Talk:Lump of labour fallacy

Requested move

Lump of labour fallacy → Lump of labor - Change "labour" to "labor" because this is America. Remove "fallacy" from the title because it is POV. LevelCheck 01:56, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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• Oppose The term fallacy should be included because linguisticly it refers to a specific idea in common usage. Specific applications of the lump of labor fallacy are controversial not the existance of the term. --Pearlg 02:26, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Wikipedia is not supposed to be deferential to US spellings. Per MoS, any topic that is not US-specific should NOT be changed to US-spellings: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English. Niteowlneils 04:27, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose The labour/labor issue should be left alone - for international issues, WP uses the version written first. As for fallacy, "lump of labour" usually appears followed by "fallacy", and is no less POV without it. --Henrygb 09:07, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Come back and make the proposal to remove the word "fallacy" when you have removed the offensive and anti-policy spelling change. — Helpful Dave 10:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose completely. 1) This article is not exclusively or even primarily related to the United States. 2) An article about a logical fallacy can use that term in the title. Jonathunder 14:20, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
• Oppose, due to the American spellings fallacy. —Michael Z. 2005-04-18 20:08 Z
• OPPOSE because it would be American linguistic imperialism, because fallacy is necessary in the title, because fallacy of labour scarcity is a better title. 132.205.15.43 21:47, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • "Lump of labor" is quite clearly NOT a fallacy, as the present economic situation in the United States demonstrates - those "lucky" enough to have jobs routinely working 60-hour weeks while real unemployment is in double digits. LevelCheck 22:46, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Economist's definition of lump of labour fallacy, complete with fallacy in the phrase 132.205.15.43 03:47, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Sandwichman's language poem on the Economist's obsession with the lump of labor fallacy, complete with Only So Much Work to Go Round in the title 142.179.124.112 03:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

If that is your counter-argument, I'd encourage you to study the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Jonathunder 22:53, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

• Oppose. The article is describing a fallacy, so removing the word from the title would be pointless: if you want to write a new article about the related term Lump of labor go right ahead. Also each of the linked references uses the non-US spelling, so this would make it inconsistent. By the way what is the "this" you are saying is America? Surely not Wikipedia, because we've had that tedious argument entirely too many times. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:02, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. If it's a fallacy, it should be called one. The original editor used the spelling "labour", which is reason enough to keep it, since the topic is not specific to any one country. --Angr/_comhrá 09:54, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, for most of the same reasons as above. In fact, I think that "Lump of Labor" should be redirected to this article, not this article moved to "lump of labor." Majromax 19:59, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. violet/riga (t) 16:15, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Concerns over Tom Walker

A full two paragraphs is spent discussing Tom Walker's "rebutal" of the relatively common position that work-week restrictions are not effective against unemployment. I was instantly left wondering, who is Tom Walker. Tom walker turns out to be a social policy activist[1] (Yes, I'm pretty sure I have the right Tom Walker). His rebutal has not to my knowledge been published in a peer reviewed journal --and my opinion, as a PhD candidate, is that it is riddled with enough errors of logic as to not even merit consideration as reasonable dissent. Unfortunately, Mr. Walker is so obscure, I can't find anyone who has taken the time to critique him in a peer reviewed journal either--which isn't surprising given that his paper was never published in an accepted journal. As much as I'd like to include some real argument against the commonly held position of economists, I don't think this Tom Walker stuff passes muster to merit inclusion. I intend to delete the paragraphs relating to him. I invite people to come forward with information suggesting that

• Tom Walker is actually a figure of merit, qualified to have so much prominence in this article.

• has published his rebutal in a generally accepted peer reviewed journal

Also, if people have any replacement suggestions. Please speak-up. --Pearlg 06:58, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You might have a little more credibility as 'a PhD candidate' if you could spell 'rebuttal' and 'speak up'. Or if you could avoid such obviously ad hominem fallacies concerning qualifications and prominence, or the most blatant violation of the burden of rebuttal by dismissing -- in fact, censoring -- something as "riddled" with errors without identifying any. OTOH, we have this LevelCheck fellow talking about "this is America" and denying that it's a fallacy that there's a fixed amount of labo[u]r. I think Mr. Walker is right to want nothing to do with such clowns. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.40.203 (talk • contribs) 19:26, 4 May 2005

The Office of the President of the Republic of Korea and the Industrial Relations Department of the State of Queensland, Australia apparently have no problem's with the merits of Tom Walker's scholarship. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.180.174.199 (talk • contribs) 06:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

(see: "Why Economists Dislike a Lump of Labor," Review of Social Economy, September 2007) (copied for IP editor) CRETOG8(t/c) 03:20, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Reply from Tom Walker

I'm Tom Walker, author of the critique of the alleged lump of labour fallacy. My critique was indeed not published in a peer review journal. It was published in a book, Working Time: International trends, theory and policy perspectives, edited by Lonnie Golden and Deborah M. Figart (Routledge, 2000). Many of the articles in that book were originally published in a special issue of the Review of Social Economy. My chapter was an invited contribution to expand the scope of the collection. Obviously, the editors thought the article had merit.

