A lot of people will say things like that when they're no (longer?) in position to actually make a difference - it's a safe way to garner sympathy and attention without actually making the decision and be responsible for its consequences. I can guarantee you he wouldn't have the same opinion if he was still in his position and had political power to be able to actually allow this.
People working multiple jobs are universally frowned upon by the slave masters not only because this allows the slave to be less financially dependent on the master (which means they won't accept as much abuse as they would if they had no other source of income), but also because the extra money affords them a lifestyle that can rival those in higher, more prestigious positions. Same reason remote work is under constant pressure, since it used to be a perk exclusive to higher positions and seeing the peasants enjoy it doesn't fly too well.
It's not voluntary unless/until you can find me a place where housing/land is free.
Sure, the slavery is "distributed" across multiple actors such as landlords & profit off the whole concept of property as an asset, but ultimately the net result is the same - you have to work just to be afforded shelter.
The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?
Really? I've never heard this and a quick google doesn't bear this out. Also, it's not clear to me what they would actually do to you if you didn't...put you in prison? Release you as punishment?
13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
If people start using prison as this "one weird trick they don't want you to know" to not pay rent, this problem will be solved pretty quickly too (if it isn't already, as the other commenter suggests forced prison labor is a thing in some places).
You only addressed the lighthearted part of my response. I'd be much more interested in your reaction to my main point - you appear to be defining slavery as having to care for yourself. Surely you do not believe that you are owed a life of leisure do you?
> Surely you do not believe that you are owed a life of leisure do you?
I believe shelter and basic necessities should be a human right. So many problems would be solved/improved if people didn't have to spend half (or more, for the lower classes) of their earnings on perpetually renting.
You may believe that, but there has to be a means to that end (preferably one that doesn't require the oppression of others).
Shelter has to be built on a property and maintained indefinitely, food has to be painstakingly extracted from the land, etc. People have to do that, because there is no extant alternative.
Ignoring land ownership for now, are the maintainers and farmers not to be compensated? That would be actual slavery.
I'm pretty sure slaves from any era would kill to have my job where I work from home, have various insurances and investments through my employer, make a lot of money that I can spend on whatever I want and more. When you abstract concepts enough, everything becomes similar but current employment in developed countries is nowhere near slavery.
Slaves from the previous era would sure kill for your job... but you might very well kill for this job 20 years down the line when all your perks have evaporated and inflation/property prices/taxes have reduced your currently-high-salary to what is effectively minimum wage?
Keep in mind that no employer/business is providing these perks out of the goodness of their heart - they do so because the market is (was?) extremely competitive, but it's not a given that the market will stay competitive.
The conspicuous difference is that you can choose who to work for and in consequences employers have to compete for labor, which is why the overwhelming majority of people make more than minimum wage.
You're also setting up a catch 22 where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist, are a prerequisite to not having slavery, but if no one has to do labor to construct housing then where does it come from?
Minimum wage is an arbitrary construct that may have been reasonable when it was initially introduced but due to dysfunctional politics/corruption (or "lobbying") hasn't been updated to reflect the cost of living especially with regards to property prices, so making minimum wage isn't a high bar.
> where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist
That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top. Even if you hypothetically wanted to just put a tent somewhere and not require on any external labor, you'd still need to buy/rent the land first.
> Minimum wage is an arbitrary construct that may have been reasonable when it was initially introduced but due to dysfunctional politics/corruption (or "lobbying") hasn't been updated to reflect the cost of living especially with regards to property prices, so making minimum wage isn't a high bar.
Irrelevant. The point is that you could set the minimum wage to zero and people would still make wages higher than that because employers have to compete for labor.
> That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top.
But this is really not any different -- depending on how you define it land is either a scare resource you can't get any more of at all or something that requires labor to create more of, e.g. by building sea platforms or similar.
And people don't actually need any particular amount of land in order to have shelter. You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter on a given piece of land by building an arbitrarily tall building. In theory there is a limit on how tall a building you could make, but in practice if we built buildings of the largest size we know how to build on the amount of land that actually exists we would have dramatically more housing than is needed for everyone.
