
    - mptest 2y ago
      This is not a helpful mindset. Because things were worse before, we should ignore how they are still not faultless?
      - adamomada 2y ago
        Isn’t perfect the enemy of good? It’s better, but not better enough until it’s faultless?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - jimbokun 2y ago
        The comment I replied to made no constructive suggestions.
        mptest 2y ago
        They didn't explicitly, no. But implicitly, their constructive suggestions seem obvious to me. Reduce barriers to benefits often called "means testing" - also make them more comprehensive.
    - organsnyder 2y ago
      Oh, it was most certainly worse. But that doesn't mean we can't do better.
- mistermann 2y ago
  I wonder how our "pretty good" would rank in percentage terms on an absolute scale (what is possible under the circumstances we find ourselves in). I bet cultures that have the ability to consider such perspectives would beat us handily, especially if they could do it willingly.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Asking for a friend - how do you get access to those programs? He's about to be homeless.
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    Just Google your state plus food stamps. Typically that will lead to a portal for all of the Social services benefits. If not they need to also Google your state plus Medicare, as long as your state participated in the Medicare expansion.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      It's Texas so there could be problems. Certainly no Medicare expansion.
      - the_real_cher 2y ago
        oof yeah. Not sure what to say about that.
pas 2y ago
worth of labor is not the worth of product/service. Amazon picks the places where it can hire extremely cheap labor, because usually they are the only game in town. (monopsony market for labor.) it happened without automation and happens with automation too. of course it's on society to help those who are stuck in these unfortunately places.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  > monopsony market for labor Yes, when the inelastic aggregate supply of labor (expressed as an explicit work quota or expressed as an implicit work quota equal to cost of living divided by wages) exceeds the demand for labor, capitalism turns what should be a happy situation (let's all work a bit less!) into a horror show where working hard for scraps is a privilege and rotting in unemployment is the norm.
  - parineum 2y ago
    Which system works better?
    - schmidtleonard 2y ago
      We've been here before, shortly after the industrial revolution. Some countries tried communism, some countries tried fascism, and the US tried Roosevelts. The results speak for themselves. Large, meaningful compromises to labor can thread the needle well enough to avoid bloodshed. We need us another Roosevelt.
    - GreenWatermelon 2y ago
      Whatever system they use in Scandinavian countries.
  - pas 2y ago
    we are working less. is it due to capitalism? is it just the technological progress fairy? (maybe the fairy is more attracted to the smell of capitalist pigs?) it's not capitalism's fault that people are extremely bad at coordination problems (it's Mr. Moloch's fault obviously, who poisons people's minds with shortsightedness!) it's not capitalism's fault that people choose to block densification of cities, higher taxes, welfare reforms, or that people vote based on their xenophobia.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
No. You're forgetting that there is a finite amount of work needed and so orders-of-magnitude fewer people are required. Also, the average real purchasing power in America has been declining for a very long time and cannot afford goods and services except through taking on debt.
- saalweachter 2y ago
  There are two basic solutions to this problem. 1. Everyone works less (the government mandates a 35, 30, 20... hour workweek), raising the relative value of labor. 2. We collectively do more than the bare minimum needed for survival and comfort (the government raises taxes, spending them on activities like building sports stadiums or moonbases), raising the demand for labor.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Or we could just have the government stop having laws that constrain competition, so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps, and then at lower prices people buy more products and services, increasing the demand for labor and decreasing the cost of living.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      The recent profitflation phenomenon demonstrates pretty conclusively that we can’t rely on lower production costs to result in lower prices without a lot of aggressive trust-busting.
    - SleepilyLimping 2y ago
      > so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps I cannot trust any company with any modicum of success not to immediately exit into the hands of megacorps. I cannot hope that companies have any type of morality/"want to make the world better" anymore.
      - 2y ago
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Labor is fluid, if everyone working for a rich company should be rich, then why would anyone work for a not rich company? It would completely lock up the labor market, where everyone vies to work at the richest company rather than the company that can use their labor the best.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  That's like asking why would anyone go to college anywhere but Harvard. They would, but Harvard has limited slots, so you do the best you can. Also, it's weird you pose this as some kind of counterfactual proof by contradiction, it already happened, because "locking up the labor market" the way you describe is kind of what FAANG did, in at least a mild way, to software engineering, during what we now have to sadly call (if we rely on it for our livelihood) the good old days of the 2010s. In fact, the dearth of math teachers in America probably has to do with this a little, for example. Shortage of math skills, and they really help getting into tech or finance, and the pay difference is huge, so, they suck all the oxygen out of the room.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    So who gets to work for the richest company? The luckiest, the most connected or the hardest working? Is it better being a warehouse worker for Amazon rather than a ML engineer for a poor startup?
    - galdosdi 2y ago