Having read through the current edition of the Wikipedia lump of labour article, I am content not to have my analysis associated with it in any way. In its present state, the facts presented in the article are almost entirely without substantiation, beginning with the "also calleds" and continuing through the ad hoc "history" of the fallacy's origins.

As for this "discussion", the contributor calling his or herself "Pearlg" claims to be a PhD candidate and makes sweeping allegations about my article being "riddled with logical error" along with several comments questioning my competence. If this is the standard of discourse that passes for editorial discussion on Wikipedia, I'm sure I can find a more edifying way to waste my time. --216.232.204.73 21:19, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

BTW, according to the Wikipedia definition of Peer review, the Tom Walker article on the lump of labor meets the criteria of being peer reviewed in a scholarly publication. --216.232.204.73 13:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

MarionADelgado (talk) 05:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC) I am content not to have my analysis associated with it in any way. In its present state, the facts presented in the article are almost entirely without substantiation, beginning with the "also calleds" and continuing through the ad hoc "history" of the fallacy's origins. This is a very sane approach, in my opinion. On Wikipedia, top to bottom, market fundamentalism and Austrian economics are the baseline "neutral point of view" on economics and anything else has to stand trial in an echo chamber. It's the main area where things are so bad it's better to let Wikipedia get a public reputation for being completely worthless if and when cognitive dissonance with the cyberlibertarian bias is involved, rather than waste energy battling to patch it up, since results would at best be cosmetic, and therefore deceptive.

Energy example

Hi, I'm merging in material from Zero-sum fallacy:

A more controversial example goes as follows. Green politics postulates a zero-sum game regarding the finite supply of fossil fuels available to mankind. Activities that utilize these resources (coal power, internal combustion, etc) are believed to be irreversibly depleting them and precipitating an energy crisis. Opponents to this school of thought call this example a zero-sum fallacy because they believe that increased fossil fuel use leads to research into more efficient utilization as well as creating more of an economic incentive for locating additional resources. This respectively has the results of lower per capita usage and increased supply.

The contradiction to this fallacy is sometimes summed up in the phrase 'rather than arguing over who gets how much of the pie, increase the size of the pie'.

This seems a little bit controversial, since "opponents to this school of thought" do not argue that fossil fuel resources are not finite, only that they can be stretched infinitely thin.

Actually, they *do* argue that fossil fuel sources are not finite -- their arguments are structured along the line of Zeno's Paradox -- but they fail to recognize that it is more properly called Zeno's Fallacy. They also misrepresent the "Green' position, which is not a fatalistic view that we will inevitably run out of resources and then we're screwed, but rather that we need to account for such depletion and change our ways *now*, to avoid great suffering. The difference between the Greens and their opponents is not so much that the former are committing a fallacy, but that they put a greater value on avoiding suffering -- economists are taught, very wrongly, that such valuations are irrational.

I'm leaving it here in case somebody thinks it's worth cleaning up and adding. Sympleko (Συμπλεκω) 18:40, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

This is not an example of the Lump of Labor Fallacy since, according the article, the LOLF is a specific misconception about the labor market. It's also not an obvious analogy, at least not for me. Jone951 (talk) 05:46, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

What is wrong with this article?

1. The lump of labour fallacy is not a logical fallacy. It is a 19th century colloquial usage of the term fallacy to refer to a. a popular or unscientific misconception or b. any notion the author wishes to denigrate as unworthy of serious consideration.

Please read the OED before you begin lecturing on when the word fallacy may or may not be used. I agree that it is not a logical fallacy in the strict sense; that is, it is used with respect to things which are not formal syllogisms, but it is most definitely a False premise in many situations. It is commonly mentioned enough that it has gotten its own name.

2. Historically, the term did not originate in connection with arguments about the hours of work. The term was first used by D.F. Schloss with regard to workers' attitudes about piece work.

This is not directly relevant to the meaning, correctness, or modern usage of the term. If true, a more detailed description of the history is needed in the article. Your essay, however, misused said information in attempt to debase the notion that the lump of labor fallacy was a fallacy. The simple fact of the matter is that the term has been taken and applied to a different idea from which it originally denoted. Such linguistic history can be interesting, but it has no relevancy on whether the modern idea designates something that is a fallacy.

3. It is pure speculation that "most" economists accept the argument. There has never been a survey to determine who accepts or doesn't accept it. The argument has only appeared in one modern introductory textbook, Paul Samuelson's. No economist who cites the fallacy has verified the existence of an authorative account of it. Several institutionalist labor economists have refuted it.

