The Labor Theory of Value Refuted: Nobody Cares How Hard You Work
October 19, 2015 in Economics
By Ryan McMaken
The Labor Theory of Value Refuted: Nobody Cares How Hard You Work
October 19, 2015
Except when they do.
Self-help business writer Oliver Burkeman noted last week that customers and employers may not care how much you work.
It’s doubly hard to avoid the Effort Trap because our culture so strongly reinforces its deceptive message: Hard work is ultimately what matters. From childhood, parents and teachers drum into us the moral virtue of effort, and the importance of “doing your best”. Numerous approaches to productivity—even the best ones, like David Allen’s Getting Things Done—encourage a “cross-it-off-the-list” mindset: They’re so preoccupied with clarifying and keeping track of your to-dos, you forget to ask if they’re the right tasks to begin with.
And too many workplaces still subtly communicate to employees the idea that intense effort, usually in the form of long hours, is the best route to a promotion. In fact, though, if you can do your job brilliantly and still leave at 3 p.m. each day, a really good boss shouldn’t object. And by the same token, you shouldn’t cite all the effort you put in when making your case for a raise. Why should a results-focused boss even care?
In a situation where value is measured almost strictly in dollars (i.e., as in the case of profits measured by a large company) an employee that brings in the most revenue or a manager that oversees a profitably division will be rewarded, regardless of how many hours he works. When analysis is done with numbers, “coffee is for closers” you might say, and not for people who just put in long hours.
As Burkeman notes, American workers, like so many others, mistakenly think that work has economic value in itself, and not the product of the work.
But when value is calculated somewhere other than on a ledger, things start to get more complicated. Burkeman writes:
The behavioral economist Dan Ariely tells the story of a locksmith, who, as he got better at his work, started getting fewer tips, and more complaints about his prices. Each job took him so little time or effort that customers felt cheated—even though, pretty obviously, being …read more
Source: MISES INSTITUTE
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