Next time you need a teacher, a doctor, or the fire service I think you will realise why we need to keep these worthless people around.
And why would you assume I had anything against people in those professions, did not Think they should be paid for their useful work, and whatever else it is that made you pick professions I never mentioned? I mean, OK, we often disagree, but hallucinate elsewhere please.
Yes, I think morality/ethics is a part of it. Humans are both subjects and objects. As objects, they may get to a place where they have no worth (or value in the economic sense). That is, they may have little or no instrumental value to others, so that no one is willing to pay them to perform any activity. However, those same worthless individuals are still subjects, valuers, and it is consistent to say that they are both valueless (in an economic sense), and valuable in some sort of moral sense.
And I don’t think this is a problem with the economy. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the economy is a tool, it’s useful for pricing goods and allocating labor and investment, for aggregating information about what it is that people value (the descriptive question, as separate from the normative question of what people should value). I don’t think one has to be an anarcho-capitalist to recognize the great power that the market has and appreciate its use as a tool for human flourishing; peoples economic decisions are often irrational, and some of the negative outcomes of a pure market can be recognized and protected against.
Is this statement descriptive or normative? I don’t think it’s right either way, but I’m curious 
As a descriptive statement, the rate of charitable contribution, of spending on welfare, of humanitarian international aid, all suggest people actually do see inherent value in other humans.
Another distinction worth making is between accessible value and value. Because transactions should always have a non-zero cost, if a person has less value than the transaction cost of extracting it, they won’t have value from the perspective of a market, but they will still have non-zero economic value.
As a normative statement, well, I’ll just say I disagree, as it’s beyond the scope of this thread (and though I’m working on some moral philosophy posts at the moment, I don’t know that there’s a very good way to argue that people have worth).
In an instrumental sense, I agree that that is true. However, I do think everyone has inherent, non-instrumental, non-economic value. And, considering that much of humanity might one day be net-negative in purely economic terms (if machines become plentiful and cheap and more capable than most humans), we should be wary of any suggestion that being a net loss means being dispensable.
I actually meant there was a problem on a practical level. If people have value that is not rewarded in the economy, then the economy has a problem. Now some people would argue that the economy recognizes value from doing and misses value inherent in being. Like as a human you have value, even if you sit in the dark and never do anything of value for anyone else. And those can be fine arguments, but it seems to me that the economy misses a lot of valuable doing, but futher that much of what is valuable being has effects, effects no counted in the GNP.
Well, you could have a hammer with a slightly loose handle so it misses nails on occasion. That the economy is a tool does not mean it cannot have problems. That said, I suppose I would need a definition of economy, because it seems more like a rather large batch of phenomena and I can’t think of it as a tool. I can’t imagine someone using it. They might be able to influence it, or use patterns and mechanisms, within it for certain effects, but the whole goes beyond being a tool
It is descriptive, but includes terms that indicate a normative critique. Or, at the very least, a normative driven outburst of distaste or rage.
Some people. And it is a charitable read of humanitarian aid and other giving,w hich certainly can have, in part, good motives by some people, and less good ones by others. Further it is only part of what is happening.
‘purely economic terms’ . The use of that term highlights the problem of economy as considered today. It limits what we consider valuable to what is valuable to - well, I’ll use Jame’s term - what works best for the socialist overloards (though I am more likely to throw in fascist as an adjective) to have considered valuable. To view us as the creators of products which they can be the primary profit makers of selling back to us. And generally things that have newtonian effects that can be easily tracked. If you cannot have such effects or are not allowed to, they you are outside the market. AS if the market was a neutral non-political thing that happens after humans try a bunch of stuff. And note how much like a kind of original sin, guilty until proven innocent, this system implicitly functions as. You do not get sustenance unless you prove you can produce products for the system.
Compare that to tribal life.
This thread is an absolute abomination. It’s like reading something from a Wal Mart directors meeting. Or the Comintern.
So…a meeting with a lot of neologisms, abstraction in general and undercurrents of menace made by a bunch of white guys.
Or just ‘the internet’…
That’s kind of like saying ‘This thread has characteristics found amongst all possible texts.’
I found your first more pointed.
Commintern and Walmart directors’ meetings would also share a dearth of humor. Not for a lack of folksy attempts in the latter case.
Not really. The internet is dominated by opinionated white men. Everywhere I go on the internet I find white men sitting around complaining about how hard they have it (because of women, immigrants, the Left, whatever) and in a lot of places I see a resurgence of Neo Nazism.
I doubt these characteristics dominate, for example, East African literature, or South Asian philosophy. But you tell me.