Refuted what exactly? You see you have in mind a very specific idea, yet you haven't articulated it. It is my expectation that you are thinking of a very narrow and specific point--i.e., one surrounding the political issue of whether the legal working week should be reduced. So far as my background goes, I am aware of people demonstrating that the lump of labor fallacy is not a conclusive arguement against working-hour restrictions--much as the lump of labor fallacy indicates that working-hour restrictions are not conclusively per-se beneficial to employment. People have a rather pernicious habit of behaving as if they've made a conclusive argument when at best they've made a suggestive one.

4. Although the similarities are evident, in extensive research on the lump of labour fallacy, I have never before seen it referred to as another name for the "zero sum fallacy." The only authority I know of who refers to it as the fallacy of labour scarcity is the Macedonian journalist and economic consultant Sam Vaknin. It has however been referred to as the lump of work fallacy, the lump of output fallacy or simply a fallacious belief in a fixed amount of work.

5. The fact that some proponents of reduced working time may commit the error of assuming a fixed amount of work is a red herring with regard to the matter of whether all proposals for reduced working time necessarily commit such an error.

I agree completely. That, though, does not debase the notion that _some_ arguments wrongly rest on a lump of labor assumption. To determine when it would be proper to use such an assumption, one must ask: What evidence exists that would permit a lump of labor assumption in a large, actual economy? The article explicitly already says "sometimes," so your point is a rather blatant straw-man.

Some proponents of fiscal conservatism have a simplistic conception of financial economics, does that make all arguments for balanced budgets fallacious? Or, are all arguments for fiscal stimulation fallacious because some advocates are oblivious to inflation?

This line of reasoning leads to an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.

6. "This policy" inaccurately links the French 35-hour law and the Hoover-era work-sharing program with the assumption of a fixed amount of work to be done. This is called begging the question-- "in which the evidence given for a proposition is as much in need of proof as the proposition itself."

actually that is not what begging the question is--even though wikipedia seems to think so. Begging the question occurs when the premises assume that the conclusion is true.

No, begging the question is exactly as stated; assuming the conclusion is a special case, as is explained in detail in the wikipedia article; wikipedia "seems to think so" based on evidential support, something you fail to provide in your naysay.

Sadly no. Fowler stands somewhat alone. To understand why, you should go to the root origin of the term which is firmly established as Aristotle's Prior Analytics. See Book II, Part XVI. "begging the question is proving what is not self-evident by means of itself" [2]. Please in the future try to show more patience. Despite (and as a consequence of) having received the benefit of a rather thorough and rigorous education in logic, I do tend to presume people are better informed than they are.--Pearlg 07:40, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Sigh. I displayed neither patience nor impatience, I simply stated facts. I reiterate: the WP article provides evidential support for the position it presents, which is that a circular argument is a special case of begging the question, as the English term is used in 2005. Walker did not just characterize something as "begging the question", he referenced and quoted a WP article, so the application of the term in this context really can't be disputed. Not to mention the fact that the dispute is an avoidance of the point -- that "evidence [was] given for a proposition [that was] as much in need of proof as the proposition itself" -- whatever you want to call such a fallacious rhetorical technique.

Sorry, your point isn't quite right. Terms carry certain emotional weight. Laying aside for the moment whether Fowler should be followed or not, begging the question has earned a certain emotional weight on the basis of its traditional meaning---that is, arguments which contain the conclusion in the premise are particularly egregious *deceptions* (if taken maliciously) and *mistakes* (if taken generously). In contrast, merely using premises that the listener doubts is more readily just a structural problem of you and your opponent disagreeing. + Only in the course of discussion will such underlying disagreements be unearthed for discussion. So I wasn't attempting to distract from the point which is literally indisputable---your opponent either shares your premises or he doesn't. I was, however, rightly deflecting the emotional implication of the charge.

I suggest you read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language. Riding on the emotional connotation of what a word used to mean and adopting that sentiment by distorting the meaning to suit a purpose for which you desire the emotional force is a dangerous and oft used rhetorical technique. I am not saying TW was doing that intentionally, but I would say he was looking to clobber my position with the emotionally weighty begging the question charge. Honestly, his point would have been most properly made with a statement: "I disagree with your premises."

