Exploitation: A Common Sense Approach

Carl, in the course of these exchanges there are some places where we are close, for example, where people may waste time or do work that is not socially valued. In your last reply you say "For jobs that are simply nastier, such as the 'honeydippers' who clean out the septic tanks in our rural township neighborhoods, simply reward them with higher pay and shorter hours." Here I think we are close and I have tried to point out how this could be consistent with reward for effort and sacrifice defined by onerousness, duration, and intensity of socially valued work.

Where we have been disagreeing, however, is on reward for luck, where people through the genetic lottery acquire talents or skills that others are not able to perform as well or not at all. I have tried in various ways both below and in my essay above to explain why I disagree.

Although it has not been the central focus of our discussion, I think we also disagree that some should be born into wealth or inherent productive assts. I attribute this acquisition of wealth and productive property also to luck and in other cases to bargaining power and brute force. I also disagree with these arrangements and their outcome.

Much less on the periphery however, has been our discussion of hierarchy in the workplace division of labor. You have stated explicitly that you defend both hierarchies in wages and in divisions of labor, both in your own business that you own and in the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain. I reject this as something we want to carry over into a new society and think it should be left behind.

You say that you think taxation and public education is your solution to social inequity and you also say that you think it would be "far easier to administer and measure, and far less divisive, than paying people for 'effort expended.'" So here is what I don't get... Assuming it would be "far easier" and "less divisive" assumes also that working people will  accept willingly the hierarchy in wages and divisions of labor of your system. I have no idea how you arrive at that assumption, but, I think it is wrong.

You can try to explain your position more if you want, but nothing you have said compels me to believe that class division, and the bureaucracies needed to enforce it, will be any less divisive or easier to manage in your proposal than the class rule we have today. In a participatory economy workers and consumers self-mange their own economic lives without administrative layers over them.

So, even if you do offer further explanation, we have carried on this discussion long enough for me to think I will disagree and with good reason. So what do you say we wrap it up?

>We simply disagree on matters of 'talent' being similar or comparable to skin color or sex in heredity, >or on the role of 'luck.'

Well, I would disagree with that statement too as it seems unclear to me and not what I was arguing. But you are right about the last part, that we disagree on rewarding luck, as I think it is inequitable and has nothing to do with economic justice as my essay explains. 

>It's not peculiar to you and me, since the debate has been going on for some time. Here's an excerpt from some of the latest that I happen to agree with:

>"What does all of this have to do with Einstein's genius or your piano playing? Developmental systems theory tells us that, while genetic differences do matter, they cannot, on their own, determine what we become. From there, the whole idea of innate talent falls apart. "

Nowhere have I argued that training or cultivating talents can't help what we become. We don't disagree about that. What I have argued against however is that training can help anyone become as good as anyone else at anything else or that providing a material incentive for them to try doing so is wrong. As I explained in my last reply, although it may improve my own performance, no amount of guitar practice could allow me the same skill level as, or anywhere near, Jimmy Hendrix -- so, in a good economy, why pay me less because I can't play like him. Or put another way, if you were going into a boxing ring with Mike Tyson and, because there was a high value placed on either knockouts or out-lasting your opponent, is it possible that you could train enough to cultivate your talent, stamina, and muscles to have a chance?    

>My working hypothesis when teaching tough students few others wanted to deal with, was that every kid is born with an IQ of 1000, but some have their options beaten down more than others by the structures of race, gender and class privilege and oppression.

For talent though, it is the same as watching a running race and after leaving the starting line seeing that some do better than others, and some way better, because of the genetic lottery, and for the vast majority, no amount of training could put them in the same category with the top runners or, for many, even the mediocre ones. Talent in the workplace or in education is similar and there is no reason why some should be rewarded less just because they were born without the ability to perform certain tasks, perhaps even more valued tasks, as well as others. The difference could be small, as in the business you own for those earning $30-$50 per hour, or larger, say like Bill Gates and Microsoft. But, aside from duration, this has no bearing on how hard someone works or the onerousness of conditions they work and so is unfair.

>Another was that every student had assets and talents, even if not apparent, and my task as teacher was to find them, uncover them, and help them grow.

As any good teacher should. But you have to admit Carl, that some have a natural capacity for better reading, writing or arithmetic than others and that it is unfair to reward those less who can't cultivate these capacities as well. And this is to say nothing about the quality of the schools that people are learning in for better or worse - both of which are more determined by luck than by anything we have control over -- even if there are good teachers. 

>I also taught that no one had to be a prisoner of bad luck and the bad choices of others; they could make their own luck and make their own choices, and it would make a difference. And part of those choices, naturally, was the one to fight for better conditions and a better world, individually and socially. Naturally, what I could do alone was a drop in the bucket. Still I had some amazing successes, and some other cases where students were murdered or in prison before we could get farther.