If you don’t like it, stop reading it and go back to your own site. Oh yeah … what happen to your own site? Died, you say? What a shock.
And didn’t you get banned from here once already?
Ah, pardon. I misinterpreted your ‘or’ as ‘rather this instead.’
Though if that is what you meant, I can’t really see how the Commintern fits. And I don’t think those people are causing me the problems. I think the source of the problems, if we care going to look at the individuals by group, are mainly caused by a tiny subset of white men. At the global level. At state levels and down, well, men from other races come in, some on the left, some on the right. Women can certainly be assholes and misusers of power, but they are not common at high levels. That’s me. Others in the thread might have something else to say on the issue.
But what do you see as the best reaction to ZMPs?
How mature of you. Those rational metaphysics and superior way of thinking are really coming into play now I’ve told you I think you’re a fraud and a complete asshole.
Nope, was killed due to a lack of time and is currently being resurrected elsewhere.
Meaning that one of your derogatory statements about someone else was wrong. What a shock.
Multiple times, including for maintaining more than one account. But the last time I was banned, I was banned by a chickenshit who quit his job as a mod 2 days later and has since fled this site entirely, from what I gather. And after that happened the owner of the forum emailed me to tell me he disagreed with the decision and hoped I’d be back.
In sum, you are a fucking child.
Perhaps I did mean that. I’m not quite sure now.
It depends - are we attributing problems to people or to philosophies or to systems or to something else or to some combination of all these?
Also, I have a huge problem with reducing a person to a ‘Zero Marginal Productivity Worker’ let alone a three letter abbreviation.
And to be honest, I don’t really give that much of a shit. Everyone is so busy arguing with the guy next to them that they rarely stop to look at the person spinning the argument. That this thread’s topic is even a question that’s being asked strikes me as misplaced.
I think Carleas was simply taking it as a given. This is a growing phenomenon. What do we do about it?
Agreed, it is corporate speak or perhaps academic speak or both and rather demeaning.
So this thread really couldn’t have gone well for you, even if everyone was on topic and not…
Is there something that is both on topic and not a misplaced question?
And why would you assume I had anything against people in those professions, did not Think they should be paid for their useful work, and whatever else it is that made you pick professions I never mentioned? I mean, OK, we often disagree, but hallucinate elsewhere please.
[/quote]
EH? What do you think a ZMP worker is?
Teachers and Doctors (in public health) have negative productivity as they cost money and make no PROFIT.
I suppose the first thing that is so galling about your misreading here is that my position is very much in favor of defending people who do get classed as ZMPs (who are not the people in the professions you mention, more on that below) IOW you blunder in, do not seem to have read the OP, have not read my posts, blast what it seems you think(incorrectly) is a right wing position on my part completely missed many boats. I think it is sick that society is creating ZMPs and thinking of people. My point with that sentence you latched onto was that I do not think everyone produces or has value, even though I am critical of the current methods of measuring this. But it would be too much to ask that you have the slightest idea of the context of anything. The attempt to come up with a clever example to embarrass a right wing position I do not have fails in so many ways itis almost art.
-
you are using a very idiosyncratic definition of the term. Or in any case not using in Carleas sense, see below. Those people are professions are clearly productive, and people pay for their services, and while yes, robots may encroach on their professions, they are not good examples for the thread topic. However much you capitalize PROFIT, these are still productive workers. And doctors for example certainly generate profits for various organizations if they are not self-employed and do it for themselves. Production is not just about making chairs. That you seem to think teachers have a negative productivity is beyond me. Its like we are at some very primitive state in society where the only production is making stone tools and wool clothing and other more subtle types of productivity have not been encountered. 2) Even if this was the definition of ZMP that was being used, you still assumed incorrect things about what I said. I said nothing about ZMP workers should not get paid. I was talking about people who create a net loss in society. Say, an unemployed antisocial serial killer. No services plus costs and destruction. Choosing an example that hopefully most can agree with, but I do not think the category is limited to such extremes. I certainly could have said more TO CARLEAS or someone else if they wanted to take up that line, rather than assuming strange things about what I meant.
Here’s how Carleas defined it…
We pay for the labor of doctors, firemen and teachers. We have chosen to do that directly, often with doctors, and indirectly for teachers and firemen, via taxes. If they do not labor or labor does not increase, then we tend to cut back on the number of them - at least that would be the goal.
If you want to introduce a new interpretation of the term take that up in general. Certainly you would want to disagree with Carleas definition WHICH IS THE ONE I WAS WORKING WITH YOU ASS.
Lev, you are a real black hole of a poster. You are an example, at least often, of negative productivity here. Words come out, but not information, and those words make a mess, that requires time to clean up.
Back on ignore.