[impostervt]

Honest question, not really related to the story: What makes someone "exploited"?

Most of us trade our time for money, so at what point does the money become too little and be considered exploitative? Are all gig workers exploited? Didn't they make a rational choice that this is the best opportunity for themselves?

It certainly feels wrong, the low wages. I'm just wondering where the threshold is.

[swed420]

Cost of living varies by locale and changes over time, so you won't find a single number to answer your question. But it shouldn't be hard to determine what is a comfortable standard of living and what is not for any given time/place.

[tpm]

> What makes someone "exploited"?

According to Marx it's basically always you are selling your time/labor for money because you are paid less than the value of the labor. The employer keeps the surplus.

[pas]

Employer (the capitalist) also takes the risks, blablabla.

Probably a better framework would be to look at the power imbalance in the respective labor market. Is the employer incentivized to hire people even at a relatively high wage, because there's competitive pressure from other employers? Do people have enough savings (and unemployment payments or other safety nets) to be able to find a good job? (Even relocate if necessary.)

Company towns were bad, and small rural towns with only one big employer also exhibit similar problems.

Where are scientists in this model? Do they have ample of opportunities? Are they simply settling for a low pay because they really really like their niche work?

[tpm]

> Is the employer incentivized to hire people even at a relatively high wage

That doesn't matter in that particular theory (I'm not a marxist, just explaining). The employees are always exploited like a natural resource.

> Company towns were bad, and small rural towns with only one big employer also exhibit similar problems.

Well the funny thing is Marx advocated for that in the Communist Manifesto. He might have been a good philosopher but the solutions he proposed weren't very successful.

[Vaslo]

Marx is the last person people should listen to when it comes to economics.

[gruez]

It's probably worth mentioning that Marx's labor theory of value is not taken seriously by mainstream economists.

[AngryData]

To be fair economists don't agree on many things and even the most mainstream theories are regularly challenged as inadequate and ineffective at explaining past and current economic trends and bad at guiding policy changes and decisions.

[philwelch]

There is a very broad consensus that labor theory of value is nonsense however.

And when it comes to a theory being “bad at guiding policy changes and decisions”, attempts to implement Marxism killed more people than the world wars, many through famine.