Except it's illegitimate to directly compare the value of a commodity and the value of a person and/or their labor. The minute we start thinking of labor as a simple commodity, we've gone horribly wrong.
Labor
is a commodity. What would it be if it wasn't a commodity? A lot of people seem to think that their labor is as valuable as the commodities that they exchange their labor for. It is absolutely essential that labor fall under the same rules of exchange as other commodities.
Are you saying that the laws of supply and demand shouldn't apply to labor because it isn't a commodity? I don't understand how you could possibly not treat labor as a commodity.
You seem to have this idea that treating labor as a commodity dehumanizes the people doing the labor, but I can assure you that I have no intention of dehumanizing myself, even though I treat my own labor as a commodity when exchanging it for goods.
People are not chattel and should not be thought of in such ways.
I didn't say that people were chattel. Believe it or not, I have a great deal of respect for a fair number of people. There is a difference between saying the people are chattel and saying the labor is a commodity. I didn't make a comparison between a
person and a marketable abject, I made a comparison between
labor and a marketable object. I made this comparison, because their function as far as marketability is identical.
Again, people organize for the common good, and for no other reason.
Yes, but what does that mean? It means that people orginize for their own good, and contribute their goods and services in exchange for the advantatge provided to them by the contributions of the goods and services of the rest of the orginization.
Rarely do people contribue to the group because they want to contribute. Far more often people contribute because they want what the group has to offer.
There is no more legally unowned land. Therefore, everyone is either born wealthy enough not to work or they have to work for someone in order to survive.
Lets not forget that that someone can be themselvs, and they can pay themselves whatever thewy want, but all of this has little relevance.
So it's not a case of valuing an hour of your time over $8.00 an hour. It's a case of valuing your continued existence on the earth over an hour of your time.
If the $8.00 is necessary to your continued existence on the earth, and an hour of your time is necessary for the $8.00, then obviously (assuming that you value your continued existance on the earth more than an hour of your time) you value the $8.00 more than you value an hour of your time.
No; the value of labor ought to be determined by value provided to the organization.
That doesn't make any sense. You are essentially saying that the cost of goods should be based on how much they cost to manufacture, rather than being subject to the laws of supply and demand.
People are not commodities, and the organization exists to benefit them all (else why offer to pay someone at all?).
The organization exists because the people in the organization wanted what the organization had to offer them. And because of that, it does benefit them all, and the extent to which it benefits them is to a degree which they have, by the very act of joining the organization, consented to.
OK, so suppose the kid who gets the Pop tarts has invented some secret machinery to spit out PB&J's on demand, and at someone else's expense. Blah blah blah.
Ah, that brings back memories...
So when PBJhead is offering one of his PB&J in excahnge for the kids pop tarts, and someone else with another nearly unlimited supply of PB&J offers him two PB&J for his pop tarts so that he can gain an advantage over PBJHead in the Chateaubriand and Bordeaux Wine market, the kid learns how to get the most PB&J for his pop tarts.
The beauty is that the Kid doesn't even need to know about the Chateaubriand and Bordeaux Wine market. All he needs to know is that he like PB&J better than Pop Tarts, and that he can get more PB&J for his Pop Tarts by playing the Chateaubriand and Bordeaux Wine market tycoons against each other.
I understand that. I'm telling you that people didn't used to trade PB&J for Pop Tarts the way you illustrate. Trades used to work along different lines. Often, even when the producer of pop tarts didn't have any, the PB&J guy still spread his sandwiches around.
There are two possible reasons for that. One of them is benevolent and selfless charity. Charity is still alive and well, but I certainly hope you arn't suggesting that it should be manditory.
The other possible reason is that the PB&J guy was getting value from the continued existance of the Pop Tart guy, because it was likely that in the circumstance where he didn't have any PB&J, the Pop Tart guy would have pop tarts and would be willing to share.
This is the same system. If the PB&J guy didn't think he was getting adequate value for the PB&J he was providing, he wouldn't share the PB&J unless he was just a charitable guy.
Which nevertheless does not mean you can simply forget the original principle (i.e. that people organize for the common good).
When you say "common good," what you really mean is that people organize for the benefits that such organization provides to them personally.
Essentially, your conclusion is not warranted from the premises (specifically, you commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent),
No it hasn't. You have misunderstood both the conclusion and the premises.
It's not legitimate to say "If a resource is advantageous, then it is valuable, so if a resource is valuable, it is advantageous."