Carl, I too believe that people can make changes in their lives and saw this happen in my previous job as a social worker - but there are limits. Class mobility, for example, is a fallacy for the vast majority. In today's world, most people stay in the class they are born into with their economic fates pre-determined. Almost two years ago it was determined by the Economic Policy Institute that intergenerational class mobility was a myth.  They asked "To what extent are children's economic fates tied to their parent's income or wealth? Do most families end up about where they started on the income scale?" and "Is the United States' less-regulated economy characterized by greater economic mobility?" They found that income, wealth, and opportunity are "significantly" correlated across generations. A daughter of a low-income mother has only a small chance of achieving very high earnings in her adulthood. "Almost two-thirds of children of low wealth parents (those in the bottom 20 percent of wealth scale) will themselves have wealth levels that place them in the bottom 40 percent of the scale." Their research also shows that the U.S. has become "considerably" less mobile over time, and has even less class mobility than other advanced economies. So while I too believe that people can make changes in their lives, and should, the economic deck of cards is stacked against them as the vast majority are born into a situation without owning significant wealth or productive assets - again luck. If we are going to reject class rule, which I do, then I am going to argue that reward for luck of having wealth, productive assets, talent, skill, tools, training, working in a better work environment, or with a more valued good or service, or reward for bargaining power or brute force - is all un-just and has nothing to do with economic justice. And if we believe in classlessness, then the only remunerative norm morally consistent with that objective, and that we have control over, and so makes the most sense, is for onerousness, duration, and intensity of work.   

>Finally, I think your system has more problems than you might imagine when it comes to measuring 'effort' and then rewarding it by payment. 

It does not and should not have to be complicated... Making it less complicated is that in a participatory economy everyone is also working in a balanced job complex so all share in an equal distribution of both empowering and disempowering tasks, which translates into everyone committing a comparable approximation of effort and sacrifice. It doesn't have to be exact. We don't need algorithms and it would likely be assessed in different ways by different societies. Yet, I think we would find the overall average to be roughly in the same ball park, with exceptions made where people are working more or less significantly harder, longer, or under varied workplace conditions.

> I had students who seemed to work hard but weren't making much progress productivity wise, measured in how many computers they could repair and recycle. Some I found couldn't read beyond a third grade level, hid it, and then couldn't read manuals written at a 10 grade level (The 'For Dummies...' Books). They had to be redirected to remedial reading, as well as continuing with me. But their incentive for remedial reading was the potential for earning more.

But what do you do with those that can't catch up? It sounds like you were doing some caring work, so I find it hard to imagine that you would allow rewarding less those that were unlucky enough in life in one way or another...  

>One kid simply couldn't see well, and no one had ever taken him to an eye doctor.

But you can see, however, that it not being his fault he shouldn't be rewarded less, or at least prepared for a society that rewards less for bad luck, can't you?

>Others were more interested wasting time in visiting porn sites or talking nasty in chat rooms, and then flipping the screen when I or one of my helpers came around. So to discount this waste as 'effort',

Carl, I have to wonder why you remain oblivious, or at least act as if you do, to my previous explanations, over, and over, and over again, that wasting significant amounts of time on things that matter or don't matter, or doing an overall poor job, or working on something that has no use or is of little quality, is not valued and so rewarded less if at all. This is really not hard to understand so are you ignoring this, just to be difficult? Less effort and sacrifice equals less remuneration. More equals more. I have gone to some lengths now to make the distinction clear for you, so I have to wonder if you're not getting it or are ignoring it on purpose...

>your have to have the workers police each other,

 I think this is just you, not only going way overboard, but being a bit cynical. People have the capacity to self-mange their own lives which includes being able to assess effort and sacrifice expended in a workplace, and not only can this be done in different ways across societies, but it is also made easier, again, by everyone working in a balanced job complex and so in a comparable situation of desired and undesired work. If our previous exchanges in this thread are any indication, I suspect you will ignore this and continue arguing how difficult it would be to gauge effort and sacrifice. We can only lead a horse to the trough. 

> or hire foremen to do the policing for them--both of which work against solidarity.

I have to admit the oddity of me arguing for an economy free from owners or bosses and without coordinators or managers, and with fair remuneration and divisions of labor too, and the whole time you are arguing your acceptance of hierarchy in pay and division of labor not only in your own workplace that you own but in alternatives like Mondragon too. Do you see the irony?

> It's better, I think, to build the punishment into the activity itself.

Carl, this could mean a wide range of things and some not so good... However, what you have argued for so far is a remuneration system that already exists and supports class hierarchy, which I am against.

>Those who waste time on diversions will generally be less productive and less skilled, and thus paid less on that basis.

And this is partially what I have been arguing for remuneration based on effort and sacrifice. Perhaps we really are not too far off on this point - yet you are also arguing much more than that, and which I disagree with - reward for luck of talent. Again, I reject that and of all the reasons why that I have explained so far it is probably made most clearly in my paper above.

>That's a lesson I learned as a cab driver for a year or two at one point in my life--sitting in a diner drinking coffee and gabbing, while enjoyable, got me no fares and no tips.

And that was your choice to work less so you were paid less. If you think a little harder about remuneration for onerousness, duration, and intensity you will see that it is consistent with your cab driver lesson and much else that is Just by way of promoting classlessness.

