> By that standard, the Jesus Christ dude would be a billionaire... That
> is not to say that I do not feel sorry for the dude, he
> should not have
> got the treatment he did for what amounted to kvetching and story
> telling, but I would not pay a dime for his self-styled sacrifice
> either. I think this betrays an unmistakably Catholic "ora
> et labora" -
> or Maoist if you will - trait in parecon: "manual labor- good,
> pointy-heady labor - bad."
Nope, socially valuable labor is good, of all kinds.
Not only that, effective pointy headed labor often produces more valuable output per input, to be sure. So does the work of great artists, or athletes, etc. But that doesn't mean we have to make them rich...
> Of course, I do appreciate the concept of "balanced jobs"
> that corporate
> capitalism is destroying (which was, btw, a centerpiece of Braverman's
> work),
Braverman -- after bakunin and some others longer ago -- did resurface attentiveness to division of labor and its implications...but to my knowledge he never advocated anything like balanced job complexes as a goal...but that might just be my ignorance.
> but you can get only so far with it. Indeed, there is no bona
> fide reason in the world that can justify executive salaries in the US
> in terms any output these guys can possibly produce.
I don't know...but so what.
Let's take Michael Jordan playing basketball for the Bulls. Should he have been remunerated for the amount that society valued his output? Or for the effort and sacrifice that he put out in his work?
Same question for a surgeon, or whoever.
In a parecon, there aren't any executives in the sense you refer to.
> I concocted a
> phrase Mosquito Intake Theory of Executive Compensation (MITEC) to
> describe that phenomenon. Mosquitoes do not have lungs, they cannot
> suck, so the amount of blood they take in depends entirely on the
> pressure in the blood vessel to which they manage to tap.
> Likewise, the
> amount of executive compensation depends mainly on the volume of other
> people's money these suckers manage to put their hands on.
Well, I think it depends on their bargaining power -- which is what everyone's income in a market system depends on -- though ownership conveys great power.
> But the fact that many US execs are obscenely overpaid does not mean
> that anyone can do their job. That is simply naïve. Managing people
> requires a lot of skill, responsibility and risk taking and
> not everyone
> is willing to take that risk and responsibility.
Many many tasks have diverse attributes that many people cannot do well. So what? I think you overestimate this one, largely because you are thinking about the difficulties of managing alienated and hostile labor...but that's actually beside the point. Not everyone will have as part of their work ANY particular task...some will. There are tons of thing I could not do...
> I for, example, would
> rather have an academic sinecure for a moderate compensation
> that allows me doing what I like than a management job that pays considerably more
> but also demands a lot of time, energy, schmoozing with people I would
> rather not to, risk etc. I think that people who are willing and able
> to do this kind of job should be compensated proportionally more than
> those who, like myself, take a more leisurely approach to work.
If it turns out that a type of task is more demanding, less pleasurable, than if we remunerate effort and sacrifice doing that does get remunerated more. Whether some task does, or not, is another matter.
For example, if we were to keep the current division of labor -- I would say that being a short order cook, working on an assembly line, coal mining, and so on and so foth through a gazillion jobs, would be remunerated more than being a manager...but, that is for a social determination...the value/ethic is what we can talk about.
> Another thing - I still remember times from my other life on the other
> side of the iron curtain when the management had virtually no power to
> discipline workers. Termination of employment had to go through the
> "labor courts" which were generally slanted in favor of employees, and
> was very difficult to obtain. As a result, people were slacking on
> their jobs big time - it was not uncommon to wait for a bus for an hour
> while the drivers were having a little social gathering at the terminal
> stop, train conductors pocketing the money instead of issuing tickets,
> sales clerks not bothering to serve customers, etc. Worse yet, if you
> had the temerity to say something about it, you would generally had to
> face a rude response.
Centrally planned coordinatorism and parecon have virtually nothing in common...
> In that context it was a sea change when I was in Warsaw not long ago
> and, having experienced a rude behavior on the part of a bus driver, I
> conspicuously wrote down the number of the bus and asked for the phone
> number of his company. As the driver's behavior changed quite
> dramatically, I started to appreciate the effects of the management's
> ability to make an employee join a "reserve army of the unemployed."
With all due respect, I think you should lose that appreciation given that the capacity is utilized not to generate desirable outputs, but profit.
> More seriously, my problem with your approach is too utopian
> in the same
> way as the neoclassical econ is - it operates on a rather
> abstract level
> and replaces one abstract overarching principle (rational
> self interest)
> with another (solidarity and cooperation) to achieve a
> similar objective
> - a balanced distribution of material resources.
Saying something is too utopian -- or too anything -- is an assertion. It could be true. But I can't reply unless you give me some reason why you think it is so.
Do you have a good grip on what parecon is? If not, how could you decide it is too utopian -- presumably meaning it would not function as indicated. If you do, okay, which part is too utopian?
> By so doing, both
> approaches assume a very sketchy and conventional conceptions
> of social
> institutions and human behavior which essentially ignore how people
> actually think and act. People may sometimes maximize their
> utility and
> sometimes cooperate with others to achieve common objectives, but most
> often they minimize their transaction costs i.e. act opportunistically
> to do whatever they can get away with at a moment. That transaction
> cost minimizing behavior is what keeps social/economic/political
> hierarchies alive and well.
I guess I have to repeat my question above...if there is something about parecon that you think is misconceived and would have effects other than those indicated for it -- let me know and I can either learn from that, or try to reply if I am not convinced...