This is a sadistic logic. People dying because they can't afford healthcare. "Everybody wins". Living precariously from wageslip to wageslip. "Everybody wins". Internalising the toxic logic that one's worth is directly proportional to one's market value. "Everybody wins". Etcetera.
Several things:
1. If this were so it's strange how so many widely different forms of economic organisation, across the past and present - from post-war fordism in France to the state-owned enterprises in China today - have achieved remarkable levels of growth, stability and innovation. Economies are incredibly historically, sociologically and culturally varied and complex things. They cannot be reduced to a universal and parsimonious law.
2. What is of market value is not what is of social value. Even the most gooey-eyed neoclassical economist admits that a huge number of inefficiencies and distortions separate the two. Many thinkers - Rousseau, Marx, even Rawls - took them to be very far apart. A system in which the majority of people hate their job, have no bargaining power, have no say in their workplace, and are told by society that they aren't worth anything and to be grateful for the Promethean achievements of the rich, is not maximising social value. It's socially and culturally crippling.
3. You are naturalising a contingent and defeasible fact: that people need gratuitously large paychecks to have sufficient incentive to work. It's proven that above £28,000, increased income has no effect on quality of life. People want more money than that because capitalism, like any social system, functionally reproduces itself ideologically; and humans can be extraordinarily sensitive as to their social status and how others perceive them.
> This is a sadistic logic. People dying because they can't afford healthcare.
At some point everyone dies, and we know somewhere we run up against physical limits of what we can achieve. You'll need o be more specific about what your issue is here.
> Living precariously from wageslip to wageslip.
I've met people on $150,000 who manage to live paycheck to paycheck because they spend all their money in one go. You are probably referring to a real problem, but again maybe be more specific about what the actual problem is.
> Internalising the toxic logic that one's worth is directly proportional to one's market value.
It is impossible for everyone to simultaneously be 10x more productive than average, so I would _strongly_ advise anyone who thinks like this to pick a more achievable standard for measuring their self worth. But the choice of economic system does not determine anyone's mindset.
Several things 1)
Seems reasonable.
Several things 2)
> A system in which the majority of people hate their job, have no bargaining power, have no say in their workplace, and are told by society that they aren't worth anything
I mean realistically this is a value judgment so there is nothing to disagree on, but there are a lot of aspects here that are very negative. Clearly these workers are worth something, being humans, and nobody is seriously going to tell them otherwise. A lot of people are happy in their job, and realistically what is the actual problem with modern jobs? That workers have to turn up on time? That they have to be nice to people even if they don't feel like it? There are some horror stories that come out of retail, but they are caused by bad behavior of customers, not by the economic system.
I've seen a lot of people with lousy jobs who really struggle through life, but often the actual problem is something that is strictly in their personal life. I'm not sympathetic to the idea that somehow because workers don't understand the importance of what they do that they are therefore wasting time.
Several things 3)
> It's proven that above £28,000, increased income has no effect on quality of life
I'm not really familiar with the income and expense situation in the UK so I'll not try to talk about it. I would suggest that once you get beyond lifestyle expenses there are a lot of things that the wealthy do with their money that have nothing to do with their short term quality of life (like investment, or supporting family members or close friends).
This is a sadistic logic. People dying because they can't afford healthcare. "Everybody wins". Living precariously from wageslip to wageslip. "Everybody wins". Internalising the toxic logic that one's worth is directly proportional to one's market value. "Everybody wins". Etcetera.
Several things:
1. If this were so it's strange how so many widely different forms of economic organisation, across the past and present - from post-war fordism in France to the state-owned enterprises in China today - have achieved remarkable levels of growth, stability and innovation. Economies are incredibly historically, sociologically and culturally varied and complex things. They cannot be reduced to a universal and parsimonious law.
2. What is of market value is not what is of social value. Even the most gooey-eyed neoclassical economist admits that a huge number of inefficiencies and distortions separate the two. Many thinkers - Rousseau, Marx, even Rawls - took them to be very far apart. A system in which the majority of people hate their job, have no bargaining power, have no say in their workplace, and are told by society that they aren't worth anything and to be grateful for the Promethean achievements of the rich, is not maximising social value. It's socially and culturally crippling.
3. You are naturalising a contingent and defeasible fact: that people need gratuitously large paychecks to have sufficient incentive to work. It's proven that above £28,000, increased income has no effect on quality of life. People want more money than that because capitalism, like any social system, functionally reproduces itself ideologically; and humans can be extraordinarily sensitive as to their social status and how others perceive them.