Value of labor?

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We don't have a "free market".

In my state, people who cut hair need a license to work legally. You are worthless to an employer if you don't have your license which may cost $10,000 - $20,000 to obtain from a beauty school.

"Our survey of 55 cosmetology schools says that the cost of cosmetology averages between $10,000 and $20,000".
http://www.beautyschoolsdirectory.com/faq/howpay.php

1,200 Hours To Be a Lawyer, But 2,000 To Be a Barber
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/16782

Thus, the value of your labor is influenced by your willingness and capability to get the right credentials.

It creates the incentive to keep as many people as possible from having that skill which is NOT a part of law of supply and demand but IN FACT an artificial human system designed to keep supply low, demand high.

For instance, let's say you take tens of thousands of people who can pass a basic reading comprehension and writing exam and can read on a twelfth grade level which, of course, is where most should be when they graduate high school. Let's say you give them access to studies for a law degree, train them, as it were, in a short amount of time, assuming all the people who sign up are motivated to earn that law degree and have the ambition because, as we all know, those who do not want to are not going to try their best to obtain something. So, these folks have the desire, ability to read, comprehend and write on a twelfth grade level. I am going to offer them a $200 crash course in law that takes two years to complete then I am going to see if they can pass the bar. It will only cost them $200 for my course. I would be curious to see how many of them made it, if I were allowed to do this and, of course, if I had the background to do it, which no lawyer really wants to because they have all pretty much sweated blood and spent oodles of cash in order to practice law in the US.

Anyway, let's just pretend by some fluke the opportunity is there, $200 and ease of entering the course. No prerequisites besides the ability to understand written word and write fluently plus the desire to become a lawyer. I bet most of these people could do it without being the brightest in their class or having some blemishes on their academic record for whatever reason, but can obviously read and write fairly well and it would only cost them $200 and it wouldn't take forever. It could be managed, trust me, it's just lawyers do not want that. They don't want a lot of people passing the bar. They don't want law degrees to be inexpensive endeavors. Everyone just automatically assumes the way things are set up now MUST be the only way when, in fact, it is set up that way by people who have gone through a system, paid a lot of money and wish to continue making a lot of money. They want to stay rich, in other words. Got nothing at all to do with the value of labor or the free market.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 10 Mar 2015, 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah but which is going to cost you more to achieve, huh? Becoming a lawyer or barber? Which school is going to be the most difficult for you to access? Beauty or Law?

Also, lawyers cheer on added complexity to the law. Some have used the term "delicious complexity".



Either way, you have to pay to play.

You might be a genius or a great artist, but unless you have that degree, the government can make you unemployable.

Am I too early to hee and haw at some poor naive chum summoning up the Labor Theory of Value from its grave?

If you have to "pay to play" it's not truly a free market. In a truly free market, there would be many lawyers and doctors.

The economic shambles we submerge ourselves in is nothing to guffaw over.

Actually, in a free market, there wouldn't be that many lawyers at all, because there wouldn't be that many laws. The much simpler laws would mean you'd be able to do it with a 3 year law degree. Also, there wouldn't be any patent lawyers, because patents wouldn't exist.

Assuming enough people can access the training required, the cost of hiring someone with a particular skill should be a function of the cost of the training - the more expensive the training, the greater return people will require in order to spend money on the training. If it falls below a certain level, fewer people will work in that area, which will cause the price to rise; conversely, as the price rises, people have more of an incentive to work in that area, causing the price to drop. There's probably research around in what the average return people require in order to pay for tuition, but I don't know where it is.

We would still have laws and courts. The free market would bring down prices so that would mean more lawyers, if we let people do it there way, not require them to go through expensive law schools. The new way of thinking would simply state, if you can pass the bar, you have earned the right to be a lawyer regardless of your educational background or how long you have been at school or how much money you have invested in your education. It should be, if you can manage to educate yourself by whatever means necessary, you can become a lawyer. I am not adverse to toughening up exams and making them more difficult, if necessary.

Money and inconvenience does stand in the way between people and college degrees so if you make it easier for people to access these degrees the result will be you will see more people with them. Then you have "systemers" who will holler, if everyone has a degree, mine won't be valuable." So you see how easy it is to want that system and how fearful people are they won't have access to the money they want. This fear really does drive a lot of the economy. It is the Law of Fear of Losing Access to Money that drives the economy but the vast majority of people refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Well, you could hire anyone you want to represent you, whether they have a law degree or not... but I wouldn't advise hiring someone who hasn't, because it's less likely they'll be able to do a good job.

