[nateabele]

On the other hand, 150k is an astronomical sum for most people on the planet—and no one is being forced into accepting that as a market rate, or even living in a high-rent city, particularly post-COVID.

I still don’t understand this idea that labor supposedly has some sort of intrinsic value. The value is derived from the labor being done in the context of a system created by someone else. As others have said, if you want to reap the full value of your labor, you’re free to go it alone.

[escapedmoose]

You present only the two options to offer labor to 1) an organization in which you’re not compensated in proportion to your output, vs 2) a solo practice where you’re forced to bear the burden of scaling/resource/etc costs on your own. You’re ignoring option 3) where you offer your labor to a collective organization of which you are granted proportional ownership as a condition of employment and can participate in setting the rules of your own compensation and expense burden democratically.

In option 3 the system benefits from every member’s labor contributions, AND every member benefits from the “context of a system created by someone else”

[falcolas]

> 150k is an astronomical sum for most people on the planet

This assertion (regardless of the dollar value) bugs me, because it never considers the cost of living. Sure, if I lived in Vietnam, $150k would make me a relative millionaire.

But I don't live in (for example) Vietnam. A vast majority of people working a job that pays $150k don't live in a similar place either.

[green_man_lives]

> The value is derived from the labor being done in the context of a system created by someone else.

When property ownership is indefinite and transferrable between generations, then capital accumulation becomes about whoever did it first. Yes there is occasional disruption, but a guy like Micheal Bloomberg did the labor 40 years ago and has had people working for him ever since.

I think the idea is that we ALL stand on the shoulders of giants, and rather than holding all of the gains ourselves, they should be spread so as to give other people the opportunity to make something of themselves.

[prottog]

> When property ownership is indefinite and transferrable between generations, then capital accumulation becomes about whoever did it first.

If this is true, the richest people in this country should be named Washington or Jefferson, or perhaps more recently, Carnegie or Vanderbilt. Instead, we have the likes of Bezos or Musk, the latter of whom wasn't even born here. Bloomberg was born to a bookkeeper, hardly the stuff of generational wealth. Empirical evidence suggests that it's actually pretty hard to remain at the top of the leaderboard across many generations.

I agree with the idea that we all stand on the shoulders of giants, but I dispute the picture you paint that the wealthy are "holding all of the gains [themselves]". Salaries get paid, taxes get paid, new ecosystems are made upon which future wealth can be built. There is no compelling evidence that makes me believe that more redistribution on top of what we already have (which is already quite a bit, contrary to popular belief that the US is a low-taxes-on-the-rich, low-social-benefit nation) would result in better outcomes for the median person.

[BobbyJo]

I mostly agree with this sentiment, but I think it ignores some of the wealth feedback loops that exist, and the leverage they afford businesses over employees. Our society is filled with information assymetry, and therefore power assymetry. Offsetting that asymmetry with things that aren't necessarily "fair" may be required to make things more fair as a whole.