Myself and others have substantially contributed to the begging the question article since then to salvage it from it's strongly Fowler derived POV. There are many citations as to the commonly and historically accepted meaning (hint: it isn't Fowler's). This should not surprise anyone. The Fowler brothers were never traditionalists and the term begging the question is extremely idiomatic. That is, if you interpret it literally it means something very different than the usage that brought it into prominence--and indeed, without the historical prominence, I doubt the term would qualify as belonging in wikipedia. *It is a direct translation of a phrase out of Greek*

Actually, subsequent editors of the article have been even less supportive of Fowler's definition than I am. I'm still reflecting on whether I feel strongly enough to give Fowler some more credit, but at the moment I feel that Fowler more accurately captures a turn of the century morphing of the term---much as raising the question has thoroughly penetrated the discourse. Given that 1) the purpose of wikipedia is not to be a dictionary and 2) that explaining the meaning and describing the origins of its historical and modern _technical_ usage is appropriate material, I'm not particularly inclined to intervene. --Pearlg 22:19, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

It may be that the 35-hour law and the work-sharing programs did not come about as a result of the argument given in that section of the article--I don't know; however, if someone attempted to argue that those programs reduce unemployment _per se_. Then, it would right and proper to say a lump of labor fallacy has been made. I can't stress that per se point enough though. The lump of labor fallacy does not disprove weaker arguments, though it does cast some doubt.

The claim about work-sharing not reducing unemployment per se is an interesting one and worthy of some attention. When the hours of work change, the nature of that work also changes. When the number of employees change, the qualities that the employees, as a group, bring with them to the job change. So, clearly, a direct re-division of a given amount of work is not what is at stake. A formal policy change with regard to hours of work will elicit various response from employers, employees, consumers and other policy actors and it is the aggregate of those responses that determine whether unemployment falls, not some abstract arithmetical calculation. Policies can have unanticipated adverse consequences related to people seeking to evade certain intended effects or to exploit inevitable loopholes or even perverse incentives in implementation. So, strictly speaking, one could say that no policy produces it's intended effect per se but only in the context of a complex co-ordination of social and political intentions, actions and outcomes. For example, economic growth also does not reduce unemployment per se and, in fact, there are several recent periods in which fairly vigorous economic growth has accompanied stagnating job growth and even increases in unemployment. Thus the growth fallacy is no less a fallacy (in those per se terms) than the lump of labour fallacy but where are the economists who cite the lump of labour fallacy when it comes to the issue of economic growth and unemployment? Solidly on the side of economic growth as a solution to the problem. This may seem to be a digression. However, I believe it is directly relevant because it would be arbitrary to 'rigorously' apply standards of formal logic only to selected classes of policy proposals and not to others, especially when one exempts the very process by which those classes of policy proposal are selected from the same formal standards. When formal logic becomes a tool solely for defeating the arguments of an opponent but not for critically evaluating one's own position, it ceases to be logic and becomes simply a species of rhetoric disguised as logic.--216.232.204.73 16:24, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can't say that I intend or want different standards to apply. I happen to believe that all arguments (by the time they are prepared for formal publication) should be very precise as to their limits. Much entrenchment in social politics comes from precisely the problem you mention: Opponents observe the flaws in an argument. They attack those flaws. The speaker then makes a somewhat fatal error of not confessing the limits of his argument. The opponents view this as having won morally and dig in. In the end most choice must be made not on the basis of conclusive arguments but from a careful (and often intuitive) weighing of which argument is more cohesive and faithfully grounded in reality.

That said, precision is still important--best to compare precise statements. I agree that economic growth does not necessarily imply decreased unemployment, and whether or not people gloss over the point ought not to license glossing over another point (of course I am speaking about my own moral system). Two wrongs don't make a right and other similiar cliche's do apply to real life. --23:54, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I think we should celebrate finding common ground on these points!--216.232.204.73 01:15, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

7. Some of the above misrepresentations could, by a stretch, be excused as NPOV about some economists' POVs. That is why, previously, I posted additions referring to my published, peer reviewed rebuttal. However, considering how that attempt at offering balance was imperiously rejected by one self-described "PhD candidate", I no longer believe such a piecemeal correction is adequate. The entire article needs to be rewritten from the ground up to reflect what is known and what is not known; what is documented and what is here-say about the so-called lump of labour fallacy.

I asked for feedback. I waited a week. I acted. Seems fair. I find it very troubling that you submitted the content that said you "prove" or "showed". Your work is not so well known versus an idea as well-known as the one in the article that you deserve to have your name so highlighted. One point of trouble with your _essay_ is a flaw of misleading vividness. Though you provide much in the way of reasonable historical commentary, most of the commentary is irrelevant.

I don't see that waiting any amount of time is justification for deleting someone else' peer-reviewed work. Add your rebuttal, but do not delete -- you do not own the page.

In pearlg's defense, there was not evidence that the work was peer reviewed. In fact, pearlg explicitly asked for such evidence on this talk page before acting. Also, merely being published in a book does not make something peer reviewed. It has not been established that Tom Walker's work was peer reviewed. It was an invited contribution to a book, intended to provide "another" side. As is common with invited essays, no process of review was used in regards to Tom Walker's section of the book. According to the publisher, he was invited to make a submission because of his affilation with the Work Less Party. The publisher indicated that they wanted to survey the field of opinions on employment. Tom Walker submitted a piece in support of the positions of the Work Less Party.