So the limiting factor is not actually land, it's construction, which somebody has to do in order for you to have shelter.
I disagree that the limiting factor is construction. The limiting factor is that there are significant entrenched interests based on the scarcity of property which influence any eventual laws/regulations or incentives to build more property.
> You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter
You can, but it isn't done, because of see above. For a lot of people/businesses in power to actually change things, it's often more profitable to defend the status-quo than make the change. It's a "tragedy of the commons" problem - it would end up better for everyone if the change were to be made, but only if it's done collectively - otherwise any individual player would be at a disadvantage.
But my original argument wasn't even about third-party constructed shelter. Even if let's say you wanted land just to put a tent somewhere and call that your home, well you can't without buying said land first, which is often priced disproportionately compared to wages (and there's pressure to keep it that way, where either wages/earning potential are pushed down, or land will just raise in price to match).
> I disagree that the limiting factor is construction. The limiting factor is that there are significant entrenched interests based on the scarcity of property which influence any eventual laws/regulations or incentives to build more property.
Now you're making a completely different argument: Not that the problem is that you have to work in order to buy housing, but that the cost of housing is too high because of artificial restrictions on housing construction.
Which is totally true but is something else entirely -- if housing cost 10% of what it does now, it still wouldn't be free.
> It's a "tragedy of the commons" problem - it would end up better for everyone if the change were to be made, but only if it's done collectively - otherwise any individual player would be at a disadvantage.
It's quite the opposite really. It would be better for anyone individually to build more housing on their land because they would make more money than the construction costs, so in order to prevent that they pass laws prohibiting nearly anybody from doing that.
These laws persist because of regulatory dysfunction. People benefit if the property they own is worth more and the property they might want to buy is worth less -- and any given person doesn't own most property, so the general advantage is to make housing cost less everywhere. But the laws that prevent it are instituted at the local level, in places zoned for single family homes that are predominantly owner-occupied, so the local voters are local homeowners who want local housing prices to go up rather than down. Meanwhile they don't get a vote in what the zoning is somewhere they might want to move to, so the rules make prices go up.
This is a real problem that could be solved by empowering individual property owners to build what they want on their own property, but what does that have anything to do with employers who are largely ambivalent to this? If anything employers should prefer housing costs to be lower so they can attract talent to their locality through a lower cost of living, and pay less in rent themselves.
> Even if let's say you wanted land just to put a tent somewhere and call that your home, well you can't without buying said land first
What are you proposing to do instead? You can't feasibly create more land, and what people actually want the land for is to have shelter. You can create more shelter, but that requires labor. It's never going to be free -- one way or another somebody has to build it. Somebody would even have to make the tent.
We could certainly make it cost less by removing zoning restrictions but less is not free.
> The point is that you could set the minimum wage to zero and people would still make wages higher than that because employers have to compete for labor.
Wrong. Profiteers learned ages ago the importance of wielding their capital for political influence to maintain a stagnant pool of unemployed surplus labor by many means, including the prison industrial complex, migrant trafficking, and more. The result is that employers do not compete for mere labor but rather only for specifically skilled labor, meaning unskilled labor is only legally differentiated from slavery and effectively just slavery. Furthermore, most of these so-called unskilled laborers are in fact highly skilled surplus of the skilled labor market, which means the same holds true for a significant portion of the so-called skilled labor pool.
> meaning unskilled labor is only legally differentiated from slavery and effectively just slavery.
Many unskilled labor jobs also pay more than the law requires, and there is basically unlimited demand for unskilled labor at low wages, so there is only a problem if the cost of living is higher than the wages unskilled labor receives in the market -- which in nearly all cases is because of artificial scarcity of necessities. Because otherwise the low wages would result in a low cost of living as necessities could be produced inexpensively through cheap labor.
If you let millions migrants come to the US to build housing and provide medical care and consequently made housing and medicine inexpensive, unskilled laborers in the US would be better off, not worse off. If you artificially limit the supply of those things so the cost of living remains high, you're screwed regardless of whether there are immigrants, because a marginal difference in the wages for unskilled labor doesn't hold a candle to a ten fold increase in the cost of living.
