h a l f b a k e r yQuis custodiet the custard?
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Head Pay
Pay employees based on how much you need them | |
1) There are no degrees of absolute necessity.
2) Labor is almost any firm's highest cost.
3) You will not hire unless by absolutely necessity.
Consequences:
1) No one is working in your firm who is "more necessary"
or "less necessary" than anyone else. If it seems that
way, it just
means you made a bad or unnecessary hire, which hurts
the company, the employee and/or resource allocation in
the larger
economy.
2) Want to know what to pay your new hire? If you did
your hiring right, you don't have to decide what to pay.
Since you need
him/her just as much as anyone else in the company, you
pay accordingly.
3) When you start a firm, and decide how much to pay
the founders based on their necessity (which like all
hires, is absolute),
you pay what all other firms pay. Thus, everyone in every
firm is paid the same.
Problems and solutions:
Information asymmetry is remedied by the fact that
these hires are really not doing anything since all jobs
have been replaced
by automation, and firms are simply notional
workplaces. Thus, the type of worker the person is does
not matter. In fact,
this firm is nothing more than an organization with a
completely automated productive capacity. The new
hire is nothing
more than a member of your little club. The only reason
you hire is to make sure no one in the firm sees their pay
go up
because even if you split it equally among everyone in
the firm, you are still subject to the third consequence.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
http://restud.oxfor...t/70/3/489.abstract
A central tenet of economics is that individuals respond to incentives. For psychologists and sociologists, in contrast, rewards and punishments are often counterproductive, because they undermine “intrinsic motivation”. We reconcile these two views, showing how performance incentives offered by an informed principal (manager, teacher, parent) can adversely impact an agent's (worker, child) perception of the task, or of his own abilities. Incentives are then only weak reinforcers in the short run, and negative reinforcers in the long run. We also study the effects of empowerment, help and excuses on motivation, as well as situations of ego bashing reflecting a battle for dominance within a relationship. [fishboner, May 31 2013]
LSE: Why Does Performance Pay De-motivate
http://cep.lse.ac.u...download/dp0476.pdf
The sheer scale and speed of the shift of payment system from time-based salaries to performance-related pay, PRP, in the British public services provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of incentive pay schemes. This study is based on the first large scale survey designed to measure the effects of performance related pay on employee motivation and work behaviour across the British public services. While there is evidence of a clear incentive effect for those gaining above average PRP, it is likely that it is offset by a more widespread demotivating effect arising from difficulties of measuring performance fairly. Organisational commitment appears to offset some of the negative effects of PRP. [fishboner, May 31 2013]
After your job is gone
http://techcrunch.c...r-your-job-is-gone/
Pretty good Techcrunch article, with links to other relevant analysis [theircompetitor, Jun 01 2013]
[link]
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What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Economic
decisions cannot be made based on demand alone,
or
supply alone. It is not possible to properly value
work without regard to supply. Supply,
definitionally, breaks up the labor force by skills. |
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The corporation already pays people according to
how much it needs them, and certainly already
divides the pie (though unevenly). This idea
cannot be implemented if for no other reason that
your proposed company is not the only job
providing entity in the universe. So the second a
more profitable corporation (which according to
this scheme, maybe paying more to each
employee) has a "need", it will hire away workers
from you by paying more than you can pay, and
you won't be able to compete. |
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Fixed pay scales already exist in various union
jobs, of course, and they do in fact skew the
hiring process, generally in a way that is harmful to
the corporation. |
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Finally, an entity such as you propose can and
does exist in partnerships. From law firms, to
multi-owner restaurants, lots and lots of
businesses are owned by more than one person
with an even revenue distribution scheme, and
many of those, when they bring in an additional
partner, divide the equity equally. Of course in
any such situation people tend to think long and
hard before adding such a partner. |
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// already pays people according to how much it needs
them, and certainly already divides the pie (though
unevenly).// |
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I think you missed the part where I proved this is
impossible. |
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I think you missed that part :) |
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//No one is working in your firm who is "more
necessary" or "less necessary" than anyone else.// |
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That's a silly statement, because the "necessity"
of a job isn't the same as the "necessity" of a
particular employee. |
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A cleaner and a CSO, for example, are both
necessary. But, with no disrespect to the cleaner,
his or her role can be filled equally well by many
other people. But if I'm a biotech company, the
CSO is one of a handful of people who make and
shape the company - the CSO is not readily
interchangeable. |
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Thus, the cleaner is necessary but that particular
