HACKER Q&A
📣 bsldld

In this lockdown period, should the world now evaluate compensations?


In this lockdown period, should the world now evaluate what jobs are really valuable for the society to function and set the compensations of those doing these jobs accordingly?


  👤 sparkie Accepted Answer ✓
Value is subjective. There is no "valuable for society." There is value for individuals, and nobody is more capable of making the decisions about what is valuable than those individuals themselves. Attempting to have some entity decide what is valuable on everybody's behalf is incredibly stupid.

The way to have compensation re-evaluated would be to completely scrap existing regulations which interfere with the ability of individuals to set or request the compensation they determine to be worthwhile for the work performed in a free market. Scrap minimum wage. Get rid of all regulations which protect established companies from competition. There should be no reason you need a barber's license to cut hair.

The labour theory of value has been debunked. Just because it cost so much to produce something, does not mean people are willing to pay more than that for it. All subsidies to enterprises should be scrapped. The market can only operate efficiently if there are accurate price signals. Government intervention in the market distorts the realities and ends up taking money from hard working, low earners, and subsidizing high paying workers, whose products or services are not providing the level of benefit to individuals that they would otherwise voluntarily pay for if they weren't involuntarily subsidizing through forced taxation.

The way out of the mess is to assert your monetary sovereignty and to be the dictator of what you deem to be valuable to you, to your family, to your neighbours, to your country, and to the rest of the world - in that order.

In order to do that, you need to be able to protect your wealth against unwanted theft. Fortunately, there's now a way you can do this: bitcoin.


👤 necovek
It's never been that simple: let me give you a trivial (and oversimplified) example.

A baker's job is essential in almost every country in the world, yet the time and effort required to get to a reasonable level of skill is pretty small. Thus, if compensation was increased, competition in the market would quickly drive the compensation back down again.

Pay is, unfortunately, not proportional to the value to the society.

Humans should and do work on making it fairer, but it's been a long road so far and we are nowhere close to it (but we are better off than a couple hundred years ago).


👤 31337
It is like asking should we stop wasting world resources and set the priorities accordingly ? Yes we should. And then what ?

👤 mhh__
Define valuable, ideally without invoking Marxist labour theory of value.

The vast majority of jobs have nothing to do with, what I'm assuming you're implying, healthcare and food - the compensation should be set by those who pay for it not someone else.

There are countless jobs that neither you nor I have ever heard of let alone thought about that society needs to function.