Tan Kin Lian's Blog: A new society (2)

Friday, September 04, 2009

A new society (2) - Distribution of work

We need a fair way to distribute the work among the people in a society, so that every person has the right to work at a suitable occupation for a fair wage, that is sufficient to meet their basic needs.

Based on the size of the population and the output of the essential services and products, it is possible to determine the number of people to be engaged in each occupation. The workers can bid for these jobs. A right quantum of work should be allocated to each person, to ensure a fair distribution of the work.

The rate for each job can be determined by supply and demand, almost like the bidding system. If there are more people willing to do a certain occupation at a specified rate per hour, the rate has to be adjusted downwards to reach a market balance. If there are less people interested, the rate has to be adjusted upwards. This rate can apply for a period of six or twelve months.

Under this system, it may be possible for a doctor to earn (say) $30 an hour and an office worker to earn $10 per hour. This will reflect the market conditions and the training needed for the occupation.

A doctor can earn 3 times of an office worker, but not 30 times or 300 times. Each qualified doctor is confident of being able to earn a certain number of hours of work each day, based on the way that the work has been allocated.

It is possible to introduce fair competition in this system. For example, the consumers know that standard rate for a doctor is $30 an hour. An individual doctor may charge a higher or lower rate than the standard rate, but this has to be disclosed to the patients. The patient can decide whether to go for the standard or the special rate.

The doctor can work more or less than the standard hours, but if there is a fair balance between supply and demand, there is no need for excessive or predatory competition. There is enough work to be shared among the doctors.

The same concept can apply to other occupations.

Tan Kin Lian

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: however, it doesn't apply to CXOs who decide where the money flows. many of the CXOs has income that's more than 10 times (in banking, it could even as many as 100 times). doctors are nothing compared to those high positions.; September 04, 2009 9:58 AM
Anonymous said...: An insurance agent can earn 5 times than a doctor and a ceo despite a low qualification of 4 'O' levels and insurance qualifications at certificate level from an exam mill sanctioned by a regulator which panders to the needs of the FIs and throwing ethics and interest of the consumers to the wind.
The agents don't provide any professional advice that is worthy of the commission nor have expertise knowledge that is worth the commission nor providing a service that is worthy of the commission. (is form filling worth so much?)
Why?
It is the system. The system provides the license to kill and the consumers conditioned to believe, brainwashed, that they are qualified to dispense with insurance and investment advice which they are NOT qualified. They are only salesmen. This is the flaw.
Pfizer was fined for $Billions for unethical practices by bribing the doctors to sell and promote only drugs by Pfizer. The doctors inevitably become salesmen and do not practise as a doctor. It becomes lucrative for doctors to become salespeople.
Selling is fast and can generate volumes. It need not only require profession knowledge or expertise or comply with any algorithm of practice. It requires ability to manipulate a few facts or truths with untruths. It is to confuse the buyers. It makes a lot easy for clients to be manipulated if they are clueless, trusting, blur and many consumers are in this category. The biggest cohort is of the poor man in the street and they are the majority.
The doctors and the insurance agents serve this group and the victims of insurance agents are mainly from this group.
The bottomline is , every highly paid person is a salesman. In this selling game the sellers design and tailor the rules to suit him or her.
There is no level playing field. Anything goes.The honest and competent are the losers. The suckers are the consumers.

The Watchman; September 04, 2009 10:39 AM
Tan Kin Lian said...: Someone told me that my suggestions sounds like state planning. This is true to a certain extent, but it should not be seen in a negative way.

State planning is necessary to determine the appropriate number of schools, hospitals and other amenities to meet the needs of the population. It can be extended to the appropriate number of people in each occupation.

This is to ensure that the human resources are appropriately used, and that there is a balance between supply and demand. If there is imbalance, there will be wasteful competition the leads to friction.

We also need a fair mechanism to determine the fair rate for each job. My suggestion is a market based approach.; September 04, 2009 10:49 AM
Anonymous said...: hi mr tan, a fair market based approach would be a single entity e.g. goverment to be the controller instead of CXOs who decide where the money flows. as there's favoritism, politics, etc etc which does not really give a fair market rather relationship based e.g. someone is some CEO's relatives and someone get much more money than others.; September 04, 2009 11:39 AM
Tan Kin Lian said...: It is possible to use the internet portal to discover a fair market rate for each type of work. For example, all the qualified nurses can bid for the opportunity to do nursing work and the hourly rate that they should be paid.

If a person bid too high, there will be sufficient people who are willing to work for a lower rate (and will be appointed).

There is no need to bid too low either, as there are other work opportunities.

This is a similar mechanism as the bidding for COEs, but the outcome is better. The COE bidding is erratic as it depends on supply and demand at any point of time, and speculators are allowed to be involved.

Under the bidding for the job rate, the people who won the bid are entitled to work at that rate for the next 6 to 12 months, and will also have the right to be extended at the market rate at that time.

The market rate is a fair benchmark. It is fairer than the current system where the remuneration is decided by the management on a case by case basis (which is subject to favouritism and unfairness).; September 04, 2009 2:25 PM
Anonymous said...: hello REX comments as follows,
The bidding proposal for fair rate of job renumeration, is interesting. However it has to be adopted from day Zero. Because if you adopt it now, you have a big problem, what do you do with the tons of people who are being overpaid. The bidders who bid the lower rate would get the job ok, but you will sack immediately the current batch of workers? This is not like a COE where a car is a car is a car, nothing much to it. A job.. well there are many aspect of continuity, specialised knowledge, specific cases, localised problems. You cannot just turnover loads and loads of workers to lower bidders overnight unfortunately.
REX; September 06, 2009 9:03 AM