6 ms·

> Cards on the table: I think the vast majory of people would do less, and perhaps very little socially productive work without the current financial incentives

> Cards on the table: I think the vast majory of people would do less, and perhaps very little socially productive work without the current financial incentives. I don't disagree, but aren't you implicitly admitting here that the vast majority of people don't want to spend their lives doing work? We get a few laps around the sun, once, before we return to oblivion. It seems a tragedy to me to force almost everyone into spending that brief spark of life on the drudgery of increasing shareholder value. If you agree, would you then also say that it would be in humanity's interest to work toward a situation where people can lead happy, fulfilling lives? I'm not saying I have any answers, but I am saying that implicit in your own assumption is a problem that needs solving.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
I agree with everything you said except the shareholder value part. people dont want to spend their lives doing work, but they do want to spend their lives consuming. If you eliminate the shareholders and shares, it still take the same amount of work to produce what we consume, so this wont help reduce work. In the 1930s, Keynes imagined that humans would live lives of leisure as productivity doubled every 20 years. However, the human hunger for material comforts is bottomless. The only offramp from work is reducing consumption or 2) freezing consumption (assuming productivity increases)
- kamarg 2y ago
  > it still take the same amount of work to produce what we consume Does it? Seems like if we don't have excess value going to shareholders, less work could be done to provide the current level of value for things people are consuming.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Value isnt the same thing as labor/work. This would change where the value goes, not the amount of work done. A restaurant needs X hours of labor to make Y hamburgers. This is true if all the money goes to workers, or just a fraction of it. You could pay a worker more, but that doesn't increase the supply of hamburgers. Inversely, any value tied up in the share price is not being spent on hamburgers. The best you can hope to do is shift some consumption from investors to workers, but consumption differences are as great as wealth/value differentials. e.g. Musk & Bezos might have 1 million times as much value to their name, but they don't consume 1 million times as many hamburgers. The vast majority of excess value held by investors is not directed towards consumption.
    - nehal3m 2y ago
      > The vast majority of excess value held by investors is not directed towards consumption. So why does it need to be created in the first place then? That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        >That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself. Value =/= Work. no extra work is happening at the burger shop. you still need X hours to make Y hamburgers. If anyone works less, fewer people eat. The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere). >So why does it need to be created in the first place then? In theory, the utility of investor profit serves as a market signal for what goods are desired, when things should be produced, and what should no longer be produced. Markets determine this through trial and error with thousands of participants simultaneously acting. In theory, people have proposed doing away with the profit signal, but the only alternative is trial and error from a political process. for the last 150 years, it has been understood that neither process is perfectly efficient. For most goods, it is conventionally understood that inefficiency of the profit signal is less than the inefficiency of political process. By way of analogy, Walmart has a 2% profit margin which is a cost consumers bear for Walmart curating the selection of goods they want in the quantities they want. In terms of efficiency, I think it is unlikely a panel of government politicians (with their own motives and biases) could run a store and decide on the types and quantity of goods that people will want in a more efficient way.
        rbanffy 2y ago
        > The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere). Who could, in turn, work less if burger prices didn't reflect the need to pay investors more than they invested. > In theory, people have proposed doing away with the profit signal, but the only alternative is trial and error from a political process. You can always measure by actual consumption. > By way of analogy, Walmart has a 2% profit margin which is a cost consumers bear Note Walmart is subsidised by government programs that pay their employees because the wages Walmart pays are considered too low for survival.
brigadier132 2y ago
People dont want to work but they want the benefits of other peoples labor. Simultaneously they try to fight the automation that would lead to a world were humans dont need to work for things to exist
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > Simultaneously they try to fight the automation that would lead to a world were humans dont need to work for things to exist Because they are sure (rightfully so) the owners of said automation will not pay them enough to offset their lost jobs.
throwaway22032 2y ago
"Increasing shareholder value" is a meme. In both the US and UK over 30% of households are owned outright with no mortgage. The economy is made up of us, it's not (predominantly) a downtrodden serving a tiny elite. Most people work and do useful stuff for each other. Yes, there are bullshit jobs, but it's a huge exaggeration to pretend they all are.
- nehal3m 2y ago
  Alright, I'll concede the numbers, let's say some fraction of people are employed not because they see value in their work but because they're economically incentivised (in other words, to make ends meet). I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so, and furthermore, that humanity owes it to itself to remedy that situation in order to maximise for fulfilled lives. That is if you agree that societal progress means making people's lives better, and that spending one's time meaningfully is a good measure of better. What I'm not saying is all work is horseshit and let's all party.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    >I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so You cant have the fruits of labor without the labor. People make this calculus every single day, and nearly unanimously decide that it would be more detrimental to go without the fruits of labor (especially those that must be incentivized). It is obviously worth exploring how to make work less miserable, or better fit the interests of a worker, but that is a genuinely difficult matching an allocation problem. A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done. The closest equivalent to a system without transactional incentives is individual subsistence farming where one has to work for oneself so they don't die.
    - laserlight 2y ago
      > A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done. That sounds weird to me. If people want it done, they would get it done, wouldn't they? Can you maybe expand with an example?