>Chris, where do you get the idea that one has no control over one's skills and talents, and that they are of the same nature as sex or skin color? 

Carl, not that they are the same in nature, but that the common denominator here is luck – meaning that just as one has no control over what race or sex they are born, neither does one have control over what talents they are gifted with or which will respond to cultivation. For example, I may have a talent for playing guitar but I will never be Jimmy Hendrix no matter how much I practice. Maybe I can throw a football but I will never be Payton Manning. That anyone should be rewarded less because they don’t have control over the talent they are born with is as unjust as rewarding someone less because they have no control over their skin color or sex. 

>I've worked with the toughest students for years--gang kids, prisoners, ex-offenders--and I KNOW this to be false. Given decent teachers and opportunities, just about anyone can enhance their talents, improve old skills and learn new ones.

Improving talents and skills is one thing but rewarding those less that are unable to do the job with as much ease as someone else is unfair. One example I give in my paper points out the inequity of rewarding someone for being able to pick more apples than I in a single hour just because they were born with longer arms or better stamina. Rewarding someone because they were dealt a better hand of cards in the genetic lottery, which talent is, is not fair.   

>And there's a great deal of difference between wage labor and slave labor;

It is obvious that chains and whips and owning people are no longer a dominant part of the modern employee / employer relationship -- yet workers still have no control over where they work, how they work, over the productive process, or nearly anything else. The appearance has changed but the nature is not that different. The vast majority of people don’t choose who they work for but who they work for chooses them, and on the employer's terms, on their hours, at their location, at their speed, and at their pay rate. Unless they are unionized, in which they can exercise some bargaining power. 

>it's just demagogic of you to claim that understanding that wage labor is going to be around for a while means one is therefore opposed to the abolition of chattel slavery, and that the two are on a par somehow.

I didn't say that really. What I was arguing was that, just as I think it is wrong to argue for classlessness only in the far off future, so too would it be wrong to argue before abolition for an end to slavery in the far off future. Of course wage labor will be around for a while, but while here we should argue for an end to class rule just as abolitionists may have sought an end to slavery then while still knowing it would exist for some time first. However, this is not the same as rationalizing remuneration for luck of talent as you are doing, which may as well be for rewarding for race or sex... Just as the abolitionist would fight for an end to owning people as property the class abolitionist would fight for an end to ownership of productive assets, hierarchical divisions of labor, and remuneration for luck, bargaining power, or brute force. The abolitionist would not argue for an end to slavery based on the talent of the slave for escaping his or her master where freedom is the incentive and those who don’t have the skill to escape remain to suffer. Rewarding workers for talent acquired through the genetic lottery is the incentive for some to try harder to learn better skills and harness their talent while those that are unable to – even if they try harder or under more onerous training conditions – are left in a lower class to suffer if they can't.

>Even so, the system I advocate, Economic Democracy, with Mondragon as one case in point, gets rid of wage labor for the most part. It's worker-owners get a regular check, but the essence of it is that it's a draw against their share of the profits after expenses, ie, not wage labor. But the fact that, say, 10 percent of those working at Mondragon are wage laborers, usually temporary until their buy-in to the coop is arranged, is hardly the same as buying and selling and working to death enslaved Africans.

Sure, but we were talking about much more than that, for example, reward for things out of people’s control such as talent, race, sex, etc. And specifically, I was responding, not to your Mondragon example, but to your own business example. 

>You may think this is some moral trump card, but at best, it make you look silly, and at worse, chauvinist.

If that is what I was saying Carl, but it was not. Or if that is what you thought I was saying you are wrong. I was arguing, that I believe, remuneration for something out of our control such as talent is virtually the same as rewarding someone for their race or sex. Except that, instead of being either racist or sexist, it is classist. The rational for rewarding talent as being unjust and unfair is spelled out both above in my reply to you and in the essay.

>You don't care for the Mondragon model because it lacks what you call 'classlessness'--they have pay differentials based on skill and productivity, and they hire managers that they pay more than themselves--at a 4.5 to one ratio, rather than the more than 300 to one ratio here.

And that is not classless -- far from it. Maybe what you describe offers a little bit more control for the worker/owners over the workplace, and perhaps not as large a wage differential as most workplaces in the U.S., okay, that is good and I have no problem conceding that. But you’re right that I think it does not address remuneration or divisions of labor in a fully equitable way. And even though it may be better in many ways it is still wishful thinking that it is now or will be in the future classlessness unless it institutes remuneration for onerousness, duration, and intensity as well as balanced job complexes. I’m all for the Mondragon model as improving the lives of workers who work there but I by no means put all my eggs in that basket since I reject reward for talent, output, and coordinator class managerial positions. I have much more in mind when it comes to the type of economic system I envision for the future – parecon. For that, we will need social or no ownership of productive property, new balanced divisions of labor, equitable remuneration as outlined in the article, and self-managed workers’ and consumers’ councils. For now though, while we work to get there, I’ll continue to reject remuneration for luck of talent, or for owning productive property, or for bargaining power, output, brute force, etc. since arguing for any or all of this is just an excuse for exploitation and what amounts to class rule.  

