Just to be clear, when you say that it’s much harder to get such a job, and that this is due in part to increased competition from immigration and women, what you mean to say is that it’s much harder for non-women and non-immigrants to get such a job, because it’s correspondingly easier for immigrants and women to get them. Yes?
You seem to additionally be implying that how hard it is for women and immigrants to get jobs isn’t a relevant factor in determining the difficulty in achieving a decent life. Yes?
I have no intention of arguing against either of those points here, I just want to make sure I’ve understood you correctly.
Just to be clear, when you say that it’s much harder to get such a job, and that this is due in part to increased competition from immigration and women, what you mean to say is that it’s much harder for non-women and non-immigrants to get such a job, because it’s correspondingly easier for immigrants and women to get them. Yes?
Yes. I am aware of the lump of labor fallacy, and that in theory an increasing number of workers might have economic effects creating more jobs even as said workers take existing ones, ending up with a similar or perhaps even a better job market than existed before the new workers came into the picture. But in practice it seems like workers have increased faster than jobs, and the oversupply of labor has led lower wages, lower non-monetary compensation, and/or lack of jobs.
You seem to additionally be implying that how hard it is for women and immigrants to get jobs isn’t a relevant factor in determining the difficulty in achieving a decent life. Yes?
Let’s start with women. If you think of the family as the basic block of society instead of the atomized individual, then yes. Under the old model, it was understood that women would marry early (men slightly less early), and that their husbands would be financially responsible for the resulting household and children. If there is a strong job market for men under this model, then most women do not need to work; only the very poor, the widows, the spinsters, and other extreme cases. Instead of slaving away 40 hours per week at work like their husbands did, wives were free to slave away cooking and cleaning and raising the children, which is still slavery, but is a much kinder form of slavery, with a more caring master. Under the new model and circumstances, both men and women perform the wage kind of slavery, and either they perform the household kind of slavery on top of that, or they outsource it, with negative consequences all around.
Immigrants are a different matter. Utilitarians can make a good case that immigration increased total utility, improving the immigrants’ quality of life more than it lowered existing citizens’. If you’re one of those guys who thinks we should all be sending all of our spare income to Africa, or whatever percentage of our income is realistically psychologically sustainable, I guess this is pretty great, and it’s also great if you are one of the immigrants waiting to get in, but it’s not so great for existing citizens whose quality of life is being brought to equilibrium with the rest of the world’s, or for the immigrants already here.
Home appliances cut down quite a bit on “household slavery”. And while you might argue that home-based work is preferable to market work due to having a “kinder, more caring master”, the swift demise of cottage industry once early factories became feasible suggests that folks care more about how productive they are than whether they can work from home.
And while you might argue that home-based work is preferable to market work due to having a “kinder, more caring master”, the swift demise of cottage industry once early factories became feasible suggests that folks care more about how productive they are than whether they can work from home.
The folks who were actually around at the time seemed to disagree about that. Plenty of people devised plans for utopian communities where Moloch wouldn’t be a factor, but they cared little for household-based work. (Indeed, some of them assumed that you could get rid of households altogether, and just live in large, factory-like collective arrangements under the supervision of some ‘uncaring’ leader. Of course, modern evo-psych and social anthropology argue against that view.)
OK; thanks for clarifying. Like I said, I have no intention of arguing those points (though I probably ought to say explicitly I don’t find your arguments convincing), I just wanted to confirm that I was interpreting you correctly.
Just to be clear, when you say that it’s much harder to get such a job, and that this is due in part to increased competition from immigration and women, what you mean to say is that it’s much harder for non-women and non-immigrants to get such a job, because it’s correspondingly easier for immigrants and women to get them. Yes?
You seem to additionally be implying that how hard it is for women and immigrants to get jobs isn’t a relevant factor in determining the difficulty in achieving a decent life. Yes?
I have no intention of arguing against either of those points here, I just want to make sure I’ve understood you correctly.
Yes. I am aware of the lump of labor fallacy, and that in theory an increasing number of workers might have economic effects creating more jobs even as said workers take existing ones, ending up with a similar or perhaps even a better job market than existed before the new workers came into the picture. But in practice it seems like workers have increased faster than jobs, and the oversupply of labor has led lower wages, lower non-monetary compensation, and/or lack of jobs.
Let’s start with women. If you think of the family as the basic block of society instead of the atomized individual, then yes. Under the old model, it was understood that women would marry early (men slightly less early), and that their husbands would be financially responsible for the resulting household and children. If there is a strong job market for men under this model, then most women do not need to work; only the very poor, the widows, the spinsters, and other extreme cases. Instead of slaving away 40 hours per week at work like their husbands did, wives were free to slave away cooking and cleaning and raising the children, which is still slavery, but is a much kinder form of slavery, with a more caring master. Under the new model and circumstances, both men and women perform the wage kind of slavery, and either they perform the household kind of slavery on top of that, or they outsource it, with negative consequences all around.
Immigrants are a different matter. Utilitarians can make a good case that immigration increased total utility, improving the immigrants’ quality of life more than it lowered existing citizens’. If you’re one of those guys who thinks we should all be sending all of our spare income to Africa, or whatever percentage of our income is realistically psychologically sustainable, I guess this is pretty great, and it’s also great if you are one of the immigrants waiting to get in, but it’s not so great for existing citizens whose quality of life is being brought to equilibrium with the rest of the world’s, or for the immigrants already here.
Home appliances cut down quite a bit on “household slavery”. And while you might argue that home-based work is preferable to market work due to having a “kinder, more caring master”, the swift demise of cottage industry once early factories became feasible suggests that folks care more about how productive they are than whether they can work from home.
I think that was just Moloch.
The folks who were actually around at the time seemed to disagree about that. Plenty of people devised plans for utopian communities where Moloch wouldn’t be a factor, but they cared little for household-based work. (Indeed, some of them assumed that you could get rid of households altogether, and just live in large, factory-like collective arrangements under the supervision of some ‘uncaring’ leader. Of course, modern evo-psych and social anthropology argue against that view.)
OK; thanks for clarifying. Like I said, I have no intention of arguing those points (though I probably ought to say explicitly I don’t find your arguments convincing), I just wanted to confirm that I was interpreting you correctly.