Updated: Hierarchies and Anti-Abundance

[marc fawzi]

After some dialog with people here, it seems that the problem is not the hierarchy in and by itself but what hierarchies are normally associated with, which is the rationing of power and control.

So again it's not the hierarchy but what the hierarchy is typically associated with.

It seems possible that there can be a hierarchy where people are paid equally for equal work energy and such hierarchy is consistent with the idea of people being equally empowered through work.

In effect, the idea of 'equal pay for equal work energy' amounts to trading at cost in work energy in work-as-a-service as opposed to pricing work-as-a-service subjectively which is equivalent to rationing access to money based on subjective criteria. For example, a doctor gets paid $1000 for every N joules of work energy while a janitor gets paid $1 for the same N joules of work energy. If you factor in the doctor's energy inputs (including the work energy that went into his/her education) it still won't result in such a massive difference, assuming education becomes abundant and can be attained at cost (in work energy) it takes to produce and deliver it.

The idea is that for things that are abundant no one should pay more than cost (in work energy) and that includes work itself (e.g. if everyone who wants to be an electrical engineer can learn to be an electrical engineer through open courseware/labware then we could have an abundance of engineers, if the culture supports it) So if skills are abundant and are not scarce then why pay an engineer more than the total cost of work energy it takes to produce the work?

People should become engineers because they like to engineer solutions not because they like to get paid more.