cleaner is not. The CSO is necessary and that
particular CSO is. |
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If I have a biotech company that depends on a
particular cleaner, but where the CSO can be
swapped out easily, I'm probably doing something
wrong. |
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Pay is already generally ordered this way creating incentive for
those to aspire to certain jobs, and also to be repulsed from
doing
certain jobs that receive less pay. That's why MB is offended
because he sides with the system of inducements for people to
act
rationally pursuant of rewards, and avoidant of menial lowly
paid
servitudes, choosing this draconianism over the actual ideaology
of
the market that would indeed cause the too many who have
aspired to wallow in their deflated value. The draconianism of
inducements, of course, is set up against the too many who
have not aspired, either disaffected or unaffected by the
institutions of behaviourism that denominate into functional
roles. |
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Is the cso the Chief Science Officer or the Chief Scientist Office? |
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Chief Sewer Operator. It's the cleaner going for a
raise with an important sounding acronym. |
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//his or her role can be filled equally well by many
other people// |
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[Max] In other words, you need a janitor just as
much as a CSO, but you will pay the janitor less
because you can. |
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Meanwhile, your CSO has his performance
potentially damaged by an unnecessary and
wasteful extrinsic motivator enhancement[link]. |
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Essentially, you are looting your company to get
slightly worse performance out of everyone in it. |
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yes, if Roomba won't cut it. To be sure, when
algorithms can run your corporation, you need less
people too. Which is happening. |
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//In other words, you need a janitor just as much as a CSO,
but you will pay the janitor less because you can.// |
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Yeah, that's pretty much how supply and demand works. |
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[marked-for-deletion] This idea is advocating either for or
against a free labor market (I'm not quite sure which);
either way it's still advocacy. Besides, every concept
described here has been expounded upon in great detail as
part of the existing body of economic theory, so there is
nothing here that's not WKTE. |
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I'm with ytk [hmm, I think that works as a rap song
title, too] |
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// [Max] In other words, you need a janitor just
as much as a CSO,
but you will pay the janitor less because you can. |
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Meanwhile, your CSO has his performance
potentially damaged
by an unnecessary and wasteful extrinsic
motivator
enhancement[link]. |
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Essentially, you are looting your company to
get slightly worse
performance out of everyone in it.// |
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No. I pay my CSO more than the cleaner because
(a) I do not want
my CSO to laugh at me and walk out the door and
(b) I believe in
paying people in proportion to their abilities - his
are rarer than the
cleaner's, therefore more valuable. |
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To look at it from the other side, if I am CSO of a
company that
offers to pay me what they pay the cleaner, I will
laugh and walk
out the door, and they can replace me with the
cleaner. I will go to
a different company that will pay me more, and
that different
company will ultimately employ the cleaner when
the company he's
CSO of goes under. |
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Can I ask, [fishboner], whether you earn above the
minimum wage
(either actual or de facto, depending on where
you live)? If "yes",
would you be happy to be cut back to minimum
wage? If "no", and
you could do the same job elsewhere for better
than minimum
wage, would you switch? |
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I realize the idea was intended as humour, but it
seems somewhat
mirthless. |
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[And I never arm the cleaners; unless you are
referring to my
'cleaners', that is.] |
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//Your anno comes across as a lame defence of the
badly managed status quo// |
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Thanks! I was worried I was being too subtle. |
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//You have won second prize in a communist
beauty contest, please report to the gulag for 10
years// |
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Reminds me… They had a contest in the Soviet
Union for the best political joke. Do you know what
first prize was? |
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[ytk] the logic of necessity as it pertains to pay rationale as
applied here is completely original, afaik. I don't see
anything normative in my post. |
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Labor is expensive. Trust is hard to come by. You only hire
if you absolutely need to, and you pay accordingly. If you
have seen this idea posted elsewhere, kindly link us to it. |
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Is the janitor more replaceable? Sure. So replace him if it
doesn't work out, but if you pay him less just because you
can, that is really a case of you letting the janitor set his
own wage. More specifically, a janitor who is desperate for
a job will offer to do it for less. if that undercutter were
not there, you would be paying the higher wage. thus, the
