Does work have value beyond meeting financial needs?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Does work have value beyond meeting financial needs?

Zachack: Jun 1, 2000

crack mayor posted:

I was leaning towards the side of keeping the discussion casual and figuring there would be a general understanding of what is meant without having to set any parameters. That being said, you raise a good question. Off the top of my head, any kind of job that is basically a middleman seems unnecessary. Retail jobs, sports and talent agents, etc.

Sales positions and other middlemen can (although don't necessarily) act as filters, feelers and buffers. Even a Best Buy TV salesperson can be useful if they can act as a buffer between the buyer and the manufacturer simply by saying "we've had a lot of returns on that model". At the sports/talent agent level, ignoring all the idiotic poo poo you're paying someone to do a better job of finding you a job than you can and arguing for/protecting you during negotiations. People with desirable skills and knowledge are often terrible at recognizing that value and convincing others of it.

This doesn't mean all middle positions are useful or necessary, but sometimes the path from source to endpoint needs massaging on the way.

quote:

The farmer example to me is work that has no middleman. He is providing for his family and possibly his community in the most basic way possible. We live in a large world, but how necessary are distributors and wholesalers if everyone works together in their local community?

At some point that farmer is going to interact with the tractor salesperson because Agraria doesn't have the tractor-making facility found in Megatruck City.

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Zachack: Jun 1, 2000

crack mayor posted:

The basketball player may find value in a sports agent dealing with the front office or sponsors so that he can concentrate on his game. But if the Knicks or Adidas dealt with their athletes in an honest manner, would the agent be out of a job?

No, because the basketball player would still not want to deal with this poo poo and may not understand what shoe/team wants in the contract. Additionally, part of negotiating for a new athlete is that their "honest" value is extremely low because they have not delivered any value to the team/shoemaker, and any parties are basically investing. And this doesn't touch on the issue of celebrity, how an agent can act as a manager, etc. The celebrity/fame/riches elements make the whole thing a giant mess. I kinda get what you're going for with this but you really should have picked something like a headhunter (which I think have been heavily replaced by the internet) over a sports agent.

quote:

Does the farm supply store in Agraria really give Old MacDonald a better deal on a tractor than if he just dealt with the tractor maker directly?

The tractor maker doesn't want to deal with individual buyers. Many industrial processes can't be stopped or started on a whim, or require specialty parts from some other point in the supply chain. For something like a refinery there are (or used to be, dunno now) consultant companies whose entire purpose is starting up a plant because getting to steady-state requires very unique setups. For the tractor factory, they likely just want to crank out a thousand of this year's tractor and be able to sell those tractors as soon as their finished, which means having some sort of wholesaler that will agree to buy them all up front and slowly sell them throughout the year as every Old MacDonald erratically needs them. You could go the Apple/Gap route and have a store just for your product but I'm offhand not thinking of something that isn't a luxury good in that case.

Now, Old MacDonald could go to the factory and get a custom tractor made for them, but it's probably going to be more costly and he'll have to find some way of transporting it back to Agraria on his own. An example of this would be Scamp trailers, which have no showroom, kinda pricey, are ordered directly from the Scamp factory, and are custom built and must either be picked up in Minnesota or you pay a hell of a shipping fee. And they're great trailers, but at the same time consumers tend to want some (just a few) choices and the ability to compare, which is where you get a wholesaler.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 01:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Does work have value beyond meeting financial needs?