      You're asking how it should be or how it actually is? If the latter, have you like, actually been in the workforce? Yeah, it's a combination of luckiest, most connected, and/or hardest working, depending on the company, depending on the situation. You should know this if you've interviewed for jobs a few times. I'm really confused by your train of thought. Are you a college student?
abfan1127 2y ago
how have the shareholders siphoned off money? dividends? Has amazon ever paid a dividend? does capital investment provide no value? If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat? There are a whole host of logical fallacies here.
- xyzzy123 2y ago
  When an activity produces an economic surplus there's a pretty obvious conflict that occurs in terms of how that surplus will be distributed between workers and capital owners. You can search for "productivity vs compensation" to see the classic graph that shows compensation and productivity decoupling around 1980 in the US. One such is e.g: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ or for Australia (because that's where I live) over a different timeframe: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-reflected-labour-productivity-growth https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-refl... - I'm not sure anybody has conclusively identified the root cause although a lot of people have ideas.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  > If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat? Mature businesses don't make money by selling shares, they make money by selling products and services that the workers make. Share value is not of that huge importance.
Bostonian 2y ago
'At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker.' "Siphoned off"? The shareholders funded the automation that boosted the workers' productivity.
- seec 2y ago
  Then the question is: how they came about getting that much cash that they could fund such a thing? Did they get it solely from their hard work or a large amount of luck/exploitation was involved? It is a rhetorical question, because of course the only right answer is the latter. The reality is that across all ages, you could never get there just by hard work. I have a very fitting example in my family: my great-uncle/aunt were hardworking people and extremely thrifty (not to stay stingy, but to be fair they grew up in war time when everything was in short supply). Yet after 42 years of stable hard-working career and 33 years of confortable retirement pension (over the median salary for the area); the total of their assets doesn't even cross the million euros mark. In a way they could have much more if they had put their capital to work, but since they were simple blue-collar workers, they did not, and what they end up with is just the result of their labour (and social system). This amount could just about pay for the adult life of a single person at minimum wage and you could barely fund a small/medium business acquisition. There are many businesses in the area that sell their assets for much more than that, and you would still need to exploit it to get anything; which is exactly where we started: make other people work to make you money, and give them less for their labour than you make exploiting the assets. It took them over 75 years to accumulate all that, anyone getting that much cash earlier in life either inherited it or got lucky another way (did something that somehow got valuation way over the actual labor cost, which is basically the case for all early tech stuff). The shareholders didn't fund jack shit, they took some money from someone else and used it as leverage to exploit the labor of other people, it's simple as that. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.
Aunche 2y ago
If shareholders aren't entitled to the profit of a business, then they wouldn't have invested in it in the first place. > there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. At the end of the day, the price of labor is going to be a the intersection of supply and demand, so this isn't much different that forcing an employee to spend x% of their wages on buying shares in their own company. This would be great if you were a 1997 Amazon employees, but it would be a disaster for 1997 Sears employees.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to If this were even slightly true, you could just go out and offer your labor on the street corner, and people would jump at the chance to buy it from you. Or you could "harvest" your labor and sell it retail to others trivially, and just loaf around half the year on the cool half million you earned the other half. You can't do these things, and few can. Your labor has no economic value whatsoever, nor does the labor of most other people. > The entire system is designed to drain as much v Designed by who? Why does everyone use the word design here? It sounds every bit as dumb to say "design" here as it would if we were talking about biology. The system evolved. No one person got to design, or parts of it, nor did a committee. If some billionaire or pope or warlord wanted to redesign it today, he couldn't. It's never been designable. No one would even know how to design it so that they could get the results they desired. > Being able to buy and sell shares is not problematic per se, but there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. How could it possibly be more accessible? If a hobo walked off the street smelling like poop and vodka, with a wad of money in his hands, right into the broker's office... do you think they'd turn down the money? Did you mean affordable?
Pet_Ant 2y ago
> At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. You are wrong, but so very close that it's understandable. What can be done with an hour of labour has gone up so very high. That it is true. But what has increased in value is the infrastructure of that allowed for the force multiplier. The actual value of labour thus goes down because it can be consumed so efficiently. Since it's the infrastructure that provides most of the heavy lifting, the owners of it get the benefit. If you need another analogy it'd be like a sport where players win the games, but it's really about the excellent coach that calls the plays. The players have no leverage even if they win all the games.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > what has increased in value is the infrastructure of that allowed for the force multiplier. The actual value of labour thus goes down because it can be consumed so efficiently The price of unskilled labour is objectively higher today than one hundred years ago, and it's clearly higher in developed countries in comparison with undeveloped ones. This is due to a myriad of factors. But to date, workers have done well by way of increasing productivity. (Others have done better.)
