Even though we will answer this question, there is something that needs
to be said first. We Egalitarianists believe that this question is a
redundant issue. It is not a matter of why someone would train to become a
lawyer if they are not going to receive a higher wage, and
is instead a matter of whether or not it is ethical to pay people more for the job they do
(particularly intellectual labourers). Consider this
question, which was also asked once upon a time. If we can't have slaves,
then how will our farms remain economically viable? The answer is that it
doesn't matter if your farms can't remain economically viable, slavery is
wrong and therefore unacceptable. And as time passed, most farms continued to operate, and they continued to
remain economically viable, because consumer prices rose (closer to what
they were actually worth) to cater to
paying wages to black workers. Similarly, it doesn't matter that lawyers
(like many other people in other jobs) want and
think that they deserve to be paid a lot more
than the average wage. We all want this, and most of us would
accept it if were us, particularly in a social environment where everyone
has to economic fend for themselves. And most of us would also probably
believe that we deserved it too. However, as we have discussed in our 'Why
We Know that All Elitist Societies are
Invalid'
and 'The Capitalist Scam (Part 3)'
(which you should definitely read if you wish to know more about the
answer to the title question),
stratified wages and elitism in general, are created by abuse of power,
which is corruption. This makes it invalid, and by today's standards,
corruption is also considered wrong. Therefore, it would be stupid for anyone who isn't
well off to accept being economically and socially disadvantaged because
of it. With regards to
capitalism, both the private ownership of business and
unequal wages are deliberately designed to produce economic, social, and
political domination,
and these forms of domination are no more good or valid than physical
domination is.
And if you believe that physical domination is good or valid (perhaps
because we
see it in nature), then most of you are doing a very good job of hiding
this belief, because most of you appear to be appealing to laws, morality,
or the word of god to prevent it from happening to you. One has to
always remember, nothing is what is supposed to be, not even unequal wages.
Every form of rule, every form of elitism, and every accepted excuse to
have more than the rest are just another set of institutional fantasies:
the 'I am the King of the castle' fantasies of those people who gained
control over the law and policy making processes within the society, and
gaining this control is also nearly always achieved by some type of
domination.
To answer the question, in the AEM's Egalitarian society, we will have no trouble
convincing people to become lawyers or any other type of intellectual
labourer. People will never stop trying to get away from hard physical
labour, mundane labour, repetitious labour, and even customer service and
driving, and people will never stop trying to become
employed in intellectual pursuits, law being one of them. This is
particularly so for people as we grow older and sorer. That is, we need to
think about and plan for the future because we know that as time passes,
we either will not be able to, or will have no desire to continue doing the same
amount of physical labour. In fact, going into Egalitarianism will
bring many intellectual labourers back down to Earth.
They will have no choice but admit that they would rather be a lawyer for
an equal wage (or some other type of intellectual labourer) than be a bus
driver (or some other types of physical labourer, or be involved in repetitious
or mundane work). In fact, most will gladly be prepared to study in their spare time just to get
away from physical or mundane labour. This is something that is already
demonstrated. As mentioned elsewhere, in the USSR during the Eighties,
before capitalism started to be introduced, doctors, who require more
training than lawyers, received an average wage. Never the less, 3.4% of
the working population were in medicine compared to only 1.5% of the
workforce here in Australia. In fact, we expect that we will have no choice but to continue with the
practice of limiting access to jobs involving intellectual labour because
the demand for the these jobs will continue to far outweigh the
availability of intellectually orientated jobs. So, even in an Egalitarian
society, one will also have
to be a reasonably good lawyer to remain a lawyer because there will still
be a competitive workplace environment. Incidentally, after a short while,
we aren't going to need as many lawyers within the AEM's Egalitarian
society, particularly those involved in money and property crimes,
non-payment of fines, divorce settlements, insurance disputes, corporate
law, drug related crimes, medical law suits, wills, workers compensation
claims,
civil law suits, and others. So, the competition to be a lawyer is about
to become even stiffer, and as such, it is difficult to
foresee that it will available to anyone under 35 - 40 years of age
(eventually).