It's clear that pearlg can do far better in hsr own defense than your baseless and inflammatory comments.

Whoever submitted the last comment has a vivid imagination. The Work Less Party did not exist when I was invited by the editors to submit my article nor when the book was published so the publisher could make no such statement. The process of review was simple: the editors, both tenured professors and recognized leaders in their field (they were, after all, the guest editor's of the Journal of Social Economics special issue on work time). They made extensive comments and suggestions on several successive drafts of my paper, which suggestions were incorporated into the final edit. It would benefit the editorial discussion if people would refrain from making up "facts" like the connection between publication of my article and the Work Less Party. On the other hand, it does offer a rather hilarious real time demonstration of how dubious "facts", "theories" and "fallacies" may get introduced, repeated and eventually accepted as gospel.--216.232.204.73 05:27, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

not having too much more time to spend replying at the moment, let's examine one paragraph of your essay:

The character of the lump-of-labor case against work-sharing may be summed up by contrasting mainstream economists' longstanding trepidations toward reducing the hours of work with their usually confident embrace of other labor saving innovations, such as computers, machinery or power technology. Strange as it may seem, the reduction of work time is a labor-saving device, albeit a uniquely worker-friendly one.

Here you've committed a fallacy of false analogy. You _imply_ that ecomomists are being inconsistent. They aren't; what they object to is the de jure manipulation of the employment market. Economists tend to view technological improvements that reduce the work week and laws that reduce the work as no more than superficially the same. You're equivocating labor-saving and de jure work-week restrictions--and to argue favorably, by association, for work-week restrictions; that is an example of begging the question. --Pearlg 04:03, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly problematic that economists "object" to anything. It would be like physicists "objecting" to laws of physics because they don't like the outcome. Economists like to pretend that they're scientists, but they aren't; they're lackies who provide convenient rationales for policy. You're right that economists aren't being inconsistent -- they are consistently serving their personal economic interests through prescriptions that reinforce the concentration of wealth in the hands of those who have it (and employ economists). To put it another way, it's rational for an economist to be a whore, so it's pointless to deny being one.

8. I'll leave this comment here for a couple of weeks and see if there are any responses, objections or suggestions. If not, I'll take it upon myself to completely revise this article as conscientiously and comprehensively as I can. Meanwhile, I have to complete revisions to a paper updating discussion of the fallacy for the Journal of Economic Issues. Tom Walker --216.232.204.73 19:40, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Brief Comment: a more one-sidedly biased article on Wikipedia I have never found—and that’s saying a lot. Hello, covert propaganda! Selahw (talk) 19:14, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Pearlg's point-by-point contradictions of "What is wrong with this article?"

Pearlg's point-by-point dismissal of my criticisms reveals that he or she is zealously partisan regarding the lump-of-labour fallacy, its uses and validity. I won't pretend to be neutral, but I do try to be balanced and well informed. I suspect the ad hoc combative tone of Pearlg's response speaks for itself with regard to the depth of his or her original research on the topic.

With this ad hominem rant, you have failed to take on the burden of rebuttal to Pearlg's arguments. I suspect that the rest of "the wikipedia community" will generally agree. I urge you to take a different tack. The WP rules mandate against Pearlg imposing hsr POV on the page -- it does not mandate that s/he not have one. Regardless of what s/he writes here, s/he cannot justifiably excise reference to your work based on hsr own counterviews. There's no need to engage in a point-by-point, or to declare one side or the other the winner; WP is explicitly set up to avoid the need for editors to decide what is true, and Pearlg is violating the rules to the degree that s/he is unilaterally making such decisions.

As I am not interested in carrying on a pissing contest with a self-appointed guardian of the dictionary of received ideas, I will leave it to the wikipedia community to make whatever intervention and correction that need to be made here. I'm done. I will conclude by citing a link to an electronic copy of my published research on the lump-of-labour fallacy. It would be instructive if Pearlg would similarly present evidence of his or her research on the topic.

"The 'lump-of-labor' case against work-sharing: populist fallacy or marginalist throwback," published in Working Time: International trends, theory and policy perspectives. --216.232.204.73 13:45, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[The above link was broken, but I believe this is now the correct one: http://hussonet.free.fr/lumplab.pdf ] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sethgodin (talk • contribs) 17:27, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

This is an excellent and extraordinarily relevant piece. It would be a high crime of ideology to omit it from the LofL article.