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
  Infrastructure is not sentient. Remember that and the causes of French Revolution my friend. With no one to run the tools or tools workers chained to tools what good are the tools? They decay and many cannot be moved effectively. Thanks to the fact that criminals won the war on drugs - a destitute life on the streets perpetually high on meth or heroin and alcohol appears to remain within reach for the foreseeable future posing an attractive alternative lifestyle for those dispossessed of abusive labor conditions. Funding social welfare programs would rebalance the calculus but that fact is angrily denied by most wealthy people despite the overwhelming consensus amongst researchers and practitioners. Expect the difficulty to staff these expensive tools with impoverished staff to fuel inflation for the foreseeable future. It is not impossible that ever more creative financial engineering may stave off any of the countless imposing financial crises but the rebalance against capital for labor is long overdue even without a financial crisis to fuel discontent. I for one hope that the rebalance can occur peaceably but accept the fact that rich and powerful live in reality distortion fields so are more likely to lash out violently than concede a single of their unearned pennies.
bloppe 2y ago
I agree that extreme inequality is generally bad and the value of labor should be higher than the value of capital. But market forces are really important for the functioning of the economy and the welfare of everybody, including low-skilled workers. Regulations like this would distort market forces. A much better solution is progressive taxation. Capital gains and dividends should be taxed much higher, with the benefits predominantly going to workers.
- SCUSKU 2y ago
  Probably not a new idea, but something I've been wondering is if the US implemented progressive taxation, and instead of a UBI implemented a stock buyback program where the government buys shares and then redistributes ownership to citizens. Even though this is totally wealth redistribution (which is politically unpopular, socialism and all), I bet you could market it as super American like Andrew Yang did with UBI as the "Freedom Dividend". This way you could "work within the system" and still keep stonks going up, but also help redistribute wealth to poorer citizens.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Interesting idea, but if you need medicine for your child and are low on cash, you will sell those stocks today rather than save them for the future. And the buyer will be someone who has enough cash to not worry, and will thus get even more cash to not worry. That is, I don't think it'll be that simple. edit: one way to solve the above would be like the Spanish coops, where the ownership (stock) is tied to your employment. IIRC you have to buy say one stock to get employed, and you can only sell when you leave your position. But then it's harder to redistribute the stocks...
    - SCUSKU 2y ago
      Hmm, maybe then maybe put the shares into a retirement account? Basically a government 401(k). Then people will be discouraged from selling because of the tax hit when selling before retirement age. Unless of course they really need it. Which presumably they would also be receiving other government services and payments (Section 8, foodstamps, etc) if they are desperate enough to be liquidating a 401(k).
elevatedastalt 2y ago
You are confusing the "productivity" of labor with the market value of the labor.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Exactly. Just correct the % gains in productivity terms to those from 1969 and the average worker would be making 6 figures right now.
atleastoptimal 2y ago
Labor is worth more because there are "choke points" which need human intervention to run. Logistics companies need legal, support, drivers, operations, etc. However as certain domains prove entirely automatable via different tools, human labor will be redundant. There will be thousands of "ghost factories" and "ghost stores" which operate perfectly 24/7 with no human employees once intelligence and robotic physical labor become cheap and reliable enough.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Also it would be easy to completely restrict very profitable corporations using publicly funded workers. That is completely insane. Of course no country wants to give up their capacity of cheap labor, so politics move slowly or worse, it becomes the literal race to the bottom. It is false to believe they could do without these workers while in reality they probably could do without much of their management.
snapplebobapple 2y ago
That's not true. The system is designed to pay least cost to both capital and labor. Labor just notices it more and whinges more because of sticky prices on their cost side, a less equal distribution of payouts because the quality of labor is far more varied than the quality of capital and the value of capital has been exploding over the last at least 5 decades as technology pushes output per worker far higher over time than output per unit of capital (because the technology is basically allowing more capital to be deployed per worker to increase worker output at a higher ratio of capital to labor). Labor already earns 10-40% of the net income of capital (over and above what they are compensated for for their labor) because of government taxation. It's ridiculous to claim they should be getting even more of the pie or have any say beyond convincing their manager of something. Also, this idea that a worker should be paid what they provide is stupid. They should be paid the lowest price the market will bear, the same as capital. What matters for labor's salary is not what they did but that a company is willing to pay the market clearing price for their labor set by supply and demand.
zrn900 2y ago
> Being able to buy and sell shares is not problematic per se, but there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. Thats not a bad idea. If it was required to run some sufficient percentage of the company as if it was a cooperative and give a defined amount of shares to any joining employee for X years of service and also give representation to the workers in the governance of the company, things could be better. Europe already has the latter in the form of 'work councils'.