undercutting janitor is setting the wage. This is an
abdication of your role as a manager. |
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People are having a hard time letting go of dead ideas
about how markets function. What's more, they do this
under the flag of an unyielding market rationality. Well
here we have my proposal and mounting evidence from the
field of economics[link] about how performance,
motivation and pay really function, and we are deciding to
cling to the old, failed model just because it seems more
cut-throat, and thus more valid. |
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I don't “need” a janitor to run my company. I need my
floors cleaned and my trash taken out. If someone is
willing to do that job to my satisfaction for $8/hour, I
would be an irresponsible manager if I paid more than
that. |
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I also don't “need” the CSO. I need a smart person
with an appropriate degree in a relevant field to
direct my research department. If I'm only willing to
pay the same $8/hour for such a person, there will be
nobody qualified who is willing to do that job, because
it is a much more difficult job than cleaning floors and
taking out trash, and any reasonable person would do
the easier job for the same amount of money.
Further, no person would bother seeking the advanced
qualifications, because there is no financial incentive
to do so. |
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Your response to this is, undoubtedly, “No, people will
do the more complicated job for the love of doing so
(or other reasons not related to compensation), so you
can simply fix the pay for all jobs at the same rate
and still find qualified people.” And you'll probably
think that's a highly original notion. Funny how I've
heard it before, though. |
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Your whole premise seems to be based on getting all
companies to agree to pay the exact same rate for
every employee. That's not a new idea—it's called a
planned economy when it's government enforced, and
collusion when it's not. Do you really need me to
handhold you with some links to Wikipedia where you
can read all about this? |
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// [CSO] is a much more difficult job than cleaning floors and taking out trash// and Chief of Sites' Maintenance is a much more difficult job than titrating a sample and running a spectrometer. |
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Anyways, the idea is "communism" (the theory, not the practice): baked. |
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Why are you even talking about paying anyone $8.00
per hour? |
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Communism did not operationalize need to this end
in the same way. You might as well say pianos and
radios are the same invention since they both create
sound. |
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The only way you'll get people to take positions, without their own personal graduated recompense, is for them to own the company in some manner, which definition can be easily stretched to include things like sense of duty (armed forces' pay is never high) or "love of the work" (likewise forest rangers and artists rarely make top ten wage lists). |
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By definition, a person who has to be "on top of things" needs support. |
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//Chief of Sites' Maintenance is a much more difficult
job than titrating a sample and running a
spectrometer.// |
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Uh, no, it's not. Practically any able-bodied person can
perform janitorial duties with little or no training. Like
the vast majority of people, I'm not even sure what it
/means/ to “titrate a sample” and I have no idea
what to do with a spectrometer, or how to interpret
the output of such an instrument. |
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//Why are you even talking about paying anyone
$8.00 per hour?// |
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Because if I pay much more than that, I don't have to
worry about /having/ floors to clean or trash to take
out
for very long. |
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Where do you propose getting the money to pay
everyone at above market rates? And if everyone is
paid the same rate, why does it even matter what
that rate is? This idea is just utter silliness with a side
of magical thinking. |
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//[spectrometer] or how to interpret the output// as an entry-level lab tech you generally don't have to worry about that unless it's outside of a certain range... likewise as a junior janitor you don't have to worry about deciding what chemicals to use to clean the 50 different kinds of surface in the building: the boss tells you. |
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Done both: I don't recall either as being easier or more difficult. Move a couple rungs up the ladder and there's Stationary Engineer on one side, a 3 year apprenticeship + courses to semi-proactively keep a building in working condition, and "Lab Supervisor" on the other: a 3 year community college or university program + time in, to semi-proactively decide the best way of achieving <x> statistics for a given problem. Pay's about the same too. After that I'm not sure where the janitorial hierarchy leads... wait, actually I am: ever had to decide how to dispose of kilotons of hazardous materials ? |
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Of course there's still cultures which look down on environmental maintenance and worship the shiny magic of technology. |
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[fishboner] as it's pertinent to the argument, may I
ask what you do for a living? |
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//dead ideas about how markets function// |
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Just to state a fact rather than economic theory,