> Furthermore, most of these so-called unskilled laborers are in fact highly skilled surplus of the skilled labor market
There is rarely a long-term surplus of skilled labor -- or anything -- because that would just cause it to cost less, increasing demand (companies hire more) or reducing supply (people switch careers to ones that pay better).
> Many unskilled labor jobs also pay more than the law requires
Because law requires such a low wage that it competes with the cost of being unemployed. Unskilled wages are just survival costs, if even that, just like a slave, and this is why people in those jobs live shorter lives.
> If you let millions migrants come to the US to build housing and provide medical care and consequently made housing and medicine inexpensive, unskilled laborers in the US would be better off, not worse off.
Then why aren't they better off now than before that was done?
> There is rarely a long-term surplus of skilled labor -- or anything -- because that would just cause it to cost less...
It does, of course. Wages for many many skilled labor jobs (whose capacities have proportionally increased faster than average) have decreased very significantly over recent decades when accounting for inflation. This is just common knowledge.
> Because law requires such a low wage that it competes with the cost of being unemployed.
Everything competes with being "unemployed" -- which is another way of saying that you do your own labor. You can pay someone to make your dinner or make it yourself, pay someone to fix your car or fix it yourself, pay someone to make your clothes or make them yourself etc.
Specialization generally wins, even when you're not making a lot of money.
> this is why people in those jobs live shorter lives.
There are multiple reasons why this is the case. The people with the ability to do skilled labor more often also have the ability to do other things that increase their longevity. People who make less money are more likely to smoke cigarettes etc. There isn't a single unified cause, it's many things that correlate with each other.
> Then why aren't they better off now than before that was done?
Because they're not allowed to build housing and provide medical care. Zoning restrictions constrain housing construction, the AMA restricts the supply of doctors and people with legitimate medical degrees from other countries can't just come here and practice etc.
Regulatory capture is a thing. But the medical regulators are captured by the AMA (i.e. incumbent doctors), not Walmart or Comcast, who have no real interest in higher medical costs. The zoning boards are captured by local homeowners.
> Wages for many many skilled labor jobs (whose capacities have proportionally increased faster than average) have decreased very significantly over recent decades when accounting for inflation. This is just common knowledge.
Your argument was that a significant proportion of these people would end up doing unskilled labor. No they wouldn't, they'd still prefer to make $60,000 rather than $30,000 even if their skillset used to pay an inflation-adjusted $70,000. And some of them will even refuse the $60,000 and find a way to change careers to one that pays more.
In slavery, the enslaved is property. Their spouse and children can be sold off, you can be used as a breeder of more slaves, you eat what you can forage or what is handed to you, if you don't work harder you and your family are physically beaten. Some slaves had their achilles tendon's ruptured so they couldn't run but still could work in fields. That is just getting started and I'm not an expert in the matter (just took a few history classes).
So.. there are some really stark differences. "Wage slavery" does have similarities to an extent, but it is still a world apart.
The qualitative difference between slavery and a job is that a slave is not allowed to choose a better option if one is available. A slave is barred from taking higher paid work, work with better conditions, etc. Even if it would be beneficial for their master (e.g. they do higher value work and all of the money goes to their master) they do not have the freedom to choose. A slave does not have the freedom to improve their circumstances even if it is a win-win situation. That is the qualitative difference between slavery and a job.
I wouldn’t use the word slave, but a lot of these companies have moonlighting agreements and verbiage like “will dedicate your full business attention” to ensure you aren’t building anything that isn’t for them.
Engineers making 300k is a US-specific phenomenon and was only as a result of the very competitive SWE job market (itself as a result of "free" VC money which has now ran out).
There's no guarantee it won't become like the UK or most of Europe where software engineering salaries are miserable.
I think slave is (way) too strong, but I earn more than that, and until I'd paid off my house I considered myself a "wage-slave", in as much as I couldn't afford to stop working. Another term I used for myself was "techno-whore", since I sell my technical skills for money. I could choose to end that by moving to a LCOL area instead of the VHCOL area that supplies those wages, but I don't because there are advantages to being where I am.
