economics!!!!!!!!!!?

firewhisky61: economics!!!!!!!!!!?
1. when you purchase a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, whose labor are you paying? (i think, the labor of the one who made the products… )
2. if the labor of the free person is more productive than servile labor, why did slavery and serfdom endure many centuries? why do totalitarian states still engage in stern direction of labor?
3. not everybody relishes work. can you offer some reasons why some people do as little as possible.

* the labor of free men and women is usually more productive than labor of slaves, serfs, and other people who are not free.. explain further…

Answers and Views:

Answer by lombardo_uk
1.) Obviously the labour that made the product, also the labour involved in transport and distribution, if a truck driver delivers 100,000 pints of milk in a 10 hour journey that’s 0.23 seconds of his time per pint your paying for, think about the support staff he needs back at the depot, guys to maintain his rig, dispatchers to control where he picks up and unloads wages staff to ensure he gets paid and pays tax, his boss to coordinate it all. those people involved in the petrochemical industry to make the fuel for his rig. Those involved in selling the milk( everyone at the supermarket from shelf stackers to floor sweepers you are paying for when you buy a pint of milk) think of the electricity workers who make the electricity to power the refrigeration units and the people who mine the coal to power the electricity power stations, the people who make the refrigerators ( and the shelves the milk stands on) the construction workers who built the store, the brick makers who made the bricks the store is made from, the machine makers who made the brick making machines, the list just goes on.
2.) a free man may produce more than a serf or slave, but costs more too. whilst modern economists have calculated that free men will produce more per dollar (pound, euro, yen, whatever) that servile labour, this is counter intuitive and many tyrants & dictators simply don’t realise or believe it to be true.
3.) Man’s natural instincts are to provide food and shelter for his family. Weather it be finding a nice cave and going out hunting and gathering, or working 16 hours a day at a high paid job to earn money to buy a nice apartment and gourmet food. People work to live, not live to work. Once the basics of survival are sorted out ( through welfare, money from family, or an alternative lifestyle) many people figure why bother killing themselves in a stressful job to get that extra THING their neighbours have and instead just kick back and enjoy life.