Price Gouging - Fair and balanced, or unfair

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


If it's an idle daydream, nothing.

Useful ideas, those that actually lead to a new product or other item, actually require a lot of detailed implementation work.

You don't just have a passing thought and then the finished prototype suddenly Minerva's out of your head. At least not on this planet.

It's not taking the tool that he built though. It's paying someone else to build another one.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I never took individual innovation into mind when I thought of this system of innovation. My thoughts were to encourage hard work, not innovation. Innovation can be planned by the society.

WHAT?! Since when?

I haven't quite worked out the possibility of individuals are smaller groups of individuals thinking of ways to save their labor and earn more.

Despite the fact that that's been the standard model of innovation for thousands of years?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
No. Thinking is labor saving, not labor.

Ah. I see. So these planners of yours, they won't get paid anything, because they're just thinking, not doing labor?

[Velociryx]

::In the voice of the Emperor::

Arrian...join the dark side....join the dark side....



-=Vel=-
(you know you wanna! LOL)

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious


How about if I just remind you that there is a department in most companies called R&D?

So it's individual companies, who hire and pay people specifically for their ideas?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


How about if I just remind you that there is a department in most companies called R&D?

ya and the company expects to profit if it innovates and often the employees in such a department would get huge bonuses if their innovations make money. Its called capitalism and it works great for innovation.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


So it's individual companies, who hire and pay people specifically for their ideas?

They pay people to come up with ideas.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Kidicious


They pay people to come up with ideas.

But according to you, that's not labor. So why should they be paid for not doing any labor?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


It's not taking the tool that he built though. It's paying someone else to build another one.

By this do you mean paying a bunch of people to do focused research to discover that which Vel has already created ? Since after all, unless you plan to be a coercive police state, you surely don't plan to expropriate the invention Vel made to get a look inside it to see how it works?


Wouldn't it be so much betetr to offer VEL a fair price for his invention absed on the impact it would have on industry?

[Velociryx]

It's not taking the tool that he built though. It's paying someone else to build another one.

Yep. But without my cooperation in giving the prototype up, you'll have to take it (ie - exploit me....you know, the thing you despise. But then someone said once that we all become what we despise).

And Walker beat me to the point I was getting around to.

Your central planning group isn't "laboring" - they're thinking. Planning. Allocating.

So they get...nothing? That won't work...they'd starve!

And if they're not working, there's going to have to be a profit margin built into everything you produce, cos you're gonna have to pay those non-working louts a salary of some kind.

Hmmm...profits built in.

But that means exploiting those who MAKE the stuff we're talking about.

Doesn't it?

So either thinking IS work, and your planners are working (and in which case, stealing my idea = stealing my work), or it isn't and you still need some means of paying the planning group's salaries.

Right?

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Ah. I see. So these planners of yours, they won't get paid anything, because they're just thinking, not doing labor?

People will get paid for thinking, because it's a value to society. Society benefits from thinking so there should be compensation, just as with labor.

[Kidlicious]

I have to go now. Maybe I better rethink this incentive idea of mine.

[Velociryx]

I'd love to take credit for that gotcha, but in truth, you just skewered yourself.

Props, Kid....that was awesome.

-=Vel=-

[Kuciwalker]

But I thought people were to be paid for the effort they put into their labor...

... or was it paid based on the value of their labor?

And what's the difference (in terms of your theory) between thinking and labor, then, if both have a value to society, and both paid for?

EDIT: as others have said, moot. Major @ Kid; I take back what I said earlier.

[Arrian]

EDIT: Moot, given Kid's last post. Props to Kid for reconsidering. That's rare here.

Is "management" work? What do managers do, really? They try to get the most out of their underlings, and they fill out lots of forms. How does that compare with manual labor?

Is what I do (insurance coverage analysis) work? I mean, I don't do much in the way of manual labor. I do a lot of reading, thinking and typing, though.

I essentially get paid to think. Not to dream up ideas, but rather to analyze the facts & circumstances of a given claim vis-a-vis the terms of a given policy, in light of the prevelant law of the appropriate jurisdiction (itself a quesitonmark, as "choice of law" is its own question at times).

I would be the first to admit that it would be a better world if my job didn't exist. But I think of a communist system and figure that a "planner" in that system looks an awful lot like me... instead of analyzing claims, they analyze production data or somesuch and make some sort of determination (build more of widget A, less of C). Isn't that work?

-Arrian