> And rather than rewarding for 'effort' or rotating jobs, they have worker-owned schools, research centers and a university that their workers can attend to enhance their talents and skills and wider their knowlege.

This sounds very nice but in so far as remuneration for luck of talent is practiced, or if it is preparation for that, well, that is one feature that is a very dangerous and a slippery slope...

>Compared to US factories, their hierarchies are considerably flattened, but yes, there are three or four levels of hierarchy in their firms, even if the boundaries are fluid, and yes, that's acceptable to me.

Well, from what you say here then, this is the difference between me and you. It may be better, but just because it is better does not make it okay or even desirable to me as a final destination or even one that we can't suggest improvements for today. It may even be a stepping stone to something that I want, but to rationalize the hierarchies that exist in both wages and divisions of labor as being better than what we have in the U.S. and so as far as it can go until the far off future is to me a very mistaken choice. Instead, while we offer solidarity where we can, I think these experiments should try to do more to offer more inspiration to others too. They should become exemplary showcases for new self-managing and classless social and material relations. I argue for this now, which means that whatever our starting point is today, whether in factories in the U.S., or say businesses like yours, or those like Mondragon in Spain, we orient ourselves towards developing shared institutional goals around remuneration for onerousness, duration and intensity of work, balanced job complexes, and workers and consumers control over productive assets, production, consumption and allocation. Saying we need to develop this kind of shared orientation is not the same as taking a purist stance but is instead, while acknowledging positive examples, offering a reasonable stance I think. And it is just fine to, in fact I believe we should, point out where today’s examples fall short of our end goals, so not only can we measure their success today, but so we can also assess the distance we have to go.

>More important, it's not only acceptable to me, but acceptable to the Mondragon workers; it's a system they have designed and refined and it's working rather well. I think it's a prime example of radical structural reform that empowers the working class, even if it doesn't meet your 'classlessness' standards.

Okay, and that is fine. Almost nowhere meets my standards in this regard but I can still I agree with you that there are many valuable experiments today that can be viewed as stepping stones to something even greater. There are many worker run models all over the world that I think should be held high as inspirations to other workers for how things can be done better. And, again, improvements can be made on them to better serve that purpose.

>Now we have the steelworkers union here forming a collaborative with Mondragon to build worker-owned cooperative firms here in this country to grow jobs in the green industrial economy and manufacturing generally.

Well, to the extent that it saves jobs and creates jobs this is a great thing, but it is even better the more it actually empowers workers over the productive process and equalizes payment for effort and sacrifice. Now I doubt this is going anywhere close, but as I said, I’m not a purist, but rather think we should be working consciously towards these things....

>None of this will be to your taste. The worker-owned firms will have a division of labor, they will hire managers (and fire them too, if they need to), and they will make products and compete in current markets, and so on. But I plan to put a good deal of energy into helping this project in whatever small way I can. I think its a major breakthrough for the left in the US trade union movement, and offers even more further done the road. But that's a concrete, practical difference between you and me.

I agree that it is concrete and practical. If you see any opportunity to open a discussion about divisions of labor and remuneration please let us know how it goes and even better if you mention parecon. If Michael Albert     were given the opportunity to talk with the folks making this arrangement I think he would be interested...

>Finally, it's quite possible for a small firm to create quality products at a decent price and maintain market share IF THEY CAN SATISIFY CUSTOMERS.  A case in point is South End Press and projects related to it.  They've got a niche and serve it; I don't think Random House is going to do it in.

I agree it is possible, but I’m sure they are struggling too being in print media, just like we are and as well all the other radical left print media. As I’m sure you are aware, many have folded precisely because they didn’t have the capital. In fact the ones that remain are mostly those that have been around for a long time, were one of the first in their niche, or have benefactors to help out – all mostly luck with some hard work to boot.

>That's easy. First, satisfied customers, due to quality work at a decent price, with good service afterwards.

Wrong. Just because you may have satisfied customers and provide good work, price, etc. does not mean that a larger competitor is not able to provide more and perhaps better both faster and cheaper -- with the end result of crushing the smaller "nicer" firm. And, again, by your logic this larger firm would be "smarter" than you and Justly, in this world, forcing you out of business -- something that happens all the time. You can deny it if you want but doing so overlooks that others are able to out compete you, but even more oddly, and shockingly actually, is that for you this is okay while I reject it as having nothing to do with economic justice or equity.

>Second, satisfied workers earning a decent hourly rate, even if graduated by skill level, with and opportunity to learn more and earn more.

This too has nothing to do with economic justice -- rewarding people for talent, something they have no control over. It is the same (unjust) moral principle as rewarding someone less for the color of their skin or their sex - they have no control over either -- but applied to skill. In a classless society, what matters more for economic reward than luck of skill, race, or sex, is the onerousness, duration, and intensity of work that one does - because that is what we have most control over. 

