Nedd Ludd's Privileged Professionals

[alice wellintown]

The cost of labor is never simple. It is a complex set to calculate
and to negotiate. For example, in the US, patronage has always been
important factor. Determing the cost of large labor contracts is no
easy formula because it must account for swings and shifts in
political power structures. It's naive to argue that capitalism simply
cycles into cheaper labor. A job (take Molly's Job, the subject of a
book length study of recent cycles and trends in tech-jobs), may move
to find cheaper labor or not. Also, cheaper in the short term (1-5
yes) may not prove cheaper in the long term 5-10 years). The move of
specialized work to cheaper labor has huge net benefits that have
nothing much to do with the cost of labot; specialization does not
produce innovation. So, let the Chinese do the specialized work on a
computer board. This will free the American worker from the piece
work, mind numbing labor that is only driven by monied incentives, to
create, to innovate, to dream and invent, even if there is no or
little monied reward for such reveries and the ideas they produce.
Complex thing, labor, not something Marx only got by the tail. And the
tail don't wag the dragon.