Late Stage Capitalism

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A place for for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited.

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founded 2 months ago

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anticolonialist

K1nsey6

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They keep our value (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by K1nsey6 to c/latestagecapitalism

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[–] damnedfurry 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You are compensated for your labor with your wage/salary. It's a trade.

If you trade me your shovel for my rake, it wouldn't be accurate to describe either of us as having made out with the "full value". We exchanged our two objects of value.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The trade is unfair though. If I pay you $10 an hour for some widget you produce. I turn around and sell that widget for $1000. You have made $80 for the day of work and I have made $920. I'm not sharing that $920 with you though. Even though you produced a widget that is worth $1000 you will never realize the "full" worth of your work you will get $10 per hour. If you were paid what you were worth there would be no profit in it for someone to employ you.

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Okay, so then why am I not simply creating that widget myself and selling it for $1000 on my own, if it's that simple? Likely because of both of the following, to name a few:

I don't have access to the raw materials and tools needed to create it, they were provided by my employer
I haven't spent the money on the marketing that would make customers willing to pay me $1000 for that widget (see: Apple infamously, and largely successfully, charging significantly more for products than comparable equivalent products of other brands)

The bottom line is, there is much more than "your work" that goes into that widget ultimately being successfully sold for $1000, and that's why you can't accomplish the same on your own (or else you would, right?), and it's why you do not have a rightful claim to that $920.

Now, if you're able to create and sell that widget for any more than the same $80 of time/resources, then you should go into business for yourself, and can reasonably say that the business offering you only $80 was ripping you off.

But in the real world, that's rarely the case for very long. Those situations are extremely rare, and when they're discovered by individuals, they're capitalized on (pardoned the pun) pretty much instantly--all it takes is one person to 'close the gap', generally speaking.