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Comment by DubiousPusher | Hacker News Reader

One of the strangest things about our work culture right now is the way it sees factory work as a more moral or honorable than service work.

In history this wasn't always so. Factory jobs were first considered unskilled positions whereas many service jobs required something akin to finishing school to acquire.

Now we put manufacturing jobs on a pedestal and deem them worthy of high wages whereas service jobs are lowly and what you do until you can get a real job.

Unions, with all their problems uplifted those jobs in the American consciousness. And whatever your politics unions and wage controls are how almost every country in the world guarantees high incomes.

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Generally, factory jobs are 1:many while service jobs are closer to 1:1; they're just so much more efficient and productive that they could afford to pay better (compared to the artisan, hand crafted, one at a time jobs they replaced).

There's a reason why TVs are so much cheaper, but medical care (ignoring liability and cost of medicine) and education have gone up in cost relatively. The bottleneck is people and machines and software hasn't made them 100s of times more efficient like it has for factories.

I do think unions are another factor. Factories had a concentration of workers, while service jobs distribute them across multiple shops, which makes it harder to organize.

I believe it's a deep feeling of "wait, we can't just perpetually be giving each other haircuts".

Consider the collective value of all the physical goods imported into the US. Without any production in the US, that sum would have to be compensated by non-material exports only, or it will, sooner or later, result in an economic imbalance.

While there are certainly some high-value services and intellectual properties that can be sold across borders, it makes people queasy that so much of the country's productivity is tied up in law, finance and other zero-sum arenas that are essentially masturbatory. It seems unsustainable.

It's not really strange, if you map maslows heirarchy to a corresponding job (either the outputs or the individual worker satisfaction) then it makes sense to make these moral/honorable distinctions.

The world's Basic needs are realized through industry and agriculture

The worlds Psychological and Self Fulfillment needs are further up and are realized through services.

IIRC, while popularly referenced and in some ways intuitively attractive to many people, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is basically speculation that has never been born out scientifically.

So the fact that if one assumes it models reality, then certain observed distinctions people make about jobs are sensible doesn't actually make those distinctions sensible.

(Also, psychological and self-fulfillment needs are realized through industry or agriculture [pretty much all luxury products of either kind], and a some Basic needs are realized through services.)

True, but I think that the people's perception is what we are discussing here, not what is actually scientifically correct.

Students are taught Maslow's hierarchy as fact, so I think it can be assumed that the perception argument is fair here.

For me the problem with this isn't the invocation of Maslow's needs but the step to saying that they have some bearing on how people view occupations. I just don't think that's born out at all by reality.

Architect which is a very respected profession isn't fully necessary to meet even the basic need of "shelter." You can build a house without an architect but you can't without a builder.

While corn farmer and cattle rancher, the underpinning occupations of our food system aren't treated with much respect or reverence at all.

Shouldn't that make service jobs more skilled than factory jobs, and therefore worthy of higher prestige and better pay?

Well some are. Like doctors. Notice though that service jobs that fit into the basic needs categories are the outliers in this case.

I'm arguing that you've got the direction backwards. I'm asserting that, when the basics - the stuff lower on the hierarchy - is available in abundance, the stuff higher on the hierarchy should pay better than the stuff lower on the hierarchy.

For an example, basic food costs less than a ticket to the opera. The opera is higher on the hierarchy.

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