@shel @starkatt this. Theoretically my experience and specific skillset makes me more valuable than a batch of people but honestly this stuff doesn’t break me as bad as warehouse or food service work did.

@Leucrotta @starkatt the problem with tiering pay by scarcity of skill is that's putting a market value on a person. a cushier office job that's easy should pay less to compensate for easier more desirable work. cleaning shit from a chicken coop better pay enough that when you go home that feels worth it.

@shel @starkatt @Leucrotta that would be a value, but not necessarily a market value

@yatchi @Leucrotta @starkatt are you sure? It seems like salary is set by "supply and demand" of a particular skillset yeah? that's why "if anyone can do it" it's cheaper?

@shel @starkatt @Leucrotta market forces, including supply and demand as we understand them, operate to maximize profitability (as opposed to productivity, human welfare, and so on.) wage differentials serve to incentivize and disincentivize the movement of labor, and under capitalism, this is in service of profitability - wages rise and fall in order to allocate labor to more productive capitals - but that is different from what is being described here

@shel @starkatt @Leucrotta movement of labor is necessary in any (non-post-scarcity) economy and the existence of wage differentials alone isn't sufficient evidence for the existence of market relations

it is an illusion that we pay (western) doctors as much as we do because they provide that much more human welfare than everyone else - their wages are, like everyone else's, set by market forces (which, you could say, are themselves only the outward appearance of the class struggle)

@shel @starkatt @Leucrotta so like you can talk about different ways of valuing work (and political economists have talked about all of this) but like even the ways conservatives say they value work/justify why rich people are rich don't match up with what actually happens in market economies

@IrisKalmia a similar idea :)

@catdad That's a pretty solid plan too really.

@melissamcewen I want to go much farther than that.

@starkatt maybe mutualism?