> My failures were due to a low cushion in the bank--customer would take 90 days to pay, but the workers and the IRS had to have their money every 30 days.

Ah, so again, someone with more "cushion in the bank" due to inheritance or luck is able to avoid your economic failures, and by your logic, is smarter than you. Notice that in a racist or sexist society that someone born with a more advantageous skin color or sex would also be considered "smarter" then you.

>As for 'working slow', workers do it all the time when there's an incentive to do so--and since more time implies more effort, with renumeration based on effort, you're going to have this problem.

Wrong. Carl, you completely ignore, not only what is clearly in my essay above, but in my previous reply too, that there is not only remuneration for what is socially valuable, so shirking is less valued and so rewarded less if at all, so this is something you shouldn't ignore, but there is a difference between working in a computer lab and a factory -- meaning that each have different levels of unpleasant conditions and so time spent in one, whether slower or faster, is not the same as time spent in another. Now you can keep ignoring it if you want, but I have to wonder what value is in this exchange, not only for me repeating myself over and over, but for any other reader who is actually interested in what economic justice may look like.  

> You're not likely to have a sufficiently accurate 'socially necessary' police.

This is silly Carl... It is over the top reactions like this that make me think you are not taking the arguments seriously. So why should others for you?

>I'd rather have a system where people are paid according to a mixture of their skills and productivity, so long as there are opportunities to enhance both through schooling.

I really don't think you are considering the implications of what you are saying. Could you imagine someone arguing they would rather have a system where whites and non-whites, men and women, are paid according to their skills and productivity? Do you really think that would generate fair outcomes, regardless of education?

>As for Gates and the incredibly high salaries he pays, the problem isn't with his system ao much as it is with our country's system of taxation.

What? Taxes are the problem? I don't' even know what you mean by this, but my initial reaction is that it sounds like saying lipstick is the problem with sexism...It doesn't address the fundamental structure of an economy based on class rule.

>Besides, if you know anything about how Microsoft took off, it was due to a number of brilliant decisions and plans of Gates' part, as well as an upper-middle class upbringing. I have no problem with him and his workers making their billions. My quarrel is with the tax system that let's them keep so much of it.

I have to be honest that I think this is underwhelming Carl -- to put it lightly. While it suggests that things could be better it says nothing about what a fair and equitable - classless -- arrangement should be. Of course things should be made better as we should struggle to make them, but full economic justice is different than partial economic justice, and going all the way means classlessness in ownership, divisions of labor, and remuneration. I provide the logic for this in the essay above, so won't repeat it here. But the one thing I will say is that I see no real proposal in anything you've yet to write that argues in favor of workers and consumers self-managing their own lives in a classless and participatory way -- convincingly. Now you could say you are for these things, sure, but arguing that you have no problem with Bill Gate's billions of dollars except that he should be taxed more is to me far short of the necessary structural changes that classlessness demands and that I offer in the essay.

>I don't mean the same thing by 'classlessness' as you do.

From what you've written so far I'm not so sure you even mean classlessness at all.

>To me, a classless society is for the distant future

So, in a society of slave owners would you say a slaveless society "is for the distant future?"

>were the length of the working day approaches zero via cybernation and high design in economies of abundance

Hmmm... "cybernation"? "high design"? Aside from not knowing what any of this means by way of property relations, divisions of labor, remuneration or any other economic institutions, it indicates nothing about fairness and equity. In fact, I'm not sure it is saying anything different from "we will end slavery the day we develop a perpetual motion machine." Parecon and its intuitions are for the real world now and is just as possible today as in the far off future which means that people are just as capable of self-managing their own lives today as they are tomorrow yet this requires the realization of classless economic institutions which is also just as possible today as tomorrow.

 
>where the working class is abolished along with other classes.

Without saying what this means, I'm not sure it means anything...

>But in the near and mid-term, I have no problem with, say, Mondragon, where you have workers, worker-owners, and managerial employees, so long as the boundaries are fluid.

As long as hierarchical class division of labor and remuneration exits, I do have a problem with it and see it is a barrier to classlessness. It is like saying that in the "near and mid-term, I have no problem with workplace divisions of labor and remuneration based on race or sex, so long as the boundaries are fluid." Just as it would be a racist or sexist workplace, so too is hierarchical divisions of labor and remuneration -- based on ownership of productive assets, luck, or bargaining power -- classist.

"and since more time implies more effort"

where do you come up with this stuff?

i will put aside the fact that you are comparing carrots to peas. i will also put aside that over the countless times i have suffered through your criticisms of participatory economics that its become clear you intentionally either misunderstand or refuse to read up on it before bringing strawman arguments forth to refute it.

but let me ask you this, Carl: why do we consume less gas per mile driving at 55mph than 80mph?

does it take more effort to walk than run? under your mysterious logic if i walk a mile i will use more effort than if i run it.

again, the remunerative norm found in parecon is to reward how hard and long someone works. if you slow down your work then you are working less hard. whatever gains you think you would make by taking longer due to slowing down would be offset by working less hard.