Still, costs are in line with those wages, so my mortgage was costing me ~$5k/month, my electricity was peaking at $1k/month, my water was $500/month, my property taxes were $1500/month, etc. etc. etc. A high salary doesn't necessarily mean unbound wealth, it just makes living in that VHCOL area comfortable.
Sadly, I still can't afford to stop working, but that's more down to the completely terrible form of "healthcare" that the US employs, and not my actual job.
I agree that it shouldn't matter for lower paying jobs and those that don't need a non compete. For higher paying jobs, I think it's reasonable for a company to set a base pay or pre approval before having a second job.
It _should_ matter from a perspective of not paying enough money for an employee to meet basic needs and have enough discretionary spending to not need a 2nd job.
Exactly. Ive also noticed a lot of former faang VPs now trying to become influencers on LinkedIn by sharing the "internals" of big co promotion and other processes. Amazing they would never talk about this while in the role but suddenly they are now ultra generous! Don't get me wrong. The revealings are actually pretty spot on but timing is very dubious!
I don't think cynicism explains why an exec would not share the "internals" of the organization they are currently in. They are in a position of trust which has the expectation of not sharing said "internals". Betraying that trust would, rightfully, cause them to be sanctioned. Once they are out of the position, they have the option to divulge or not so some choose to do so.
Definitely not cynicism. The other way even. There is a definite amount of sociopathy and Kool aid selling needed as you guys higher up the ladder. You are a bit free from it when you leave the ladder. And forget real altruism, there is an element of perceived altruism when you look like you are "spilling the beans".
> because this allows the slave to be less financially dependent on the master
Just a little back of the envelope economics: if everyone thinks the way you do -> labor supply doubles -> wages go down -> working two jobs is now the expectation
Similar economic side effects to having both genders in the workforce. This lifestyle only "works out" so long as most people are unwilling to do what you're doing
Short of some radical changes around the whole concept of "property", I think this may end up being the norm anyway considering property price inflation?
After all, people need a place to live, so if there's more value to extract, why wouldn't the landlords (and all the industries supporting them) cash in on that?
Slaves were forced to work all day in the sun without shade performing brutal physical labor. They were forced to work in the rain without cover, in the snow without protection from the cold. In mines, and in other dangerous jobs where injuries were frequently fatal. They were beaten regularly for all sorts of stupid and made up reasons. They were raped. And tortured. And murdered. They were bought and sold like things, and children were torn from their parents because they were just things.
To call one of the cushiest jobs that has ever existed in human history "slavery" because of some minor restrictions on your ability to make even more money on the side...I don't even have the words to describe just how ridiculous you come across right now.
I've never really understood the opposition to this besides non-competes et al. Ultimately I think work should be about delivery of a product or service not time spent, and if an enterprising person can deliver a business a product or service and at the same time deliver something else for another business, why shouldn't they be able to?
I've always noticed this disturbing tendency in some people to assume that since they employed you they own your entire life. I think they need to adjust their attitudes.
Contracts are on case-by-case basis but generally no. On the other hand, that's why so many companies do not want to hire contractors even when the task is well-suited for such an arrangement. They want a butt in a chair financially dependent on them first, and the deliverable second (if at all).
Disclaimer: contractor so my response might be obviously biased.
It shouldn't matter if (and it is a big if) management is actually managing employees deliverable outputs. But if you have management that isn't capable of measuring and managing what the employees deliver, then they revert to just managing the employees time.
The recent push for return to office seems to indicate that many places are not capable of managing what their workers actually produce.
> The recent push for return to office seems to indicate that many places are not capable of managing what their workers actually produce.
It's not that they can't, it's that the people in power to make this change would themselves be obsoleted if they do so. Many higher-level positions derive their perceived usefulness and prestige by the number of reports under them and the amount of busywork produced even if said busywork is counter-productive to the bottom-line.
A laser focus on deliverables would signify the death of middle-management and various "facilitator" positions who currently enjoy cushy jobs without contributing anything essential.