monero-xmr 2y ago

And I would say that developed western nations, including the USA, have done a pretty good job of providing subsidies and benefits for low skilled workers, so they can get on the lowest rung of the totem pole and contribute to society without starving. We specifically have food stamps, the EITC, welfare, child tax credit, housing vouchers, and so on specifically so they can provide valuable labor to society (and minimum wage is definitely a cost to businesses) and not starve.

vaidhy 2y ago
and I would assume you would agree that these benefits be expanded as needed and cover a larger population if necessary, right? In fact, it would correct if everyone gets these living expenses taken care of, right?
- monero-xmr 2y ago
  No I don’t want to give free housing to rich people. I support means tested benefits. The goal is to make people self sufficient, not dependent on the government handout for life.
organsnyder 2y ago
Surviving in these systems is incredibly stressful and leads to trauma for both the workers and their families. The stigma, uncertainty, and bureaucracy exact tremendous tolls.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Try surviving in the world before those systems existed.
  - mptest 2y ago
    This is not a helpful mindset. Because things were worse before, we should ignore how they are still not faultless?
    - adamomada 2y ago
      Isn’t perfect the enemy of good? It’s better, but not better enough until it’s faultless?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - jimbokun 2y ago
      The comment I replied to made no constructive suggestions.
      - mptest 2y ago
        They didn't explicitly, no. But implicitly, their constructive suggestions seem obvious to me. Reduce barriers to benefits often called "means testing" - also make them more comprehensive.
  - organsnyder 2y ago
    Oh, it was most certainly worse. But that doesn't mean we can't do better.
mistermann 2y ago
I wonder how our "pretty good" would rank in percentage terms on an absolute scale (what is possible under the circumstances we find ourselves in). I bet cultures that have the ability to consider such perspectives would beat us handily, especially if they could do it willingly.
silverquiet 2y ago
Asking for a friend - how do you get access to those programs? He's about to be homeless.
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  Just Google your state plus food stamps. Typically that will lead to a portal for all of the Social services benefits. If not they need to also Google your state plus Medicare, as long as your state participated in the Medicare expansion.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    It's Texas so there could be problems. Certainly no Medicare expansion.
    - the_real_cher 2y ago
      oof yeah. Not sure what to say about that.

pas 2y ago

worth of labor is not the worth of product/service. Amazon picks the places where it can hire extremely cheap labor, because usually they are the only game in town. (monopsony market for labor.) it happened without automation and happens with automation too. of course it's on society to help those who are stuck in these unfortunately places.

