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by mfru
923 days ago
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> the work the people making the pencils for Jimmy would not exist without Jimmy Apart from this example being overly reductive and not rooted in reality, the hypothetical Jimmy would eventually be replaced by someone else who would invent this pencil. There is no truth that needs a single person to be uncovered. There are infinitely many people able to invent the pencil given enough tries and time. This also makes the argument of original thought not being original. We are made and influenced by our surroundings and thus the ideas we form must necessarily be a product of those surroundings. So, even if Jimmy had the idea to "invent" the pencil, he will not be the first one who did. He might be the first one with enough capital to execute (as in buy machines and factories, hire workers and exploit them for their labor and scale the business to planet-scale) and this is where it gets ugly. |
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As I've seen it historically, here's the crux of your argument. "If not for this employer, some other person would have done what they did, so it's not even really their value."
The problem becomes the devaluation effect this has on ideation, which misaligns incentives away from innovation and progress. Since when do we presume someone would have done something, discounting the person who actually does? This wouldn't apply to the laborer who constructed the pencil, I observe. "Well, anyone could have constructed this pencil, so why value the production?" Nobody makes that argument.
Additionally, this devalues the organizational contribution of coordination between the lumberjack and the miner. Jimmy coordinates their raw materials into an environment where they can be combined in the first place. Even if he doesn't invent the pencil, he still creates value by building the environment for the job to exist. Absent someone in Jimmy's role, none of the pencil-construction jobs would exist.