Finally paying workers the same wages for doing less work than than the job entailed when I hired them does not sound anything like abuse to me. I still want to someone to explain why that is abusive to them. I'm looking for an answer other than noting that the owner is making more than I am. Calling something sick is not an answer.
If I work my fields and produce ten acres of corn, then to ten acres of corn I am entitled. If I work to produce only five acres of corn, then five acres of corn is what I earn.
It's the basic principle that a laborer is entitled to a benefit from his work commensurate with the productivity of that work.
Unchecked hourly-wage labor is an affront to this basic principle of human decency. It reverses the relationship between a laborer's productivity and the benefit he receives from his work: as soon as he becomes more productive, the amount of time he is required to work decreases and he ends up with less benefit than before despite being more productive.
Remember, the owner may think up ways to increase productivity, but it is the workers who actually more productive. Should the man who solves the problem of increasing productivity be entitled to some of that benefit? Of course. But should he be entitled to
all of it?
The whole ridiculousness of the current system boils down to the fact that workers do not own the means of production. Instead, those means have been concentrated into the hands of a few individuals who use their position to exploit the workforceif people
need widget XYZ, then whoever owns the means to produce widget XYZ can charge a premium for use of those means.
This is the concept which underlies the exploitation of a society's workforce by those who own the means of production. Call it what you will; repackage it how you want; it's all the same in the end.
In my view, when people insist that their wages should go up in step with their productivity, then they are essentially asking to be paid on a 'piece work' basis. Are they willing to accept reduced wages when the owner steps down production because of a recession? Because that's what owners do.
Yes. In fact, I would say that almost all labor should be compensated for based on the
quantity of production rather than the
duration of production. When production decreases as a result of falling demand the saved labor can be devoted to some other production or the laborers' reduced pay made up for (to some extent) though a safety-net program as RAZD and I have discussed.
I don't think they directly answer the questions I asked Jon, which were more along the lines of what do you do with existing situations, were it is the owners money and not the employees money being invested.
When the owner has to pay workers based on their productivity, then he isn't going to use his 'own' money to innovate labor reductions. If he does, he's something of a fool.
The owner already has his undue benefit simply in the fact that he contributes nothing of value to the product by way of his ownership of the means of production and yet still receives a benefit that his workers alone produce. He's already a non-contributor being floated by the contributors (and floated quite high).
If we decide to give him an additional cut of the increased productivity because he innovated it, then we're paying him twice: once for doing nothing and again for doing something. It'd be like having gainful employment
and receiving unemployment benefits at the same time.
I guess I just can't figure out how the hell that makes sense.
Can you help me understand how that makes sense?
Love your enemies!
™ Version 4.2
