People say that capitalism is supposed to reward risk not effort and that if all it took is effort that would be pretty easy and laborers would be at the top. But why is easy not good? And what is wrong with the workers at the top?
Because regular "workers" care about helping others while those at the corporate "top" only want to help themselves. That is why those at the bottom of the pay scale generally stay there and never move up to the top, they just care to much about doing the right thing, not trying to stab others in the back or use others to get what they want in life.
I think it depends on the job you're speaking of. For example it's hard to be a family man and a top executive. How much time you're willing to sacrifice is how likely you'll be to get to the top. Since some people are willing to dedicate their entire lives (Maybe 60-80 hrs/week), those who will dedicate 40-45 hours a week can simply not make it to the top.
Well, risk implies that you're going for it; that you're taking all you've got and gambling it on something that can either make you big or break you big. Effort, while commendable, does not imply results.
Sometimes people "succeed" by risk & sometimes by effort but usually by chance & circumstance. Thru all known history hardly anything was easy for the vast majority of people. People have been conditioned to think easy is bad yet are secretly envious. People always take the route which seems more beneficial regardless of whether it involves easy work or difficult. When they have a choice.
Ask anyone who spent any length of time living in the former Soviet Union and the answer will be obvious. When workers are in charge they are motivated to do as little as they have to. This is bad for productivity. It would be like if you went to McDonalds and the workers there could tell the manager what to do but the manager could not tell the workers what to do. How fast do you suppose you would get your food? How motivated do you suppose the workers would be to order ingredients to foods they didn't like preparing? After all, if they don't have muffins they can't/won't have to make egg mc muffins. Therein lies the problem. Most workers are as lazy as they can get away with. You don't want that kind of person running a company.
Workers in the charge, thats an bit odd statement, Lenin the agitator or Stalin the terrorist labeled as a worker, I´m thinking dictatorship, riding with communist manifesto.
Getting workers at the top is not all that "easy". The problem with labor is that it is very easy to succumb to the perils of "supply" and "demand" and as long as those things hold, you will wind up with labor in pretty much the position it is in now. Suppose you were to place the laborers on top, earning the most money./1 What would they do with their money? In the long run, they'd almost certainly look to use it in the way most advantageous to them, which would turn out in large part to mean "investing is as capital" or "lending it" since those are both simple passive strategies for earning off of otherwise idle cash. Over time some of those would succeed and some would lose cash. -------- /1 There are two ways to do this (or some combination of the two), the first is to simply increase salaries, but hold rates on retiurn on capital investment steady. The second is to reduce rates of return. The laborers earn no more than they did before, but the capitalists earn less. I assume that the former is the primary startegy, though that has the potential for a great deal of inflationary pressure. -------- Unfortunately, arbitrarily jacking up wages will lead to price inflation, as employers have to pay laborers more now. So prices so up. As prices rise, the nominal rates of interest rise fby the same amount (so that the "real" rate of interest can remain unchanged. Suddlenly the nominal rate of interest is high enough that the investing classes are earning more than the laborers again. That makes investing cash an even more attractive strategy to the laborers. Slowly over time you'd wind up back where you started, though at a higher price level, save that some of the new "laborers" were have formerly been investors and many of the new set of investors would have been laborers that managed to hold their new positions. You'd have stirred the population pot, but supply and demand evenatually move wages and rates or return back, in real terms, roughly back to their original levels. The only way around this is to "turn off" the market forces that lead to it. That's easy to do, if you have a strong enough political regime, but it also tends to take the form of a command economy, and those are very inefficient at allocating resources. (So ineffecient that people will pay exorbitant sums on black markets to get goods that they'd never get in the command economy.) Worse, most such economies are subject to some level of corruption, as those with thepower to turn off the market activity seek to get the perks and benefits for themselves that the command economy doesn't allow to the average citizen. The only other fix is to change human nature in such a way that the laborers no longer want to uinvest their new found wealth in ways that benefit themselves, but actually do want to benefiot society as a whole. I have no idea how to instill such an altruistic viewpoint in people on a broad scale, and the Soviets failed at it despite some very earnest attempts.