schmidtleonard 2y ago
> monopsony market for labor Yes, when the inelastic aggregate supply of labor (expressed as an explicit work quota or expressed as an implicit work quota equal to cost of living divided by wages) exceeds the demand for labor, capitalism turns what should be a happy situation (let's all work a bit less!) into a horror show where working hard for scraps is a privilege and rotting in unemployment is the norm.
- parineum 2y ago
  Which system works better?
  - schmidtleonard 2y ago
    We've been here before, shortly after the industrial revolution. Some countries tried communism, some countries tried fascism, and the US tried Roosevelts. The results speak for themselves. Large, meaningful compromises to labor can thread the needle well enough to avoid bloodshed. We need us another Roosevelt.
  - GreenWatermelon 2y ago
    Whatever system they use in Scandinavian countries.
- pas 2y ago
  we are working less. is it due to capitalism? is it just the technological progress fairy? (maybe the fairy is more attracted to the smell of capitalist pigs?) it's not capitalism's fault that people are extremely bad at coordination problems (it's Mr. Moloch's fault obviously, who poisons people's minds with shortsightedness!) it's not capitalism's fault that people choose to block densification of cities, higher taxes, welfare reforms, or that people vote based on their xenophobia.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

No. You're forgetting that there is a finite amount of work needed and so orders-of-magnitude fewer people are required. Also, the average real purchasing power in America has been declining for a very long time and cannot afford goods and services except through taking on debt.

saalweachter 2y ago
There are two basic solutions to this problem. 1. Everyone works less (the government mandates a 35, 30, 20... hour workweek), raising the relative value of labor. 2. We collectively do more than the bare minimum needed for survival and comfort (the government raises taxes, spending them on activities like building sports stadiums or moonbases), raising the demand for labor.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Or we could just have the government stop having laws that constrain competition, so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps, and then at lower prices people buy more products and services, increasing the demand for labor and decreasing the cost of living.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    The recent profitflation phenomenon demonstrates pretty conclusively that we can’t rely on lower production costs to result in lower prices without a lot of aggressive trust-busting.
  - SleepilyLimping 2y ago
    > so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps I cannot trust any company with any modicum of success not to immediately exit into the hands of megacorps. I cannot hope that companies have any type of morality/"want to make the world better" anymore.
    - 2y ago

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

Labor is fluid, if everyone working for a rich company should be rich, then why would anyone work for a not rich company? It would completely lock up the labor market, where everyone vies to work at the richest company rather than the company that can use their labor the best.

galdosdi 2y ago
That's like asking why would anyone go to college anywhere but Harvard. They would, but Harvard has limited slots, so you do the best you can. Also, it's weird you pose this as some kind of counterfactual proof by contradiction, it already happened, because "locking up the labor market" the way you describe is kind of what FAANG did, in at least a mild way, to software engineering, during what we now have to sadly call (if we rely on it for our livelihood) the good old days of the 2010s. In fact, the dearth of math teachers in America probably has to do with this a little, for example. Shortage of math skills, and they really help getting into tech or finance, and the pay difference is huge, so, they suck all the oxygen out of the room.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  So who gets to work for the richest company? The luckiest, the most connected or the hardest working? Is it better being a warehouse worker for Amazon rather than a ML engineer for a poor startup?
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    You're asking how it should be or how it actually is? If the latter, have you like, actually been in the workforce? Yeah, it's a combination of luckiest, most connected, and/or hardest working, depending on the company, depending on the situation. You should know this if you've interviewed for jobs a few times. I'm really confused by your train of thought. Are you a college student?

abfan1127 2y ago

how have the shareholders siphoned off money? dividends? Has amazon ever paid a dividend? does capital investment provide no value? If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat? There are a whole host of logical fallacies here.

xyzzy123 2y ago
When an activity produces an economic surplus there's a pretty obvious conflict that occurs in terms of how that surplus will be distributed between workers and capital owners. You can search for "productivity vs compensation" to see the classic graph that shows compensation and productivity decoupling around 1980 in the US. One such is e.g: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ or for Australia (because that's where I live) over a different timeframe: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-reflected-labour-productivity-growth https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-refl... - I'm not sure anybody has conclusively identified the root cause although a lot of people have ideas.
carlosjobim 2y ago
> If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat? Mature businesses don't make money by selling shares, they make money by selling products and services that the workers make. Share value is not of that huge importance.

