Re:‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Comp...
by roenxi on Thursday November 15, 2018 @04:38PM
(#18463631)
> The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy. It is subject to all the same tribal impulses and inequalities that have persisted in humans throughout history.
Based on context, I suspect you mean merit as in moral merit. Economic merit is defined as the economic value add in a free market, so free markets are tautologically a meritocracy, because success in a free market is basically a definition of economic merit.
It certainly isn't fair, but nearly nothing is. Life is profoundly unfair.
> In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. That’s just an excuse for exploitation.
A debatable point - it is easy to justify making it as easy as possible for a worker to leave a job that isn't paying a living wage and find something else. However there are a lot of people out there and not all of them are working to live. Eg, maybe someone has a stead source of income (spouse, parents or investment money) and wants to get involved in something worthwhile but low value add. It isn't at all obvious why we should prevent that as a society because nobody thinks it is worth a living wage worth of money per hour.
A minimum wage is basically a declaration that work with less value add than some number is not worth doing. From an incentives point of view, it is really weird and there are probably better ways of helping people with nothing to offer their community.
Based on context, I suspect you mean merit as in moral merit. Economic merit is defined as the economic value add in a free market, so free markets are tautologically a meritocracy, because success in a free market is basically a definition of economic merit.
It certainly isn't fair, but nearly nothing is. Life is profoundly unfair.
> In western societies, no job should pay less than a living wage, no matter how enjoyable it is. That’s just an excuse for exploitation.
A debatable point - it is easy to justify making it as easy as possible for a worker to leave a job that isn't paying a living wage and find something else. However there are a lot of people out there and not all of them are working to live. Eg, maybe someone has a stead source of income (spouse, parents or investment money) and wants to get involved in something worthwhile but low value add. It isn't at all obvious why we should prevent that as a society because nobody thinks it is worth a living wage worth of money per hour.
A minimum wage is basically a declaration that work with less value add than some number is not worth doing. From an incentives point of view, it is really weird and there are probably better ways of helping people with nothing to offer their community.