
Ask HN: In this lockdown period, should the world now evaluate compensations? - bsldld
In this lockdown period, should the world now evaluate what jobs are really valuable for the society to function and set the compensations of those doing these jobs accordingly?
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sparkie
Value is subjective. There is no "valuable for society." There is value for
individuals, and nobody is more capable of making the decisions about what is
valuable than those individuals themselves. Attempting to have some entity
decide what is valuable on everybody's behalf is incredibly stupid.

The way to have compensation re-evaluated would be to completely scrap
existing regulations which interfere with the ability of individuals to set or
request the compensation they determine to be worthwhile for the work
performed in a free market. Scrap minimum wage. Get rid of all regulations
which protect established companies from competition. There should be no
reason you need a barber's license to cut hair.

The labour theory of value has been debunked. Just because it cost so much to
produce something, does not mean people are willing to pay more than that for
it. All subsidies to enterprises should be scrapped. The market can only
operate efficiently if there are accurate price signals. Government
intervention in the market distorts the realities and ends up taking money
from hard working, low earners, and subsidizing high paying workers, whose
products or services are not providing the level of benefit to individuals
that they would otherwise voluntarily pay for if they weren't involuntarily
subsidizing through forced taxation.

The way out of the mess is to assert your monetary sovereignty and to be the
dictator of what you deem to be valuable to you, to your family, to your
neighbours, to your country, and to the rest of the world - in that order.

In order to do that, you need to be able to protect your wealth against
unwanted theft. Fortunately, there's now a way you can do this: bitcoin.

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nradov
I've seen a lot of reports about Bitcoin theft.

~~~
sparkie
They are 100% down to negligence of the owner and not the "skill" of some
hacker.

The key point for Bitcoin though, is that you should not only secure your keys
from physical theft, by utilizing a seed phrase (backed up) and a passphrase
(in-brain/shared with family), but also that you should never reveal to
anybody the extent of your bitcoin holdings - because if somebody knows what
you own, they are vulnerable to theft.

Bitcoin that you own, securely, which nobody knows you own, are not vulnerable
to theft.

Hence, you should avoid any KYC service when acquiring bitcoin. If you use an
exchange like Conbase, you are explicitly revealing to the State how much
bitcoin you have purchased, and they will attempt to steal it off you, like
they did with gold in EO6102.

If you do use any such service, and need to untaint your coins, then run them
through several coinjoin or payjoin to break the linkage to your identity and
have plausible deniability of ownership.

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necovek
It's never been that simple: let me give you a trivial (and oversimplified)
example.

A baker's job is essential in almost every country in the world, yet the time
and effort required to get to a reasonable level of skill is pretty small.
Thus, if compensation was increased, competition in the market would quickly
drive the compensation back down again.

Pay is, unfortunately, not proportional to the value to the society.

Humans should and do work on making it fairer, but it's been a long road so
far and we are nowhere close to it (but we are better off than a couple
hundred years ago).

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31337
It is like asking should we stop wasting world resources and set the
priorities accordingly ? Yes we should. And then what ?

~~~
mhh__
Firstly let's start by making all bad things illegal.

~~~
necovek
Such broad statements are bad.

We are now both under arrest.

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mhh__
Define valuable, ideally without invoking Marxist labour theory of value.

The vast majority of jobs have nothing to do with, what I'm assuming you're
implying, healthcare and food - the compensation should be set by those who
pay for it not someone else.

There are countless jobs that neither you nor I have ever heard of let alone
thought about that society needs to function.

