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Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

> If you tell people they will get $12k no matter how hard they work, they won’t work.

This is obviously not true, since in every capitalist society, the hardest working people already make the least amount of money, and the laziest people employed already get given the most amount of money.

Capitalism has already proven that financial incentive has no correlation to how hard someone works.

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What?? It’s the exact opposite. Those people HAVE to work that hard precisely for the reason I mentioned: they won’t be paid otherwise. This is precisely the issue. If you paid people irrespective of how much they work, they won’t work.

Your example is evidence of my statement, not refutation.

Do I really work harder as a software engineer than the garbagemen who bust their asses doing a dangerous smelly job? Or teachers wrangling a room full of kids?

I don't think so.

And yet I am paid 5-10X what they are.

I think you're basically agreeing with the comment you replied to. They're saying people who are financially secure (possibly like a software engineer) are less incentivized to work hard. Someone who really needs the money is more incentivized.

If you got the same pay whether or not you showed up to work each day, you'd be less incentivized to show up.

"incentivizing" is such an anodyne word for this cruelty.

Do you have an actual argument or are you just going to nitpick word choices?

Words matter. Let's be clear about the human costs of what we are describing.

I'm not advocating poverty, nor do I think was the parent comment. They were just in agreement with you that poor people work hard.

You are still completely missing the point. Stop deciding you want to be angry about my comment before actually reading it.

If you think I missed your point, perhaps you should consider rephrasing it to make it more obvious.

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