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> For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. I think you are extrapolating the experience of the 19th century industrialization into

> For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. I think you are extrapolating the experience of the 19th century industrialization into the distant past. There have always been poor people, but I think "labour" is a relatively recent concept. i.e. Medieval serfs had a place fixed in society. It was a lousy place, but a place still. It had more to do with lord-vassal relationship than in had to do with the calculus of labor's value added.

PeterWhittaker 11y ago
Well, a more detailed comment from me would have expanded upon themes of reward, social mobility (which requires resources or connections or both), etc., etc. But as a quick comment, it serves. For example, consider serfs as examples of hardly paid at all: They made enough to survive, but even if they had surplus and managed to sell it for a luxury item or two, they stayed stuck in their fiefdoms, by and large, unless they had skills or talents both in demand and recognized, e.g., qualities for the priesthood, for becoming a mason, etc., or unless they fled and/or joined the military. I guess they key follow-on to both the original article and to Christie's comment is one disposable wealth and choice: For much of human history, most of us have had neither. For part of the 20th C, many of us have had both. Perhaps that is the return to the mean (that I honestly hope we are not experiencing - otherwise, my daughter's world will be far crappier than mine, regardless of the efforts of either of us, unless one of us should win the platform creation-and-ownership lottery).