Why is Labor different from any other Commodity?

Look.

Lets say I have a baseball.

This particular baseball is very valuable to me, I think it is worth $150,000.

So I take it around and try to sell it for $150,000.. but the most I can get for it is $5.

Like it or not, the value of the baseball really is only $5 because that is all anyone is willing to pay for it.

Now lets talk about labor.

To me, my labor may seem really valuable.. it might even be priceless too me.

But then I go around and try to sell my labor to the highest bidder and the highest bidder is only willing to give me minimum wage.

Even though I think my labor is worth more, in reality it really is only worth what the highest bidder is willing to pay.

Now tell me, does government have a right to force someone to buy my baseball at asking price? of course not.

So what makes people think their labor is any different from any other commidity for sale, like my $5 baseball?

 

Because you work to live. And the wages must be enough to live.

 

Because humans are not baseballs?

 

Its the employer fault for what they pay the employees not the employee. No one of forcing anyone to pay more then what they agreed to. If it was agreed apon and it hurts the employer that is their fault and no one else's. Just like if someone over pays for a base ball. That is their problem.

 

When it comes to economics, yes they are.

Humans are nothing but interchangeable cogs in a giant machine. Economically we are not more special as individuals than ants and our value is determined by our skill set and our labor.

It is inherently ridiculous to have to explain such basic concepts to people.

I'm serious.

Where I live, your social status is directly related to your job. There is no equality, there is a pecking order and you accept your place in it or that pecking order will punish you with exclusion.

So you have a choice, participate in society within the confines of your place within that society, or **** and go live a unabomber lifestyle.

I would assume its like that everywhere in the USA and most of the world.

Apparently europeans like to pretend they are an exception to a major rule of primate societies.

 

For something I hate the rights. They consider workers as machines. No, they are humans. And they have rights. Like it or not.

You're comment proves again what I've been saying about your opinions and most of your fellows from I registered in this forum. And this opinion is disgusting as much.

And if we are like that, and workers are treated as scum, don't expect that they last a lot without starting revolts leading to a revolution.

And with your opinion you're even confirming even more my ideology and that is the right and at least is more human.

Ah, and humans don't exist to serve the economy. The economy is a tool to serve humans.

And your comment is disgusting, fascist and you indirectly are defending the slavery.

 

Of course they have rights. Those rights are listed in our Bill of Rights, anything outside of that is a privelege.

Good. I'm glad you find it disgusting. I find communism as disgusting because it is a failed ideology that murders millions through starvation and economic failure.

No one is "treated like scum". They are treated according to their market value and whether you like it or not, some humans are worth more than others. The CEO is more valuable than the line worker, get over it becuase you strike me as a baby crying.

It isn't humane. It is foolish. Marxism leads to failed economies every single time. There is no possible way for a Marxist economy to exist. It is a proven scientific fact that the more humane the society, the less vibrant its economy. Proven economic fact.

Sorry man, I serve no one but my own self interests and the minute I feel my self interests aren't being met I move on to somewhere that does serve them.

My employer doesn't own my life, I volunteer my time in return for a fair market value wage and I have no right to demand more than that.

I recently printed up a report from the internet showing that I was underpaid according to the company average.

Guess what? My employer raised my pay to the company average and I'm better off than I ever have been.

Thats how the system works. I now make as much as my peers anywhere in the country do. I cannot ask for anything more!

We are not the same. I am a hard working person with gainful employment.

you are a commie without a job.

I am more valuable than you are as a human.

Get over it.

 

Baseballs and inanimate objects are not the same as people. Full stop.

Of course we may chose to consider them loosely equivalent for some discussions, but anyone claiming they are identical simply hasn't thought it through.

The are no health and saftey regulations for baseball bats, they do no repreduce or require training and education. They cannot vote in elections or become ill.

You've taken the principle to the final degree and it falls down horribly...

 

But we're not talking about humans.

We're talking about labor. Labor is a commodity and it is no more or less valuable in the open market than a baseball would be. Full stop.

Answer me this.

Why is a Western ditchdigger more valuable than a Chinese ditch digger and what gives the Western ditchdigger the right to demand a wage that Chinese Ditchdigger cannot recieve in the globalized market?

It seems rather selfish to me to demand more money for the same labor that a Chinese person does.

Why can't you understand that we all live in an interconnected globalized economy and becuase of that economy the value of all labor has been reduced to 3rd world value?

The only way to stop it is with protectionism and that is against international law.

 

Labour provided by.....? Fill in the gaps and quit your silly simantics game.