One of the main reasons why people believe
that lawyers and other intellectual labourers deserve more is because they
had to undergo the sacrifice of living on student wages for several years
to graduate. Consider this, while that lawyer was studying very hard for 5 years to
be a lawyer, a bus driver was working hard for 5 years just to stay a bus
driver, and he was also doing something productive for the
nation at the same time. Who has made the bigger sacrifice? Also, in the AEM's Egalitarian society, students
who we grant scholarships to, will be on a full wage while they study, so there will now be no economic sacrifice involved in becoming a lawyer.
Therefore, what reason
is there left to give lawyers or any other types of intellectual labourer
more pay. In fact, we would be
correctly justified to say that society has now invested in the lawyer's
education and that the lawyer now owes society for the privilege of being
able to do intellectual labour instead of physical labour, so forget about
getting a higher wage mate. Receiving an education, no matter how,
enriches the individual, regardless of its vocational outcomes, which is
why it is a privilege to receive an education, and the higher one's level
of education, the more privileged one is.
Your assumption that lawyers should be paid
more is brought about by several things. First, as is normal, you have adapted to
what you have always known. You have
accepted it like you accepted many other things about your culture: things that
would seem odd or illegal in another culture (eg. wearing bras, monogamous
marriages, modern medicine, drinking alcohol, burying the dead). The children who are brought up in the
AEM's Egalitarian society will adapt to an Egalitarian environment just as
you have adapted to this economically and socially abusive one, and they
will have just as much trouble as you are having now when they try to
understand why on Earth people once believed that a lawyer should
receive a much higher wage than a bus driver. They, including lawyers, will assume correctly that
this is clearly an outcome of corruption, and they will be thankful that
stratified wages and elitism, and all the problems they bring, are things
of the past, or happening somewhere else in less civilised
countries. Secondly, we who are not so intellectual, tend to think
that because study and intellectual labour are hard for us, means that
they are hard for everyone, and this is not so. We all have our aptitudes, and
various types of intellectual labour are just other ones. In fact,
physical labour is hard for most people to endure continually, and
intellectual labour is the much easier option for most people. In fact,
many people love learning and gaining an education. It would also be true
to say that gaining a degree is perceived by those who are intimidated
by university, or who have never been to university, as being much harder
than it is. The truth is that most people can acquire a degree in a field
that they are interested in, when they put their minds to it, because
gaining a degree has a lot more to do with doing the work required than it
has with possessing a high IQ. We Egalitarianists claim that intellectuals in high
places are taking advantage of your inferiority complex about not being
smart (which has been deliberately nurtured in you by your ruling class
and others with a superiority complex),
so that they may take full
advantage of you by having you believe that the effort and sacrifice you
put into your non-intellectual labour is not as big as the effort and
sacrifice put in to do
intellectual labour. To a large extent, it's your own fault for
trusting people who crave power and wealth to tell you the unbiased
truth.
Also, once selected, becoming a lawyer in the AEM's
Egalitarian society will be a much more effortless thing to achieve. If we do a good job at constructing the
Egalitarian society, for the majority of people, it will be a normal part
of life to gradually move from unskilled and skilled physical labour into
continually higher levels of intellectual labour because the training will
be provided on the job. Further, by not paying lawyers more than
anybody else, we increase the likelihood that those people involved in law
are committed to law, rather than being committed to getting ahead of the
rest and self-interest.
