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RE: Obscenely Wealthy
You're almost entirely wrong. You make one good point, so let me address that up front...
plenty of scarce things have low value. Sociopaths are rare, but are hardly valued by society.
You're right - it's not scarcity alone that establishes value - it's just one factor.
The rest... it's a mess.
But not all values can be either normalized or measured in monetary terms. And demand can be influenced (through advertising or individual charisma) without changing value in an objective sense.
You're clearly equivocating on the term "value" - though it's something a lot of people seem to do. First, you deny that value can be "normalized", but then later you talk about "value in an objective sense".
If value can't be normalized, then it doesn't exist in any objective sense - you're left with just the purely subjective judgements of individuals. The "value" of something, then, means subjectively, what would a specific person exchange for it.
But you clearly recognize that there is some meaningful notion of value in objective sense. Therefore, it can be normalized in a useful way.
But individually, value is nothing more than willingness to exchange. If you want apples, and you're willing to give up one sheep for two bushels of apples, then that's your value for the apples. Adding money to the picture just means I don't have to take the sheep, I can take some amount of money, that I can use elsewhere to get the sheep - or, since I prefer beef, my neighbor and I can pool our money, buy a cow and split it between us.
Aggregated over all trades, the money exchanged in a transaction is exactly a measure of the objective value of the transaction. There really can't be any other meaningful measure.
Furthermore, that values can be influenced by advertising, or argument, is immaterial. Values do change over time. A century and a half ago, live theater was much more valuable than it is today. Over time, its role in entertainment has been supplanted - first by radio, then by movies, and now by TV.
Pointing out that values change through other mechanisms, too, doesn't affect the way in which money measures those values.
That's just ridiculous. Anyone can do what janitors do.
Yes, but they don't. Anyone may be able, but not everyone is willing to do what janitors or garbage men do. It's not skilled work, but it's dirty and difficult and society could not function without it. That makes it just as valuable as what an executive does.
This is just ignoring the basic notions of supply and demand. The reason most people aren't willing to do what janitors do is because there's something else they can do for as much, or more, money. That is, they can supply some form of labor that's more scarce or otherwise more in demand than janitorial services.
If there's no better work on offer, everyone will be willing to do janitorial work - the alternative is starvation.
Moreover, if the current janitorial staff of the world decided they agreed with you that they're "just as valuable as ... an executive", they'd be replaced almost immediately by a new batch of people who are willing to do janitorial work for the old pay rate. The supply of janitors at the current rate exactly meets the demand. If the demand goes up, the price goes up and more people will be willing.
Also, a lot of scarce skills could be learned by a lot more people if they had equal access to education. Of course, that wouldn't work very well because if everybody were trained to be a "leader" there'd be no one to do the work.
Not sure I really buy that argument. First, basic education is free to everyone in the US. Those who show almost any aptitude at all are generally encouraged to take it further, and there are plenty of scholarships and other programs to allow the "economically disadvantaged" to have "equal access" - at least in the cases where they can and will make use of it.
Beyond that, leaders fit into the supply and demand equations just like janitors. If everyone were "trained to be a 'leader'", we'd still only need a relatively small handful, and so the supply would far exceed the demand, pushing the cost at which we obtained that leadership down. We could pay our leaders the same as we pay our janitors.
They are relevant--society as a whole is made up of individual opinions.
They're "relevant" in the same sense that the motion of an individual molecule is relevant to the temperature of the gas that contains it. Yes, it's part of the aggregate, but if you change just that one element, you still can't make a measurable difference in the aggregate.
The specific content of an individuals value judgements, no matter how they're varied, don't change aggregated desires of society as a whole in any meaningful way.
The fact is, neither of us is qualified to speak of what society as a whole wants, it's immeasurable (even though economics tries).
I disagree. Society as a whole tells us what it wants through its behavior - specifically, its economic behavior. Any fool could tell you that society wants action blockbusters, not documentaries. It's easy to see that it wants fast food, not gourmet. It wants air travel, not trains.
But if what you're saying is true, and that only collective desires matter, ...
You're now putting words into my mouth. Individual desires are irrelevant to the subject at hand - objective value. Of course individual desires matter in individual matters. That's a tautology.
Individual desires do not matter to the big picture of what society as a whole wants - again, in the sense that changing an individual's desires won't change the big picture in any noticeable way.
... then what you're effectively saying is that this self-justifying status quo--that the entire system of western economics itself--is socially defined. That means that any number of alternative systems could function equally well or perhaps better in its place, if enough people believed it were possible.
Yes, I'll buy that. Seems like it's yet another near-tautology - western society is socially defined. The specific details of our economics - the government's role in manipulating the money supply, the level of taxation, the current supply and demand levels in the market, and so on - are all socially defined.
The basic mechanisms of economics, however, seem (to me) to be a little less ephemeral. In any economy, supply meets demand to set prices. The supply curve is dominated by technological capabilities, and the demand curve just models what people want.
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RE: Obscenely Wealthy
No, it doesn't. The whole point is that money "normalizes" values. It shifts from "what I want", and "what you want", and "what he wants" into "what we want".
I'm afraid it does. The theory of value you're describing assumes that value can and should be normalized in the first place, that value and demand are the same thing, and that value is only measurable in terms of money (which implies that what money cannot buy is not valuable).
But not all values can be either normalized or measured in monetary terms. And demand can be influenced (through advertising or individual charisma) without changing value in an objective sense. There is a difference between value and the appearance of value.
When you say that someone who's paid a lot doesn't "add much to society", you're saying that you don't value their contribution - but clearly somebody values it enough to pay them.
That's a tautology; What you're saying is that people pay for what they find valuable, but that things must be valuable if people will pay for them.
When it comes to people's contributions, the fact that somebody pays them just means that somebody with even more money values their contribution; it does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the majority. Just because those with power value certain contributions over others, does not mean those contributions benefit everybody equally.
That's just ridiculous. Anyone can do what janitors do.
Yes, but they don't. Anyone may be able, but not everyone is willing to do what janitors or garbage men do. It's not skilled work, but it's dirty and difficult and society could not function without it. That makes it just as valuable as what an executive does.
Scarce things are more valuable because they're scarce. People with strong leadership skills are far more scarce than people with janitorial skills
That's not true--plenty of scarce things have low value. Sociopaths are rare, but are hardly valued by society. Also, a lot of scarce skills could be learned by a lot more people if they had equal access to education. Of course, that wouldn't work very well because if everybody were trained to be a "leader" there'd be no one to do the work.
It's not your, individual, desires that are relevant. Your desires aren't those of society as a whole.
They are relevant--society as a whole is made up of individual opinions. The fact is, neither of us is qualified to speak of what society as a whole wants, it's immeasurable (even though economics tries).
But if what you're saying is true, and that only collective desires matter, then what you're effectively saying is that this self-justifying status quo--that the entire system of western economics itself--is socially defined. That means that any number of alternative systems could function equally well or perhaps better in its place, if enough people believed it were possible.
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