[antonovka]

The extremely small amount of time I have to work to earn a big mac seems grossly disproportionate to the labor involved in sourcing, manufacturing, and serving a Big Mac.

Am I really generating N sandwiches worth of value every few minutes?

Or am I (systemically) skimming value off the top of what's produced by individuals who are being paid disproportionately to the value they produce?

[pg]

The reason this seems counterintuitive is not that there's some dark matter of people who are somehow not subject to market forces, but simply that we're surprised by how much more cheaply things can be made by mass production. If a Big Mac were made by an individual farm family that raised the cattle and grew the wheat and the other ingredients, and then prepared it for you in quantity 1 in their kitchen, it would cost a fortune.

Our surprise at this variation is equivalent to the surprise of someone who doesn't know anything about programming at the fact that a piece of code can be made 100x faster.

[biohacker42]

Right, but there's also the government skimming from all kinds of productive business activities, to subside farming in the US. Thus making, corn, beef, etc, much cheaper then they would be without this market interference.

[pg]

True, but almost certainly less than 5x so, which is rounding error by comparison.

[patio11]

Am I really generating N sandwiches worth of value every few minutes?

Yes, you really are. We're programmers and businessmen -- our value scales waaaaaay the heck out of proportion to the amount of time we spend on something. I think that is awesome. (If I was a big proponent of income equality, I'd really hate it. I can do an honest day's work while sleeping by setting a system in motion to do it for me -- no manual laborer will ever be able to do that, which suggests that I will make rather more money than them, by a lot, and the gap is going to get larger over time.)

[mrtron]

As awesome as it is for us, it is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in asia.

I am pro capitalism, but the current system does have pretty deep social costs. [a second caveat being I can suggest no superior practical alternative]

[patio11]

it is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in asia.

No, poverty is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in Asia. Nike didn't invent poverty. It got there a long time before Nike -- or America, or the nation of China for that matter. Poverty is the natural state of the human condition.

For most of human civilization, we've had societies where almost everyone was desperately poor and then a few people were marginally less poor. (Poor Americans eat better and have better healthcare than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago. Plus, they don't defecate in buckets they sleep next to, which is a plus.)

The newfangled innovation brought about by capitalism isn't poor people: its rich people. Rich people who are so overflowing with money they buy frivolous shoes, enabling some Chinese peasant to get off the farm. Chinese peasants are pretty much in favor of getting off the farm -- it gives their kids a much better shot at surviving to the age of 5, and means you don't have to deal with famine.

[cia_plant]

In what sense do poor Americans eat better than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago?

[patio11]

More calories, more variety, more cheap GMO tomatoes in their store-bought sauces and ketchup (European aristocrats thought tomatoes were poisonous -- hah, hah, funny right? Funny like scurvy, a constant scourge of all social classes back then), cleaner drinking water (!), less food-borne pathogens, less periodic bouts of famine, less dependence on seasonal variation in available food sources, hot and cold food available on demand.

[cia_plant]

Your points about health are reasonable, but I don't think the modern diet really has more variety than the Medieval aristocrat's did. The kinds of meals eaten by the upper classes back then would still be considered extremely luxurious today.

[nazgulnarsil]

in the sense that they aren't malnourished, like a huge percentage of the population used to be, causing widespread disease.

[cpach]

Diseases are still spreading, albeit of different kinds. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epidemiology_... https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Diabetes_mell...

[BearOfNH]

The newfangled innovation brought about by capitalism isn't poor people: its rich people.

This is an excellent aphorism. I wish I'd been the first to put it that way!

[mrbgty]

It doesn't matter. There are millions of people getting paid who produce zero or negative value (if that's possible?) their entire lives. Not that they have intentionally done anything wrong. Many people just end up on a path they believe is right but ends up going nowhere (ever hear of CIA agents chasing some guy their entire life only to find out it was all for nothing?). It's necessary for us to advance so don't feel bad. You chose your path. They chose theirs.

[tjmc]

Your comment reminds me of something I saw once. I worked a night shift in a video factory in London years ago when I was backpacking around Europe and running low on funds. At one point I was working next to a guy whos job it was to prevent videos going into a shrink wrapper crooked because they'd get stuck in the machine. Thing was, they were all going in straight anyway. The guy was so tired he'd occasionally try to "straighten" the odd video to show he was doing his job - it would then get stuck and start melting. Fortunately after about 20 mins of nodding off he actually fell asleep in his chair at which point everything worked perfectly. Here was a man who was more productive while asleep.

[cma]

Bad analogy; if the parent takes your advice he is like a CIA agent who figured out chasing some guy is all for nothing, but then keeps doing it.

[MikeCapone]

Things have no intrinsic value, only what people are ready to pay for them. There's no "fair" price for an ounce of gold; could be worth a lot right now, or nothing in another context. Same with your labour, or the labour of those making the big mac.

[kiba]

Comparative advantages and division of labor allow consumers to afford big macs and mcdonald mochas. Your input is greatly apperciated.

[seregine]

Also automation

[secret]

A classic essay related to your question: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

[ars]

There is a lot of labor in "sourcing, manufacturing, and serving a" [large number of] "Big Macs".

However a single Big Mac does not cost so much. It's efficiencies of scale basically.

[ken]

You're generating the consumer price of N sandwiches of value every few minutes. Don't forget that, at least in the United States, many food items are heavily subsidized by the government. You (and to a larger extent, people richer than you) also pay for part of the actual cost in taxes.

[RyanMcGreal]

[M]ost of the wealth being created today is unearned, a "free lunch" that should, by rights, accrue to society as a whole. "A fundamental implication of modern research on economic growth is that past advances contribute far more to today's economy than current activities."

http://raisethehammer.org/article/818

[clistctrl]

Its nice, I had a delicious lunch today and an even more delicious dinner and all it took was just a few lines of code. I think i wrote maybe 100. Those 100 lines accomplished a lot though. So thanks for the sushi jquery, and I enjoyed the sandwich .NET.

[thetrumanshow]

Thanks God. The potential energy you've locked up in matter is totally useful! Without a potential difference, I wouldn't be enjoying this Big Mac. Thanks again!

[charlesju]

The market is efficient.