Work is work, so then why is some work more valuable than other?
Why should a doctor be paid more than a plumber? Don’t they both do something that society need? If you say the doctor should get paid more becuase he attended university for 8 years. why should the doctor expect to be paid more just becuase he did university? The way it is, our system assumes that people only become doctors for the money motive. If we remove the money motive than we will have people who want to be doctors be doctors and breed out those that just want to be doctors for the money.
People will choose their careers based on like and personal interest instead of based on social status and monetary value. Those who are ambitious will purse careers that fit their personal interests and like and those who are lazy will clean the toilets The toilets cleaners are still providing a service society needs so therefore their service and work is not less valuable than a doctor. Philosophers will become philosophers. However this will require a society that allows people to pursue work based on like and personal interest instead of monetary value.
The monetary value of work should all be the same unless you have reasons why it should not.
Money is illusionary. It is just a measure of value. Value is the intersection of supply and demand. I think you’re ignoring the supply side.
Overall, plumbers may be more necessary to society than doctors. Imagine how many people would get sick and die if we couldn’t dispose of our biological waste! An army of doctors couldn’t save us. That’s the demand side of the equation.
That being said, the supply of plumbers is greater than the supply of doctors, mostly because it’s easier to become a plumber than a doctor. This drives the value of a plumber down.
Removing money won’t change anything. Like I said, money is just a measuring device. If I measure the length of my computer screen as 19", does the it cease to be 19" when I remove the ruler? No. It’s still 19" long. Remove money all you want, the value of the doctor is still there.
There are things in society that are valuable that for one reason or another, we don’t put a price tag on. One of them is attractiveness. However, study after study shows that attractive people get better jobs, have more friends, etc. etc. Why do you think that is? It’s because the laws of supply and demand are universal. Society will, by it’s very nature, reward the things that people value. Even if you take money out of the picture, society will still find a way to reward the things people values.
I ignored the supply side, becuase society has only so many positions available so those who can’t find positions in their chosen career will have to find another career that interests them or wait for a position to become available while doing something less interesting (that society requires) for them. The supply side should not effect the value of work becuase work is work just becuase other people have the same skills or too many have the same skills shouldn’t lower the value of work. Neither should the easiness of work as long as society requires it. I agree that toilet cleaning is easier than being a doctor (or is it?), however this is irrelevant becuase both parties do work that society needs. Therefore should be paid and rewarded the same.
What do you mean? The value of a doctor is societal not intrinsic.
What is attractiveness and who defines what attractiveness is? What does it have to do with the value of work?
Yes, but if a plumber and a doctor were paid and rewarded the same, nobody would ever become a doctor, because “why go through all the effort, when all you have to do is learn to screw on a pipe and you can make the same money.” That’s why you can’t ignore the supply side.
(this conversation is kind of skewed because the reality is a certified master plumber makes a lot of money and you’re right, mastering the art isn’t really all that simple. We should probably say something like a doctor and a janitor, but plumber works well enough for the conversation.)
The value of a plumber is also societal. Regardless, both of their values are still intrinsic. They’re intrinsic to society.
Society, by nature, moves toward it’s own preservation or expansion (or at least attempts to). That means certain things will be necessary to achieve that end, i.e., doctors and plumbers. Since there is a determined goal at hand, the service which is most important to that goal will be valued more highly. That is the demand side.
Attractiveness is individual, that’s true, but there’s also a universal element. The girls in the magazine are in the magazine because most people find them attractive.
To answer your question about what it has to do with work, you have to ask yourself: “What is work?” Isn’t work anything we do in the hopes of being rewarded? People will tell you relationships are work, even though you don’t get paid in dollars. The benefits are emotional.
This is where attractiveness comes in. Just being in the presence of an attractive person can make you happy. That’s a reward. Therefore, attractive people, by merely being around, are performing a service that increases our happiness.
And so, that being the case, society finds a way to reward attractive people for the service they provide.
People with ambition will seek the careers that require more effort. In such a society career training and education will be free, all people have to do is choose.
Demand and supply shouldn’t really effect the value of work becuase work is work. If we say some work is more valuable than other work becuase of effort (all work requires effort), demand, supply than that is just value judgments.
The girls in the magazines are in the magazines becuase they fit the ideal image of beauty that society promotes and people buy the image.
Attractive people increase happiness? Ok, maybe for you.
Earthy once you understand all actions of humans as existing for the sole purpose of accumulating power the sort of ugly hypocrisy and prejudice amongst people becomes all the more clear.
Read some Friedrich Nietzsche and topics on evolutionism. All will become clear thereafter.
Money is a form of relationship. If we give money value we also give it meaning, so it is not all illusion, because to the extent that we give it value it is not illusion to us. It is because life holds all value that those who can save life or improve its quality are paid more than others. Those who can feed our egos perhaps draw more, and so do people who give us a sense of a future of meaning beyond death. It would seem by the nature of the relationship that prostitution would pay more, but it is likely that what one is buying is no relationship, or one that seems the cream of the relationship without the crumbs. Perhaps it is a chance to have a witness to your immorality, or an opportunity to do violence to the idea of love that is such a tyrant to so many.
That is not true, and it cannot be proven. Let me offer a much more likely scene. Money is a form of relat ionship. So is everything else under the sun. What all these forms of relationship have in common is that through them people are recognized which add to our psychological sense of being real, and we are realized in fact, which means that we have a better chance than another of being here tomorrow. When people use forms for personal power they are sucking the life out of the relationship. Slave and master are forms of relationship, but for power the master makes himself as much a slave as the slave, and it is so unequal in relationship that the benifit goes primarily to one, but neither benefits as they would in an equal cooperative relationship. The process of building and abandoning forms is going on all the time, and people do reform forms. A marriage is an example of a form where the needs of the relationship dictate the character of the form. In that form, if one person takes all the power, and uses the other, and makes all the choices, they have limited and stunted the form and the relationship. It comes out of their time and life for little absolute gain, if any. So, worn out decripit forms relationships will always find use and abuse, and one side vainly seeking power. That is the extreme minority even if there may be no such thing as a fully equal relationship. The best relationships are informal, where people work together for a common goal without the form dictating behavior. If a form, like slavery, is unequal it can hardly be called healthy, and it is the form which justifies the injury and illness within. As a simple relationship, no injury is ever justified.
We are all puppets on a stage. the lighting, the props, are all cheap and corney (i’m not talking about maiz). These are designed like wads of money attatched to strings, the more persevearence and luck you have, the bigger wad of money you will be able to catch. (in out society that is)
We chase after a pickup truck with a politician throwing oout scraps. the faster you are and the better position you are in will determine how many scraps you can grab compared to everybody else…
The sad part is that there would be more then enough food to go around if they stopped the damn truck, but the worse part is that they don’t throw out enough food for everyone to survive.
If you want to change the world begin with yourself. Do not confuse the world we live in with an ideal. People build their forms with a view to an ideal, but they evolve to fit a chertain reality or a certain view of reality. The consitution, ans especially our true founding document, the Delaration of independence were full of good ideas, but making the government so powerless that it could not get out of its own way, and leaving the individual free to exploit both environment and fellow citizens was a big mistake. If you have to wait until any sort of immorality has a single victim and a single trail back to a single villan, there are likely to be millions already injured, and not singly, but by a whole class given to the notion that greed justifies all.
Too many contradictions were papered over in our constitution. Even the notion that both people and property can enjoy rights was never explored, but clearly accepted. And if you judge by our rich, the U.S. is a rich country. If you judge by our poor, you see they are as poor as anywhere in the world. And considering the natural wealth of the place which should have contributed to the general welfare, and should continue to contribute through taxes, then the government clearly has been designed to control the give away of America to the rich. What ever ideals it had did not work, and if they threw us the sop of a few civil rights we will find and have already found that they are for sale under duress. No right can stand before the need to eat. Political equality goes the way of economic equality.
We have cross-cultural, basically universal, standards of beauty, and thats because of a shared mental architecture (set of adaptations, across humans) individuals may like different chicks, but statistically, theres certain features which are popular in all cultures.
The same is true of WORK. People have adaptations to climb hiearchies, they have adaptations to demand what they think their work is worth. People have in-born adaptations, to make sure they get the most out of what they choose to do.
If you have a doctor that goes to university for 7 years and someone bagging groceries, making the same pay-check, in almost no society (not twisted by religion) the doctor is going to DEMAND more.
And if he doesn’t he wants to.
In hunter-gatherer societies, people routinely demand their fair-share. its not just handed to them, they actively fight against others, for what they think their work is worth.
You might be right that people will still become doctors due to interest or maybe even partially genetics, but the point is; that doesn’t mean they’ll treat you without paying up.
A doctor can be a doctor and still refuse to treat you due to not being happy with a plumber’s paycheck.
And you’re even wrong about that. Huge amounts of doctors would say “Fuck this, i don’t spend every-day surrounded by disease for a plumber’s pay check”
Non sense. Honest to god non sense. Nietzsche may have impressed people in his time with his learning, but he does not impress me. His conclusions were bold on the joy people take from collecting debts out of people’s hides. Actually, that was very recent to Europe, and historically, and prehistorically people were charged blood money for injury or death, and not the reverse, as he seems to suggest as common. So, is there any difference between injury for money, or money for injury? It makes all the difference in the world if everyone is a free person and a free agent, because if you injure a free man you take his honor which is his to retrieve. If you don’t want to have to lie sleepless at night waiting for vengeance you better have a doom, or moot, or thing with him, his family and yours, lay your cards on the table, and get a look at his and reach some sort of accord. When law is imposed by the strong over the weak and the rich over the poor there is no limit to the depravity of the suffering they will inflict; but such horrors were seldom heard of in primitive societies where quarter was asked and often given.
It is out of primitive societies that Germany and France both use the word right, for law, but this was determined in a case by case basis with fate, or as the say in the East, kismet playing a large part. Among the American indians as well as in primitive Europe, even a murder might be bought off with blood money. But, again, these were free cooperative communities finding law as needed to avoid the curse of vengeance and feud. Now, the notion as put forth, that individuals were always seeking power over their own is nonsense, pure and simple. What sort of power could anyone have over others when each was equally armed. If they had authority, it was because they had influence, and not great physical strength or threat. Only by influence, and by soliciting a common commitment could any one rise above the mean of power, and then ones status came about by being strictly honorable in division of any possible spoils. People needed each other because they were surrounded by dangerous enemies. People only have few natural allies in this world. So rather than power, people sought honor, and honor implied a debt. Wealth might mean enough food, and it was an honor to share, but one might reasonably expect a share at another’s meal, so that bonds were re-enforced, and unity made strong. Society had to progress a long way in class division before any needs were denied, and before law could be imposed from above.
Now, if you reference any amont of primitive liturature you will see the concern for honor shine through like a light, and you must admit that honor cannot be taken lightly from any person with a sense of honor. Freedom might be easily had from a defeated man, but he needed no shackles, only because he gave up his freedom on his honor. I don’t know where Nietzsche got some of his wild ideas, but I do know that few were based upon fact. Societies evolved, and people who were once victors became serfs on their own land. So to have family, love and relationships they became the slaves of others, and degraded. They were not physically or morally different to any degree, but adapted to the situation they were born to.