>Sure. I own it because I started it and work in it, and built the customer base with quality work. When I got more customers than I could handle myself, I hired workers to help me.
 
So what determines your success or failure? Surely not only hard work, and in fact, hardly hard work at all... And why are the vast majority of people born into a position to have to sell their labor and only a few bequeathed with the wealth or property to own productive assets, and still fewer others able to work hard as exceptions to the rule to become owners themselves? And above and beyond all this, do you think this is a fair arrangement? I do not. And if you do than we can agree to disagree but it is precisely this that I am arguing against in my essay while at the same time offering a classless alternative.
 

> We're talking the difference between, say, $20 per hour and $50 per hour, which is significant.

In today's world the logic for this difference is as you spelled out yourself, and which nearly everyone operates on. In a participatory economy it is backwards as I spell out in my paper.
 

>Under your setup, if they worked harder and slower, they would make more,

Wrong, they can either work less and get the job done quicker (since they have more talent)  which translates to having greater leisure time than others or they could work harder to get more compensation. The choice is up to workers themselves which they prefer. But working slowly is not socially valued and so not compensated...
 

>because their total effort would be greater.

Just because someone works slower does not mean someone is working more intensely or under worse conditions, as I think you'll agree sitting in an office answering phones and email for eight hours is not worse than digging and hauling coal in a mine for the same amount of time. And if one decides to work slower in either workplace the price they pay is theirs for being there longer than they want to, unless they like to, but in either case it has less bearing on effort or sacrifice and more on what is socially valuable -- in other words, and this is very important - the person doing shoddy work, inefficient work i.e. wasting time or resources, or doing work that produces nothing that anyone wants, are no longer rewarded as such...  


> Under my setup, if they worked smarter, they would make more, and that applied to all, save those who didn't get smarter. 

By this logic, Bill Gates deserves more than you or I because he had greater assets to contribute to the GDP and so he has greater privileges. Personally, I reject this and it is counter to economic justice. I argue why very clearly above against all the reasons someone like Bill Gates should be allowed to have more economic privileges just because of luck, inheritance or bargaining  power.

Further, allowing this is a slippery slope.... "Smarter" may also mean that just because any thug is able to cheat, beat, or steal his or her way into a good economic position at the top of the pyramid, ala Bernie Madoff, deserves more than you or I. This too I reject and the arguments in the essay explain why, yet I think it should be obvious to all.


>Even so, as they got a little smarter, I'd give them a raise, say, to $30.  Why? Because the more skills they had and the more efficiently they used them, we could service more customers, and make a bigger pie.

So, let's assume a larger firm offering better products and services comes along and makes you a deal, "Let us buy you up or we will compete you out - that is your choice." And so the "choice" is yours. Is this fair because they are "smarter" than you and your business? I would say no but according to your logic you would have to go out of business and that would be Just.

Carl, I'm trying to be nice about this and I say this because I'm sure you know the arguments. We may each believe something entirely different. I would say that what I believe in is classlessness and so that is the remunerative norm I have offered. I'm not sure what you're proposing but when I read your words I see a logic that leaves class rule intact. Why you would want to do that is beyond me. If you say that you don't believe people can self-mange their own lives, I would understand -- understand but disagree - but at least I would understand where you are coming from and why you are resistant to parecon's remunerative norm. But I am for classlessness and self-management and what I provided in my paper is the best way I know of how to get there. If anyone has better ideas on how to realize these goals than I am all ears. But so far in this exchange I'm not seeing them...

Carl,

For any task (and a given quality of output), if someone works more intensely they will finish sooner than if they work less intensely. Conversely, if they are working faster, they are working more intensely. We want to be paid more if we work more intensely. Also, for a given intensity of work, we want to be paid more if we work longer. In other words, every worker has a monetary incentive to work as hard and long as they can. (Of course, they also have an incentive to work shorter and not overwork themselves, in order to enjoy life. That's no different than today.)

What's the incentive to "work smarter"? Well, suppose there is an easy way and a hard way to achieve a task. That means you produce more product or less product with the same amount of work and for the same pay. Why would you choose the hard way? By the way, if you choose the hard way, all your coworkers would know it.

Which part do you find a problem with?

carl your example highlights the problems of divisions of labor,  which is another element of participatory economics.

if labor is divided so that some monopolize the tasks that entitle them to more money regardless of the remuneration norm then thats not fair. agreed.

which is why parecon proposes four basic things to equitably manage an economy:

1. social ownership
2. participatory planning
3. remunerative justice
4. balanced job complexes

ps: if a worker slows down to increase how long the task takes then they also slow down how hard they work. whatever gains they make by slowing down are offset by not working as hard

>Here's a problem.

Hi J.D.

I tried to deal with this as clear as I could in the essay. Part of the problem is that even if I devote my lifetime to the “craft” of, say, golfing, I would never achieve the level of skill Tiger has, not even in his pinky. Tiger is able to excel because, well, he is Tiger… Sure years of training and struggle probably went into developing his talent, yet it is by sheer luck that he is able to develop it and I am not. So does he deserve to be rewarded for this luck 100, 1000, or even 5000 times more than me? I say no, and I explain how I arrive at that conclusion in the article above.

