3 ms·

this is relatively unremarkable for those with an understanding of wage, labor, profit, price and capital. capitalism will always seek to reduce labor cost. d

by nimbius 3mo ago

this is relatively unremarkable for those with an understanding of wage, labor, profit, price and capital. capitalism will always seek to reduce labor cost. during the epoch of neoliberalism it achieved great strides in this by reducing labor power through union busting by both thatcher and reagan in the UK and US respectively. it has also effectively curtailed any increase in the minimum wage for nearly 20 years as well as reduced protections, regulation and prosecution for wage theft and overtime pay violations which it maintains as exclusively as civil matters while ensuring theft itself from a merchant in turn is always a criminal matter through the primacy of private property. to learn more i recommend reading Marx's "Das Kapital," albeit its rather academic. Engels "wage labor" is also a good read to understand why housing is so persistently unaffortable but helps to understand why any other good or service slowly becomes so as well.

simianwords 3mo ago
[flagged]
- abdullahkhalids 3mo ago
  > Workers enjoy highest living standards of any time in history. It's entirely possible for someone to be paid a lot in absolute terms, while at the same time paid very little relative to the value that they produce which is monetarily captured by their organization. The truth of the first does not invalidate the injustice of the second.
aeternum 3mo ago
Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value. His worldview is primarily that capitalists 'steal' the valuable labor. However it doesn't seem that that is actually the world we are in. Instead the intrinsic value of human labor seems to be slowly trending towards zero. And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.
- arthurptj 3mo ago
  Then why does every plumber I know own a yacht
  - cucumber3732842 3mo ago
    Industry cartel. If you landscaper had one like the plumbers do he'd have his own yacht. Or he wouldn't exist because you'd buy about as much of his services as you do a plumber's.
  - AngryData 3mo ago
    Because you live in a prosperous area and the plumbers unionized in order to maintain wage growth along side their neighbors.
- AlotOfReading 3mo ago
  It doesn't seem like the value of human labor is going away. If you look at luxury goods, they're still "handmade". Telecoms still advertise human representatives. Nursing homes still charge massive amounts for personal service. What's changing is how much of that surplus value is captured by the workers doing the labor.
- saghm 3mo ago
  > And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc. Sounds like we should start imagining a world where we don't treat people like literal livestock, and then figure out how to get there fast
- wqaatwt 3mo ago
  Isn’t it the complete opposite? i.e. high automatization means that a single worker can create many times more value than before. However it reduces the demand for labor and worker bargaining power. So companies have no incentive to pair “fair” wages.
  - aeternum 3mo ago
    That is true but likely only temporarily. Why is the single worker even needed? We tend to have a pretty human-centric worldview so if there's a single human working to keep a hotel running, our default is to attribute all the generated value to them when it really isn't the case. You can imagine that hotel at some point in the near future goes from requiring 1 worker to keep it running to zero.
torginus 3mo ago
The problem is we are one step beyond capitalist exploitation as described by Marx - basically the surplus which fatcat industrialists extract from the laborer does not really exist - you have to compete in the market with others who do the same, and offer things at the lowest possible margins, and if you need to be big enough to get capital in, you have investors who demand their profits. So basically you are squeezed between the public demanding lower prices and the investors demanding record returns. If you are not a monopoly, that is an impossible ask Basically the only truly profitable businesses left out there is selling hopes and dreams to investors, and shovels to those who build them, which just about describes tech & AI, with companies who regularly manage to 10x their valuations (and P/E ratios)

by nimbius 3mo ago

simianwords 3mo ago

[flagged]

abdullahkhalids 3mo ago
> Workers enjoy highest living standards of any time in history. It's entirely possible for someone to be paid a lot in absolute terms, while at the same time paid very little relative to the value that they produce which is monetarily captured by their organization. The truth of the first does not invalidate the injustice of the second.

aeternum 3mo ago

Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value. His worldview is primarily that capitalists 'steal' the valuable labor. However it doesn't seem that that is actually the world we are in. Instead the intrinsic value of human labor seems to be slowly trending towards zero. And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.

arthurptj 3mo ago
Then why does every plumber I know own a yacht
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago
  Industry cartel. If you landscaper had one like the plumbers do he'd have his own yacht. Or he wouldn't exist because you'd buy about as much of his services as you do a plumber's.
- AngryData 3mo ago
  Because you live in a prosperous area and the plumbers unionized in order to maintain wage growth along side their neighbors.
AlotOfReading 3mo ago
It doesn't seem like the value of human labor is going away. If you look at luxury goods, they're still "handmade". Telecoms still advertise human representatives. Nursing homes still charge massive amounts for personal service. What's changing is how much of that surplus value is captured by the workers doing the labor.
saghm 3mo ago
> And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc. Sounds like we should start imagining a world where we don't treat people like literal livestock, and then figure out how to get there fast
wqaatwt 3mo ago
Isn’t it the complete opposite? i.e. high automatization means that a single worker can create many times more value than before. However it reduces the demand for labor and worker bargaining power. So companies have no incentive to pair “fair” wages.
- aeternum 3mo ago
  That is true but likely only temporarily. Why is the single worker even needed? We tend to have a pretty human-centric worldview so if there's a single human working to keep a hotel running, our default is to attribute all the generated value to them when it really isn't the case. You can imagine that hotel at some point in the near future goes from requiring 1 worker to keep it running to zero.

torginus 3mo ago

The problem is we are one step beyond capitalist exploitation as described by Marx - basically the surplus which fatcat industrialists extract from the laborer does not really exist - you have to compete in the market with others who do the same, and offer things at the lowest possible margins, and if you need to be big enough to get capital in, you have investors who demand their profits. So basically you are squeezed between the public demanding lower prices and the investors demanding record returns. If you are not a monopoly, that is an impossible ask Basically the only truly profitable businesses left out there is selling hopes and dreams to investors, and shovels to those who build them, which just about describes tech & AI, with companies who regularly manage to 10x their valuations (and P/E ratios)