Wages buy time and skills but not the enthusiasm that generates real value
Evidence
My first inkling of such a duality hit me one evening when Mum complained to Dad that, at the fertiliser factory where she worked as a chemist, she got paid for her time but never for her enthusiasm. ‘My wage is crap because my time is cheap,’ she said. ‘My passion to get the right results the bosses get for free!’ Soon after, she resigned and got herself a job as a biochemist at a public hospital. A few months into the new job, she told us happily: ‘At least at the hospital I love that my efforts benefit patients, even if I am as invisible to them as I used to be to the factory owners.’ — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 65
Categorization
- DEFINE: The mother’s anecdote concretely introduces the exchange-value vs. use-value / living labor duality that grounding the entire thesis about what platforms extract.
- XREF: This is the lived origin of the alienation-of-labor and unpaid-labor distinction — connects to Marx’s labor theory and later feminist/domestic-labor debates about unpaid enthusiasm. — connects to: Glamour of cool jobs acts as nonmonetary compensation for workers — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 143; Wages compensate time but not enthusiasm workers contribute freely — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 65; Profit arises from labour’s uncommodifiable experiential dimension
Broader Connections
- Wages compensate time but not enthusiasm workers contribute freely
#corroborates(1.00) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 65 - Profit arises from labour’s uncommodifiable experiential dimension
#corroborates(0.85)