About “utility” or “social value,” in a parecon it is determined by consumer preference and although it is not luck that determines how these preferences may be arrived at, it is mostly out of our control if we work in a sector that produces more or less valued goods. A very strong argument in favor of parecon, in my opinion, is that it doesn’t matter which sector anyone works in nor if their outputs are more or less valued – classless outcomes are still arrived at. This is possible through balanced job complexes combined with remuneration for onerousness, duration, and intensity of work and the costs of production and consumption are distributed fairly through the participatory planning process. If someone invents something, say a global positioning system (GPS) that is useful for all kinds of navigation, well, the brilliance of the tool should be socially recognized and praised and material reward should be given for only the onerouness, duration , and intensity of labor that went into producing the GPS. Same for producing a great piece of art or music…

sanjay,

on freedom:

while Chris raised good questions about the environments we are born in and how we didnt freely choose where and so on I wanted to briefly touch up on the concept of freedom.

just as chris defined exploitation i want to define freedom. like c wright mills, I dont think freedom is the ability to do as we place nor do i think its the ability to choose from options presented to us without our participation in formulating those options.

we are a social species whose individual actions often impact others. we would not say murder and rape is a freedom since it entails undermining the freedom of others to not be killed or rape.

likewise, me choosing your options is not an example of you being free.

so i define freedom as the ability to formulate options and choose accordingly in accordance with others to the degree that we are affected.

for decisions that affect only a specific group of people, freedom is the ability for them to come up with their own solutions and to implement them.

with that definition clearly established i dont see how paying one for effort and sacrifice (and tempered by need for those disabled, retired, etc) is a threat to freedom. saying people should be rewarded for how hard and long they work threatens no one's ability to formulate their options and make their own decisions.

>First and foremost I am born free.

Really? Do we have control over which class, caste, race, or sex we are born into? I think the answer is obvious and in my presentation I point to one of the very few things we do have control over: the onerouness, duration, and intensity of socially valuable labor. The reason why we choose this remunerative norm and its consequences is spelled out above but the important thing is that it, along with other participatory economic institutions, delivers outcomes which ensure equity and classlessness.

>Central to this freedom is choice. Without choice life for all would be onerous.

And there is no real choice under class rule  - where the interests of managers and capitalists dominate the interests of workers and the rest of us. Remuneration for onerousness, duration, and intensity ensures that the sharing of costs and consequences of our economic choices is shared equitably and not pushed onto others who have less control.

>Towards the end of your piece you talk of autonomy, diversity and self reliance

And in the same section of the piece I also say that to elaborate on this would take us off topic

> but throughout you paint a picture of a system which has no room for these and you make no effort to address this most fundamental of problems.

But I do, also in the same section, and I outline the institutions of a participatory economy, which offers more possibility for autonomy, self-management, solidarity and equity than any other economic system I know of and certainly outstrips capitalism, and centrally planned or market socialism on any of these criteria as well. At the very top of this page there is a tab labeled "Parecon" where you can take the time to find out more.

>With free choice we can assess the onerousness of a job by the number of people that wish to do it.

Assuming we had free choice, which most do not...

>The more people that wish to do it, the less onerous it is. Sadly this is not enough. Many may wish to do a role they are not capable of doing. So we can assess a role based on how onerous it is and how many people are capable of doing it.

How many people are capable of doing a task has nothing to do with onerousness. Almost everyone may be capable of collecting garbage but maybe less people are capable of making a great piece of art. Would you rather work collecting garbage or in an art studio? If we compare the onerousness and unpleasantness of each type of work I think the difference is obvious to most. Indeed, I tried to be as clear as possible about this above, making many comparisons...

>This is easily achieved. You pay as much as you need to pay to attract a person suitable.

What this does is open the door for bargaining power, luck, and in some cases maybe even brute force - meaning class rule - to come back into the picture. If you want to pay doctors what you think will attract them then they can hold out and even take more because you are not only willing to offer it to them to make it attractive, but they can collectively decide to hold out for more as it is in their interest to do and they will have the collective bargaining power to make it so.

> If there are many suitable people, the job is less onerous, you pay less.

So, by your proposal, anyone who can clean toilets, just because many people are able to do so, they should be paid less? Rationalizing inequitable remuneration this way yields results not too different from what we have today and which needs to be rejected and replaced with a new classless remunerative norm which I propose above.

> If there are very few suitable people, the job is more onerous, you pay more.

Again, the number of people "suitable" or qualified to do a job has zero relevance to the unpleasantness of the work nor the intensity of work done, unless you want something not to dissimilar to what we have now - which I don't.

>You reject this on the basis of a wholly deterministic view of life which I would question the validity of itself.

I have no idea what you mean by this, but I do reject the logic you propose for remuneration as inequitable and I point out in my essay above, that "unless we recognize that janitors who make greater personal sacrifices than professors, when each is performing their appointed duties, deserve greater compensation, not less, we are being classist and making excuses for what is objectively exploitation."

