[TeMPOraL]

The labor theory of value is "not real" in the sense that it doesn't correctly describe how the market works at scale. At the same time, it is real in the sense that it's a close approximation of what we consider intrinsically fair.

Now, you can claim the judgement of the market should replace people's sense of fairness. In that case, there's no problem. Or, you can see the market being misaligned with our sense of fairness as a bug, and ask how it can be fixed.

[cercatrova]

Fair. However I like your closing sentence before you edited just now:

> Or, instead, you can ask how can the market be coerced to be more fair.

I explicitly don't see the market being misaligned with our sense of fairness as a bug, because I am not one to judge what people like, as I mentioned. For the one making lipstick videos, I will not tell them that their work is less valuable than engineers', because, as I mentioned, it is not for me to decide. If their viewers like it, then that's good for them.

[TeMPOraL]

> Fair. However I like your closing sentence before you edited just now:

>> Or, instead, you can ask how can the market be coerced to be more fair.

I edited it to make it closer to what I meant. "Coercing the market" feels too much like giving people green light to force their opinions on others, which is already a big problem in modern society, and I'm not advocating more of it.

What I'm after here is what I believe is a human universal, even if fuzzy in details: the hierarchy of value based on how much one's contributing to others' well-being. It's the one that would place farmers, doctors, garbage collectors and sanitation engineers near the top, and influencers near the bottom.

The way the market allocates rewards doesn't reflect the social or personal importance in any way - it reflects the ability of a person to capture rewards. Farmers, rescue workers, cleaners, etc. get little, because their work has been optimized to extreme degree. They are worse off because of scaling. Successful[0] entertainers and influencers get a lot, because they benefit from scaling - near-zero marginal cost of any additional member of the audience means that, even thought they provide small amount of value to each person and receive small reward, it adds up to a lot of money.

This mechanism, few people serving a tiny value multiplied by large audience, is just one of the "money printers". There are others, like controlling the way money flows (advertisers), or skimming off the high volume of money flow (finance), etc. Point being, all those mechanisms feel like they're exploiting the structure of the market, instead of being a useful service to others.

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[0] - Almost forgot about this, but it's probably the critical thing: these jobs are in a winner-takes-all market.