7 ms·

... That describes every job... ever. Unless you are the one stealing the resources directly from the land... in which case: Fat salaries on other peoples' pro

by 1stop 11y ago

... That describes every job... ever. Unless you are the one stealing the resources directly from the land... in which case: Fat salaries on other peoples' property. But hey, hate on the academics, they are the WORST! right?

loup-vaillant 11y ago
> That describes every job... ever Wait, what? Most jobs give you a salary, sure, but you nearly always end up producing far more value than you are paid back. The thieves are the shareholders of the company you serve. (As for the land… not every piece of land is someone's property —and that's good.)
- saalweachter 11y ago
  If you are producing more value than you are being paid for, why are you working there?
  - chucksmash 11y ago
    What alternative are you suggesting? salesman who sells $100,000 in product a year should get paid $150,000 a year? Unless you are part of a cost center, it seems to me the assumption is that you are producing more value than you cost to employ.
    - 1stop 11y ago
      Or people get paid their value, and we stop thinking it's okay for a select few to reap the surplus value of others... you know, kind of like how we got rid of slavery (except we didn't, we just paid a little more for it).
      - chucksmash 11y ago
        An employer making a profit beyond the cost of paying their employees a (decent in many cases, especially in software) salary is not slavery...
        andrepd 11y ago
        You may not like the analogy, and the difference in scale is surely a big one, but the principle is the same. In slavery, you were prevented to quit by physical coercion. In capitalism, you are prevented to quit because if you do you and your family will starve (or at least live in poverty, on modern welfare states). The employer can pay you minimum wage for your labour, even if it generates 10x more value, because you have no choice: he has you on the palm of your hand. Submit to the conditions the capital holders dictate, or starve.
        chucksmash 11y ago
        1) You are totally discounting the social safety net. 2) If the services you provide are commoditized, there are millions of other people who can do the work you do so you are more easily replaceable. Investing in your skills can remedy that. About the worst thing you could do would be to lament how you are beholden to the capital holders while stagnating with an undifferentiated skillset. 3) "The principle is the same" is an incredibly narrow view to take. It minimizes the horrors of slavery. Working for a living in an at will arrangement is nothing like being the property of another human. You can quit, and go find a new job. You can move to another state - there are no laws that say your previous employer can send bounty hunters after you to reclaim you as a runaway. Perspective, please.
        andrepd 11y ago
        1) I didn't, that's what I was referring too when I said "or at least live in poverty, in a modern welfare state" 2) That's all very nice in principle, but in practice that's often not feasible. I'm not talking about the software industry, where everything is very open and full of opportunity, but about low-income jobs and how the people working in them often have such incredibly complex constraints about them that that talk about "investing in your skills" and "differentiating your skillset" is totally disconnected from the reality of life. 3) I guess so. Still I was trying to emphasise the whole binding aspect of it, the fact that in many situations you are only free to leave in principle, because being out of a job can throw you and your family into debt, homelessness, or worse. Wasn't exactly thinking of slavery in the literal, bounty-hunters-after-runaways, sense.
      - fsloth 11y ago
        Please do not be disrespectful of the people who had to suffer through slavery as slaves by comparing their position with whomever you think is a "slave" in a modern western society.
        1stop 11y ago
        That's right, don't talk about suffering now, because it used to be way worse! How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital. I'm not taking modern Western society, I'm talking historical/modern capitalism. In all societies.
        fsloth 11y ago
        "How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital." So by your definition any position short of economic independece would be slavery? I'm not depreciating suffering. Calling employees in a poor bargaining position "slaves" is muddled argumentation. Any arbitrary non-negotiable position is not slavery - unless one wants to be poetic (i.e. "we are all slaves to laws of physics" etc). As to the definition of slavery I would refer to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery "Slavery is a legal or economic system in which principles of property law can apply to humans so that people can be treated as property,[1] and can be owned, bought and sold accordingly, and cannot withdraw unilaterally from the arrangement." Capital has been always a lopsided thing - few have it. It's quite different not having capital, than being treated as a capital asset and having almost no human rights. As a fairly modern example Frederick Douglas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass) has more than a few words to say about his time as a slave. "I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday... A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. ... I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent," http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm Being bound to only few means of sustenance is one thing. Having ones birthday robbed is another entirely.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        Both people are supposed to benefit in a transaction. Do you disagree with that? The employee getting 100% of the value is just as unworkable as the employer getting 100%. In the one extreme nobody ever gets a job because it's worthless, and in the other extreme nobody ever gets an employee because it's worthless.
    - loup-vaillant 11y ago
      Note: there is no such thing as an actual cost centre: those quickly get fired or outsourced. (Exception: the shareholders themselves.)
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    Most employees produce a little more to their company's bottom line, on average, than their salary+overhead. They allow the surplus to go to the employer in exchange for certain benefits -- such as security, consistency, and division of labor. A lot of people would rather make $50,000 with a 4% raise every year than make $60,000 on average but with occasional dry spells, the constantly-looming threat of not being able to find new clients, and the annoyance of having to manage your own research/dev/sales/marketing/insurance/taxes/licensing/misc paperwork.
  - lmm 11y ago
    It's like buying insurance. My employer pays me a bit less than my average value in return for taking on all the risk. (Sadly this does induce a counterparty risk that I perhaps failed to fully account for)
  - andrepd 11y ago
    Of course you are producing more value than you are being paid for. Why else would an employer hire you?
- 1stop 11y ago
  But you a receiving "someone else's money". Every piece of property was stolen at some point even if it was sold legally after that. All major resources generally have come from such "acquisitions".