20 years ago I worked 3 jobs simultaneously. During the day I managed an infrastructure engineering team and at night I worked as 3rd shift lead in a NOC. During downtime in the NOC, there was plenty of it, I worked on freelance technical writing jobs. I think everyone in that NOC worked a day job. People would occasionally be found out and fired. I only maintained that pace for a couple of years before deciding I'd like to have a social life and sleep a full 8 hours again.
I started working fully remote in 2018 and considered jumping on the multiple job train again but decided against it. I retired a few months ago, at 53, and now part-time manage a horse farm which is more work than 3 simultaneous tech jobs was.
Remote work is about trust. The biggest fear for the employer is that you are slacking off, because they cannot physically see if you're even there. If an employer realizes that you have accepted another full time job contract they would feel cheated, even if your output is excellent. I worry that the rational position for the employer would be to try to force their next hire to not be fully remote, and to try to implement more measures to monitor and control the existing remote positions.
I read an article linked off HN about how the reason that companies want you to come back to the office is because they want to have control over you - rather than them wanting to have the output you provide (I'm wording that wrong and wish I could find the article to quote it). But I think that's very related to this.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadA lot of people will say things like that when they're no (longer?) in position to actually make a difference - it's a safe way to garner sympathy and attention without actually making the decision and be responsible for its consequences. I can guarantee you he wouldn't have the same opinion if he was still in his position and had political power to be able to actually allow this.
People working multiple jobs are universally frowned upon by the slave masters not only because this allows the slave to be less financially dependent on the master (which means they won't accept as much abuse as they would if they had no other source of income), but also because the extra money affords them a lifestyle that can rival those in higher, more prestigious positions. Same reason remote work is under constant pressure, since it used to be a perk exclusive to higher positions and seeing the peasants enjoy it doesn't fly too well.
Sure, the slavery is "distributed" across multiple actors such as landlords & profit off the whole concept of property as an asset, but ultimately the net result is the same - you have to work just to be afforded shelter.
The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?
Prison.
> The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?
Sounds like your definition of slavery is nobody taking care of you.
Which leads to this: https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-sla...
If people start using prison as this "one weird trick they don't want you to know" to not pay rent, this problem will be solved pretty quickly too (if it isn't already, as the other commenter suggests forced prison labor is a thing in some places).
I believe shelter and basic necessities should be a human right. So many problems would be solved/improved if people didn't have to spend half (or more, for the lower classes) of their earnings on perpetually renting.
Shelter has to be built on a property and maintained indefinitely, food has to be painstakingly extracted from the land, etc. People have to do that, because there is no extant alternative.
Ignoring land ownership for now, are the maintainers and farmers not to be compensated? That would be actual slavery.
Keep in mind that no employer/business is providing these perks out of the goodness of their heart - they do so because the market is (was?) extremely competitive, but it's not a given that the market will stay competitive.
You're also setting up a catch 22 where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist, are a prerequisite to not having slavery, but if no one has to do labor to construct housing then where does it come from?
> where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist
That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top. Even if you hypothetically wanted to just put a tent somewhere and not require on any external labor, you'd still need to buy/rent the land first.
Irrelevant. The point is that you could set the minimum wage to zero and people would still make wages higher than that because employers have to compete for labor.
> That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top.
But this is really not any different -- depending on how you define it land is either a scare resource you can't get any more of at all or something that requires labor to create more of, e.g. by building sea platforms or similar.
And people don't actually need any particular amount of land in order to have shelter. You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter on a given piece of land by building an arbitrarily tall building. In theory there is a limit on how tall a building you could make, but in practice if we built buildings of the largest size we know how to build on the amount of land that actually exists we would have dramatically more housing than is needed for everyone.
So the limiting factor is not actually land, it's construction, which somebody has to do in order for you to have shelter.
> You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter
You can, but it isn't done, because of see above. For a lot of people/businesses in power to actually change things, it's often more profitable to defend the status-quo than make the change. It's a "tragedy of the commons" problem - it would end up better for everyone if the change were to be made, but only if it's done collectively - otherwise any individual player would be at a disadvantage.
