Capitalism: the cause of and solution to all life's problems

[rotting bones]

1. I think the consequences will be worse if we don't have a merit system.

2. A majority of workers support reasonable meritocracy.

3. Money is not a work credit.

4. "PS. Remember, this assumes that generally, anyone who seeks employment can find a position and they're not inhumanely underpaid."

[mèþru]

Some other things:
I do not share zompist's rosy view of the 40s-70s. The economy did not, in my view, work to the benefit of enslaved prisoners in the US (US is the only Western country that allows mandatory prison labour, and said labour is still below federal minimum wage to this day). It did not work to the benefit of non-white people. It did not work to the benefit of the disabled. It did not work to the benefit of the indigenous. In some of these areas, the modern day economy (well before COVID at least) is actually a significant step up. In others, especially with prisoners or American Indians and Alaska Natives, things haven't really improved at all in the economic arena.

The status quo heavily relies on exploitation of the third world, but I do not think capitalism in general requires that the third world stays third world. In fact, while many goods would be more expensive without cheap labour of poorer countries overall I think enriching the third world would make every country in the world richer under capitalism in the long term than they would under a capitalism where the third world stays third world.

[mèþru]

Explain #3 please

#4 is plainly impossible. For instance there are far more people interested in being physics professors than there ever can be enough faculty positions for them all.

[rotting bones]

Even if robots are doing most of the heavy lifting, we'll still need people to design, repair and operate them. These jobs are light compared to what the workforce currently does. It would be nice if we could divide the revenue of (edit: automated production) more or less equally. Does anyone think capitalist (as opposed to socialist) laws won't stand in our way of doing that?

[Travis B.]

About robots, someone needs to control those robots, which means that someone needs to program those robots, design the parts those robots manufacture, repair the robots, oversee the activities carried out by the robots, and so on; a world in which robots dominate production will just mean that the jobs will shift to the programmers, designers, repair personnel, operators, etc.

Also, there are many kinds of jobs that will be hard to automate, and while we have weak AI today, strong AI is far off assuming it is realistically possible in the first place. Furthermore, even if something is possible by AI does not mean that it will be cost-effective when automated, and in many cases what is doable by AI will be markedly inferior to that done by real live humans (this is why customer service done by someone for whom English is a second language on the other side of the globe is still superior for the typical English-speaker than automated customer service when doing anything non-trivial).

[rotting bones]

Explain #3 please

The reasons are endless. Eg. Work credits are measured by average man hours. No one could possibly work enough hours to earn as much as overpaid CEOs, to say nothing of investors in businesses.

#4 is plainly impossible. For instance there are far more people interested in being physics professors than there ever can be enough faculty positions for them all.

A position. Not necessarily the position they want. If they are not good enough for a faculty position but good enough to be a schoolteacher, I could get them that. I would also increase the salary of schoolteachers everywhere by a more egalitarian distribution of the products of labor.

Of course, there could always be one person who is terrible at everything he wants to do. This is a reduction to absurdity since he would be unhappy under any economic system.

[Travis B.]

Explain #3 please

The reasons are endless. Eg. Work credits are measured by average man hours. No one could possibly work enough hours to earn as much as overpaid CEOs, to say nothing of investors in businesses.

There should be limits on work credits, e.g. a limit on the maximum number of work credits one can get, in order to keep people from working themselves to death just to get the maximum number of work credits possible.

[rotting bones]

Travis B.: The problem is that the jobs are fewer and occupy fewer hours than they did in that past. Under capitalism, that means workers get poorer, not that higher revenue is divided more equally. This is because the demand for man hours has gone down in the market.

[rotting bones]

There should be limits on work credits, e.g. a limit on the maximum number of work credits one can get, in order to keep people from working themselves to death just to get the maximum number of work credits possible.

Do you think they will do that if their pay is decent? Why? They don't have to save for retirement or worry about job security.

