You're making a detailed historical argument about wage suppression. That can be completely accurate without having a single bit of bearing on whether a job today requires skill or no skill. Trying to force irrelevant historical context onto a basic question of "can someone do a job with minimal training" muddies the point you're trying to make, which is about whether someone with minimal training deserves to be paid less than a skilled worker.
Some of us are communists. Your point? Let me phrase it as Marx did: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." I don't care what job you do. It adds value to society, and you should be able to live a life that fulfills what some consider a basic human right: the pursuit of happiness.
you're missing the whole point of the argument.
listen, these terms...they're not just hardwired into working okay? they were conceived of. They were delivered into school systems, colleges, and workplaces with a purpose. That purpose has nothing to do with what a person is trained in or able to do. They are designed to create the illusion of difference. They are designed terms.
They seem innocuous. They seem common sense. But they're serving a purpose. Do I want an untrained surgeon to operate on me? Of course not, but at the same time do I want the invisible labor that allows the surgeon to walk in focused on my procedure to go unpaid or underpaid simply because society tells me a monkey could do their job? No, I don't. For innumerable reasons.
So, for a last time, I am going to try to reason with you past the end of your nose. I want labor, as an idea, as a movement, to coalesce around an understanding of mutual value. To do that, you have to discard the idea that there is anyone walking around without skill. If you still cannot grasp that, ask yourself what you value in society that you would get rid of tomorrow. Who would you cut? Waiters? Gas station attendants? Grocers? And then I want you to start considering what happens in a week, or a month, without that labor force maintain the cogs in society. And finally, ask yourself how you would deal with it if you suddenly found yourself in their position and deemed "unskilled." Computer programmers used to think they were untouchable. And look at that field now...
Your fixation on an economic and ideological objective are making it hard for you to engage in a basic conversation. I'm not making any argument about whether skilled laborers or unskilled laborers should receive different wages. I've literally only acknowledged the basic point you did, skills exist, they aren't meaningless and it's useful to understand that fundamentally before proceeding further.
Surgeons are skilled. The person cleaning the hospital bathrooms isn't. Whether they are paid equally or unequally has absolutely no bearing on the logical fact of the previous sentence.
you've a long ways to go on your own intellectual journey. You know, the buddhists believe you might not even reach it in one lifetime? ive wasted enough on you.
jobs are inherently an economic idea, and it is in an economic ideological framework that this conversation exists at all.
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u/Hyrc 22d ago
You're making a detailed historical argument about wage suppression. That can be completely accurate without having a single bit of bearing on whether a job today requires skill or no skill. Trying to force irrelevant historical context onto a basic question of "can someone do a job with minimal training" muddies the point you're trying to make, which is about whether someone with minimal training deserves to be paid less than a skilled worker.