Communism (in any actual implementation I'm
familiar with) distributes pay based on level,
similar to how it would occur in a contract
enforced union job. There are no Communist
countries, past or present, where a janitor makes
as much as the plant manager, though the gap
maybe narrower, and all janitors with the same
seniority may get the same pay, but not all
janitors. |
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Economic studies, however thorough, cannot
possibly compare with the ultimate statistically
significant experiment, and that is history. In said
history, the one giant population subjected to
anything resembling these kinds of rules -- the
Eastern block -- saw a dramatic collapse in any kind
of productivity and eventually collapsed, and the
other giant population subjected to same -- the
Chinese -- saw a dramatic positive change only
when they changed their mind and
subscribed to dead economic theories. We've
also seen the collapse or near collapse of numerous
structures, private and government, where
expense structures are governed by equal pay. |
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Ultimately, this "idea" is doomed thus: If ever
there is something that is completely obvious to
you, that if only you could make everyone else
understand things would be so much better, it's
fairly obviously a WIBNI. Wouldn't it be nice if
everyone was paid the same. To the extent
there's ANY economic sense in it, it has already
emerged through market forces (i.e. labor
unionization), and quite arguably, is on the wane
because it produces inferior results. As I pointed
out earlier, some partnerships are run like this,
but these cannot, by definition, scale. The best
analogy, a large law firm, or a large consulting firm,
both partnerships, quickly deviate the
partnerships into paying people based on business
they bring in, because to do otherwise would
encourage free loaders. |
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So it has both been tried and [marked-for-
deletion] WIBNI. |
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I would actually go further and disagree with //a
WIBNI. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was paid the
same.// |
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If you rephrase this, you're saying "wouldn't it be
nice if extra skills, extra effort, or extra time spent
studying were not rewarded", and I don't think that
would be nice. |
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I think fishie's looking for a universe where everybody lives, eats, breathes their chosen vocation 24/7, which is the only realistic way, in a free society, that you might get people to work for peanuts. |
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Unfortunately such a society would tend to be rather short-lived: what if during a generation almost nobody wanted to be a farmer... or a teacher ? |
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But if there is a glut in the market of skilled labour such as
executives with MBAs then they should depreciate in value,
instead of enjoying permanent affluency because of a
nonmarket but an institutional pay scale that attempts to
induce a certain type of ascendency to entrenched positions of
power. Given the right circumstances where too many people
aspire to achieve in institutions, then cleaners should receive
enhanced pay. However, this is not what will be observed
because market capitalism has given way to a draconianism,
and a behavioristic institutionality, that seeks to maintain the
social order of class, not capitalism, that the mass market may
not necessarily maintain, because doing so would require a level
of direct economic planning that would still fail and uncover
managerial incompetency, so keeping certain jobs in certain
economic classes maintains institutional discipliinarianism as an
implicit threat of failure or reward for success. |
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Ask any newly graduated lawyer who is looking for a
job this year, rcarty. Starting salaries crashed,
completely. It is exactly market forces at work. |
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That's all very well and good but the entrenchment has already
taken place, those newly graduated lawyers are now directly
experiencing the draconianism, having been disciplined,
hardworking and aligned with societal values, only to endure
even more hardwork for reduced pay, whereas during their
education they were little more than slaves labouring
hypnotized by dreams formed by popular television lawyer
progammes, fuelled by the false promises of freedom, and the
detterence of becoming minimum wage toilet cleaners in the
washrooms of an undomesticated public of feral disaffecteds
who have resisted even their toilet training in such a disciplinary
overall context. |
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You're just out of a scrabble tournament? |
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Not likely, because winning such a trivial accolade would only be
an absurd event in an already meaningless life, however I might be
in attendance at such a tournament if only for the economy of
mildly attractive and socially awkward but bookish homebodies
that would also be in attendance at such an event. |
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[theircompetitor] Whereas Marx claims eventually,
resources will be allocated
according to need of the people, my idea allocates
resources based on the need of managers. So it's WIBNI for
the managing elite, so I guess you got me there since the
rest of us are superfluous. |
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You need look no further than Cato, Heritage and other
conservative think tanks to find out even more thought-to-
be market-biased resource allocation structures in the
classical tradition are ar least as historically mythical as
the "communist" ones (as we'll see, both are just examples
of elite cronyism, or Draconianism in [rcarty] parlance.) |
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Take say the Fortune 500 list of top