[mèþru]

Being a professor of physics and being schoolteacher aren't remotely the same skill sets or knowledge sets. A lot of people who can't find a job in physics go to work in Wall Street because it pays really well and they already got the advanced math. Being a high school physics teacher only requires an undergrad but requires knowing how to teach very well (they generally have degrees in education) and to do so with teenagers, which is pretty different from both young children and from adults.

Work credits are measured by average man hours

This creates an incentive to drag out projects for as long as possible, and is even more effective at getting people to overwork than money. Working hard or working long is not the same as working efficiently, one of the biggest problems with the Labour Theory of Value

[rotting bones]

Being a professor of physics and being schoolteacher aren't remotely the same skill sets or knowledge sets. A lot of people who can't find a job in physics go to work in Wall Street because it pays really well and they already got the advanced math. Being a high school physics teacher only requires an undergrad but requires knowing how to teach very well (they generally have degrees in education) and to do so with teenagers, which is pretty different from both young children and from adults.

That depends on whether they want to stay in education. I'm speaking about what a member of my family would do. Those of us who couldn't make it in science, medicine, law, etc. are schoolteachers. Although one is a journalist.

This creates an incentive to drag out projects for as long as possible, and is even more effective at getting people to overwork than money. Working hard or working long is not the same as working efficiently, one of the biggest problems with the Labour Theory of Value

Average man hours are measured by the average time it takes to produce a sprocket. Could you please stop spreading misinformation about theories you don't understand?

[Travis B.]

Work credits are measured by average man hours

This creates an incentive to drag out projects for as long as possible, and is even more effective at getting people to overwork than money. Working hard or working long is not the same as working efficiently, one of the biggest problems with the Labour Theory of Value

As a programmer, probably the best result one can get is to implementation a simple, concise, and also efficient solution to a feature, or in the case of bugs, to likewise have a simple, concise, efficient fix. This is the opposite of working hard or long, and yet is optimal, and working overly hard or long is distinctly suboptimal.

[mèþru]

There should be limits on work credits, e.g. a limit on the maximum number of work credits one can get, in order to keep people from working themselves to death just to get the maximum number of work credits possible.

Do you think they will do that if their pay is decent? Why? They don't have to save for retirement or worry about work security.

Then why would they not do that if their pay is decent under a money based system where government guarantees retirement? The same motive of profit exists in all societies. Even hunter-gatherers, although they are very effective in ending bad behaviour by shaming or at worst exiling troublemakers (shaming in a society where you have a strong personal bond with everyone you interact with in daily life is a very very strong punishment).

Guaranteeing work security for everyone I think is a really bad idea. Just because someone is suited to a job at one point in life doesn't mean they are suited to it until retirement age.

[mèþru]

I know someone who does a heavily code based job as an educational testing researcher, and he is paid for each project he works on. The amount of hours he spends can vary heavily on the project. If he were paid based on hour his pay would be extremely unstable

[rotting bones]

As a programmer, probably the best result one can get is to implementation a simple, concise, and also efficient solution to a feature, or in the case of bugs, to likewise have a simple, concise, efficient fix. This is the opposite of working hard or long, and yet is optimal, and working overly hard or long is distinctly suboptimal.

He's saying if we pay by average man hours, people will drag their feet. This makes no sense because average man hours is a unit of work based on the average time it takes to produce an article. When they are done with their job, they will get paid for the average time it takes to do it.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Guaranteeing work security for everyone I think is a really bad idea. Just because someone is suited to a job at one point in life doesn't mean they are suited to it until retirement age.

Perhaps a sort of jobs guarantee that allows one to shift roles based on suitability might solve the problem.

[Travis B.]

I know someone who does a heavily code based job as an educational testing researcher, and he is paid for each project he works on. The amount of hours he spends can vary heavily on the project. If he were paid based on hour his pay would be extremely unstable

Paying people by the hour for working on code is a bad idea IMHO (even though it is extremely common with contractors), because it rewards the wrong activity as a programmer - ideally, one should work less not more, if possible, because efficiency and quality come hand in hand.

