[runarberg]

This is a silly question, so silly in fact that I suspect it is only intended as reductio ad absurdum (which can be a fallacy if based on a false or inadequate premise).

A carpenter is entitled to the fruits of their labor, which can adequately be provided with money.

[nec4b]

>> This is a silly question, so silly in fact that I suspect it is only intended as reductio ad absurdum (which can be a fallacy if based on a false or inadequate premise).

I commend you for knowing logical fallacies. Though it would be even better if you were able to demonstrate those fallacies instead appealing to your own authority.

>> A carpenter is entitled to the fruits of their labor, which can adequately be provided with money.

I agree. Unfortunately, some people here claim developers working for google are entitled to their share of google's profits and carpenters working for said developers are not entitled to a share of profits from what those developers earn.

[runarberg]

There are plenty of examples of Reductio ad absurdum being a fallacy because of a false or inadequate premise. Zeno’s paradox[1] being a famous one. The false premise being that you can actually add infinite number of times (modern mathematics take the limit as n approaches infinity).

Here the prime candidate for the premise being wrong is to equate the work of carpenter working in their own enterprise at a project, to that of a google worker, working at Google’s enterprise for any project their management tells them to.

The former gets the fruit of their labor in full when the job is finished and paid for, the latter is suffering from a systematic exploitation as each time the stock goes up in price (or when dividends are issued) the shareholders get the fruits of the worker’s labor, as opposed to the workers them selves.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes

[nec4b]

>> The former gets the fruit of their labor in full when the job is finished and paid for, the latter is suffering from a systematic exploitation as each time the stock goes up in price (or when dividends are issued) the shareholders get the fruits of the worker’s labor, as opposed to the workers them selves.

This is a bit hard to parse. Isn't the developer's work also paid for after each unit of time served. And why exactly is the developer being systematically exploited every time the stock price increases and the carpenter is not if the house appreciates? Doesn't the developer literally live in the fruits of carpenter's labor?

[runarberg]

The difference here is in control. The carpenter has full control on which task they take, whereas the developer hasn’t. A developer is forced to work at a bad product that they know is gonna fail, but the carpenter can refuse to take on a job that they know is gonna cost them more then the customer is willing to pay. For the developer, after their project inevitably fails, it will probably cost them their job, despite the failure not being their fault. Given the option, the developer would have voted against the project, the carpenter can simply refuse it. Upper management usually never takes the responsibility of failure, opting instead to mass layoffs. Shifting the cost of failures onto their exploited workers.

Instead of looking at the house the carpenter builds, look at the carpenter as an enterprise. If the carpenter grows in skill, and is able to take on more complicated jobs, they are able to charge more. The carpenter’s enterprise grows in value, which means more pay for the carpenter them self.

This is not true of the developer. The developer might be able to demand more pay, but they are at the mercy of their upper management to relay that to the owners of the business, who might see more value in exploiting the worker for more profit for them selves. Being able to collectively bargain through a union the developer might approach the freedom of their enterprise as the carpenter, but it is still not nearly the same level as if they had direct control of the business, like the carpenter does.

[nec4b]

If the carpenter is poor and has mouths to feed, he can't pass the task even if he knows it will fail. He needs money. On the other hand google's developer has earned so much money the previous year, he can then quit any time he wants and get a new job with ease. To me it looks like the carpenter is the exploited one.

[Jensson]

> This is not true of the developer. The developer might be able to demand more pay, but they are at the mercy of their upper management to relay that to the owners of the business, who might see more value in exploiting the worker for more profit for them selves.

A typical developer at Google makes $200k-$500k. That was enough for me, I didn't feel exploited, so don't come here and tell me that I should feel exploited, I'm sure that even Marx would agree with me that such a huge salary is fair.

[runarberg]

Please note that exploitation here is a technical term from marxism and should not be confused with how this word is commonly used in english as a synonym for oppression. In my native language of Icelandic there is a much nicer word arðrán which literally means “dividend burglary”, “profit burglary” or “stealing the fruits of your labor”. It doesn’t matter how much you personally makes, if someone else is taking money that someone else worked for, that is exploitation of labor.

I hope that clears things out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour