If "justice" suggests that rewards are doled out based on merit, what decides which actions are meritricious? If it is "the Market", I don't buy it. Let's posit two workers, both employed in hard manual labor. ONe is a union member, and because his union (which he has little to do with except paying dues) has negotiated successfully, he makes $30 an hour. The other works in a non-union shop, and makes $10 an hour. Why is the union member more meritricious than the non-union member? (The union member can't get into the union because his skin is the wrong color.)GE Morton wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2021, 1:15 pm
They work under "barbaric" conditions so they can put food on the table and a roof over their heads, just as humans have always done. You seem to think their employers, and the customers for the products they help make, have some duty to improve their conditions. They don't. They are not their employees' mommies or daddies. Employers pay the least they can --- which means the least the employee will accept --- for the work they want done, just as they do for all the other services and materials they buy, and just as you do when you buy a new teevee or new car.
The bosses are paid what their services are worth on the market, just as are all other employees of the company. Businesses are not charities.
Let's look at another example (from our own storied past). A black man and white man work at similar jobs. Because the black man has fewer opportunities for employment, he accepts a job at $10 an hour. The white man works at the same job, and is less productive, but he gets paid twice as much because the employer is a bigot who doesn't want to hire black people and because the white man has more opportunities. Is this "just"?
Your faith in the Free Market is touching in its sincerity, GE. But it is unmerited. Free markets are exploitive. Besides, no markets are really free. They are regulated by (among other things) immigration laws. The impoverished Bangladeshi can't move to this country and get a better job. We won't let him. We''ll build a wall to keep him out.
In addition, the bosses are often not paid what they are "worth". As a boss, I'm well aware that I was paid more than I merited. I didn't work very hard; I goofed off on the internet most of the time. But the company was profitable and I was friends with the CEO (and I did some things others couldn't do). The notion that Free Markets are automatically efficient is, however, a myth. They are good at setting prices for goods (one problem with Communism was Black Markets, because the governemtn couldn't figure out pricing for goods). But they are not as good at setting prices for services -- especially employment servces. In fact, I'd suggest that the governement is BETTER at deciding pay scales than the Free(?) Market, in which personal relationships, old boy networks, and inaccurate valuations abound.