Read on Twitter
I've heard and thought about this notion a lot.
If we want to have any human-created thing in the world and not just work entirely on our own, specifically choosing what one is willing to work for and placing value on one's own labor as one sees fit is the voluntary path. https://twitter.com/Logan_ofthecorn/status/1345154705723432971
If we want to have any human-created thing in the world and not just work entirely on our own, specifically choosing what one is willing to work for and placing value on one's own labor as one sees fit is the voluntary path. https://twitter.com/Logan_ofthecorn/status/1345154705723432971
This turned into something long, so just a warning!
The threat of starvation comes from existing, from nature, not from other human beings. Without a job or without other people being willing to start the process of creating something that others want, and others joining along, one would still need to work to find food and shelter
It's incorrect to say that stealing occurs, that people are forced to work, or that they provide surplus value when people show up to work voluntarily. A person may decide they want to pay or value a worker's work more, but that person alone doesn't decide value.
The public may decide they're willing to work with companies that pay workers more than the average and so pay more for products and services. That's great.
But the threat of starvation and needing to show up to work would exist regardless of whether or not some business owner decided to produce anything. Living is costly and requires inputs that don't just happen simply from existing.
People don't just want fruits off a tree, which one could argue may at some point have been something a person could get for free from nature, depending on the climate and predators etc. They also want the fruits of human labor and creativity to live in modern society -
the heat, the light, the food, two-day shipping, face-time with your loved ones, a pen to write with.
There's much to unpack in that tweet.
There's much to unpack in that tweet.
The owners of a business are not the only beneficiaries. The customers benefit. The workers benefit because they can specialize and so provide more value, which is based on what others, not just owners - but everyone in society, including this person using Twitter - wants.
This is turning into an essay. I guess I just want to make a point about the "relying on the threat of starvation to force people to work for unfair wages" part.
Without wages determined by (perceived) value provided, the potential labor and skill in individuals cannot be efficiently organized for us all to be making and finding the things we use each day. People decide what to learn or not learn or realize their talents etc.
If that's not done voluntarily, then it's done by force. We try to set wages through law, which means two people are not voluntarily agreeing. We try to take money from others (not initially stolen) to give to others through taxes.
It seems a missing link in these discussions, when talking about someone having to choose where to work, that they would face this struggle anyway. If they themselves are not creating all the things they want, it has to happen through exchanges of value of labor and skill,
which creates a market, which creates prices. That labor and skill should be given voluntarily, which can only happen from people making agreements about where and how much they are willing to work for.
Any wage should be compared to the initial wage of a human being, which is zero while providing for one's own existence (or at least family if not tribe since we are social). The social aspect of humans is what makes us upset at some people having less.
But being social has always required exchanges of value among people, where people contribute (or don't), based on what is needed or their being inherently valuable. If some needed input or skill is highly valued but scarce, it will cost more, and a person can get paid more.
I think nothing is wrong with wanting people to have more or there to be less inequality, but I do think there is a denial or misunderstanding of what is occurring when people work for others. We're humans, so we can try to soften reality, but it doesn't require lying -
such as calling things stealing or forcing, when that is not it. There are issues I see, like that companies do benefit from the collective, such as through subsidies, or technologies initially developed with government grants, for example, but later privately commercialized.
In ways like this, the public collectively subsidizes corporations and doesn't receive direct benefits collectively since they then pay for the products. But that's a separate thing from capitalism as I understand it.
More can be said about individuals having unearned talents, the natural world being unfair or "inequitable", how being social makes us care about fairness, when a thing turns from individual output to a collective standard. But I had to stop somewhere. I deleted stuff :)
If you want to know what happens when people decide that individuals shouldn't negotiate the cost of their individual labor, watch my upcoming video on the Gulag Archipelago, and the whole series so far if you have time. This isn't a gotcha. It's just relevant.