But my original argument wasn't even about third-party constructed shelter. Even if let's say you wanted land just to put a tent somewhere and call that your home, well you can't without buying said land first, which is often priced disproportionately compared to wages (and there's pressure to keep it that way, where either wages/earning potential are pushed down, or land will just raise in price to match).
Now you're making a completely different argument: Not that the problem is that you have to work in order to buy housing, but that the cost of housing is too high because of artificial restrictions on housing construction.
Which is totally true but is something else entirely -- if housing cost 10% of what it does now, it still wouldn't be free.
> It's a "tragedy of the commons" problem - it would end up better for everyone if the change were to be made, but only if it's done collectively - otherwise any individual player would be at a disadvantage.
It's quite the opposite really. It would be better for anyone individually to build more housing on their land because they would make more money than the construction costs, so in order to prevent that they pass laws prohibiting nearly anybody from doing that.
These laws persist because of regulatory dysfunction. People benefit if the property they own is worth more and the property they might want to buy is worth less -- and any given person doesn't own most property, so the general advantage is to make housing cost less everywhere. But the laws that prevent it are instituted at the local level, in places zoned for single family homes that are predominantly owner-occupied, so the local voters are local homeowners who want local housing prices to go up rather than down. Meanwhile they don't get a vote in what the zoning is somewhere they might want to move to, so the rules make prices go up.
This is a real problem that could be solved by empowering individual property owners to build what they want on their own property, but what does that have anything to do with employers who are largely ambivalent to this? If anything employers should prefer housing costs to be lower so they can attract talent to their locality through a lower cost of living, and pay less in rent themselves.
> Even if let's say you wanted land just to put a tent somewhere and call that your home, well you can't without buying said land first
What are you proposing to do instead? You can't feasibly create more land, and what people actually want the land for is to have shelter. You can create more shelter, but that requires labor. It's never going to be free -- one way or another somebody has to build it. Somebody would even have to make the tent.
We could certainly make it cost less by removing zoning restrictions but less is not free.
Wrong. Profiteers learned ages ago the importance of wielding their capital for political influence to maintain a stagnant pool of unemployed surplus labor by many means, including the prison industrial complex, migrant trafficking, and more. The result is that employers do not compete for mere labor but rather only for specifically skilled labor, meaning unskilled labor is only legally differentiated from slavery and effectively just slavery. Furthermore, most of these so-called unskilled laborers are in fact highly skilled surplus of the skilled labor market, which means the same holds true for a significant portion of the so-called skilled labor pool.
Many unskilled labor jobs also pay more than the law requires, and there is basically unlimited demand for unskilled labor at low wages, so there is only a problem if the cost of living is higher than the wages unskilled labor receives in the market -- which in nearly all cases is because of artificial scarcity of necessities. Because otherwise the low wages would result in a low cost of living as necessities could be produced inexpensively through cheap labor.
If you let millions migrants come to the US to build housing and provide medical care and consequently made housing and medicine inexpensive, unskilled laborers in the US would be better off, not worse off. If you artificially limit the supply of those things so the cost of living remains high, you're screwed regardless of whether there are immigrants, because a marginal difference in the wages for unskilled labor doesn't hold a candle to a ten fold increase in the cost of living.
> Furthermore, most of these so-called unskilled laborers are in fact highly skilled surplus of the skilled labor market
There is rarely a long-term surplus of skilled labor -- or anything -- because that would just cause it to cost less, increasing demand (companies hire more) or reducing supply (people switch careers to ones that pay better).
Because law requires such a low wage that it competes with the cost of being unemployed. Unskilled wages are just survival costs, if even that, just like a slave, and this is why people in those jobs live shorter lives.
> If you let millions migrants come to the US to build housing and provide medical care and consequently made housing and medicine inexpensive, unskilled laborers in the US would be better off, not worse off.
Then why aren't they better off now than before that was done?
> There is rarely a long-term surplus of skilled labor -- or anything -- because that would just cause it to cost less...
It does, of course. Wages for many many skilled labor jobs (whose capacities have proportionally increased faster than average) have decreased very significantly over recent decades when accounting for inflation. This is just common knowledge.