Why would any knowledgeable person hire someone to represent them in court who hasn't got a law degree? That would be like going in without a lawyer, period when a lawyer is warranted in such circumstances.

I question the process, not the need.

One thing about markets that are truly free, they create a lot of excess since many more will be doing the same thing to earn money. If you have fifty people all selling the same thing you should be able to whittle down the price in free markets as you go down the line. Might not sound fair but it is the nature of free markets, to just keeping going, saying, there's ten others with the same thing I will just go and get it cheaper and keep saying that until you have the cheapest price and such a price can go pretty low if there are enough sellers. What stops this from happening is all the sellers getting together first, saying, none of us will go lower than this price and when that happens, folks, the market is no longer free but that happens ALL the time! This is what drives markets! This law of supply and demand will drive the prices of most things way down, except in the event it's at truly rare commodity in very short supply. This has already been noted which has led to what we have today. It has led to mountains of debt, inflation, and very high prices in the developed world.

You were, just a little.

I'll do it then: labour does not have value in the same way as other commodities do, it is the source of value. I can't really elaborate without a specific question or context.

To respond to the OP, the market is horribly biased in favour of "effective demand." The use-value of entertainers' labour is increased hugely by who consumes/needs its products; mainstream entertainment is frequently used, prolefeed-style, to dull people, a role that may seem trivial but is very important in keeping everyone pacified. You can guess who this is important to. And of course, the entire capitalist system is based on parasitism. The product of many, many workers' toil is appropriated by a few business-owners who do no work while workers are paid a fraction of the product of their labour.

It's the Walmart strategy.
In a race to have the most customers because you have the lowest price, something has to give. And that something is this... .

You can cut labor costs. Walmart labor costs are legendary in their exploitation. I guess the equivalent of cutting labor costs for well educated professionals (lawyers, doctors etc.) would be changing the educational requirements so that the only requirement would be passing the licensing exam, thus cutting out tuition for those who can self educate.

But you will ultimately have to not sell the same thing in order to make any profit for yourself. People can tolerate meh merchandise from Walmart (or any other cheap merchandise) because there isn't a huge downside to getting worse merchandise for a low price. If that cheap shirt wears through after 20 wearings it's not that big a deal. You can just get another one. It only cost 7.99$ after all.

But are you willing to tolerate that low quality in professional services? In a race to the bottom for prices, being very cheap also means being lower quality. That's not a big deal for clothes (for the consumer- for the sweatshop laborers it's a very big deal but that's another thread). But for professional services? Those who do high quality- even mid quality- work will be in demand. This will drive their prices up. Those who can compete only on price, not quality, will be the cheapest and also terrible. Dangerously terrible. Professionals with a desirable skill are not going to sweat themselves with 80 hour workweeks and/or being on call and all the other downsides of these demanding professions for 30$/hour. The only ones who would are the ones who aren't very good.\

You get what you pay for.

Even if you take away (for example) the requirement to go to law school and instead only have the requirement of passing the bar exam, the person still has to put in a lot of time self educating. They have to spend endless hours in the law library- even if not paying tuition- in order to pass it. And at the end of all that they'll work for whatever tiny fee you will pay? I don't think so. The most egalitarian may take on low paying work that has the glamour of being noble. But if your case confers no nobility, why should they take it on the cheap?

An unregulated market would create a lot of excess, but it would be an excess of shoddy quality. Barriers such as passing a difficult exam would act as a filter even in the absence of mandatory schooling, but then there won't be all that excess. People will have to invest enormous amounts of time, even if they aren't investing tuition money, and they won't do that for no return.

You appear to assume that these "professional" occupations need that schooling. I think that is Ana's point.

For example: Do we really need pharmacy grads (6-8 years of pharmacological training) behind the drug store counter filling our prescriptions ? They study a ton of bio/organic chemistry and what we mostly need them for is putting pills in a bottle. Heck, computers can probably do 90% of their job.

Well, 1) there is probably some law that says a pharmacist must be present, and 2) probably the pharmacy curriculum is set by a pharmacy accreditation group. But it doesn't have to be like that.

In an actually free market, there would be far fewer laws, so not only would there be much less demand for lawyers, it would also be a lot easier and quicker to learn the law.