I have restored the reference to and discussion of Tom Walker's piece, but without the POV verbiage that calls the claim "spurious" and asserts that factuality of Walker's statements. What I have included are, as far as I can see, uncontroversial statements of fact as to what Walker and the economists he referred to wrote -- as these are NPOV and relevant, there is no basis for omitting them. I strongly urge Pearlg and the original editor (LevelCheck, I think) to read and understand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV 09:50, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with the position that it is an excellent piece. As pearlg admits, the piece provides rather good historical background on the term, but pearlg is right to say that the piece is obvious propoganda at places and would not qualify for scholarly publication on the whole. If the article were reduced to it's historical content, the matter would be different. Thus, the historical information introduced by the article should definitely be included and arguments against the application of the fallacy to employment regulations included in the section on that application. Tom Walker should be made aware, though, that it is generally considered poor taste to write one's own name into an article, especially when you are yourself not very well known. I think Pearlg's actions can be explained in part by his or her concern that Tom Walker should not have been mentioned by name in the article and given so much space relative to the brevity of the article in it's earlier form. Wikipedia's policy is not to accept any amount of information about an opinion merely because that opinion exists. Content should be roughly in proportion to the level of support and acceptance a particular idea has. Wikipedia is not a forum from which to proselytize or correct the general understanding. It is a forum to articulate a snapshot of what is believed at the time the article is written. Pearlg should be given some credit for first expressing his or her doubts on the talk page waiting and then acting. The invective hurled at pearlg after the fact was hardly conducive to discussion given the pearlg explicitly expressed a desire to get a critique in place despite her doubts about the existing one. Without the actual publication reference (the book in which it appeared) Tom Walker's piece is merely a pdf with some obvious bias. It is not reasonable to accept any PDF available on the web as a trustworthy source simply because it exists. --20:55, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Your agreement or disagreement is irrelevant. The piece is prima facie well written and relevant. Whether it is "propoganda " (sic) or whether you think it is is entirely irrelevant, especially when you have the facts so wrong (clearly basing your views upon obvious prejudices rather than factual investigation) -- Walker did not write his name, or anything else, into the article; his contributions have only been to this discussion page. And in any case, the notion that material about his argument should be removed for such an ad hominem reason is POV in the extreme.

Whole thing needs to be redone!

the only way to resolve this and give wikpedia any sense of credibility is to do what should have been done in the first place and that is to have a "lump of labour" that explains the idea and "lump of labour fallacy" which explains the con side. Each would have a link at the end to the other. The original article set off on a biased foot by not maintaining simplicity. There should be no entry for "lump of labor fallacy" without first having an entry for "lump of labor" to work off of. Believe it or not both sides have merit and neither is a non issue regardless of where the writers sympathies lie.

Your comments are wholy wrong, reflecting a failure to absorb and comprehend the issues that have been presented here. You seem to be under the impression that the two sides are "there's a lump of labour" and "it's fallacious that there's a lump of labour" -- but that characterization is in fact just one of the sides! The other side, Tom Walker's, is (simplifying) that "there's a lump of labour" is a strawman, and "it's fallacious that there's a lump of labour" is an argument against a strawman that mischaracterizes the actual argument for reducing the length of the work week.

While I agree that the whole thing needs to be redone, I will refrain from redoing it since that would force me to wear two hats at once. I will offer a suggestion, though. In terms of the expression "lump of labour," there is only a lump of labour fallacy and no explicitly expressed idea or theory prior to the designation of it as a fallacy. What there was prior to the fallacy claim were certain attitudes and customs among working people with regard to collectively self-regulating the pace and amount of work they would perform. In a group of workers, someone who worked too fast would be chastised as would someone who worked too slow. This is also commonly known as restriction of output. Frederick Winslow Taylor called it systematic soldiering. It is essentially a leveling principle and it is a stretch to claim that it has to do with a belief about the amount of work there is to do.

There are a couple of other experiences that working people had in the 19th century that dovetailed with the restriction of output. One was the practice of labour subcontracting, typically on the docks, in construction and light manufacturing. This was, and sometimes still is, referred to as "lump work" (hence the lump of labour term). The subcontractor would be given a contract to perform a specific quantity of work and then would hire as many or few workers as he chose to complete the contract. Thus he might hire 10 people for 6 hours work or 5 people for 12 hours work or perhaps hire 4 people for 12 hours work and drive them harder. The other experience that working people faced was the business cycle with periodic high levels of unemployment. Putting two and two together, workers came to the conclusion that you could alleviate unemployment by sharing the work, reducing the hours of work so that more workers would have to be hired.

If taken in a strict mechanical sense, such an intuition could be regarded as being based on the assumption that there is a fixed amount of work, but there is little evidence that very many people took it in a strict mechanical sense. For most people, it was a vague intuition. It so happens that these same vague intuitions could be given a much sounder basis, taking into account early 20th century insights into the effects of psychological fatigue on productivity and the way that labour markets deviate from neo-classical market assumptions. In other words, people may sometimes believe the right thing for the wrong reason or perhaps no reason at all.--216.232.204.73 20:45, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Becareful. The modern meaning of lump of labour has drifted from historic (sic) antecedents. In modern terms lump of labour fallacy refers to the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs or conversely any decrease in the amount of work each worker does will increase employment ("Lumps of labor", NYT) [3]. This ceteris paribus assumption often does not model reality.

