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Comment by wturner | Hacker News Reader

The world "value" is always confusing. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire presumably because she is valued for her ability to interview people (she basically talks into a microphone for large sums of money). If she left society and shacked up in the woods tomorrow it wouldn't impact my life in the least. On the other hand, my garbage pickup person does harder work and makes a lot less, but if there was a garbage collector strike I would not be happy. I value my garbage collector more than Oprah Winfrey and I would assume the average citizen does as well.

Using the phrase "They provide more value" as an umbrella phrase for why people get rich is understandable, but something just doesn't seem quite right about it.

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The average citizen values YOUR garbage collector far less than they value Oprah.

They value their own, certainly, but that value is reflected by the enormous sums we collectively pay to have our garbage removed. The garbage industry is worth a lot more than Oprah.

You also pay (indirectly) your garbage worker a lot more than you pay (indirectly) Oprah, so things might be working out closer to how you value them than you'd expect.

I still can't get my head around the logic that a garbage collector gets paid next to nothing relative to someone who is paid millions to talk into a microphone and the reasoning is that the latter "provides more value". "They provide more value" just seems like a very partial catch phrase to make this all look less absurd than it actually is.

I think the difference is Oprah provides a little value to a lot of people (whether it be therapeutic, entertainment or what have you). Collectively, she is providing a lot more "value" because of the platform and distribution she has achieved. Your garbage collector provides great value to you, but no value to the grand majority of people.

My point was that each garbage collector is more valuable to the person paying for them than Oprah Winfrey is, but Oprah makes hundreds of millions of dollars and the garbage collector makes a typical wage. I understand the reasoning that Oprah provides a little value that is distributed to a lot of people and that the garbage industry in its totality is more valuable than Oprah. With all that, I still think it's a bit of a partial way to summarize whatever is happening here - and something about it just seems misleading. Then again, maybe I just think societies values and priorities are bizarre.

I think it's painfully obvious that Oprah provides more value than one garbage man, so I don't see the disconnect.

Also your above comment even says that "to the person paying them."

I pay Oprah and the garbage man, respectively, what they're worth to me.

I guess it hurts your feelings that Oprah has more value than your local garbage man, but it's just a fact.

You can probably come up with the reasons yourself: personality, name recognition, how easily replaced, etc.

Y'all're getting way too hung up on the colloquial connotations of "value" here. It's descriptive, not normative.

This is marginal value, the stuff that someone would give up in order to have one more of a thing.

A celebrity often makes money because, for whatever reason, nobody can easily and reliably produce an equivalent one on demand.

Folks working for wages in less-glamorous positions are doing valuable things for society, but fundamentally their pay is based on how easily society could replace them.

I never said Oprah Doesn't provide more value than one garbage man. I am saying that I don't understand how a task that is literally needed for society to function is less valuable than one that is negligible for society to function and I don't understand why the person who does the more needed task is paid less than the person who does the negligible task. It's really a philosophical question about values but I think entertaining it is more elaborate than a simple catch phrase. Also hierarchy of needs vs wants etc all come into play.

And you are guessing wrong. From what I've read she is probably one of the better people I would like to see in the role if "Billionaire"

> I don't understand why the person who does the more needed task is paid less than the person who does the negligible task.

If your garbage man cost the community $80k per year, there would probably be 100 other dudes, all just as good at collecting refuse, offering to take his job and only charge $50k. That doesn't mean the disposal of all that waste disposal is not worth $80k (or $250k) to the community, but competition allows the community to pay less than the value it places on the service.

I bet there are also 1000 people lining up to underbid Oprah on whatever deals it is she is making with her partners(broadcast networks? advertisers?). But none of those people will attract nearly as many eyeballs. From the partner's perspective, it's simply a matter of choosing which TV personality will bring the most revenue (over and above their fee), and that's Oprah.

I'm late here, but it's simple supply and demand. How much are you willing to pay to have your trash taken out? I'm guessing you won't pay 100k a year for yours. Someone will come and do it for far less. If nobody was willing to do it for less than 100k per house, you know what would happen? No, society wouldn't cease to function. People would take their own trash out. It's not hard, so it simply isn't worth billions of dollars.

I live in the middle of nowhere, don't have trash service, so I used to take it to the dump myself. Then my dad retired, and now I pay him a few bucks a month to take mine when he takes his. If this wasn't an option, I'd go back to doing it myself. This is why your local garbage man doesn't make as much money as Oprah. It's simple math and econ 101 supply and demand.

If millions of people each like Oprah enough to give her a dollar, she makes millions.

