: : : You still have not answered my question, "How can you earn money at someone else's expense?"
: : : Maybe you do not know the general meaning of the word "earn". When you earn something, it is not theft, but merely a reward for your labor.: : I'm sorry, I thought you wanted to discuss the effects of the capitalist system. It appears that's not your subject at all. The above question appears to be a matter of explaining the procedure of wage labor. It's easy to answer: if someone pays you for your labor, it's at "their expense." Question asked, question answered, case closed.
: Ah, a good point you have. It is "their expense" when "they" pay you, but do "they" not benefit from your labor? "Their expense" is meant to equal out the situation when "they" benefit from your labor. So, in a sense, there is no real expense to either party but, in my opinion, a gain. I strongly suggest that you carefully regard this link.
The use of passive tense here obscures a possessor of the verb "meant." When you say " 'Their expense' is meant to equal out the situation when 'they' benefit from your labor," you need to identify WHO MEANS TO EQUAL OUT THE SITUATION. Who has an interest in "equality"? Doesn't everyone have an interest in gaining an advantage? It isn't the entity who pays for labor that wants "equality" (which is usually a corporate entity, since those in the US who are rich enough to afford more than illegal Mexican immigrant labor are rich enough to take advantage of incorporation laws), because such an entity needs to reduce business overhead by paying such labor as little as possible. Witness the enormous success of companies like Nike, who pay their oppressed Asian employees 26 cents an hour to make shoes, while being complicit with a situation where ghetto kids in America's inner cities kill each other over $90 shoes. The profits made by Nike are not "equaled out" by the wages Nike pays.
And it isn't the laborer, who would readily accept a huge salary were he or she to have the leverage to demand such a thing. Witness the enormous salaries demanded by professional athletes in the US, from professional teams that barely turn a profit. Another "equal" exchange of labor for money?
If it's the theorist of "equal exchange" who MEANS TO EQUAL OUT THE SITUATION between laborer and employer, then who cares? The realities of exchange are what might make exchanges equal. Fingers typing on the keyboards of theorists won't make exchanges "equal" all by themselves. The assumption that the exchange of labor for money is equal "by definition" is an assumption made for the benefit of those who care more about their definitions than for the majority of the world's human beings. Real equality is more than a prop for an ideology.
In conclusion, there's no natural law prohibiting exchanges under capitalism from being generally-accepted ripoffs, for one party or the other. In fact, the history of exchange bears out a vast inequality of possession and privilege among Earth's human residents, throughout the planet, largely an effect of this false idea that the exchange of labor for money always "equals out" somehow.
Certainly a citation of the dictionary definition of the word "earn" is not going to verify such a natural law, if it could possibly exist. I earn my money because 1) the current market for my labor fetches a certain price for it, a price sufficient for me to keep working, and 2) previous generations of labor activists created labor laws requiring employers to provide "decent" (according to some arbitrary standard) wages and conditions for workers. Did I earn the previous generations and the market conditions, as well as my money? What did I do to bring all these things about?
:So, in a sense, there is no real expense to either party but, in my opinion, a gain. I strongly
suggest that you carefully regard this link.
Not only have I already read your link, but I've critiqued it, in this post, here in this Debating Room. I strongly suggest you read my
critique before strongly suggesting that I read your link again.
None.
