- Joined
- Mar 27, 2014
- Messages
- 63,571
- Reaction score
- 33,578
- Location
- Tennessee
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
Well, I think you need to look a little further, and a little deeper. One major missing ingredient is the return on investment derived from a mindset that involves responsibility. When someone makes a decision to be, what in effect is, a follower, it is unreasonable to demand they receive the benefits of being a leader.
Let me see if I can explain my rational for believing this.
Remove all commercial economic "rewards" from any endeavor. For it to be successful, there can't be 20 chefs, and no servers. Someone has to step up and help direct the effort. That person most likely is not going to be down in the mud with the others. Is it fair for the others to demand similar treatment? If the leader is particularly skilled at directing the others, should they not receive some extra benefit? Wouldn't other groups want to have that person provide the same skills to their endeavors, and be willing to offer even greater benefits for agreeing to do so? Should the people down in the mud demand even louder that they receive equal treatment?
Of course - no one argues that a busboy should make the same as a restaurant owner or general manager.
Distribution is fair today, because it is what it is. Do I think top CEO's need to be paid on average $10 million per year? I leave that to board of directors, and the compensation committee. Ultimately it comes down to the stakeholders. Do I think the workers "out in the trenches" should begrudge the CEO? Well, I'm sure they'd like to get 1/10th of the CEO's pay. The question becomes, what's stopping them from trying, and if they don't try, why are they complaining?
That assumes that there is some neutral set of rules of the game out there that allow for some kind of equitable outcome. Think of it like sports. Is it "fair" for a high school with a 12,000 student enrollment to compete in football against a nearby school with an enrollment of 500? Of course not, and every state has competitive divisions to account for that.
And in the economy there are a thousand ways we set the rules of the game, and the results are only as "fair" as the rules. We allow for free movement of capital, but not people. Would it be "fair" if we allowed in anyone to work that could afford plane or boat fare or walk across the borders? It would drive down wages even further and lots of workers displaced wouldn't think it fair that we ignored national borders. Is it fair that manufacturers in China can dump their waste untreated into the nearest river, but ours have to clean up that waste? Is if fair that China rigs its currency, imposes capital controls, and we do nothing? Etc.