This concepts stands without reference to or discussion of work-sharing or labor restriction policies. There are reasons to support work-sharing (as implied above) that are independent of the lump of labour fallacy. It isn't the fallacy that should be in question (it's just a designation for when an idea (the interchangability of labor) is false). The point of dispute, if I understand properly, is as to when the idea should be applied.

Yes, it's correct that the point of dispute is "as to when the idea should be applied." Unfortunately, though, the typical usage is a sweeping generalization, as in "policies advocating work-sharing commit the lump of labour fallacy" -- period. I say this only after scouring more than a century of economics literature to collect dozens and dozens of instances of usage. Trust me, those examples that do not employ sweeping generalizations are almost always dismissive of the fallacy claim. Better yet, don't trust me. Go spend a month in the library digging through eighty year old textbooks and hundred year old journals. By the way, JSTOR is a good place to start looking for citations, then snowball from books mentioned in JSTOR articles to books sitting nearby on the library shelf. Not only has the modern meaning drifted from antecedants, it has drifted in several irreconcilable directions. There is not a single authoritative modern version of the lump of labour fallacy claim. In my paper, I cited three disparate interpretations. I could have cited more.

It is indisputable that there is NOT a fixed amount of work to be done. The amount changes daily with changes in demand and changes in labour supply. It is also true, however, that dynamic changes in the overall economy are not experienced at the local level where job losses occur. It is little consolation to Mike and Susan who have just been layed off and can't find jobs that 2.5 new jobs were created elsewhere to replace the two that were lost. It is little consolation to the unemployed textile worker with an eighth grade education that two new jobs have just opened up in computer engineering. One might suggest that the entire field of neo-classical economics places an inordinate emphasis on mechanical and abstractly quantitative changes in a highly stylized, hypothetical market economy and, in fact, those criticisms are made repeatedly by heterodox economists. In such a context, it is not unreasonable to view the insistent claims about a lump of labour fallacy as a kind of projection of the repressed anxieties neo-classicists have about their own ceteris paribus assumptions. --216.232.204.73 03:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree, the article is trash in current state 124.169.140.225 (talk) 10:49, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

We need empirical data

While it's probably true that the total number of work posts is not strictly inversely proportional to the number of working hours per worker, it seems incredible that restricting working hours would even lower employment. That sounds like a gross exaggeration to me. Does anybody have any statistics showing what actually happened in countries where working hours were reduced? Army1987 14:46, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Empirical data

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, it is ideed possible that a poorly designed, badly administered policy for restricting working hours could lower employment. But it's not easy to measure the effects of one policy like work time reduction because so many other discrete variables that also effect employment are changing at the same time.

Logeay and Schreiber Evaluating the Effectiveness of the French Work-Sharing Reform, unpublished version 2003 reported a significant boost in employment in France following the 2000 reform package that included the 35-hour week. But in a subsequent analysis, Schreiber Did work-sharing work in France? unpublished version 2005 argued that the shorter hours component of that package was not responsible for the employment gains. Rather, he claimed, his model showed that limitation on hours actually held back the employment gains that in fact resulted from greater scheduling flexibility. One possible criticism of Schreiber's argument, however, is that it treats the components of a package as if they could have been implemented separately.

Crépon and Kramarz Employed 40 hours or Not-Employed 39: Lessons from the 1982 Workweek Reduction in France, 2002 found job losses for individuals from a reduction in hours, this time attributing the negative effect to the hours reduction, even though again the hours reduction was part of a package that also included an increase in the minimum wage to offset the hours reduction. Again, their methodology could be criticized because the assumptions they made in building their model may have had more to do with the results they obtained than any actual effect of the hours reduction.

When looking at published studies, it is important to keep in mind publication bias. The studies by Logeay and Schreiber and by Crépon and Kramarz both employ methods and assumptions that could be sharply criticized. Whether or not that criticism is fatal to publication may depend on whether the resulting conclusions confirm or challenge the prevailing skepticism of economists toward reduced working time, as Card and Krueger showed with regard to studies of the employment effects of raising the minimum wage. To publish results that contradict the accepted wisdom you may have to prove something that can't be proved. 142.179.124.112 03:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Economics

The following part needs rework or deleteion: "The consequence is that we might be able to take $100 of your money, use it to economically create $1,000 of value in the world, and return $200 of value back to you--in that case, nobody loses anything."

