Private Sector Pay Morality

Pah the government already interferes in the private sector far to much.

LOL - Tory? Marxist? Take your pick!

I think it's difficult to justify the government getting involved in the agreement of two consensual individual entities, like this. A banker getting half a million quid a year has nothing to do with the government when that million pounds comes from the private sector, and likewise, wealth is not a zero sum game - the poor don't get poorer simply because a banker got a bonus.

This depends upon whether or not investment in capital provides the individual with sufficient moral reason to claim an astronomical salary. The salary is taken from the fruits of the productivity of those who must sell their labour to capital and out of the capital itself (which is the productive force for society) so despite what you say about a "zero sum economy", as a collective system the poor are hit the hardest but yes, wealth (in the form of capital) can generate more wealth, when it is managed wisely and accordingly.

I don't think that's a necessary requisite - the wealth is generated, whether the majority ever get to touch it or not. Of course, that means it's not particularly desirable an outcome, but it's there nontheless.

And I don't think one needs a moral reason to claim any kind of income. That someone deems their labour (and it is their labour, as much as the worker in the factory's labour being in making screws, or whatever) to be worth that astronomical sum is justification enough - in the same way I wouldn't personally spend £300,000 on a Lamborghini, but I don't care if someone else wants to, as long as they aren't doing so with my money.

The market is organised in such a way that there is a lower equilibrium of labour force compared to capital force. If we were to take your theories to their fullest, most logical conclusions, we can safely assume that we live in (or that it is possible to live in) a system of perfect competition where a multitude of equally sized firms compete in the market producing homogeneous products and have no market power to set the price. We don't and never will do. Furthermore, this ignores the reality of the history of how wage labour and capital arose. In other words, the labourer is in a weaker bargaining position when contract deals are arranged with the capitalist, yet you would justify this arrangement based solely on the grounds that it is a voluntary contract.

It is physically impossible for the output of labour to ever equal the input of top private sector salaries. One can only earn such a salary via labour exploitation.

I don't think that's true at all - and you seem to be drawing an arbitrary line between labour and top private sector salaries. Unless by "salaries" you actually mean dividend or other share output, I'm not sure how you mean. I know people on huge private sector salaries who don't "exploit" labour (I'm not a fan of that term - it's too loaded to be useful in discussion. My bosses make money out of me, but I'm happy to be "exploited" because I earn a good wage, I enjoy my job and I don't want the added responsibility and financial restrictions of running my own boss. Can I Still be said to be "exploited"?) - I have a friend who's an network programmer. He's paid £120,000, not because of his ability to direct his slaves labour, but because his labour is worth a lot to them. Again, he may well be considered by you to be being exploited, but he's earning a ton of money in the process and can, except in very few circles, be considered to be earning a "top private sector salary".

Also, I disagree with your analysis of the logical conclusion of my argument. That doesn't have to occur at all. Competition keeps companies honest, sure, but it doesn't require equal companies providing equal services. M&S compete with Tesco, even though they offer similar but sufficiently different products. They both sell food, but M&S on a quality-value basis and Tesco on a quantity-value basis. Then you have Sainsbury's somewhere in the middle, with Waitrose on the M&S side and Asda on the Tesco side. They aren't all the same size, and they don't all offer the same products, but they do all keep each other in check - not just on price, but on variety, quality and staff. Likewise, Mozilla and Chrome are no where near as big as IE in terms of market share even today, but they really forced MS to up their game when it comes to security in their browser, just as MacOS forced them up their desktop OS game, and iOS and Android forced Windows 7 to be a ton better than Windows 6.5 on mobiles. Again, within the realm of mobile operating systems, you can't get more different market mechanisms than iOS and Android, yet they both push each other, and now MS, to hitherto unforeseen heights, and it's the consumer that benefits - all without being equal companies supplying an equal product.

That's exactly how the market should work, it's not merely an intermediary before your assumed conclusion.

Pah the government already interferes in the private sector far to much.

Does the output of those at the top of the private sector equal the output of those at the bottom?

Does the fact the market "deems" those at the top of the private sector "more worthy" provide sufficient legitimacy for astronomical pay checks?

Is income inequality justified by the supposedly higher utility provided to society by the investment in capital over the utility provided to society by productive labour?

Does capital need to be privatised? Can society not reap greater benefits from socialised capital?

Higher pay is what motivates people. Success = increased capital accumilation.

That's the way it is. To stop such a thing is to stop progress and to discourage succes and hardwork.

If you can never earn more by advancing, then what is the point?

A reward is there as an incentive to self betterment. Those below have no right to complain because they're not at the top.

Why is egalitarianism a worthwhile concept?

This is also very interesting, and extremely authoritarian. As a mantra, it wouldn't be out of place in some Stalinist nightmare.

Without it, individual liberty cannot be maximised.

To the anarchist, liberty and (social) equality go hand in hand

How are you defining individual liberty?

Not to me, anarchism without adjectives and such.

All the Bakunin quote tells me is that equality is good, because without it there would exist a state of inequality.