Bostonian 2y ago

'At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker.' "Siphoned off"? The shareholders funded the automation that boosted the workers' productivity.

seec 2y ago
Then the question is: how they came about getting that much cash that they could fund such a thing? Did they get it solely from their hard work or a large amount of luck/exploitation was involved? It is a rhetorical question, because of course the only right answer is the latter. The reality is that across all ages, you could never get there just by hard work. I have a very fitting example in my family: my great-uncle/aunt were hardworking people and extremely thrifty (not to stay stingy, but to be fair they grew up in war time when everything was in short supply). Yet after 42 years of stable hard-working career and 33 years of confortable retirement pension (over the median salary for the area); the total of their assets doesn't even cross the million euros mark. In a way they could have much more if they had put their capital to work, but since they were simple blue-collar workers, they did not, and what they end up with is just the result of their labour (and social system). This amount could just about pay for the adult life of a single person at minimum wage and you could barely fund a small/medium business acquisition. There are many businesses in the area that sell their assets for much more than that, and you would still need to exploit it to get anything; which is exactly where we started: make other people work to make you money, and give them less for their labour than you make exploiting the assets. It took them over 75 years to accumulate all that, anyone getting that much cash earlier in life either inherited it or got lucky another way (did something that somehow got valuation way over the actual labor cost, which is basically the case for all early tech stuff). The shareholders didn't fund jack shit, they took some money from someone else and used it as leverage to exploit the labor of other people, it's simple as that. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

Aunche 2y ago

If shareholders aren't entitled to the profit of a business, then they wouldn't have invested in it in the first place. > there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. At the end of the day, the price of labor is going to be a the intersection of supply and demand, so this isn't much different that forcing an employee to spend x% of their wages on buying shares in their own company. This would be great if you were a 1997 Amazon employees, but it would be a disaster for 1997 Sears employees.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

> Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to If this were even slightly true, you could just go out and offer your labor on the street corner, and people would jump at the chance to buy it from you. Or you could "harvest" your labor and sell it retail to others trivially, and just loaf around half the year on the cool half million you earned the other half. You can't do these things, and few can. Your labor has no economic value whatsoever, nor does the labor of most other people. > The entire system is designed to drain as much v Designed by who? Why does everyone use the word design here? It sounds every bit as dumb to say "design" here as it would if we were talking about biology. The system evolved. No one person got to design, or parts of it, nor did a committee. If some billionaire or pope or warlord wanted to redesign it today, he couldn't. It's never been designable. No one would even know how to design it so that they could get the results they desired. > Being able to buy and sell shares is not problematic per se, but there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. How could it possibly be more accessible? If a hobo walked off the street smelling like poop and vodka, with a wad of money in his hands, right into the broker's office... do you think they'd turn down the money? Did you mean affordable?

Pet_Ant 2y ago

> At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. You are wrong, but so very close that it's understandable. What can be done with an hour of labour has gone up so very high. That it is true. But what has increased in value is the infrastructure of that allowed for the force multiplier. The actual value of labour thus goes down because it can be consumed so efficiently. Since it's the infrastructure that provides most of the heavy lifting, the owners of it get the benefit. If you need another analogy it'd be like a sport where players win the games, but it's really about the excellent coach that calls the plays. The players have no leverage even if they win all the games.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> what has increased in value is the infrastructure of that allowed for the force multiplier. The actual value of labour thus goes down because it can be consumed so efficiently The price of unskilled labour is objectively higher today than one hundred years ago, and it's clearly higher in developed countries in comparison with undeveloped ones. This is due to a myriad of factors. But to date, workers have done well by way of increasing productivity. (Others have done better.)
Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
Infrastructure is not sentient. Remember that and the causes of French Revolution my friend. With no one to run the tools or tools workers chained to tools what good are the tools? They decay and many cannot be moved effectively. Thanks to the fact that criminals won the war on drugs - a destitute life on the streets perpetually high on meth or heroin and alcohol appears to remain within reach for the foreseeable future posing an attractive alternative lifestyle for those dispossessed of abusive labor conditions. Funding social welfare programs would rebalance the calculus but that fact is angrily denied by most wealthy people despite the overwhelming consensus amongst researchers and practitioners. Expect the difficulty to staff these expensive tools with impoverished staff to fuel inflation for the foreseeable future. It is not impossible that ever more creative financial engineering may stave off any of the countless imposing financial crises but the rebalance against capital for labor is long overdue even without a financial crisis to fuel discontent. I for one hope that the rebalance can occur peaceably but accept the fact that rich and powerful live in reality distortion fields so are more likely to lash out violently than concede a single of their unearned pennies.