[Travis B.]

As a programmer, probably the best result one can get is to implementation a simple, concise, and also efficient solution to a feature, or in the case of bugs, to likewise have a simple, concise, efficient fix. This is the opposite of working hard or long, and yet is optimal, and working overly hard or long is distinctly suboptimal.

He's saying if we pay by average man hours, people will drag their feet. This makes no sense because average man hours is a unit of work based on the average time it takes to produce an article. When they are done with their job, they will get paid for the average time it takes to do it.

Ideally, considering this model, you should pay people more for producing a sprocket in less time, but only up to a point, or otherwise people will get sloppy in rushing to complete things.

[rotting bones]

Then why would they not do that if their pay is decent under a money based system where government guarantees retirement? The same motive of profit exists in all societies. Even hunter-gatherers, although they are very effective in ending bad behaviour by shaming or at worst exiling troublemakers (shaming in a society where you have a strong personal bond with everyone you interact with in daily life is a very very strong punishment).

They wouldn't if you could. It would be a good thing in general, but it's tough under capitalism. Basically, anything that could make business less profitable increases the risk of capital flight. Plus, you know, all the other reasons I gave in my million posts.

There are ways around problems like this, but they tend not to be general solutions.

Guaranteeing work security for everyone I think is a really bad idea. Just because someone is suited to a job at one point in life doesn't mean they are suited to it until retirement age.

This presupposes you can guarantee a work-free livelihood for everyone. Currently, this is so far from reality that I can't take you seriously.

I know you are trying to present your position as more ethical than mine, but you don't seem very moved by the living hell that many work environments are today.

[zompist]

Some other things:
I do not share zompist's rosy view of the 40s-70s. The economy did not, in my view, work to the benefit of enslaved prisoners in the US (US is the only Western country that allows mandatory prison labour, and said labour is still below federal minimum wage to this day). It did not work to the benefit of non-white people. It did not work to the benefit of the disabled. It did not work to the benefit of the indigenous. [...]

Sigh. Maybe now I understand rotting bones's frustration with systems comparisons. Yes, New Deal liberalism marginalized minorities. Laissez-faire capitalism marginalized the majority. To say that something is a vast improvement is not to say that it's a utopia.

The thing is, when times are bad, minorities asking for better treatment are liable to be punched down harder, not helped. Plutocracy destroys worker solidarity. It's no accident that when the majority could see their lifestyles improving, movements arose for the liberation of Blacks, women, Natives, etc. and scored significant victories. It also helped that, for a generation, the traditional elite was knocked flat. (It's hard to imagine now, but in the 1960s companies were run by non-owners. How we got robber barons back is a long and sad story.)

I agree with you, btw, in your argument for valuing persons rather than work.

The status quo heavily relies on exploitation of the third world, but I do not think capitalism in general requires that the third world stays third world. In fact, while many goods would be more expensive without cheap labour of poorer countries overall I think enriching the third world would make every country in the world richer under capitalism in the long term than they would under a capitalism where the third world stays third world.

I agree here too. It's received wisdom on the Left that the First World lives by exploiting the rest of the world. It does exploit the Third World, of course; it just doesn't live off of that.

Imports make up about 15% of the US economy. However, at least 50% of that is with other advanced economies.

About 14% of our total trade is with China. That seems like a special case. Are we "exploiting China"? We've helped make them a manufacturing powerhouse, whose growth rate has been over 10% annually for 35 years, a rate of growth far faster than our own. Per capita income has risen from $224 to $8200. China used to be starving poor and pundits left and right assumed it would be poor forever. Now they worry about Chinese domination. A lot of countries dream of being "exploited" to that extent.

US trade with Africa is about $30 billion total. We import more from Switzerland.

I don't at all mean to say that we treat the Third World well, or that capitalism is "good" for the Third World. It's just that capitalism does not depend on, say, exploiting Africa. For the large part, and this is the real sin, we just ignore it.