The pandemic is prompting a lot of rethinking about the nature of work and capitalism. Here is one way to think about employment: for most people, it vastly increases the value of your time, which is the most important capital you own.

Look at a few of the objects in the room where you're sitting right now. How long would it have taken you to create them, all by yourself? Could you do it at all? Would those objects be of comparable quality if you tried making them with your own hands?

You probably bought most of the things in your room, including the computer or phone you're reading this on. You made those purchases with money you earned by working at your job. Your paycheck therefore increased the value of your labor by several orders of magnitude.

Let's say you're reading this on a smartphone that cost $500 and you take home about $10 an hour from your job. That means you worked 50 hours to pay for that phone. You could not possibly have made such a thing yourself in 50 hours.

Your work, your paycheck, the willing sale of your labor to an employer, gave you the money needed to command huge amounts of specialized labor from other people. This is true of both the large and small resources in your life, not just fancy electronics but even your food.

Employment, for most of us, is an incredible force multiplier for the value of our time. The amount of time we need to invest in security the necessities of life becomes far smaller, and the quality of the life we secure with that labor becomes vastly greater.

The question is: how can we increase that force multiplier to the greatest potential? Under what system is the value of time for the greatest number of people increased the most? Capitalism is the winner hands-down. It's no contest at all.

The multiplier for the value of labor is much, much smaller under socialism, and smallest of all under brutal communism. That's why communism is mostly noted for sweeping poverty and starvation. Communal labor is a HORRIBLE system for increasing the value of time.

The problem with collectivist systems like socialism and communism is that compulsive force must be employed to extract value from work. The pursuit of profit is a vastly more efficient (and morally superior) way to get people to exchange their time for the greatest benefit.

A whole lot of people were very happy to devote a vast amount of labor (and skill) to create that $500 phone in your hand. You only "worked for them" for 10 hours to get it, and you were happy to do so. Everybody won. Nobody was held at gunpoint.