Of course I believe what I wrote. Some person(s) invented a modern road. Who builds those roads? It matters not if you have the best idea since the wheel for transportation because you’d be lucky to build a mile or two on your own. You need others to work on your behalf to see the idea fully realized.
Certainly the guy who invented ink (as an example) is someone with a good idea and should profit.
But he’s got nothing without others to help him (or her as the case may be).
As mentioned you could write the next American Classic. No one but you will know it without a whole variety of industries that enable its publication.
You can say (perhaps) one person in each of those industries had a bright idea but without all the people who work in those industries your bright idea is shit and won’t see the light of day.
People employed are not paid because they provide nothing. They are paid because they provide a value greater than their salary. They are necessary to the process. If not they’d be fired (or prices would rise to cover the cost). The miner swinging a pick axe is generating wealth for those above him. If he wasn’t he’d be fired or the company would go out of business. The miner may be easily replaceable but he’s not a net drain on the system. He is a net producer. Indeed the guy at the end of the line is the net drain taking the profit generated by those under him.
Stephen King is not supporting the other 99 people out of the kindness of his heart. He needs those people. Without the other 99 Stephen King is a pauper who wrote stuff few if any will ever read.
He is just offended by the LUtzian use of “job creators” used for the wealthy who keep getting their taxes cut because the Repubs insist it will create jobs. Where are the jobs?
Most of the one percenters are financial thieves and bankers who looted the economy and the treasury. It also is the old money wealthy living off family fortunes.
Our corporations are producing jobs across the globe. They feel they owe nothing to America. Why do we owe them low taxes?
The issue here is “the guy/gal with a bright idea” profiting and the other 99 out of 100 somehow sponging off that good idea. In the case of Intel the “bright idea” was to get smart people to work for them. This is paraphrased but in the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (great book…do not let the title dissuade you) Dale Carnegie tells that his “skill” is to get those smarter than him to work for him. He benefits but he is not the guy with the “bright idea”.
What Carnegie did is fine but do not dismiss Joe Worker thinking Carnegie is the one with the big ideas. Carnegie profited from those smarter than he was when it came coming up with big ideas.
Clearly he is a profitable name. But at the start of his career he wasn’t. Some people pan his books.
Look up “Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. He wrote that (and another book) and never got them published. He committed suicide. His mother found his manuscripts and sought to get them published. She was denied at every turn and finally, as I understand the story, burst into a publisher’s office and demanded it be read. The guy, rather than having her arrested, said he’d read a chapter if she’d agree to leave after (I am doing this from memory so may have some details wrong). He read some and liked what he saw and published it.
The book won the Pulitzer Prize (and I recommend you read it because it is good).
Point is a “good” idea may never see the light of day regardless of how awesome it is. Stephen King got lucky. Talk to any writer and ask them about the hell it is to get published. They all tell the same story. Once you are “big” no problem but that is one in a thousand (or worse).
What I am getting at is a “good idea” is not enough in and of itself usually. The person with that idea needs others to make it happen.
I occasionally wonder how much music or writing or other art that is awesome has been lost to the world because the creator didn’t get lucky enough to get it distributed to the world. Most people who write/make music/paint and so on are awful but I am willing to bet some real gems are in there and have been lost to us.
It is true. There are many things that enable Stephen King to write. Hell, having a supermarket nearby rather than spending his time growing his own food enables him to do what he does. You cannot look at him and say all else is interchangeable bullshit…he creates wealth. He is enabled to do what he does by the work of thousands of other people.
I am not dissing what he does. I am pointing out he couldn’t do it without those other 99.
My GF used to work for a book publisher and would work the slush pile. Basically works that were sent to them in the hopes of being published. From her experience she said nearly no one made it out of the slush pile. She remembered one instance (out of thousands).
Seriously…ask any writer their experience trying to get published. Without an agent your chances are pretty close to zero.
You’ve got nothing without others to work to see your idea come to fruition.
As mentioned…if you invented the iPod and built them by hand how successful do you think you’d be without a factory of workers making it happen? If you were left to build in your garage you’d get nowhere.
You were doing okay up until this bafflingly illogical sentence.
Stephen King may have come up with the idea and the words, but it’s meaningless to say the other people involved in making and selling the books aren’t creating wealth. Of course they’re creating wealth; without them, the books don’t get made.
If the printing press operators, truck drivers and book store employees aren’t creating any wealth, they would not be necessary, and wouldn’t be paid anything. but they ARE necessary, which is why you have to pay people to do these things, and why Stephen King does not print, deliver and sell his books by himself.
I cannot speak for him but my guess is he’d say unless Stephen King wrote his stuff there’d be no need for these other people. Thus, their jobs exist only because Stephen King wrote a book.
I maintain there are industries on both sides of Stephen King that allow Stephen King to get published at all. Without them Stephen King either would not have time to write as he worked to meet minimum requirements of life (e.g. growing food) or he’d never get mass distribution of his work. Not like the modern publishing industry came about solely because Stephen King wrote something.
First of all, the “1 in 100” isn’t meant literally. Second, we have 6billion people on this shiny blue ball. Third, even if there were just 100 people, the expression “1 in 100” doesn’t imply that none of the other 99 are doing something.
For example: 1 in 100 might come up with a way to sharpen sticks, while another in that 100 is really good at finding berries, and another is good at starting a fire. Each benefit from the other, and are then able to teach the rest of the neanderthals sitting around waiting to get fed. Now consider that we’ve got 6billion people, that are benefiting from thousands of years of human development. So now let’s look at what you wrote:
Paper was discovered/developed a few thousand years ago by the “1 in 100,” the modern process is pretty much fleshed out. We now have a society that needs/wants paper, so we pay people to cut down trees and turn it into paper. That doesn’t require any high level function, it’s been done, now people are simply repeating the process over and over.
Yes, those are inventions that the “1 in 100” came up with. In each case the technology was built on something previous. You’ll notice that the computer developer copied the QWERTY keyboard, and chose not to reinvent the wheel. The guy that designed the typewriter didn’t come up with a new letter structure, and the guy that developed the pen didn’t come up with his own language. All stuff put in place by the previous “1 in 100”.
How is that possible, because there has been MORE THAN 100 PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET.
Yes, 1 guy (copying 1 other guy’s work) came up with the printing press. Once developed other people, who weren’t able to come up with it, built many of them. See how that works?
Right, you’ve got 100 people sitting around scratching charcole onto rocks and one guy says, “hey check it out, this black stuff coming out of this fish works better.” Then the rest of the 99 use the ink to come up with something new. It might be a different “1 in 100” that then takes the quill from a porcupine and makes the ink more useful.
Few people are truly skilled enough for that work. But more to the point, they need a product to advertise. So yes, advertising and market are important, but more in an symbiotic way. If Stephen King advertises he can sell more books. Without advertising he can still sell books. Not everyone or everything needs advertising. And even still, “1 in 100” writes a story, and “1 in 99” promote the story. See how 2 in 100 can still be functioning? It’s almost like a society.
Yes, the person that opens the book store generates wealth. Only 1 in 100 can start and run a successful bookstore. The other 99 fill it with crap no one wants to read. Or fail to adapt to the creation of the internet and go bankrupt.
That’s not what we’re talking about here. But you’ll notice that of the 100 people working on the road, only 1 of them is capable of “designing” the road, the rest are very good at following orders and driving the truck with the scraper on it. That’s the guy that spent 4 years working on a civil engineering degree and gets to wear the white hat.
Yes, congrats, you have shown that human development builds on previous discoveries. Do you want a medal for your achievements? You left off the fact that lazy ol’ Mr King couldn’t even be bothered to come up with his own language.
Yes, lots and lots of people right now are writing horror/mystery novels, how many of them will be successful? 1 in 10, 1 in 100, 1 in 1000? Most of what they write will be garbage, drivel. Nothing worth printing or advertising or selling in a bookstore.
Correction, the pen “inventor.” It’s been invented, now we’ve got people mass producing them for a fraction of a penny. From wiki: The manufacture of economical, reliable ball point pens arose from experimentation, modern chemistry, and the precision manufacturing capabilities of 20th century technology. Many patents worldwide are testaments to failed attempts at making these pens commercially viable and widely available. The ballpoint pen went through several failures in design throughout its early stages.
How many people were able to come up with a way to have a semi viscous material in a tube that didn’t leak or clog? Now that’s it’s been invented anyone can buy the three machines necessary to crank out thousands per day.
Not even remotely true.
Again, neither true, nor in conflict with the issue at hand. The guy that came up with fire needed other people to help haul fire wood. But without the guy that developed fire, those people look pretty stupid walking around with bundles of sticks. See how that works?
And once fire has been discovered, it doesn’t need to get reinvented by everyone that uses it. Now someone can work on the next big thing like charcoal or smelting or cooking. Or better yet, now because of the progress in human development, someone can develop a fire extinguisher.
Holy shit, you’re right!
So back to the beginning. “1 in 100” comes up with something that makes money. That allows the other 99 to earn income in the process. The other 99, while skilled an necessary didn’t come up with the pen they are punching out of the injection molding machine, or the machine, or the plastic, they’re just being paid to push the button.
All cogs are necessary otherwise they fuck up the machine. Doesn’t mean they aren’t interchangeable. They get paid for being a cog. Nothing wrong with that.
See how this works. Saying “1 in 100 generates wealth” doesn’t mean the other 99 interchangeable blogs aren’t important.
So to summarize:
*there are 6 billion people on this planet all sharing what they’ve discovered
*thousands of years of human development on which to build
*specialization means that within 100 people, 5 might each develop something the other people find useful.
There can certainly be other people in the process generating wealth. But in a more simplified fashion, King wrote a story that people will pay money to read. Like I said, he could at the very least print it himself using the free printer that came with his laptop. Some people make paper that other people buy to print on. Some people make ink that other people pay to write with. Lots of people generating wealth. Those people hire staff to do the work and pay them.
Wait, what’s that, he needs a printer. Yes, the person (or people) that designed the modern laser jet printer created wealth. They did it based on the dot-matrix printer, based on something before it. Thanks to them King can make more money. Thanks to King they’ll make more money.
None of what I said precludes other people from themselves generating wealth, and then teaming up with others to generate even more wealth.
Note that we’ve had authors for a lot longer than we’ve had publishing houses and marketing executives. Stephan King is able to make more money because of all the other people that want a piece of his profit. He can sell more books if someone is willing to drive them to a neighbouring down. But unfortunately that person is interchangeable with all the other people capable of driving from here to there. He/she doesn’t have to build and design his own truck, or build a road, or figure out how to get there. That person gets paid for their time, he earns income, but hardly generates wealth.
Now, we can go one level up and point Fred Smith, founder of FedEx. He pulled together hundreds of interchangeable drivers and created the first overnight delivery system in the world. Each driver absolutely necessary, but none of them capable of coming up with the organization.
Stephan King, as a talented author, generates wealth. And he can choose to pay people to help him generate even more wealth.
Someone that sets up a movie studio is also generating wealth. And they may partner with King to produce movies. They’ll pay people in the process.
I didn’t say all else is interchangeable. We have a society with millions of people. Which means 1 person can write a story, and another turn it into a play, and another can direct it. That you end up with 5 talented (and specialized) individuals doesn’t contradict the “1 in 100.”
Yes, King needs a grocery store, he needs the rest of society functioning, no one is disputing that.
Like you said, thousands of writers are producing crap, and 1 in million will be a gem. The publishing house needs to sift through and find those gems to make their money. And out of hundreds of failed publishing houses, only a few will have the ability to pick gems repeatedly.
See how the 1 in 100 applies?
Yes, King is the 1 in 100 of the truly great authors. He needs the 1 in 100 great editors, and he needs the 1 in 100 publishing houses. King’s work could end up in the bottom of a slush pile. If you give the same pile to 100 girl friends, only 1 in 100 will be able to consistently find the gems.
Stephen King books have sold over 300 million copies. King could not conceivably self-produce one percent of that; I doubt he could have sold a percent of a percent of that. Without the efforts of the other people involved i nthe process it’s quite likely he’d have sold no books at all and would still be an English teacher. It is indisputably the case that the other people involved in selling Mr. King’s books have added value to the process. That’s what creating wealth is; adding value through some sort of process. You somehow have to explain how it is Mr. King’s efforts sold 300,000,000 books while at the same time admitting that by himself he would have had trouble selling 30.
Whatever King could have done on his own is vastly multiplied by the efforts of all the other people involved. They create wealth, too, which is why they get paid for it.
What you’re saying quite literally does not make a lick of sense; it’s completely illogical. The person driving the truck does create wealth; that’s why he is being paid. If he isn’t creating some sort of value, why is he being paid to do what he’s doing?
You seem to be really confused about what “creating wealth” is. Your definition, which won’t even hold up to any sort of logical scrutiny, seems to define “wealth” as “ideas.” But that’s an absurd definition of “Wealth,” one that simply eliminates by definition almost all productive human activity. You’re quite literally saying that almost all the world’s economic activity produces no wealth - since, of course, most people in the world are either growing crops or raising animals someone else has domesticated, or making products someone else has designed, or providing servies someone else invented first. News flash: Even most business owners are either making or selling things they did not create themselves.
Certainly, Stephen King is more economically valuable than any individual truck driver, but less valuable does not mean not valuable at all.
I cannot speak for him but I am seeing the argument as being if Stephen King does not write something people want then no one will pay the truck driver to deliver books. The truck driver only has a job because Stephen King wrote a book.
Seems a chicken and the egg thing to me though. If Mr. King does not write a book then no need for the truck driver. If Mr. King does write a book then nothing happens unless you have a truck driver to deliver it.
There’s no linear relationship between the money paid for Stephen King books and each individual’s performance; it doesn’t work that way. Each person, individually, is of absolutely no value without any of the others.
emacknight seems to be assuming that NONE of it exists without King, and therefore he “created” all the wealth. That just isn’t a logical way to approach it, though, for a variety of reasons:
Even if King devised the originating idea, you still cannot allocate to him all the wealth creation in any way that makes sense. If King is 100% responsible for the wealth creation why’re all those other people involved?
It’s not even close to reasonable to assume that had Stephen King never written any books, all of the money ever paid for his books (or movies based on the books and whatnot) would vanish. That is, of course, nonsense; the great majority of the money spent on King’s books would have been spent on other author’s books or other filmmaker’s movies, or diverted into other forms of spending. If my favourite author, Bill Bryson, releases a new book tomorrow, $30 of my money will be spent on his book; if he elects not to release the book, that $30 won’t vanish. Possibly it will be spent on a different book. Perhaps I’ll spend it on a video game. It’s almost certainly the case that King’s skills have resulted in more books sold than otherwise would have been the case, as doubtlessly many people have chosen to read King’s works instead of engaging in non-reading activities because of the appeal of King’s books. But it’s not a difference of 300 million books.
Consequently, there is almost nobody in the value chain after King who would probably lose their job. Total retail books sales wouldn’t change that much, so the truck driver still delivers books, the retail salesperson still checks them out, and printer still prints books, and so on. Total book sales would be slightly lower, and so it’s possible slightly fewer people would be employed or people who were employed would make a bit less money, but it’s not an everything-or-nothing proposition (except, possibly, for people immediately employed by King, like his agent or his publicist.) There would be less wealth in the world, but not by a margin of the price of 300 million books.
That’s correct, and that is what I said a few times.
Getting paid isn’t the same thing as creating wealth. People that add value get paid for adding value. But notice the way people are getting paid as part of Stephan King getting paid. He writes a story that people are willing to pay $20 for. He personally can only print a few, so he hires someone help. Now he can print more books but only makes $18 per book. He needs those transported to stores so now he hires a driver and now gets $16 per book. Others get paid by contributing to his product. And let’s say he has no cash to print the first series of books, so he pays someone for cash, meaning he’s down to $10 a book.
He’s only going to take those steps if it means he’ll sell more books. He’s created wealth, not just for himself, but for all the people who contribute.
I’ve never said others aren’t contributing some sort of value. In fact, I’ve said repeatedly that each cog in the machine is important, which is why the cog is there. Each person gets paid for their contribution.
So now I have to ask, should each person get paid the same thing, or is it okay if we pay people differently?
Should Steven King get paid the same amount as the truck driver that delivers his books to the store, and the cashier that sells his book?
I guess we could have gone through this in post #2, so how would you like to define “creating wealth” or “generate any wealth”?
No, I’m quite literally saying the exact opposite.
Wait, what? Why is Stephan King more economically valuable? What are you saying about the truck driver?
And I guess it’s a bit late but might as well go and play the straw man card, because you’ve gone and created a big one there. No one is suggesting the truck driver is not valuable at all. On reflection I now see the title of this thread includes that nice little modifier “any.”
Okay, that’s just a whole lot of straw men that I have no desire to play with. You can respond to what I’ve said, but I’m not debating you on what you think I’ve assumed and what you think I may have said.
First of all, if 99% of the people didn’t generate wealth, they wouldn’t get paid a salary because they’d be of no value to anyone. The fact that we pay workers a salary means we recognize that they bring value and create wealth. That’s what we’re paying them for.
Some of you on the left are so invested in the view of society as a class struggle between rich and poor, business vs worker, that you’re incapable of grasping a completely different view of the relationship.
Workers go to work for others because the people they work for offer something they can’t find elsewhere. Primarily, they offer you more money than you can earn on your own. They can do this because the value they bring to the relationship is efficiency. The efficiency of assembly lines, of large capital investments bringing power machinery and vast distribution networks. Accounting departments and design studios and R&D facilities.
This infrastructure magnifies the value of the workers, allowing the company to offer competitive salaries for their services. If they can’t magnify the value of the labor by a large enough amount to allow it to offer competitive salaries while paying for all the other costs of business, then the business won’t form, or it will form and fail, freeing up those workers for more productive employment.
Both sides win in this relationship. The employee gains access to an infrastructure that magnifies his labor and allows him to focus his attention on what he’s best at, for which is earns more money than he could without that access. The business gains an employee and extracts the difference between the negotiated wage along with the other costs of business and earns a profit.
I owned my own software business for a while. A very small business. I made a living at it, but I wasn’t particularly happy. I hated the taxes, the ad work, the schmoozing to get jobs, and all the other stuff that took me away from creating software.
So I gave it up and went to work for a big company. I make twice what I did before, because i get to spend more of my time doing what I do best and and less time doing things other people are better at than me. I’ve also earned the company far more than what I’ve been paid, and my bosses have a lot more money than I do. But you know what? I don’t care. They earned it. I know what it takes to be those guys, and I don’t want to be one. More power to them. And if one of them makes enough good decisions that he eventually lands in the CEO’s chair and makes millions of dollars a year? Good on him.
We need millionaires and billionaires. They add color to society. They take risks. They swing for the fences. Without billionaires to fund them, we wouldn’t have TED talks, or Rutan spaceships, or SpaceX spaceships, or Richard Branson’s ballooning around the world. We would have Bill Gates’ to give billions of dollars to charities that have escaped the gaze of big governments. Paul Allen funds SETI teliscopes. I *like[/i[ these people, and I think the world would be a much duller place if we took all their money from them as they made it and spread the wealth around.
Besides, it’s theirs. They earned it. I have no problem with that. I understand I have to compete in the world and have to make choices and enter contracts and do my best, and that I need other people and organizations to help me, and for that I must pay them.
In the abstract, this is a profoundly just system. People enter freely into contract for mutual benefit. Everyone wins - but some win more than others. Sometimes they win much more. This doesn’t sit well with some people - especially people who feel that society has wronged them or that it’s unfair to have to compete at that level or face poverty. I get that too. They seek a kinder, gentler world where everyone just cooperates and shares and as a result there is less competition, less waste, and everyone recognizes everyone else’s equal share in the big pie.
But remember those guys that rose to the top of business? They’re still going to be around. Only, they’re going to be moving through the government. You exchange the tyranny of the market for the tyranny of the bureaucracy, and in the end, the same guys are the ones farting through silk. The bell curve doesn’t vanish at the ballot box.
Given that reality, would you rather interact with them in a job interview, or when being questioned by the police?
The underlying problem is that people who have common skills also do not have much economic or political power. So for them, solidarity is appealing. Unions make sense when they protect a factory full of workers of interchangeable skills, to ensure that they are treated fairly.
That’s the real struggle - the organization of those unhappy with the system, vs those who aren’t. But that doesn’t make it a matter of morality. It’s a purely political struggle for power.
The interchangeable comment is fairly impotent by itself, if a bit ignorant and highly elitist, arrogant and unnecessarily condescending.
But then the same exact poster also said in the same thread that only 1% of people generate wealth, and the two arguments were used to support each other.
Sigh Nobody will ever address this, but I want this pointed out for record’s sake.
Msmith, the person who called workers “interchangeable carbon blobs” and said only the “top 1%” generate wealth, made this into a class struggle. He did so by defining businesses as wealth generators and workers as useless, aka non wealth generators. This is a common feeling among industrialists, right wing politicians and their sycophants. It’s a classic class war mentality: the side that paints workers as useless.
But even after all that was clearly documented and linked here, you’re going to try to turn this around and blame it on the left?
Allow me to add onto that, since this is about both the generation of wealth and the interchangeability of people.
With as many writers as there are out there, Stephen King is almost as interchangeable as a truck driver. Take him out of the picture and another author will be there to write books that a truck driver must haul.
The archetypal John Galt is also, to a lesser degree, interchangeable. He’s not the only person who can invent things.
So I will summarize my addition to your point: everyone is interchangeable; some, less than others.
Are you saying this thread is a reference to something said somewhere else? If so, could you point us in the direction of what it is you’re talking about?