{"id":42022,"date":"2014-02-24T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42022"},"modified":"2014-02-23T20:55:12","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T02:55:12","slug":"42022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42022","title":{"rendered":"All In A Day’s Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

A high school friend of mine who lives in Texas, Jim, posted this on Facebook over the weekend:<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

Q: Why does world-famous violinist Joshua Bell make $1M for each performance?<\/p>\n

A: Because no one is stupid enough to pay him $2M – he’s just not worth that much.<\/p>\n

(Implication: what you do has value. A finite value. And if someone else can and will do the same things you can do, for less money, then your value has been reduced to that lower amount. Unless, of course, one of a number of things happens:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. that other person is already working for someone else (more jobs, scarcity of labor),<\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0you increase your value (through experience, education, or any of a sea of other factors),<\/li>\n
  3. you decide to assume a greater share of the risk (starting your own business doing what you do, for example), or<\/li>\n
  4. you find something new that you can do which will have greater value (new career, more responsibility, …).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What is exciting about all of these options is that, except for the first one, all are activities that you can do yourself. They don’t require that you supine yourself before some benefactor who will then own your future. What went so wrong with a society that no longer recognizes the beauty inherent in self-determination?<\/p>\n

    ———-<\/p>\n

    What’s wrong is that we have a large, powerful interest in our society that profits handsomely from selling victimhood and dependence; the idea that all violinists, even people who’ve just picked up the instrument, should be making a “living fee” for their performances, just from pure fairness.<\/p>\n

    It’s a way of buying votes but making someone else pay for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A high school friend of mine who lives in Texas, Jim, posted this on Facebook over the weekend: ———- Q: Why does world-famous violinist Joshua Bell make $1M for each performance? A: Because no one is stupid enough to pay him $2M – he’s just not worth that much. (Implication: what you do has value. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,69],"tags":[283],"class_list":["post-42022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-socialism","tag-minimum-wage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42022"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42025,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42022\/revisions\/42025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}