by 1stop 11y ago

loup-vaillant 11y ago

> That describes every job... ever Wait, what? Most jobs give you a salary, sure, but you nearly always end up producing far more value than you are paid back. The thieves are the shareholders of the company you serve. (As for the land… not every piece of land is someone's property —and that's good.)

saalweachter 11y ago
If you are producing more value than you are being paid for, why are you working there?
- chucksmash 11y ago
  What alternative are you suggesting? salesman who sells $100,000 in product a year should get paid $150,000 a year? Unless you are part of a cost center, it seems to me the assumption is that you are producing more value than you cost to employ.
  - 1stop 11y ago
    Or people get paid their value, and we stop thinking it's okay for a select few to reap the surplus value of others... you know, kind of like how we got rid of slavery (except we didn't, we just paid a little more for it).
    - chucksmash 11y ago
      An employer making a profit beyond the cost of paying their employees a (decent in many cases, especially in software) salary is not slavery...
      - andrepd 11y ago
        You may not like the analogy, and the difference in scale is surely a big one, but the principle is the same. In slavery, you were prevented to quit by physical coercion. In capitalism, you are prevented to quit because if you do you and your family will starve (or at least live in poverty, on modern welfare states). The employer can pay you minimum wage for your labour, even if it generates 10x more value, because you have no choice: he has you on the palm of your hand. Submit to the conditions the capital holders dictate, or starve.
        chucksmash 11y ago
        1) You are totally discounting the social safety net. 2) If the services you provide are commoditized, there are millions of other people who can do the work you do so you are more easily replaceable. Investing in your skills can remedy that. About the worst thing you could do would be to lament how you are beholden to the capital holders while stagnating with an undifferentiated skillset. 3) "The principle is the same" is an incredibly narrow view to take. It minimizes the horrors of slavery. Working for a living in an at will arrangement is nothing like being the property of another human. You can quit, and go find a new job. You can move to another state - there are no laws that say your previous employer can send bounty hunters after you to reclaim you as a runaway. Perspective, please.
        andrepd 11y ago
        1) I didn't, that's what I was referring too when I said "or at least live in poverty, in a modern welfare state" 2) That's all very nice in principle, but in practice that's often not feasible. I'm not talking about the software industry, where everything is very open and full of opportunity, but about low-income jobs and how the people working in them often have such incredibly complex constraints about them that that talk about "investing in your skills" and "differentiating your skillset" is totally disconnected from the reality of life. 3) I guess so. Still I was trying to emphasise the whole binding aspect of it, the fact that in many situations you are only free to leave in principle, because being out of a job can throw you and your family into debt, homelessness, or worse. Wasn't exactly thinking of slavery in the literal, bounty-hunters-after-runaways, sense.
    - fsloth 11y ago
      Please do not be disrespectful of the people who had to suffer through slavery as slaves by comparing their position with whomever you think is a "slave" in a modern western society.
      - 1stop 11y ago
        That's right, don't talk about suffering now, because it used to be way worse! How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital. I'm not taking modern Western society, I'm talking historical/modern capitalism. In all societies.
        fsloth 11y ago
        "How about this: robbing everyone of any means of survival short of selling their labour is the very definition of slavery. We just obfuscate it with money, but never offer a real chance of owning capital." So by your definition any position short of economic independece would be slavery? I'm not depreciating suffering. Calling employees in a poor bargaining position "slaves" is muddled argumentation. Any arbitrary non-negotiable position is not slavery - unless one wants to be poetic (i.e. "we are all slaves to laws of physics" etc). As to the definition of slavery I would refer to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery "Slavery is a legal or economic system in which principles of property law can apply to humans so that people can be treated as property,[1] and can be owned, bought and sold accordingly, and cannot withdraw unilaterally from the arrangement." Capital has been always a lopsided thing - few have it. It's quite different not having capital, than being treated as a capital asset and having almost no human rights. As a fairly modern example Frederick Douglas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass) has more than a few words to say about his time as a slave. "I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday... A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. ... I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent," http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm Being bound to only few means of sustenance is one thing. Having ones birthday robbed is another entirely.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Both people are supposed to benefit in a transaction. Do you disagree with that? The employee getting 100% of the value is just as unworkable as the employer getting 100%. In the one extreme nobody ever gets a job because it's worthless, and in the other extreme nobody ever gets an employee because it's worthless.
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    Note: there is no such thing as an actual cost centre: those quickly get fired or outsourced. (Exception: the shareholders themselves.)
- lotharbot 11y ago
  Most employees produce a little more to their company's bottom line, on average, than their salary+overhead. They allow the surplus to go to the employer in exchange for certain benefits -- such as security, consistency, and division of labor. A lot of people would rather make $50,000 with a 4% raise every year than make $60,000 on average but with occasional dry spells, the constantly-looming threat of not being able to find new clients, and the annoyance of having to manage your own research/dev/sales/marketing/insurance/taxes/licensing/misc paperwork.
- lmm 11y ago
  It's like buying insurance. My employer pays me a bit less than my average value in return for taking on all the risk. (Sadly this does induce a counterparty risk that I perhaps failed to fully account for)
- andrepd 11y ago
  Of course you are producing more value than you are being paid for. Why else would an employer hire you?
1stop 11y ago
But you a receiving "someone else's money". Every piece of property was stolen at some point even if it was sold legally after that. All major resources generally have come from such "acquisitions".