Everything competes with being "unemployed" -- which is another way of saying that you do your own labor. You can pay someone to make your dinner or make it yourself, pay someone to fix your car or fix it yourself, pay someone to make your clothes or make them yourself etc.
Specialization generally wins, even when you're not making a lot of money.
> this is why people in those jobs live shorter lives.
There are multiple reasons why this is the case. The people with the ability to do skilled labor more often also have the ability to do other things that increase their longevity. People who make less money are more likely to smoke cigarettes etc. There isn't a single unified cause, it's many things that correlate with each other.
> Then why aren't they better off now than before that was done?
Because they're not allowed to build housing and provide medical care. Zoning restrictions constrain housing construction, the AMA restricts the supply of doctors and people with legitimate medical degrees from other countries can't just come here and practice etc.
Regulatory capture is a thing. But the medical regulators are captured by the AMA (i.e. incumbent doctors), not Walmart or Comcast, who have no real interest in higher medical costs. The zoning boards are captured by local homeowners.
> Wages for many many skilled labor jobs (whose capacities have proportionally increased faster than average) have decreased very significantly over recent decades when accounting for inflation. This is just common knowledge.
Your argument was that a significant proportion of these people would end up doing unskilled labor. No they wouldn't, they'd still prefer to make $60,000 rather than $30,000 even if their skillset used to pay an inflation-adjusted $70,000. And some of them will even refuse the $60,000 and find a way to change careers to one that pays more.
So.. there are some really stark differences. "Wage slavery" does have similarities to an extent, but it is still a world apart.
I guess slaves, slave owners, and software engineers are all pretty much the same when you think about it.
There's no guarantee it won't become like the UK or most of Europe where software engineering salaries are miserable.
Still, costs are in line with those wages, so my mortgage was costing me ~$5k/month, my electricity was peaking at $1k/month, my water was $500/month, my property taxes were $1500/month, etc. etc. etc. A high salary doesn't necessarily mean unbound wealth, it just makes living in that VHCOL area comfortable.
Sadly, I still can't afford to stop working, but that's more down to the completely terrible form of "healthcare" that the US employs, and not my actual job.
It _should_ matter from a perspective of not paying enough money for an employee to meet basic needs and have enough discretionary spending to not need a 2nd job.
Just a little back of the envelope economics: if everyone thinks the way you do -> labor supply doubles -> wages go down -> working two jobs is now the expectation
Similar economic side effects to having both genders in the workforce. This lifestyle only "works out" so long as most people are unwilling to do what you're doing
Short of some radical changes around the whole concept of "property", I think this may end up being the norm anyway considering property price inflation?
After all, people need a place to live, so if there's more value to extract, why wouldn't the landlords (and all the industries supporting them) cash in on that?
To call one of the cushiest jobs that has ever existed in human history "slavery" because of some minor restrictions on your ability to make even more money on the side...I don't even have the words to describe just how ridiculous you come across right now.
I've always noticed this disturbing tendency in some people to assume that since they employed you they own your entire life. I think they need to adjust their attitudes.
Disclaimer: contractor so my response might be obviously biased.
The recent push for return to office seems to indicate that many places are not capable of managing what their workers actually produce.
It's not that they can't, it's that the people in power to make this change would themselves be obsoleted if they do so. Many higher-level positions derive their perceived usefulness and prestige by the number of reports under them and the amount of busywork produced even if said busywork is counter-productive to the bottom-line.
A laser focus on deliverables would signify the death of middle-management and various "facilitator" positions who currently enjoy cushy jobs without contributing anything essential.
Maybe, but I'd wager you are over estimating the actual management capabilities of many of those people.
I started working fully remote in 2018 and considered jumping on the multiple job train again but decided against it. I retired a few months ago, at 53, and now part-time manage a horse farm which is more work than 3 simultaneous tech jobs was.
Remote work is about trust. The biggest fear for the employer is that you are slacking off, because they cannot physically see if you're even there. If an employer realizes that you have accepted another full time job contract they would feel cheated, even if your output is excellent. I worry that the rational position for the employer would be to try to force their next hire to not be fully remote, and to try to implement more measures to monitor and control the existing remote positions.