multinationals. Last I checked, all the top 100 of that list
had benefitted from state interventionist policies, and of
that 100, twenty were spared outright disaster by timely
nanny state intervention. And while the food subsidy is a
favorite issue of Heritage Foundation writers, a lesser-
examined issue is the tremendous amount of public sector
technological research which is just handed over to the
private sector. And the government is the main
buyer for a few decades, until the private sector can figure
out a way to profit off the technology. At that point, they
pull an Apple, and all that public money completes its
journey right into the pockets of overseen holding
companies with no domestic tax burden. This was the story
of aerospace, computers, the Internet, genetics and it will
be the case with the next phase of AI and robotics. |
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Taken
together with the rest of a supposed market economy,
(what with the huge military and police apparatus and all
that entails) are we not looking at something like a
centrally planned, albeit dysfunctionally, socialist system?
Could we say with certainty that the ratio of public to
private wealth transfer, for example, is higher in a self-
described market economy? |
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Whatever the case may be, at least the misnomer
communist economies had the decency to collapse when
the desires of the people became misaligned with what it
could promise. The US' one lasts in part because it hands
the dough to a very effective, self-preserving class of
global management elites with a very large private security
force, a burocracy, and a custom policy fabrication facility
we all happen to pay for. |
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Meanwhile, as the links indicate, the behavioral theories
underpinning mythical market rationality are the exact
opposite of the data. I mean, if the kinds of qualities
expected of managers, engineers and creatives are not
enhanced by pay past a surprisingly low threshold, it may
be that only employees who's jobs require none of these
qualities are the only ones who's performance is not
harmed by higher pay. And
infact, a cursory view of some of the foudational research
in this field (much of it funded by banks) reveals this to be
the case. |
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In other words, we need to be open to the possibility that
janitors need to be paid more than the CEOs. |
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One more thing; who said a partnership has to be scaled
up? |
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[maxwellbuchanan] I have a future-proof job as a trust fund
kid or retiree who
spends his spare time implementing workplace automations
so that no one has to work in the future. Isn't that nice of
me? |
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[fishboner] the point of the partnership comment
was that this model exists to a limited extent in
small horizontal organizations, but cannot be
scaled. |
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The fact that managers do not make optimal hiring
or salary decisions and instead protect their own,
or that the market is distorted by governments
does not change this idea from a WIBNI. Nor does
the distortion in any way disprove markets, the
opposite -- the government is simply like a black
hole distorting time and space, inflating it by
blowing money into the system -- where it
appears, gravity operates abnormally -- but it does
not disprove other physics, quite the opposite --
it's a great illustration of physics. Market forces
operate in every single Communist system -- they
are the reason for the emergence of black
markets, for instance. And the military industrial
complex, or the banks, or any other easily
aggregated amorphous squid is simply an
illustration that if there's sufficient money in
something, people will try really hard to get it. |
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Ultimately, decisions in any entity add up, and
produce Darwinian results. Some fish evolve to
take advantage of the Gulf Stream in their
migrations, others evolve to swim upstream to
spawn. The water, though, continues to flow
downhill. |
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I'm not saying markets are mythical forces. Of
course market rationality is a force of nature on
par with gravity and evolution. What I'm doubting
(and the data bear this out)
are markets as an efficient means of resource
allocation consistent with continuity of
technologically advanced civilization. |
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As a novel mechanism facilitating a partnership
mode of firm structure, my model has merit, and
if you cannot demonstrate otherwise, you are
obliged to bun it. |
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In other words everyone acts individually stupid and then pray to the aggregate result of their collective stupidity. |
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//and if you cannot demonstrate otherwise, you
are obliged to bun it// |
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No, we're really not. I could go through and
Bun/Bone things at random if I felt like it. And
even if your statement were true, the fact that
you've gone from this entire company being make
work to discussing market forces means that the
lack of a single point invalidates your claim. |
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And no, market forces are not a perfect method
for allocating wealth, but, under the appropriate
contraints, they're better than most of the
alternatives. |
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Jobs pay more for one of three reasons: Higher
skill requirements, higher responsibility, or higher
unpleasantness. |
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If the job requires a higher skill level, the higher
pay is an incentive to acquire those skills. If it has
higher responsibility, the higher pay is