I guess pigs might fly also. Let's say you borrow my $100 and use it in this way: You buy a piece of wood for 50$ and hire some guy to carve it into something useful for 50$, like a wooden IPod-stand. He has his own tools and place of business. Then you're somehow able to sell this to some idiot at ebay for 1100$. Have you now "created" 1000$ of value? Now you return 200$ to me. So I'm happy and you're happy. Your ebay idiot now has 1100$ less to spend at caffe lattes, doesn't that mean lost business opportunity for somebody?

The next week 10 other guys notice what you got for it at ebay and they decide they can do the same thing, and wooden IPod-stands only get 150$ at ebay. Your 1100$ customer wakes up and smells his latte. He never admits to another soul that he paid 950$ too much for his IPod-stand, but he understands that the ebay game is not of the non-zero-sum kind.

Geir Gundersen 07:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC) ←

I guess that it is it. That works for many things. One's (or a few one's) profit (which can be shared between several companies or actors) might be harmful to overall economy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OjuzKiopo (talk • contribs) 08:14, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

---

The idea that I give you $100, you spend it in productive ways that produce $1,000 worth of value, and then you give me back $200, is the basis of the entire banking system. The numbers are unusual - one seldom sees such high returns - but the principle is entirely sound.

Counter-example: I go back to the 1800s and give Thomas Edison $100. He uses that money to buy equipment he needs for some experiments. Said experiments lead to a device called a "mousetrap" which is highly effective at catching mice. This device can save American farmers $1,000 by reducing the depredations of mice on their harvests. Edison sells his invention to the farmers for $500 and pays me back $200. Everybody wins except the mice.

67.59.53.157 (talk) 17:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

So the mice lose, so it's still zero sum. What's your point? The banking sector is mostly about taking small amounts of lots of people's money in return for short term gain. It is taking wealth from the future and will eventually collapse without a new source to extract. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.236.80.140 (talk) 00:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I am having trouble following this "fallacy". If we say halfed the legal work week to 20 hours, surely the economists aren't suggesting employers would just make workers produce twice as much in the same time using the same technology ? I mean if that were possible wouldn't they be doing it now to earn that much more money, or employ part-time for lower cost ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.115.37.159 (talk) 12:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

If the technology already allows to produce twice they'd've done it since long. Or they'd be producing in 40 hours 80 hours of work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OjuzKiopo (talk • contribs) 08:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Robots

As a thought experiment to test this theory, what if robots that were just as capable as humans were relatively cheap to produce? Sure, there will be some "social" jobs for humans, but it's difficult to see this providing sufficient employment for everyone. After all, many people are not very good at being sociable (spending their day writing and editing Wiki Talk comments, for example.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.233.0.202 (talk) 21:48, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

The theory's ground is economy, so you're somehow right, you simply think needs-driven politics while almost everyone think economy and even forgot what "politics" means, let alone "employment". --2A01:CB11:13:D700:D186:445D:41E4:DA1D (talk) 13:34, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Hey, man wikipedians are sociable more than that shopkeeper or neighbour who doesn't even say "hello" while you've got no idea why. Like if you had did anything to him. --OjuzKiopo (talk) 16:38, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the problem is mostly about PAID work. As a "salary", many jobs are offered which seem to leave one to have infinite work to do...(at least in the way that a one person may not ever see the end of it). Like delivery bikers with ubereat or such.

Those would one time works....and would those social jobs be infinite? Would they not be sporadic? I would agree.

"What if robots that were just as capable as humans were relatively cheap to produce?" That's still sci-fi. Especially in 1897. : )

--OjuzKiopo (talk) 08:19, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

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Studies

This was removed.

Some economics studies have noted criticism and complexities with the fallacy claim.

Benjamin (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

References

Voting for renaming Lump of labour fallacy → Scarcity of labour or Labour scarcity

Again I think a vote should be made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OjuzKiopo (talk • contribs) 08:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

• Agrees I think that it's not really sure. Also the article does not really explain why work to be done would be "infinite" (if there is no scarcity it is infinite? Or at least superior to the whole). Apparently the usage of the word does not stick to how it was used in 1897. Also no article featured is called "scarcity of labour" --OjuzKiopo (talk) 10:36, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Lump of labor fallacy is a specific thing. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:28, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. The lump-of-labor fallacy is about the demand side (the amount of work available to be done is not fixed). Labor scarcity is about the supply side (the workforce will carry out a limited amount of labor, given some price/wage). They're different concepts. 73.223.72.200 (talk) 22:47, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Don’t think we should just take Economists’ word as gospel and just assume there’s an infinite amount of wealth in the world…

The beginning of the article calls “fixed-pie” thinking a flat out misconception. That’s an insane metaphysical assertion. Simply put there is NO wealth on Earth, because wealth is a projected concept. 0 is a fixed number. Same as if we assign value (as most people do) to some sort of resource, which would almost certainly exist in a limited quantity on Earth. 2001:56A:FCFE:E200:BD40:8579:3AB2:8E37 (talk) 12:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)