You're both wrong -- if you need two different resources as inputs to make something, and either missing makes the process impossible, it doesn't matter what your subjective opinions are when deciding which is more valuable. They are equally necessary and that's all there is to it.
So how come some input resources are priced a lot more highly than others? How come sometimes, say, labor gets a big cut and capital a small cut, and other times the other way around?
Supply and demand. Bargaining power. That's why. Nothing to do whatsoever with the actual value involved in the process.
What portion of the value we apportion to the suppliers of each resource is purely a political question based on bargaining power -- who is less willing to withdraw from providing their resources, etc
To use your sports analogy, if this magic genius coach can easily find plenty of any old players to execute his strategy with, then I guess he will manage to absorb the lion's share of profits. If it's hard to find players relative to supply/demand, then it doesn't matter if they're dipshits who barely manage to do anything and who just do what the coach says, it doesn't matter if anyone could do what they do. All that matters is the coach needs them and there's not enough of them. You can't have a team without the coach and you can't have a team without the players, regardless of their respective merits.
How you divide the spoils among resourceholders all of whom are critical to the process is purely political, based on leverage and negotiation, not based on actual "value" which cannot be computed unless a sports team can exist without players or without a coach and merely be a little, measurably worse.
The masses of jobs don’t require unique humans. And the more is automated, the less individual worker skills matter. For most jobs.
This gives businesses huge economic leverage over their workers. They will pay them the minimum it takes, and since this is an economy wide problem, every drop in wages somewhere makes it easier for wages to be dropped elsewhere while still retaining workers.
Finally, any area where many workers manage to hold onto higher wages will have a target painted on it as a prime place for new business value to be made finding a way to commoditize their work with automation.
Businesses are rapidly growing the capabilities of their physical and informational automation. Human workers are not getting stronger, faster, or smarter. So they are forced to compete for jobs by getting cheaper.
> Equally necessary doesn’t mean equally valuable. So there is that.
But there's no objective way to measure valuable other than what the output is and what happens if the resource is removed. That's circular reasoning. You want to believe that doing something easy can't possibly be as valuable, but, it sure can, it's all a matter of supply and demand. We've all seen boomtown situations, especially if we read history or follow current events, where suddenly an undersupply of warm bodies relative to the opportunities makes for high wages relatively speaking for anyone just willing to move to the boomtown area.
There would be an objective way but it wouldn't be politically accepted. Because then there wouldn't be so much difference in compensation for work and it doesn't do rich people or politicians any good.
After all, if everyone is closer in net worth, many of the problems politicians are supposed to solve just go away.
In any case, objectively the ones who get a shit ton of money just for owning a stock or just leading (making choices, good or bad) are overcompensated compared to the rest.
Supply and demand don't work for this type of stuff because demand (for better paid jobs/position) is basically infinite while supply is artificially constrained: we are making sure that only one in a hundred or one in a thousand can get the position, regardless of actual worker competence. One might be perfectly good enough for the job but if all the positions are taken, he will have to settle for a lower position.
The fact is that the difference between lower levels of pay and higher ones is way too large and this inequality has increased 10-50-fold in the last 50 years. Clearly the system is broken.
But isn't it more profitable to replace a high-cost job like a data analyst or logistics expert than 10-20 low-cost jobs like warehouse workers? Like the cost of the machines and the maintenance probably will end up costing more than humans.
Except replacing the data analyst is very difficult, especially since he probably brings to the table a good amount of human intuition is involved (thinking).
You cannot replace it straight with an AI or automated process because we just don't have the tech yet and you cannot replace it easily with any other human because it requires not only a particular education but also very specific skills that are not ubiquitous.
That human has more leverage and this is why he is getting paid more. It's very logical but I don't think it is fair to the other humans at the bottom, because while they are much easier to replace, they are still very necessary.
Everyone is walking around with devices that connect them to nearly the total sum of human knowledge.
Not acting on that to get out of an easily replaceable job is a skill issue.
Also, the education systems currently aren't the best. Automation and IT hasn't penetrated them as much as is feasible.
Being unable to learn is a matter of either unwillingness or disability.
Nowadays it's easier to learn than ever, and the real rates of intellectual disabilities/neurodiversity hadn't gone up that much. Such conditions are just easier to diagnose nowadays.
Thus yes, if you won't learn, and you can't prove that it's an organic problem, enjoy a job that sucks.
So how come some input resources are priced a lot more highly than others? How come sometimes, say, labor gets a big cut and capital a small cut, and other times the other way around?
Supply and demand. Bargaining power. That's why. Nothing to do whatsoever with the actual value involved in the process.
What portion of the value we apportion to the suppliers of each resource is purely a political question based on bargaining power -- who is less willing to withdraw from providing their resources, etc
To use your sports analogy, if this magic genius coach can easily find plenty of any old players to execute his strategy with, then I guess he will manage to absorb the lion's share of profits. If it's hard to find players relative to supply/demand, then it doesn't matter if they're dipshits who barely manage to do anything and who just do what the coach says, it doesn't matter if anyone could do what they do. All that matters is the coach needs them and there's not enough of them. You can't have a team without the coach and you can't have a team without the players, regardless of their respective merits.
How you divide the spoils among resourceholders all of whom are critical to the process is purely political, based on leverage and negotiation, not based on actual "value" which cannot be computed unless a sports team can exist without players or without a coach and merely be a little, measurably worse.