bloppe 2y ago

I agree that extreme inequality is generally bad and the value of labor should be higher than the value of capital. But market forces are really important for the functioning of the economy and the welfare of everybody, including low-skilled workers. Regulations like this would distort market forces. A much better solution is progressive taxation. Capital gains and dividends should be taxed much higher, with the benefits predominantly going to workers.

SCUSKU 2y ago
Probably not a new idea, but something I've been wondering is if the US implemented progressive taxation, and instead of a UBI implemented a stock buyback program where the government buys shares and then redistributes ownership to citizens. Even though this is totally wealth redistribution (which is politically unpopular, socialism and all), I bet you could market it as super American like Andrew Yang did with UBI as the "Freedom Dividend". This way you could "work within the system" and still keep stonks going up, but also help redistribute wealth to poorer citizens.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Interesting idea, but if you need medicine for your child and are low on cash, you will sell those stocks today rather than save them for the future. And the buyer will be someone who has enough cash to not worry, and will thus get even more cash to not worry. That is, I don't think it'll be that simple. edit: one way to solve the above would be like the Spanish coops, where the ownership (stock) is tied to your employment. IIRC you have to buy say one stock to get employed, and you can only sell when you leave your position. But then it's harder to redistribute the stocks...
  - SCUSKU 2y ago
    Hmm, maybe then maybe put the shares into a retirement account? Basically a government 401(k). Then people will be discouraged from selling because of the tax hit when selling before retirement age. Unless of course they really need it. Which presumably they would also be receiving other government services and payments (Section 8, foodstamps, etc) if they are desperate enough to be liquidating a 401(k).

elevatedastalt 2y ago

You are confusing the "productivity" of labor with the market value of the labor.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

Exactly. Just correct the % gains in productivity terms to those from 1969 and the average worker would be making 6 figures right now.

atleastoptimal 2y ago

Labor is worth more because there are "choke points" which need human intervention to run. Logistics companies need legal, support, drivers, operations, etc. However as certain domains prove entirely automatable via different tools, human labor will be redundant. There will be thousands of "ghost factories" and "ghost stores" which operate perfectly 24/7 with no human employees once intelligence and robotic physical labor become cheap and reliable enough.

raxxorraxor 2y ago

Also it would be easy to completely restrict very profitable corporations using publicly funded workers. That is completely insane. Of course no country wants to give up their capacity of cheap labor, so politics move slowly or worse, it becomes the literal race to the bottom. It is false to believe they could do without these workers while in reality they probably could do without much of their management.

snapplebobapple 2y ago

That's not true. The system is designed to pay least cost to both capital and labor. Labor just notices it more and whinges more because of sticky prices on their cost side, a less equal distribution of payouts because the quality of labor is far more varied than the quality of capital and the value of capital has been exploding over the last at least 5 decades as technology pushes output per worker far higher over time than output per unit of capital (because the technology is basically allowing more capital to be deployed per worker to increase worker output at a higher ratio of capital to labor). Labor already earns 10-40% of the net income of capital (over and above what they are compensated for for their labor) because of government taxation. It's ridiculous to claim they should be getting even more of the pie or have any say beyond convincing their manager of something. Also, this idea that a worker should be paid what they provide is stupid. They should be paid the lowest price the market will bear, the same as capital. What matters for labor's salary is not what they did but that a company is willing to pay the market clearing price for their labor set by supply and demand.

zrn900 2y ago

> Being able to buy and sell shares is not problematic per se, but there should be rules in place that give all workers of a publicly traded company better access to owning parts of said company. Thats not a bad idea. If it was required to run some sufficient percentage of the company as if it was a cooperative and give a defined amount of shares to any joining employee for X years of service and also give representation to the workers in the governance of the company, things could be better. Europe already has the latter in the form of 'work councils'.