compensation for the additional stress (and, if
done properly, which too many companies don't, a
reward for successfully managing the
responsibility). The higher unpleasantness pays
more in order to provide incentive to do those
jobs instead of the lower paying ones. |
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If everyone in a company was paid the same, in
the absence of outside jobs, you might still get
people to fill some of the positions in the highly
skilled category, because a lot of us tend to be
nerds and enjoy the work. The high
responsibility/stress jobs, and the unpleasant jobs
would be extremely difficult to fill. |
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In the presence of outside jobs, you would not be
able to fill any position that normally paid higher
than your set rate. |
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The data does not bear it out, [fishboner], not
outside an academic's fevre dream, anyway. Sorry,
no bun for you. |
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Far be it for me to say this is a very dumb idea, but I
think it's a very dumb idea. |
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//In other words everyone acts individually stupid
and then pray to the aggregate
result of their collective stupidity.// |
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I would say it's both. And of course it's not just
prayer, but tribute and ritual sacrifice
are offered. Take say the passage below: |
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//I could go through and Bun/Bone things at
random if I felt like it.// |
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Momentarily finding self in the role of the deity,
the devotee is obliged to be
capricious, thus proving the need for the deity.
The rest of the tract reveals that the
the acts of the actual deity posess a benevolent
wisdom: |
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//If the job requires a higher skill level, the higher
pay is an incentive to acquire
those skills. If it has higher responsibility, the
higher pay is compensation for the
additional stress// |
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In other words, the deities are not merely shaping
the aspirations of man, but they
are rewarding ritual suffering, tribute and sacrifice
with rewards of good fortune. |
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And we find numerous useful statements of faith
throughout the rest of the seven
passages of the text. |
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The next text we will examine you will recognize
as a defense of the faith. |
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//The data does not bear it out, not outside an
academic's fevre dream, anyway// |
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Note the tell-tale "academic" label. This is a
codeword to the rest of the congregation
that it is from "those people". To see the truth,
they need look no further than the
reality of how the congregation functions around
them, for there is no order except
that which God has established. |
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The opening statement is equally interesting. It
is a simple, ex cathedra statement.
Note the economy of words undoubtedly meant
to convey to the faithful that "yes,
the academics talk and talk, but it is all noise."
This devotee can blow away all
unpleasant secular thoughts by simply inverting a
fact. |
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[MB] takes the same approach, only slightly more
deftly. |
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//the academics talk and talk...// |
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You don't say? Look -- at some point -- you may want
to consider the "it's not you, it's me" argument. The
other one -- that we all just don't get what you're
saying -- is likely a bit less likely. Or by all means carry
on. |
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Add into this hash the concept of the individuals'
complete sanity, which is presumed in many theories
yet rare in real markets, and it all starts to make
sense, therefore proving I am insane. |
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[theircompetitor] but there isn't much to get... |
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Author, Artist, Artisan, Butler, Personal Assistant. |
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And yes, we may be able to automate all of the
above, but that doesn't mean we will. Otherwise
there would be no market for live theatre in the
face of movies. |
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Employment only disappears if we manage to
stumble our way into a post scarcity society, not a
rationed one, and even then work doesn't, it just
gets a lot more optional. |
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//Otherwise there would be no market for live
theatre in the face of movies. // |
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I have given this issue much thought, and have
come to this very example before. Of course,
there are infinitely more employees and work
hours in movie and television production than in
theater. We might even consider live theater to
me close enough to zero to just call it zero in
terms of its relevance to the economy. |
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Love it or hate it, market rationality simply has no
way to reconcile emerging ends of automation
with a predominantly market approach to efficient
resource allocation. We are reduced to faith that
it will all just work out, because the idea that we
could engineer resource allocation produces such a
feeling of sudden defeatism in our usually gung-ho,
result oriented, can-do scientific and academic
sectors. Could it be that the information age
changes the game of resource allocation
engineering? |
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Actually automation does work with market forces
quite well, since at the same time it reduces
available wages, it reduces the cost of goods.
