Subject:
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Re: Preaching to the Choir
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:16:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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1895 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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The continued references to a soviet determining what work is valued enough
for payment suggests that you are misunderstanding what I think. I think
you should be paid for digging holes exactly to the extent that someone
else wants to pay you. Commerce should be free in that way. I’m just
thinking it should be a crime for you to charge more than one manhour for a
hole that took you an hour to dig.
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So there’s a unit of currency and it’s a manhour, then? All else remains the
same as far as the market goes?
Can I charge LESS if I want to? Can I OFFER more if I want to?
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You can give gifts of your time. You can not institute and exchange that
values your time more highly than another’s.
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OK.
So if I know that it takes the average hole digging person an hour to dig a hole
of a certain size, and that’s an accepted market value, can I charge 50 minutes
to dig it instead of an hour (giving a discount or a gift if you like)?
Is that OK if it took me 60 minutes to do it?
How about if it took me 50?
How about if I am super efficient and it only took me 40? Another’s time is
worth 60 and I’m only charging 50... isn’t that OK?
If your answers are “yes, yes, no” (as I think they should be if I understand
your system correctly, which I may not) then there is no incentive to come up
with more efficient ways to dig holes. Even if I just goofed off for the 10 of
slack I earned by my innovation... soon as I dig for 40, finish, and stand
around (or work on something else) for 10, someone will notice and want to only
pay me 40.
How do we then make progress? I think we have a zero sum (or worse) game here.
But real systems that actually work well aren’t zero sum.
I don’t know about you, but I LIKE the fact that it takes me less time to earn
my daily bread than it did my paternal grandfather (who was a subsistence
farming peasant in a small town in Poland until he died at an early age from a
disease we sneer at today). I earn a whole loaf of bread in about 2 minutes (5
minutes after taxes, or so it seems some days) and it took my grandfather a lot
closer to 2 hours than 2 minutes.
Now as it turns out, if I had to do this via hole digging, it probably would be
closer to 20 minutes than 2 to earn it. But then, after all, I’m a lousy hole
digger. I’m OK with that because I think the world as a whole benefits more from
my working an hour at architecting computer software systems (to do things like
let bigbox retailers shave 5-50 cents a pallet off their logistics costs or make
money transfers go faster and cost less, to pick two examples where we help out)
than it does from me digging holes. (and the labor market tells me I’m right)
I’ll reiterate. It is my view that comparative advantage (among nations, among
firms, among laborers) is a good thing. If your system removes it, it’s bad,
prima facie, at least in my view, without further discussion of fairness or
equitability being required.
Now I really should be toddling off... car’s mostly loaded, just have to check
the checklists one more time and I’m off.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Preaching to the Choir
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| (...) There isn't exactly an accepted market value. I'm thinking about this. (...) My first reaction is yes, yes, no. But maybe it really does need to be no, yes, no or it falls apart due to a breach in internal consistency. (...) I think people do (...) (20 years ago, 11-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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