Re: [ox-en] Re: Weighting labor
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:09:04 +0200
Hi Christian and all!
4 hours ago Christian Siefkes wrote:
Stefan Merten wrote:
what do you do if demand for unpopular, repetetive, boring tasks (like
cleaning or most of the typical manufacturing tasks) exceeds supply of
people willing to do the task on a reliable, lasting basis? dropping all
"excessive" projects until demand meets supply for the specific task
doesnt seem like a reasonable solution.
they are "weighted higher", i.e. if you decide to perform an unpopular task,
you have to do less of it than when you perform a popular task.
Read the book.
This is indeed one point in the book which I simply do not understand:
In which way this is any different from a simply labor market? You are
paid higher wages for tasks for which there are less people available.
The most important difference is, of course, that there is no *market*. On
the labor market, you need to find a buyer for your labor capacity.
And a project needs to find a seller of labor capacity. Indeed that is
the very meaning of a market. Potential buyers meet potential sellers.
So if in one of your projects cleaning is needed then that project
needs to buy labor power. If they offer you one of their products for
cleaning then they buy your labor power, utilize it and pay you by the
product. You found someone who bought your (excess) labor power for a
product. This is a market - isn't it?
Even if you might argue that this is not the case for a single
project: At the moment there are distribution pools with their
additional level of abstraction this will happen.
BTW while I'm at it: Did you ever enjoy capitalism under full
employment conditions? Then it is easy to find a buyer for your labor
power. I heard a guy who were enthusiastic about that time in Germany
in the early 1970ies. Funny enough that guy tried to sell Gesellian
ideology in a talk...
You than
have to utilize your labor capacity as the buyer (who is usually a
capitalist) seems fit --
Yes. In both cases. But this is simply part of finding the price for
your labor power. Again in both cases. Under conditions of competition
the societal average necessary will be the result.
To be concrete: If there are two projects needing cleaning and
producing the same good then you would labor for the one which gives
you more of the good. Since no Selbstentfaltung is employed here we
are dealing with abstract labor monades - just as in capitalism.
which, among other things, means that you have to
work longer than you would have to work if you were simple working for
yourself. By doing so you produce _surplus value_, which is of course the
reason why the capitalist hired you in the first place, and which is the
very basis of the capitalist economy, as you well know.
And what in your system could stop a project from gathering surplus
value? I can see nothing.
Apart from this this reminds me so much of that old social-democrat /
anarchist / ... call for the "just price" - meaning that the surplus
value should be part of the wages. Sigh...
But in the peerconomy, there is no labor market and no buying and selling of
labor capacity -- instead, people simply _divide up_ among themselves the
work that they want to have done.
You are really good in finding new names for trivial things.
Unfortunately this hides what you are really proposing.
Dividing up labor is indeed the core of each system employing division
of labor. For instance capitalism. The question is on what basis this
division is done. I could imagine systems where you have some
governance structure which cares about this. In fact most of human
history were determined by such governance systems. One of them is
called feudalism.
If - with Marx - you criticize the *political economy* - meaning that
the economy "makes" governance decisions - then you should end up with
a political governance system as well - or everything is based on
Selbstentfaltung which defines the problem away :-) .
So in capitalism labor is divided up as well. And it is the same
abstract labor you are proposing. You are probably thinking about some
social agreement and as such real governance. Even if that works for a
single project it won't if you have distribution pools (aka global
market BTW).
Therefore, there is no surplus -- you
merely have to do your share of the work, but no more; and there is nobody
who is a privileged position due to his/her being able to buy other people's
labor capacity.
Sorry, but I think this is really wishful thinking. I can see not a
single facility in your system preventing this.
However, the labor market is true to reality in that not everyone is
able to do any job and so the supply side is part of the weight. But I
see no way to prevent that in a system based on abstract labor like
you are proposing.
Well, in the case that there is high social demand for people with a special
talent and there are fewer people with this special talent than necessary to
satisfy all demand, that's indeed what happens, and that's the intended
effect. But I think this case is rare -- usually many people can learn and
acquire skills, and whenever there is high demand (and therefore high
weighting) for a certain skill, more people will start to learn it until
this temporary effect has leveled out.