These two aren't perfectly in balance, but they are
generally applicable. To own more than two sets
of clothes prior to the industrial revolution, you
had to be at least moderately well off, and most
likely wealthy. Now, you can pick up a complete
outfit for a day's wages (depending on where you
shop). |
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As goods cost less and less, more and more people
can make enough to buy them in what otherwise
would have been marginal jobs. |
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What's really limits employment as a result of
automation is not the cost of labor, but the cost
of materials, and beyond that the cost of energy.
Those are the factors that define the minimum
possible cost of an item. If we reach a true post
scarcity society (someone comes up with a truly
cheap, resource free source of energy) then truly
trivial amounts of labor would be required to earn
enough to live. |
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If not, then all those out of work people will be
able to get employment as guards/soldiers for the
people who actually have resources. |
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Of course neither is going to happen in the short
term. Yes, there is some significant disruption in
the work force, and increasingly the jobs are going
to go to the creative or innovative. Learn how to
program a CNC mill rather than run a manual one.
Learn how to diagnose plumbing problems rather
than putting the plumbing into a standardized
ship. |
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Your main problem appears to be that market
forces don't actually care if a given individual
starves. |
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//We might even consider live theater to me close
enough to zero to just call it zero in terms of its
relevance to the economy.// |
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I would also debate this argument. SAG has a total
membership on the order of 180,000, Actor's
Equity has a membership of about 50,000. I don't
have the time or the detailed knowledge to go
through all the relevant unions, and I don't argue
that Movies and Television employ more people
than live theatre, but not so many more that you
can afford to ignore live theatre all together. |
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There are some ideas which are so wrong that the interesting game is not to prove them wrong, but rather to enjoy the meta-argument about the neatest way in which to encapsulate their wrongness. |
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St Anselm's Ontological Argument is one and Head Pay is another. |
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To this point, most of the observations have been about how this idea won't work at the level of practical economics - which, of course, it won't. However, the idea could also be attacked much earlier, in its premises - the first is a vacuous tautology and the third is untrue. |
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Should we, then, focus on the wrongness of the premises, or on the wrongness of the idea derived from them? |
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Alternatively, we could treat the whole thing as an interesting counter-factual; in an alternative universe, where the premises were true, could the idea be derived from them, or is the derivation process itself as broken as its start and end points? |
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//To this point, most of the observations have been about how this idea won't work at the level of practical economics// |
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Of course, we could say this about any idea, and many do. What I am wondering is why we choose one dumb idea over another. |
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Head Pay may be no less a counterfactual than the proposition of our current mode of resource allocation would have been in the tenth century. |
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I will say that resource allocation is an effective metric for the normative assessment of an economic model or set of policies. If the proponents of one or another model aren't even concerned with resource allocation outcomes associated with their model in practice, that tells you something. |
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Again, all i have done is proposed a particular mechanism providing rationale for a partnership model. It really is not controversial. I see managers struggle with this all the time. They have no idea what to pay people, so they pay as little as they can get away with; essentially, letting the mass of desperate workers set the pay. This leads to a general inefficiency of resource allocation across the economy that ends up hurting even the managers themselves, as their rationale is replicated across the entire economy eventually dragging down aggregate consumption. |
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Keep in mind, the decision to pay as little as possible is merely one of several rationalities available to us, each with its own set of advantages, drawbacks, stupidity, magical thinking, etc. I have merely proposed one such rationality, and I believe it is novel but bun-worthy. |
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