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Comment by WaxProlix | Hacker News Reader

Do you believe that to be a reasonable, charitable interpretation of what OP said?

I believe OP repeated a good sounding slogan ("workers should be able to buy the things they produce!") they had heard, without having spent any thought to what it would mean in reality.

My example is meant to show that principle is absurd, not that OP actually believes in that consequence. I admit the point could have been delivered friendlier.

As for charitability, we are all prone to agree to what fits with what we already believe without critical thought. This time OP slipped up, many times it's been me.

That's not how I perceived your comment. You took the statement and came up with another statement and claimed it was a logical extension of the first. But it was not faithful to the original statement. Nor was that my only point. You essentially found a logical exploit and dumped the rest of my meaning. That's violent.

Agreed

Well, there are "reductio ad absurdum" arguments - which attempt to show that an argument is bad because it leads to absurd conclusions. And as its fancy latin name suggests, its as old as the ages, and is often a reasonable form of argument.

The poster "reductio ad absurdum"ed after he "non sequitur"ed. A valid reductio requires applying the principle of charity first though.

We do need a Latin phrase for the principle of charity!

Ok, so a worker makes a part of a plane - not the whole plane. Should the group of workers be able to buy the whole plane?

I don't see the substantial and valid point in your rebuttal. Care to elucidate in the spirit of the original point?

My core substantial point is that there should be no connection between the unit price of what a worker produces and their wage.

To take an example at the other end, should someone working in the paper clip industry be happy as long as they can afford to buy one paper clip?

I can understand an emotional reaction to people working on goods just outside the reach of their spending power. But if you think about it, those two numbers have nothing to do with each other.

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