s1artibartfast 2y ago

I agree with everything you said except the shareholder value part. people dont want to spend their lives doing work, but they do want to spend their lives consuming. If you eliminate the shareholders and shares, it still take the same amount of work to produce what we consume, so this wont help reduce work. In the 1930s, Keynes imagined that humans would live lives of leisure as productivity doubled every 20 years. However, the human hunger for material comforts is bottomless. The only offramp from work is reducing consumption or 2) freezing consumption (assuming productivity increases)

kamarg 2y ago
> it still take the same amount of work to produce what we consume Does it? Seems like if we don't have excess value going to shareholders, less work could be done to provide the current level of value for things people are consuming.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Value isnt the same thing as labor/work. This would change where the value goes, not the amount of work done. A restaurant needs X hours of labor to make Y hamburgers. This is true if all the money goes to workers, or just a fraction of it. You could pay a worker more, but that doesn't increase the supply of hamburgers. Inversely, any value tied up in the share price is not being spent on hamburgers. The best you can hope to do is shift some consumption from investors to workers, but consumption differences are as great as wealth/value differentials. e.g. Musk & Bezos might have 1 million times as much value to their name, but they don't consume 1 million times as many hamburgers. The vast majority of excess value held by investors is not directed towards consumption.
  - nehal3m 2y ago
    > The vast majority of excess value held by investors is not directed towards consumption. So why does it need to be created in the first place then? That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      >That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself. Value =/= Work. no extra work is happening at the burger shop. you still need X hours to make Y hamburgers. If anyone works less, fewer people eat. The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere). >So why does it need to be created in the first place then? In theory, the utility of investor profit serves as a market signal for what goods are desired, when things should be produced, and what should no longer be produced. Markets determine this through trial and error with thousands of participants simultaneously acting. In theory, people have proposed doing away with the profit signal, but the only alternative is trial and error from a political process. for the last 150 years, it has been understood that neither process is perfectly efficient. For most goods, it is conventionally understood that inefficiency of the profit signal is less than the inefficiency of political process. By way of analogy, Walmart has a 2% profit margin which is a cost consumers bear for Walmart curating the selection of goods they want in the quantities they want. In terms of efficiency, I think it is unlikely a panel of government politicians (with their own motives and biases) could run a store and decide on the types and quantity of goods that people will want in a more efficient way.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        > The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere). Who could, in turn, work less if burger prices didn't reflect the need to pay investors more than they invested. > In theory, people have proposed doing away with the profit signal, but the only alternative is trial and error from a political process. You can always measure by actual consumption. > By way of analogy, Walmart has a 2% profit margin which is a cost consumers bear Note Walmart is subsidised by government programs that pay their employees because the wages Walmart pays are considered too low for survival.

brigadier132 2y ago

People dont want to work but they want the benefits of other peoples labor. Simultaneously they try to fight the automation that would lead to a world were humans dont need to work for things to exist

rbanffy 2y ago
> Simultaneously they try to fight the automation that would lead to a world were humans dont need to work for things to exist Because they are sure (rightfully so) the owners of said automation will not pay them enough to offset their lost jobs.

throwaway22032 2y ago

"Increasing shareholder value" is a meme. In both the US and UK over 30% of households are owned outright with no mortgage. The economy is made up of us, it's not (predominantly) a downtrodden serving a tiny elite. Most people work and do useful stuff for each other. Yes, there are bullshit jobs, but it's a huge exaggeration to pretend they all are.

nehal3m 2y ago
Alright, I'll concede the numbers, let's say some fraction of people are employed not because they see value in their work but because they're economically incentivised (in other words, to make ends meet). I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so, and furthermore, that humanity owes it to itself to remedy that situation in order to maximise for fulfilled lives. That is if you agree that societal progress means making people's lives better, and that spending one's time meaningfully is a good measure of better. What I'm not saying is all work is horseshit and let's all party.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  >I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so You cant have the fruits of labor without the labor. People make this calculus every single day, and nearly unanimously decide that it would be more detrimental to go without the fruits of labor (especially those that must be incentivized). It is obviously worth exploring how to make work less miserable, or better fit the interests of a worker, but that is a genuinely difficult matching an allocation problem. A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done. The closest equivalent to a system without transactional incentives is individual subsistence farming where one has to work for oneself so they don't die.
  - laserlight 2y ago
    > A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done. That sounds weird to me. If people want it done, they would get it done, wouldn't they? Can you maybe expand with an example?