You are correct in that it is not legitiamte to say that, but that is not what I said.
Allow me to rephrase.
My first premise is that some resources provide more advantage to a given individual than others, and that this difference in advantage is determined by the individual to whom such advantage is provided.
My second premise is that trade is mutually benefitial when both parties determine that the resource that the other party has is more advantageous to them than the resource that they have.
Given premises one and two, we can say that when trade occurs, it is because the advantage provided by the aquired resources was at least as great as those provided by the resources they were exchanged for.
My third premise is that the measurable difference in advantage between resources is called value, and that such value can be applied quantitatively to determine a hierachical order of value for the same quantity of different resouce, or to determine the equivalent value of differeing quantities of different resources.
Given all three of these premises, we can arrive at the quantitative value of a resource by determining the point at which the individual in possession of that resource is willing to exchange that resource for another resource.
For example, if Bob is unwilling to part with his PB&J in exchange for one pop tart, but is willing to exchange his PB&J in exchange for two pop tarts, we know that in terms of its value to Bob, the relative value of two Pop Tarts is equal to or greater than the value of one PB&J, and the value of one pop tart is equal to or less than the value of of one PB&J.
No where in this did I say that "If a resource is advantageous, then it is valuable, so if a resource is valuable, it is advantageous."
No, incorrect. As the overall value of the organization increases, the value of all members should also increase, with some exceptions.
The value of of a Comic book only increases when someone is willing to pay more for it. Same rules apply to labor.
Even if we were going to go by your measure of value, as it relates to the cost of production rather than the rules of supply and demand, how is someone who sweeps 500 sq feet of floor providing more value unless they start either sweeping more sq feet or making the 500 sq feet that they sweep cleaner?
Why should anyone get payed more unless they are taking on more responisbility?
If I sweep a floor in a San Diego store, and the company starts doing really well because of the phenominal success of a store in New York, how am I deserving of an increase in pay?
I've always realized it. Your position does not seem to acknowledge it. And this is part and parcel of the topic at hand; it's why the value of the CEO's post is not what it seems to be.
My position ackonwledges it. If I didn't think that anyone but the CEO provided any value, I would think that everyone but the CEO would be fired.
Quite to the contrary, I think that a floor sweeper who makes $8.00/hr has a value of $8.00/hr, and that the manager could not do what he/she does without the people working for $8.00/hr why is that hard to understand?
And even as competent as you are, had your staff not been up to a certain level, you'd not have made the deal, either. Or, you might have made the deal at the expense of keeping your store functioning.
See, you are comparing my competence to the competence of my entire staff. Now there is nothing wrong with doing that from my perspective, but you are not arguing the value of a manager compared with his entire staff, you are comparing the value of a single manager with the value of a single floor sweeper.
The big difference is that if the company decided to hire someone who wasn't as skilled as I, but who would work for less, my counterpart at the competition would have gotten the deal instead of my company.
If the floorsweeper was a little bit less competent than his counterpart at the competition, the competation would have slightly cleaner floors, which may or may not lead to a little less money than if the company had been willing to pay for a more competent floorsweeper.
Sure, if my
entire staff had not be "up to a certain level" I would have made the deal at the expense of keeping the store functioning, but I am not talking about the
entire staff being completely incompetent. I am the first to admit the the entire rest of the staff is at least as valuable as the manager.
Put yourself in the place of the company though. If you hire
one manager who is
slightly less competent (not completely without a clue, just slightly less competent) than the competition, you risk losing a $50,000 deal.
If you hire one floorsweeper who is
slightly less competent (not completely without a clue, just slightly less competent) you risk having a
slightly dirtier floor.
So how much more is it worth to have
one manager who is just
slightly better than the competing managers, compared to having one floorsweeper, who is just slightly better than the competing floorsweepers?
Yes. So why do expanding revenues accrue only to the manager?
Because people are willing to bid more for better managers, thus they are more valuable. Just like with X-Men comic books. Do you know how much it costs to manufacture on of those X-Men comic book? I can tell you it ain't $60,000.
I agree. But I think compensation these days is apportioned without the barest recognition of the fact that expansions are due to everyone in an organization, not just the CEO. Were this not the case, pay on the lower levels would not be stagnant.
I think compensation is apportioned based on how much of what kind of labor people are willing to exchange for how much money, and how much money companies are willing to exchange for how much of what kind of labor.
shocking I know:roll: