The home owner should have raised the rent as the home value increased because the value of the space increased. Whether the home creates a profit is independent of the renters agreement. the renter is not investing in real estate and carries no risk.
Everything.
Wow that’s the worst misunderstood out of context quotation I’ve ever found myself the victim of.
I sometimes think (and I do not commit myself to this–I merely state “I sometimes find myself thinking”) that the wage system should be replaced with a profit-sharing system. I do not know whether this would result in an increase in income for the worker. And I do not think there’s any sense in which a dishwasher legally employed in the USA is “entitled” to a share of the profits legally or morally. He’s entitled to what he agreed to, no more no less. Now, it may be that we should be working on building a system where agreeing to that wouldn’t seem like a good move to him. But as it stands, it’s what he agreed to and the agreement defines his (moral AND legal) entitlements.
I didn’t misunderstand you. Yes, you couched post #26 with a ton weasel words but regardless, that last sentence I set apart above is the type of “feeling” I was talking about. (Even though you also added the weasel words “may” and “seem to” to that last sentence as well.)
As a side point, I don’t really understand why you had to surround your arguments with such words to (attempt to) distance yourself from the opinion stated. You already have a long posting history sympathetic to the position. Your identity is anonymous here on SDMB. Just say your opinion in a straightforward manner and argue your position from that point. Why use weasel words and then turn around and accuse someone of quoting you out of context?
Huh. Screw you too, then.
Those aren’t weasel words: They express my position precisely.
Why do you and others in these conversations have to approach the issue so distrustingly? You appear hostile thereby, and others become defensive as a result. 
I don’t have much of an opinion here. Actually, emacknight’s got me halfway convinced. But for the most part what I have are questions. Emacknight and others seem to take themselves to have made good arguments, and I’m not seeing good arguments. I’m seeing a lot of unstated presuppositions and half-conscious ideological commitments. I’m trying to bring those forward.
I honestly have no idea what the truth is about the topics being discussed. I’m just trying to find someone with a good argument concerning the topic.
And the most important one I forgot to mention–conceptual confusions. People on boths sides of this argument really seem to me to be confusing, for example, prescriptive and descriptive concepts, and concepts of entitlement, desert and justice (three separate things!).
Because adding a few qualifiers such as “may” and “seem to” to this one post in this one thread so you can step out of character and be “neutral” does not jive with your posting history. I wasn’t intentionally being hostile about it. That’s just the way it looks to me.
Right… I’m with you there. You haven’t found anybody making a good argument for the business owners. I agree that you think that … which is why I responded to you the way I did – which is to take your comments at face value (ignoring the qualifiers such as “may” and “seem to”).
If you ignore the “may” and “seem to” in the statement you’re discussing, then you’re ignoring my stated position. My stated position accurately reflects my actual position (and despite what you said, it’s completely in keeping with everything else I’ve said in these conversations).
So then, you’re refusing to engage with my actual position.
I can’t see what productive continuation there can be from that.
Once again: when you read my posts, you’re reading the words of someone who does not have any well-formed beliefs about the topic, but who is very interested in the topic, and would very much like to have a well-formed belief about it, and who hopes to find the basis for such an opinion in the writings of others–but who seems to find considerable conceptual confusion in those who participate in the conversation who do have opinions and make arguments for them, and so continues to be quite lost.
I don’t believe there are aliens, but I believe there may be.
And I don’t believe that we should be working on building a system where agreeing to wages wouldn’t seem like a good move to dishwashers, but I believe it may be that we should be doing so.
If this is accurate and true, you should be able to cite abundant posts that you authored giving equal time to positive arguments favoring business owners over the workers.
Regardless, I’m just going to let this issue go and let you be “impartial” about this.
As for the following complaints about “confusion”…
… I think you’re actually ADDING to the confusion by saying there is confusion in this thread. I don’t think there’s much confusion.
Descriptive concepts: there’s an existing legal framework for who gets profits. Nobody in any thread I know of is confused about this status quo at all. This total non-argument has been beat to death for some crazy reason.
Prescriptive and entitlements concepts: this can all be boiled down to what people feel/believe/judge is the proper disposition of profits for workers. It’s really that simple. There are 2 sides being discussed.
Now, yes, there has been some confusion over terminology such as “risk”, “entitlement”, etc. But all of that is a sideshow to the fundamental disagreement about who should get what % of profits. That’s the main debate pivot of all these threads. No confusion I see.
Hm… I guess to my mind “entitlement” and “desert” are very different things.
I think that every one of those posters would agree that once an agreement has been entered into, it governs who is entitled to what, both legally and morally. I think.
But they also think that in some sense, that agreement is a bad one. It shouldn’t have been entered into. Why? Because the worker (they think) deserves more than what his agreements entitle him to.
Again, I’m not trading on a confusion between legal and moral entitlements–I’m saying the agreement entitles the participant to what he agreed to in a moral sense, and yet, the person may have deserved (again, in a moral sense) to enter into a different agreement.
If any of the four quoted posters are reading this, I’d love to hear whether they think I’m right about what they think concerning agreements, entitlement, desert, etc.
I’m floored. I’ve given all my time in these threads to positive arguments for the view that Y’s risking X for investment W entitles Y proportionately to X-like rewards resulting from W. (I don’t think anyone in this thread "favors business owners over the workers). I haven’t addressed–neither put forward nor criticized–any other arguments.
People are confused about what ‘should’ means, basically.
I split your following sentence in 2 parts to emphasize what we’re wasting time on:
Yes, yes, and yes one thousand times. We’ve beat this non-argument to death – a thousand deaths actually. Nobody is confused about this. Nobody. And yet we continue to add words to this aspect that everyone on both sides 100% agrees on.
This is the essence and spirit of the debates. It always has been.
To be fair, Voyager said he was misquoted. You’re actually down to 2 posters since you’ve explained that you’re impartial.
Never mind, I misunderstood you.
You’re saying I’ve only argued against these arguments, and I also should have been giving arguments for them, or at least, arguing against arguments for the opposite conclusion.
But my main intention here has been to be in dialogue with emacknight’s view (not him specifically, but his view) so that’s what I’ve been doing.
If someone on a different side of the fence starts up some OP’s titled “understanding labor” or something, check and see what my posts look like in that thread.
I still don’t know why you keep using the word desert. Am I the only one who finds it strange? Are you referring to losses, or did you forget an ‘s’ ?
Then how was I wasting time? I can’t see the relevance of the four quotes unless they are misinterpreted as being confused on that very point.
Gah! I have no clue what you people are even talking about anymore.
Myself being one of the 2 eliminated?
Dude, I showed you the dictionary entry! 
So the question is, which agreements should we enter into.
Emacknight’s answer is, we should enter into the agreements where reward is directly proportional to risk. (Right?)
I then ask, what’s the argument that those are the best agreements?
The only reply I think I’ve gotten to that is an argument from psychology–we’re psychologically structured to try to make reward proportional to risk.
I pointed out that’s not a good argument–just because we’re structured to try to make one thing proportional to another, that doesn’t mean it’s good to try to make that one thing proportional to that other thing.
As far as I can tell, that’s where the discussion (mine anyway) stands.
Since Ruminator’s posts, I’ve queried myself to see if I have a position. Maybe I’m getting one, but I don’t feel a lot of conviction about it. It’s this: entitlement is determined by agreements (we all agree on this of course) and desert is determined by agreements (that’s the bone of contention) but agreements are only agreements when entered into freely (that’s agreed to by everyone) and many dishwashers did not enter into these agreements freely (very controversial, and not really something htat’s under discussion in this thread). Happy Ruminator?
No. For example, Whack-a-Mole was specifically not talking about that legalistic point. He was talking about the higher concept (non legal) of what he judge was right and fair. He even made it a point to mock the OP using a strawman of fake ignorant dishwashers that supposedly didn’t know the letter of the law. Seriously, we have beat this sub-topic to death… and all over a total non-disagreement.
Wow, this must be a new talent of SDMB participation. Find a subtopic that everyone agrees 100% and write a million words back and forth about how we disagree and are confused about it!
Correct.
But there were probably others that expressed similar “feelings.” I just didn’t go over every post looking for them.
Alright, I’m prepared to drop that topic. I cannot follow what you’re saying. I said they were probably using “deserves” or “entitled” a moral rather than a legal sense. But they were quoted in a context which I could only make sense of if I thought the quoter was confused and thought they meant it in a legal sense.
Okay just never mind.
I guess you’re redefining the debate from “investment risk –> profit” to “agreements –> profit”
Although the words “capital investment” are drastically different from “agreement”, I don’t think the debate is all that different because the end concept of “fair & justice of profits” is still what we’re ultimately debating.
But let’s play along with your characterization of the “unfree coerced dishwasher.” In what scenario would he be “free” to enter into the agreement that “capital investment risk” determines profits? I guess if the dishwasher was a millionaire himself, he would be “free” to enter such an agreement. But I’m not trying to mock you with that non-existent dishwasher. Obviously, that scenario is too far fetched… so what would this species of a “free” dishwasher that’s not independently wealthy look like?
Every year I sign a lease. I agree to pay rent, and the owner agrees that I get to live in the home. He also agrees to keep the building in livable condition for the entire year, continuously. I agree to notify the property manager sixty days before the end of my lease if I wish to renew the lease, and he agrees to notify me prior to that of the rent for the following year.
If the building gets hit by a meteor, he loses his building, I lose all my belongings, unless I have my own insurance, and he has to find a place for me to live for the balance of my lease, since my current home is not livable. If rent goes down to a third of what I am paying now, I lose out on the cheap rent for the rest of the year, since I have already signed a contract to pay him my rent.
If I think I can get a better deal, I can look around before I sign the lease. If I don’t like the place he has for me to move after the meteor strike, I can refuse, and ask that the balance of the lease be voided. We might have to go to landlord tenant court over that one.
I am not an owner. If the RNC decides to have a convention in my town, and the place I live in could be rented for ten times the rent I am paying, He cannot raise my rent because he is missing out on the bonus in sudden demand. He risks a possible improvement in rental income to gain a contracted income. Neither of us gets to whine if we end up on the short end of a change in the economy. We have agreed to a contract, and are legally bound to fulfill it.
Tris