The Sin Bin • Re: Wealth re-distribution
Sal Paradise wrote:
Yes I take you point about the workers but without the entrepeneur the workers never get a chance and everything stagnates. Someone has to get the ball running and manage the growth both financially and operationally and that isn't the workers.
The Labour idea of having a cleaner on the board of a PLC is completely bonkers - what would they actually contribute at that level.
Education is an interesting one - you will always have inequality that is the human condition - some are genetically more intelligent than others and some parents see education as a way of progress and some see it as a necessary evil you can never have the level-playing field utopia that Labour seem to think is possible.
Somebody has to get the ball rolling and it should be properly incentivised. But products fill needs. Just as we’d still have had Olympic sprint champions if Usain Bolt had chosen to be a couch potato, and Jimmy Carr not telling jokes would not impact much on GDP, other companies would have developed computer software and employed people to do it if Bill Gates could not have been bothered.
Everybody contributes - if there’s no vision from the top, opportunities will be missed and efforts misdirected. Take away those working on delivery, nothing gets delivered, and everything stagnates. Take away the support staff in payroll and the cleaners, and the other staff are unable to deliver and everything stagnates. Should the people at the top of the hierarchy with the most responsibility be better remunerated than those below them in the organisation? Absolutely. Is the gap currently too big? Well, you seemed to think so a few pages ago.
In terms of a cleaner on the board, I do think somebody who could puncture a few overinflated egos might offer some benefit. Just having somebody to call bullshit, and not laugh along with weak jokes or inappropriate behaviour might put a slight brake on the arrogance that power and extreme wealth can breed. Is Elon Musk a talented guy? Yes. Would he benefit from being told ‘no’ occasionally? Clearly he would. And obviously it doesn’t have to be a cleaner specifically.
While resources are limited, we will have inequality. Some are more intelligent or driven than others. But circumstance plays a huge role. Would I have enjoyed the same level of success in my life if i’d been born in a shanty in Manila, for example? Of course not. More worrying, would I have the same chances growing up in Hull now as I did 30 or so years ago? I dunno, maybe the barriers were just less clear to me back then.
A level-playing field may not be feasible in the foreseeable, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aspire to it and try to make things better. It is about equality of opportunity as well as wealth, and the game seems rigged to many - some of that can be put down to its ‘losers’ looking for something or someone to blame, but even you seem to think there’s a problem.
Statistics: Posted by Mild Rover — Sat Jan 05, 2019 10:04 am