>In your view, capability should not be rewarded and the system above would clearly reward jobs that require a high degree of ability.

It would reward socially valued work appropriately, neither under-or-over valuing someone's effort and sacrifice, meaning the onerounsess, intensity, and duration of work performed, and since it rewards one of the only things we have control over, it is not only morally sound, it can enhance economic performance. Again, I pointed all this out above in the article.

>If ability is not rewarded, how then do you assess onerousness?

By comparing the relative unpleasantness of participating in other forms of socially valuable work, along with intensity, duration, and so on, as I do in the article.

>This is not an insignificant issue and one you should seriously consider.  

You are right, and I do consider it very seriously above in the article and where I explain how I arrive at my choice for a classless remunerative norm. I hope you consider the arguments I put forward with the same seriousness too...

>Since it is a wholly subjective issue one would assume the more onerous society considered a job, the more it would be rewarded.

But it is not wholly subjective, even by your own measure of jobs where the "more people that wish to do it, the less onerous it is" but even so in a participatory economy people can choose for themselves in a classless and self-managing way. You, however, want to introduce remuneration for ability to do the work, and in so far as we are seeking classless objectives, this is wrong, as I spell out in my essay.

>Each individual in society would then have a financial interest in representing their job as onerous.

No. In a participatory society where remuneration for onerouness, duration, and intensity of labor makes the most sense people work in balanced job complexes (classless divisions of labor) where everyone has a comparable amount of both empowering and unempowering tasks. You can find out more on this site.  

>Enjoyment of a job would decrease its value.

Nope, because in a parecon all labor is reorganized for an equal distribution of both desirable and undesirable work and the value of a job is what is socially determined as being useful, meaning that people can't engage in shoddy or unnecessary labor if they want to be rewarded for it.

>Over time, this onerousness itself would become a value rewarded, and I would be condemned to live in a world even more full than today of people bitching about their jobs.

From your comments it seems you are not familiar with the participatory economic model and my intention with the article above was not to elaborate on that model but to provide a non-marxist theory of exploitation as well as an alternative to exploitation consistent with classless objectives.

>This is not the most fundamental problem. The most fundamental problem is that of freedom. A job may be onerous, intense, have long hours and be socially valuable and therefore, according to your system, be more highly rewarded for than another and at the same time require little or no ability.

Because ability, like ownership of productive assets, training, working in a sector producing more valuable goods and services, etc. is also luck, elaborated on in much more detail in the essay, and we have very little to no control over any of it - except our effort - and freedom is lost which makes it imperative to find a new norm of remuneration which I propose as part of the participatory economic model.

> Since you have already accepted some disparity of pay as a means to encourage people into onerous positions then you have accepted reimbursement as a motivation for work.

No, I haven't accepted disparity of pay, accept where people work harder or under more unpleasant conditions, then they should get more. But this is in a parecon where everyone has a balanced division of labor with an equitable distribution of both empowering and disempowering tasks.

By now I'm not only repeating myself in my response to your comments but am also repeating the arguments presented in the article above and if I continued below there would be quadruple redundancy so will stop here...  

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>In this scenario the number of people capable of doing the job would be high, and the reward for doing the job would be high, so it would be reasonable to assume the demand for such a job would be high. This inevitably causes a major problem in the allocation of your society's most important resource, human labor. How do you allocate your human resources appropriately if people with ability are drawn towards jobs that require non. How do you differentiate between the high number of applicants for a low skilled job. Randomly? Inversely to their academic achievements based on the desire not to waste intellectual resources? In relation to their academic achievements as a representation of effort and intensity?

On the other end of the scale, you have a very highly skilled job that far fewer people are capable of doing that pays less. Although these people may have the ability, one would assume they would not be compelled to take such a position. After studying, their interest in the subject sated, they would be free to apply for a low skilled but higher paid job in the interests of greater personal wealth. People would flood from skilled jobs, and their motivation within these skilled jobs would be one of complacency. They would be doing a job very few people could do for little money with the choice of changing to a job that anyone can do for more money. If you allow freedom of choice, this system fails and motivation within the skilled sectors vanishes, harming society in favour of protecting a wholly subjective view of morality and fairness.

Ability is respected in our society because it is rewarded. Or it is rewarded because it is respected. Either way, if you deny the reward and by your own logic deny the respect afforded to ability then what of motivation to excellence.

If you base your social system on value judgments then you must at least address the issue of who is empowered to make said value judgments. As issues such as onerousness, social value, personal sacrifice or intensity are almost wholly subjective you would need to develop a system, or appoint a God to make such judgments. I get the impression you believe that your perceptions of fairness and morality are objective truths which you would feel comfortable imposing upon a society. The only reason I say this is that it is the only way I can imagine the system outlined being applicable. Can I, for example, as the possessor of a particular and difficult skill, work for my neighbors? Does a baker who is better charge more for his tastier cakes? Or just have longer queues? Who makes such decisions in your utopia?

Sanjay