Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> From: Michael Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com>
>
> >'Exploit' means to utilize. Thus, anyone who works for anyone else
> >is 'exploited', all raw materials are 'exploited'. If the sort of
> >'exploitation' that socialists and union members in industrialized
> >nations complain that occurs in third world nations constitutes
> >income in excess of the average income, then there is only
> >exploitation in the imaginations of those who seek to protect
> >obsolescent jobs.
>
> Exploit means to take advantage of.
Which may or may not have negative connotations. A potential employer
takes advantage of the fact that there are people needing employment
just as employees take advantage of the fact that there are potential
employers who need employees. The fact that there are employers and
employees in the world presupposes that relationships of mutual
exploitation will exist.
Why should the same relationship, looked at from one direction, be
considered negatively? Because of propaganda, because people in labor
generally tend to overvalue their own contribution to economic output
while undervaluing the contribution of other inputs like management and
capital. One reason for this is that the labor movement has for 150
years been inundated by socialist and communist propaganda about the
labor theory of value being the only reasonable means of economic
measurement. Another, less insidious reason why laborers so easily are
swayed by propaganda about the labor theory of value is that they
generally lack the training in economics and management to properly
appreciate the contributions of management and capital into the
manufacturing process, so those contributions are easily discounted once
their own labor self-esteem is pumped up by self-aggrandizing arguments.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:46 MDT