whenever i think “how much should stuff cost” i always end up realizing i don’t know nearly enough about, like. everything. to answer that question

I mean. going by very basic knowledge and simple math, it seems clear that even if CEOs stopped being greedy and stopped taking any more of the money than they need, any product would still have to be… above a certain threshold of cost, to make sure every person involved in making and distributing it got a fair payment for the work they did

but it also seems pretty clear that, this minimum fair cost? would be very very different, depending on the product.

because different products take different kinds and amounts of labor and materials… and have different amounts of potential for how efficiently they can be provided in what quantities… and require different steps to make sure they’re made safely and humanely and without whatever kinds of harm they’d otherwise do

so it seems– to my mind with the amount of knowledge I’ve been able to get and the amount of thought I’ve been able to give it– that the answer must be different for lots of things you might need to buy.

like. there are probably lots of things that can pretty easily be affordable to everyone who needs them, while also paying everyone involved a fair wage.

and some other things where paying everyone a fair wage and improving the whole process would make the product more expensive… but still manageable to buy if you saved up, and also high-quality and long-lasting enough to be worth it.

but there are probably other things where any fair price is just… mathematically impossible.

things where, if you raised the price til everyone involved in making them was paid what’s now considered a good wage, those people (and others at their wage level) still couldn’t afford to buy the thing themselves. And that gap would persist no matter where you set the price.

I don’t have any guesses as to which things those may be.

but… considering how many different products there are, and how different the profit margins in making things can be… it seems inevitable that there are things like that.

and I don’t see any reason to assume everything in that category just happens to be a luxury we can all do without. we’re not that lucky. there’s probably some real necessities that are impossible to set a truly fair price for.

and, I guess, the solution to at least some of that problem would have to be in government funding? I mean, there’s a lot that can be done with tax dollars, if the government is actually trying to collect them from the people who can most afford to pay them, and put them toward actual good causes

(But even tax dollars are only as good as what’s available for them to buy. no matter how many tax dollars you have, you can’t use them to pay for a resource that doesn’t exist in big enough amounts. Or for people to do labor that there aren’t enough people willing to do for any price.)

so…

just from a very basic consideration of things that might be important here, it seems like the answer to “how much should stuff cost?” is probably, “it really really depends on the thing, and there’s a lot of research and math involved, and also sometimes there is no good answer”

but that is not what anyone in the argument wants to hear

and saying it would kinda come across as implying “well then there’s no point in trying to make any of this even slightly better than it is now, because actually fixing the problem is impossible”

but, the other option is not addressing any of this– and just saying the kind of things I see people actually say in this argument

like “everything should cost ¼ of what it costs now”– which seems so oversimplified that trying to make any real decisions based on it would probably lead to outright disaster

so… i don’t know.