 

Would you be happy to open Americans doors to any and all workers of the world? Like the Mexican's for example; cheaper and harder working. Yet there seems to be a significant backlash against them, particularly the US Right.

 

"Why is Labor different from any other Commodity?"

Because labor is synonymous with human being. And human beings are not commodities.

To argue they are is to be pro-slavery, no matter how you try to paint it and/or hide from your devious nature.

 

Labor is not synonmous with being human and commoditizing labor is not commoditizing a human's body or mind in any way shape or form.

I'm just trying to verbally slap the arrogance out of anyone who thinks they are better than they really are.

The entire problem is (*)(*)(*)(*)ing ego.

"I'm worth more than what I'm being paid right now." is ego, not economic reality.

 

And you're failing terribly.

 

There is no such thing as "non-human labor", unless this thread is about beasts of burden, which I highly doubt. Does that fact mean the workers are always right and should deserve millions an hour for flipping burgers? Of course not. But bet your ass to argue labor as a commodity is to support slavery with the help of semantics.

 

You obviously have no idea what being in bondage servitude, a slave, really is then and are being hysterical IMO.

 

Slaves are a commodity. Do you not understand what the definition for commodity is? Slaves can be bought, sold, traded. Commodities can be bought, sold, traded. You are arguing for workers to be bought, sold, traded. Ergo, arguing for slavery.

I know you aren't an owner. You are a worker.

Basically, the modern equivalent of "house negro".

 

Point one: You don't know me.
Point two: I am tired to say that I am not marxist.
Point three: I am as human as you. No one is more valuable than others. If we start like this go to the fascism is just one step.
Point four: Ok, I am a commie, however I am an anarchist, and proud of it. But you're a fascist.

 

it really scares me that some on the right want to take away the min wage

we have a min amount we feel a persons labor is worth, how much less would people get paid if there was no min wage, talk about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer

it does amaze me thought that some feel physical labor shoudl be taxed more then other forms of income

 

Minimum wage is quite irrelevant when as soon as it is raised prices go up.

Only a mixture of price regulations with pay criteria could garner the results you desire, and even then, all is rendered moot when free trade allows companies to just go off shores. If anything, you will just drive them away. Globalism has rendered national governments moot. If you are a leftist who argues for more regulations while you solute free trade, you are as confused as they come.

 

I think that they want to live a revolution, and they are trying everything to force it.

 

The only backlash to having Mexicans or any other third world peoples populate our nation has to do with our immigration policy. No one has a problem with any of these people so long as they go through the process of becoming a legitimate legal citizen of America. Let these illegals get to that point in obtaining their citizenship; and let them work on assimilating to the American culture before you blame the right, and before you leftists start dictating how much their wages should be and how much you feel they are entitled to from our overly generous government. Okay pal?

 

so because foreign outsourcing allows some corps to pay employees $10 a day, you think they should be able to do the same here... forget that, we would become a third world country ourselves

 

Of course labor is an economic commodity and it is subject to all the dynamics of price and volume.

Labor is not necessarily synonymous with people.

If a functions gets mindless enough, they can be automated. Ever been to an automotive body plant? You see battalions of robots handling metal parts in and out of multi-die presses, welding bodies and painting them. Back in the 60s, there were battalions of people doing this. Now machines do it.

As late as the late 60s coal mines used "conventional mining" - drill, blast load. A million ton a year mine would put a thousand men a shift underground. Twenty-one shifts a week. By the mid-70s continuous miners had reduced that to about six hundred. Today with longwall mining, that figure is down to less than a hundred and they only work two shifts a day. Digging coal back in the 60s was mindless work and didn't pay well but it paid a lot of men. Today it is very skilled work and pays a small number of people very well.

One early example of this helped to doom the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Mr. McCormick's improved 1857 reaper allowed a midwestern farmer to work forty acres of wheat, where before, he could work his butt off and barely work eight acres. Wheat prices dropped, and there was no work for a lot of young midwestern men in 1861. The Union Army offered work. Dangerous, poorly paid work but the alternative was poverty. so the Yankees had a bottomless reserve of manpower that the South did not. After the war the Grand Army of the Republic demobilized and the avalanche to the West was on.

Labor is in competition just like everything else.

Wilson, FDR and Nixon tried wage and price controls and they didn't work. They just caused market distortions and economic downturn.

 

"OK Pal"? You seem upset; calm down.

Illegal Mexicans are "exempt" from minimum wage, as they are not in the system. I would have thought people who want to rid the US of the minimum wage would encourage illegal immigration - it's great for business!