I somehow didn’t connect that this post was for labor day the first time. I closed Lemmy and then it hit me.
I need caffeine.
While I’m as pro Union as they come, I do not personally believe Labor Is Entitled To All It Creates, there’s a place for Entrepreneurial, Investment, Ownership and Management cut outs, but I believe these percentages should be strictly monitored and regulated. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
If they actually do any labor in those tasks, then yes. Labour doesn’t necessarily mean the bottom level stuff. Management still takes work. Setting up new businesses takes work.
Investment and ownership intrinsically aren’t really labor though. Just owning the company doesn’t add anything of value to anyone, and investing is more like a trade agreement. Should be honored, but not necessarily treated the same. Because investment does help create, and the owners presumably have done work to get from nothing to something of value in the first place. Ideally, anyway. This isn’t necessarily true in reality. Plenty of owners inherited, and why should they be entitled just for being born lucky?
Many projects take a long time to become profitable. The workers would starve until then.
Because of that, they need to borrow wealth to be able to keep working on the project until it becomes profitable.
The concept of lending wealth is therefore necessary.
Noone is gonna accept the risk of lending out wealth unless they expect some gain, some profit.
Therefore the workers promise to not only repay the lent wealth but to also pay on top of that, perhaps a share of the project’s profit.
Hence the concept of profitable investment is necessary.
Management is certainly a kind of labour and even a valuable one. A good manager can ensure the efficient operation of a whole organization, and a bad one can waste the efforts of whole teams and sink entire departments. No one is arguing managers and executives shouldn’t be justly compensated for their labour.
The problem comes when the compensation becomes detached from the labour. When a business produces a surplus and instead of that surplus going to the workers who produced the surplus, it goes to the investors.
Often these investors perhaps put some money into the business many years or even generations earlier, and yet are still entitled to receive cheques every quarter despite not having any role to play in producing that quarter’s surplus. How is that just?
Management should be considered a part of labor in this regard. Intellectual labor is labor and a situation in which management is beholden to those they lead but seen as part of it is where I’d consider ideal. It could be a situation like union stewards where they’re elected from the rank and file or a situation where they seek out someone with the specific skills they’re looking for in the same way they might hire a maintenance worker.
I do think there’s room for a limited reward for entrepreneurial and investment costs, but the idea that they have control in perpetuity is where I have issues. I think a situation where they’re automatically bought out for a reasonable return on investment given the risk is fair enough. Though I worry it will perpetuate the issue of wealth begetting wealth
Guinness stout one pint, 6 degrees centrigrade
zzzt!
Well that’s my work for the day!
This post sponsored by my transporter clone.
Do you own the machinery that makes what you’re helping to make? Most things aren’t made by your hands alone.
The machines are but worthless scrap without the human labor to operate it.
They cost more too. Point is the boss has made numerous monetary investments and you just sell your time to make them work.
Boss pays other people to build the machines.
Boss pays other people to gather resources.
Boss pays other people to run the machines.
Because The Boss is so hardworking he gets to decide who gets the money.
This is capitalism.
At the last few jobs I’ve had? Yeah. Cheap bastards made me buy my own fucking tools
Would that make you a contractor? You own the tools you use then you can go wherever else. If you aren’t a contractor then refuse and go elsewhere.
