There is no such a thing as a good job

There is a popular and rather cynical saying that stats that if work were any good, the rich and the powerful would have taken it away from the poor and uneducated long time ago, or at least severely curtailed their access to it, in the same fashion that they already do to certain events, selected islands and beaches, social clubs and a whole host of situations where the high price is not justified by the quantity or the quality of the goods or services received, but it serves instead as a gatekeeper to ensure that only the "chosen ones" get to enjoy it. The almost universal access to work is an indisputable proof that it is not so good. Yesterday I left hanging the question of why the narrative of the successful hard worker was so popular and I have spent the whole day rummaging about it, but I think I have now reached some clarity, which I would like to share with you.

The existence of different jobs is rooted in two principles which are very widely spread among human societies: the diversity in abilities and the mutual benefit of trade. The first principle just skits that, in any human activity, some individuals are going to be necessarily better than others. In situations where there is only one activity (e.g. looking for food) it makes sense that even the less gifted contribute to the task as long as their performance is anything above zero. However, the moment when there is more than one activity two people are better off if each one platforms the activity where they have an advantage and trade with the other for the product of the activity for which they are less gifted. For instance, if one person is a good fisher, he should focus on getting fish for two (or more) while another one gathers two servings of roots to go with the fish. It is possible that the fisher would be able to provide for themselves, but in most cases they would have to work longer than with the split arrangement. This combination is frequently referred to as division of labor.

Photo: Tom Brandt

If we do fast forward to the first agrarian societies the development of private property quickly leads to estates that have more land than the owner can work on, while some unlucky citizens find themselves dispossessed and without land of their own to cultivate. This imbalance got solved in many cases by the concept of tenement, whereby the owner gets some benefit from a land that they own but do not exploit, while the tenant gets some land to exploit in exchange for a small fraction of their production. At this point we already start to see a pattern of people working for somebody else's direct benefit. This precision is quite important because, all along the previous human history, there had been plenty of examples of individuals working for the benefit of the community, from shamans to chieftains, but now the exchange of work is a transaction between two individuals and is not aimed at any particular social benefit.

One key element of this exchange is the high productivity: the tenant had to provide for their family plus the corresponding part for the owner (frequently in the opposite order, so that it they fell short it was their family and not the owner who had to come by with less food). Still, the rent of the land was typically a small fraction of the production, somewhere between one tenth and one quarter, so it was clear that the laborer worked mostly for their family.

As the agricultural technology developed, the productivity of the fields kept growing to the point that villages started to generate enough food surplus that the artisans did not need to work in the fields and were instead able to devote all their time to their craft, providing goods for the whole village, which in exchanged provided then with food. But as the villages grew into cities it soon because apparent that there was more demand for goods than a single artisan could provide. Sometimes the problem could be solved with another artisan, but other times the existing one would instead hire and train laborers to help them in their workshop. This is just another case of labor division, where the master would focus on the tasks that only they can perform, leaving the lesser one to the apprentices. The latter would then get paid (either in food and lodging or in coin) but only for the value they added to the final product, but their part was generally small compared to the much more skilled work of the master or the raw materials required for the product, which were typically paid by the owner. However, the pay was still relatively "fair", since the price of the final product only had to cover for the raw materials and the total sum of the labor invested in it. And then came the capital.

As the manufacturing facilities grew larger and larger and their production capabilities expanded, they reached a point when the owner of the workshop just did not have enough own resources to start the production: while the volume was small it was not too much of a problem for the blacksmith to buy the iron ingots needed to forge horseshoes, hoes and pickaxes, but once the volume started to grow the purchases could become too big, and the master would be forced to take a credit to pay for the raw materials, with the well-founded hope that, once they managed to sell all the products, there would be enough to pay for the loan, the interest, and all the labor involved. But have we see again, as in the case of the tenement, one party setting more than they initially put in (the bank), while the other gets paid less than the value they actually contributed to the product because, in the end, the interest has to come from somewhere, so if a pickax takes 20 dinars of raw materials and 60 of labor, but sells for 100 dinars, the benefit is likely to go to the bank rather than enlarging the wages of the blacksmith.

This is already a helpful hint as to why everybody has work in such a high regard: because it allows the rich and the powerful to become richer and more powerful by collecting some portion of the value of the labor of every worker. And of course, the greater the number of workers, the bigger the profit for the employers and the lenders. And it is remarkable that, as in medieval times, the payment of you debt usually takes precedence over the welfare (or even the subsistence) of the workers: if your profit is less than expected, you are still supposed to pay back your loan and just learn to live with whatever is left. In fact in most of the western world the only way to escape the debt payments is filing for bankruptcy, which is not only a lot of work but also a very important blemish to the social standing of the subject.

I think that I have mentioned this before, but the increasing inequality has driven the availability of investment money through the roof. There are so many rich people with so much money looking for opportunities to grow that it has become surprisingly easy to get funding even for business proposal that are not that solid. Where a few days ago this plan would have been flat out rejected, it is now considered and even funded. It is true that the risk would have to be hedged by bundling with other investments which are less risky, but in the end the result is many wannabe entrepreneurs see their projects funded even without the due process of mitigating some of the risk. For the financial part, this is not a problem, because the banking system works to ensure that the make the smallest possible loss (or not at all).

In the meantime, the official narrative keeps telling about the success of the statistically few that actually manage to go up the income ladder, while egregiously disregarding the toils and suffering of the big majority that, in spite of their best effort, end up falling back to where they started or even deeper. And all along the way, the big fortunes keep collecting a few pesos here, a few dinars over there, then some euros, and the dedicated and well-intended workers end up becoming part of the machinery to squeeze whatever wealth the poor have or can produce.

There is no doubt that the aspiration to a better standard of living is a legitimate right for everyone, but it is important to keep in mind the huge contribution of luck in anybody's success (even if it is just the luck to be able to afford to persevere) and that effort alone is just not enough. There might be a few that fail because they just did not put the effort, but the big majority of defeats happen in spite of the effort. Let us just not lose the perspective.