Incidentally, contrary to what the title/question implies, it is our opinion that bus
driving, along with process workers and many other workers who are
involved in repetitious work, that nobody should be made to do these jobs
all day, let alone alone all week, or all year, or for many years, or for
all of their life. We regard jobs that require people to work, stand, or
sit in one position all day as being detrimental to the
physical, mental, and emotional well-being and development of any person, which is why we
regard this common and often inescapable circumstance within our
capitalist society as an institutionalised and extreme form of abuse
(similar to being a battery hen). After all, do you want to be bus
driver, and if not, why not? This is why we
prefer to see a lot more people doing these jobs for much shorter periods
of time (i.e. never all day). As such, a bus driver will probably have at
least one other job, which could be quite intellectual or high in the
chain of command of some other business. See our 'The
Humanised Workplace' web page to find out more about how people may
have several occupations at once.
However, if there are any easy jobs out there
that everybody wants to do (of which, we don't regard bus driving as being one of them), then older
people are usually going to out compete younger people, or even middle
aged people, because generally, older people will have paid their dues
more than younger people, and will therefore tend to hog the easiest jobs
more,
along with injured and handicapped people. Also, if there is a great
demand for any relatively easy job, we can also spread the work out over many people
doing it for less time, so that more people may enjoy their piece of the
easy action. Also, we can prevent people who we think are capable of
becoming nuclear physicists from being wasted in these types of occupations, leaving
them no option but to do something else if they wish to escape physical labour. In actual fact, the same thing goes on now, as most employers are
weary of employing someone who is overqualified or who they believe is too
intelligent to be content doing mundane work.
Even though it won't occur, if by chance we
found that we were having trouble trying to persuade people to become
lawyers or bus drivers, we can always offer other incentives such
as longer holidays, longer long-service leave, or earlier retirement, or
we could allow these workers to move into the types of jobs they want to be involved in
after they have helped out the society by taking on these jobs. More pay doesn't
have to enter into the issue.
However, in actual fact, there is incentive
to increase one's level of expertise (in any field) within the AEM's
Egalitarian society. That is, the more workplace challenges one takes on,
and the bigger the challenges one takes on, the more workplace autonomy
one gains (i.e. the more one is in charge of the work one does) and the
quicker one will get to where one wants to go (i.e. the more ability one
has to direct one's career in the direction one wishes to go). For those people who continue to work regardless of how much money
they possess, this fulfills the same highly desired goal that gaining more
money achieves within the capitalist society.
It should also be stated that there is a
great hypocrisy occurring by asking the title question. Do you really
think that it is anywhere near fair that lawyers are currently making
between 5 to 30 times as much as the average wage? Even if one was to incorrectly
think that the labour of lawyers is worth more than the average wage
earner, it is impossible to believe that the sacrifice, or the level of
effort required to be a lawyer are worth even two times as much. Clearly, there is
something seriously wrong with the way wages are determined in our
capitalist society, and every indicator demonstrates that this situation
is worsening year by year.
Even if you believe that lawyers or other intellectual labourers
are being hard done by, by having to receive the same wage as everybody
else, when one considers the amazing, and the many social, economic, and
environmental benefits that are created, and the social problems that
disappear, by becoming an Egalitarian society: one has to conclude
that it is worth being unfair to this minority group. Further, it is clearly obvious
that there are many more people (probably you included) within our capitalist society who are
being far more
ripped off than a lawyer in an Egalitarian society, and yet you don't seem
to be concerned about them (or yourself). Why not?
Also, it doesn't matter if the labour of a
lawyer is worth more than the average wage because unfortunately, as we have
mentioned on our other pages, the
minute you allow certain people to have more wealth than other people (and
all that goes with it), ruthless people will do
whatever they have to to become one of these wealthier people, and in
gaining these positions, they will still always want more, particularly
when we live in an economically competitive society. Consequently,
economically stratified societies are ruled or controlled by
the most ruthless of us all. To continue with any form of elitism then
(including stratified wages), is
to ask to be ruled by the most ruthless people in your society, and under
such circumstances, there is little point in complaining about all the
social, economic, and environmental problems, and the unfriendly and
distrusting culture that are inevitable byproducts of it.
