Exploitation and An Recapitulation of the Failings of Meritocracy
April 30, 2022•613 words
I remember a classmate was arguing against capitalism on the basis of exploitation of workers. This isn't a very strong argument. I believe the premise of their argument is that under private employment, it is necessary that in pursuit of profit that value is created. Thus if labor creates value and somehow value is being created, the labor must be receiving less value. This is flawed reasoning because it assumes that the end-product is equal in value to the sum of its parts, i.e. labor. Thus this perspective ignores the effect of gestalt on consumer psychology and more generally on products.
Furthermore, this view assumes that labor is what makes a product valuable. This takes more of a meritocratic view of value wherein hard work equates to value. However, as I have shown before meritocracy seems to fail as a system. Just to add a cherry on top for the argument, meritocracy also has no way of innovating. The idea of hard-work leading to success is very much a man-made one. Thus in order to maintain a meritocracy, we would need to design the reward system. However, this means that for those in the system, any progress made was already made by the designer. Thus meritocracy fails to provide innovation. Thus the idea that more labor should increase the value relies on a false premise.
He also doesn't consider risk. When a worker gets fired, they only lose the ability to actively make money. When an business owner gets fired, they've lost everything that they've invested into the company. Thus it is logical that the business owner makes some money to compensate for the risk. This doesn't justify Bezos level of compensation, but it does justify a profit margin. In addition, there is a risk inequality practically inherent in capitalism. We is obviously a finite amount of resources. Thus there is a price to obtain means of product (materials, materials to make tools, et.). Thus the initiators of a process to do some complex process without "exploitation" wouldn't be just for some are taking more risk.
This arguments also assumes that exploitation of labor is bad. The entire reason we need money is to create cooperation in society and motivate work hopefully for the greater good. However, if everyone were simply motivated to work for the greater good by themselves, there would really be no need for compensation for labor as there isn't really a need for money. Thus in a utopia, there may be "exploitation" of labor in the sense that they aren't getting compensated for their work, but no one is and there is no need for compensation as the greater good is being pursued, fulfilling the primary function of money and the economic.
The principle advantage of capitalism/free-market is that it is extremely robust. This economic philosophy requires no upkeep by people taking actions in accordance to some philosophy, in which there are guaranteed to be mistakes. Instead it works when people do what is easy: being selfish and greedy. Really the main argument against capitalism should be about the its defining feature of private land ownership. I don't have a whole lot of thoughts on private land ownership, so I'll won't try to conceive of one if there is one. I do have an argument against the free-market thought, and that is Moloch. This is expounded in [1]. Thus due to capitalism's robustness and definition, labor can be organized to perform complicated tasks that require a clear vision of what to do. Thus the only the strongest argument against liberal markets is against free-markets that is of Moloch. Details of this argument can be found here [1].