(pardon the napkin math) If you live in a town of, say, 25k people and your town has 10 garbage collectors (napkin math: each pair covers 1000 people's trash every weekday) each earning minimum wage 15k/year (if it takes 1min to pick up trash for an average household of 2, we get just over the standard 2k work-hour year. To me this sounds like fast operation and low house size. But the low end of the trash costs demonstrates the point), then each person in town is paying $6 to their garbage collectors. Even more considering benefits and non-labor costs. If healthcare, garbage truck maintenance and, I dunno, landfill fees (are those a thing?) cost the city a mere 100k/year, every person is paying $10 for garbage collection.

So in the napkin scenario, for each individual, garbage collectors are valued at 10x what Oprah is. And that's with all my napkin math assumptions choosing the lowest costs. Plausible scenarios could go as high as 100x individual value for garbage collection over Oprah mic talking. But Oprah can do her less-individually-important job for 1000x more people. It's an issue of reach.

Here's how I see it:

If Oprah dies tomorrow society lives on and for the most part nothing changes.

If all the sewer treatment plant workers die there is a scramble to replace these invaluable workers to abate a national health crisis.

Why does Oprah make more than these individuals?

Is it because she provides "More value" ?

If you believe she does.... then fine.

If society, through implicit acceptance does...then fine.

I don't, and I don't understand the logic. I believe I understand some of the psychology around it...but not the logic.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector

"...predicts that employment in this industry will increase 7 percent, adding 9,400 new jobs by 2024... Median Salary $33,800"

If we assume median salary ~ average salary, then $33,800* (9,400/.07) = $4.5bn. Oprah net worth is estimated at around $3bn.

@tqi So when you get down to the numbers and the prevalent value assumptions we all have, Oprah Winfrey (one person) provides more value to the country than 2/3's of the nations garbage collection workers. Even though that is apparently what the numbers say, I can't help but believe it is divorced from reality in terms of practical day-to-day life.

In other words, if the average person was forced to choose to either "get rid of" Oprah Winfrey or 2/3's of the countries garbage collection workers, which one would the average person pick?

*edited

You could easily replace Oprah with some other person. I am simply using her as an example because she is wealthy, popular and her creative output isn't easily quantifiable the way someone like Bill Gates might be.

She delivers less (absolute) value per person, but because of the way the business model works, she can reach more people.

If I build a local website and sell access to it for $10 in, say, Monaco (population: approx. 38,000 people) then I'll be making less money in comparison to the same situation but where the entire US is the market for said website.

The sewer treatment plant workers don't matter to me, unless I'm living in the town where this stuff is going down. If I'm not however, those workers have zero value to me.

People are a disparate group and their needs matter only in proportion to their wealth. Something can provide negative value for a million people and be extremely valuable to bill gates and earn a lot of money.

Many people kind of happy produces a higher area under the curve than a few people really happy. Watching Oprah makes many people kind of happy. Your garbage collector every day makes you and the people on your block very happy (or relieved).

The reason is that Oprah operates in what's called a "winner take all market". There are thousands of baristas, servers, and (probably) garbage collectors with failed dreams of stardom in Hollywood, etc. But you don't hear about them.

Garbage collecting is not winner take all. No single garbage collector can corner the market because the role doesn't require unique talent in the same way that being a famous talk show host does. Oprah's value is her unique personality, brand, style, mannerisms, business savvy, etc rather than any sort of utility (like removing up your rotting trash) that she may or may not provide.

* Value is not just the price that someone pays for something. If I give a homeless person a laptop for free, that homeless person is receiving value despite it not being a non-monetary transaction. Garbage men are very valuable, but the full monetary amount of that value isn't necessarily paid for.

* It's possible that garbage collectors as a whole create more "value" than Oprah Winfrey. The difference is that the value created by garbage collectors is dispersed amongst millions of garbagemen and other people, while Oprah Winfrey gets to keep most of her value.

* There's an oversupply of people willing and able to pick up garbage relative to the supply of jobs. This puts downward pressure on the wages, ensuring that the compensation for their work is less than the true value generated.

To be [un]fair, these days Oprah makes a bit more money by apportioning time on her OWN media platform for other people to sell woo-woo lifestyle products. She's going to make more money from that than she ever did by appearing on camera personally. If she withdrew from society tomorrow, the people she left running her channel would still be doing work on behalf of the business, and would still be sending her checks.

She can't appear on camera 24-7, but that media empire she now owns chugs along even while she sleeps. That's why owners win.

Your garbage pickup person doesn't even own the route they clear. They can be replaced at the drop of a hat by someone else, or by a semi-automated garbage truck. They cannot effectively capture the value they do create. The guy who "owns" the routes via their contracts with the municipal/county council is the one that can suck most of that up.

It isn't those who create value that get rich, but those who can best capture created value.

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