ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

I would like to write about why labor value is difficult to establish using Addison’s “Spectator 160” and Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments” to claim that there are actually two main decisions make when valuing labor. One decision, as Addison alludes to, deals with how useful the labor is for society as he discusses the two types of geniuses. The other decision, as Smith describes, deals with how highly we regard the actual person performing the labor. Where these paths cross to produce labor that is both useful to society and performed by a well recognized person, we tend to value labor very highly. However, most of the time labor does not fall at the upper end of each of these categories, but somewhere in the middle of each. It is when we weigh the two together that we become uncertain about the value of labor output by an individual.

This topic is interesting to me because we rate the value of others’ labor constantly in our purchases and hiring of services, and the decision can still be challenging due to any existing uncertainty in the value. The implications of our decisions are large, having impacts on the free market economy we are immersed in, yet the decisions we make can hang on a thread of certainty as we rate the labor needed to produce our desired product or service. The value placed on different types of labor determines payment, recognition from society, and social status. These are important factors to consider in any career choice, and greatly affect the economy and the lives of those in it.

Based upon these early ideas, I would like to claim that labor is difficult to establish because we are conflicted by our perceptions of what labor actually produces and who is doing it.