Sorry, but I really wonder in what world you live. That type of
unskilled labor you are talking about is exactly that part of labor
which is automated away. It is not the well educated, highly skilled
engineers who are short of jobs but exactly those unskilled workers.
And it is really not trivial to become a well educated, highly skilled
engineer.
Your model *could* work in a rural society with very low technology
where the human muscle replaces machines. This is the type of society
all higher entities (aka Gods) may help to prevent.
Whenever something is regulated by supply and demand, the interesting
question is, of course: where to they tend to reach balance? Which function
controls where supply and demand tend to meet?
In capitalism, as Marx tells us, the decisive factor is the _complexity of
labor_ -- the more complex some task is, the more is pays (while all simple
labor is paid roughly the same). That's probably due to the fact that
workers have to invest time and money in order to get the specialized
education necessary to do such complex work.
Well, I'd say it's simply because their are less skilled workers than
unskilled ones. Indeed any skilled worker can work as an unskilled one
but not vice versa - ever heard of a teacher driving taxi? The price
of a scarce good is higher than of a good available plentiful. Whether
you had high costs to obtain that high skill plays a minor role - as
the taxi driving teacher quickly learns.
But for the peerconomy, I assume that education and training are usually
free (which means not only that you don't have to pay/contribute anything in
order to learn something, but also that society cares for your needs while
you're a learner),
Which is already the case at least partly. Universities and schools
are tax funded (at least in Germany - mostly that is and is also on
the decline...). That is what you are proposing basically. Again I see
no difference.
and therefore (provided that's indeed the case), I don't
think that the complexity of a task will have a high influence on its weight.
Sorry but I think that is simply wrong.
On the other hand, the _pleasantness_ of a task (more exactly, its
_popularity_: do or don't people like to do it?) will probably play a large
role.
This plays a role in capitalism either. Wages in socially not so
accepted industries like chemistry and military industry are usually
higher than for comparable jobs in other industries.
In capitalism, it doesn't, since people _have_ to sell their labor
capacity, and therefore can't be choosy --
Well, in your system they have to sell their labor, too. Otherwise
they don't get the goods they want to have - at least partly.
if you refuse an unpleasant job,
there are usually sufficent other candidates willing to take over.
Once again that is true only when the supply side of labor looks like
it does today. If you have full employment the perspective is
different. And I see no facility in your system which guarantees full
employment conditions.
That's
different in the peerconomy, where tasks are merely divided up: if many
people want to do a popular task, and nobody another unpopular one, they
have to find a solution (in order to actually divide all tasks up). The
solution, according to my proposal, is that those who switched over to the
unpopular task, need to do less, while those who stick with the popular one
have to do more (in order to make up for it -- the overall work to divide
up, remains, after all, the same).
Which at the very least implies that laborers can be exchanged
arbitrarily. Which gets us back to the unskilled laborers...
While reading it for the third time I also wonder how this should
work. Let's assume that there are four hours work of unpopular task
and four hours work of the popular task. From two persons one decides
for the unpopular one. Because of the bonus s/he just has to work
three hours - which leaves us with one hour of unpopular task. The
other one has their malus and works five hours - well, s/he stops
after four hours because there is no work of that popular task left.
You somehow seem to assume that the labor necessary for the unpopular
task is replaced by more labor of the popular task. How this?
BTW: There is also a heavy flaw in the term "popular". It has to do
with individual needs and societal needs. In your system they seem to
become the same magically - though in the end I think you are talking
really about the societal needs. I leave it with that in this already
overly long mail...
One more BTW: Your calculation in hours assumes that everyone is
equally skilled and thus equally quick. This is again wishful
thinking.
This difference -- task pleasantness/popularity matters, while it doesn't in
capitalism --also means that labor in the peerconomy is not quite as
"abstract" as in capitalism. In capitalism, there is a double abstraction:
(1) abstraction from the results of the work (what is is that is produced?)
and (2) abstraction from the process of the work (what is is that workers
are doing -- do or don't do they like it?). In the weighted labor model,
abstraction (1) is also present, but abstraction (2) isn't. Therefore, we
could maybe talk about "semi-abstract labor" when discussing this model.
This could be a way to sort this out but I don't think it's true. In
capitalism you can choose a job you want to do and you are skilled
enough for. In fact when I read that part in your book that this is
*so* different in your system I once again wondered in what world you
live.
Grüße
Stefan
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