Street sweepers, toilet cleaners and garbage collectors

Warning: A long post with all words and no pictures.

During a random outing to Sunway Pyramid for lunch on our AUSMAT Independent Study Day, a few friends and I discussed about economics over sushi in Sushi King. At one point we talked about wages for labourers and professionals. Now it has always been a personal belief of mine that labourers deserve a way higher pay than professionals. I find it wrong for teachers to tell students, especially young ones, that if they don't study hard, they will wind up as street sweepers, toilet cleaners and garbage collectors. I used to argue that if it weren't for the street sweepers, the toilet cleaners and the garbage collectors, the world will become so dirty that even doctors and professors and reserchers will be out of jobs. Why? Well, how will you keep things sterile? Bacteria will be circulating the air that even doctors will become patients themselves. Pills and medicine will be contaminated and spoiled before they can even be tested and administered.

You may say that you can keep your own things clean. But the streets? Unless you plan to live in your own house for the rest of your life, you are going to have to drive your own rubbish to the landfill. You have to sweep your own neighbourhood streets and clean your neighbourhood's public toilets. There will be a duty roster so everyone in the neighbourhood gets their own fair share of work. That could work, you say.

But hang on.

So now everyone is a garbage collector, a street sweeper and a toilet cleaner - 3 in 1 like them Nescafe packs!

No so glamourous now isn't it? Is it really that shameful and degrading to be working in these jobs? Are these jobs ranked that low in the imaginary hierarchy of jobs? You say that their jobs require no specific skills. Well, I say who are you to define what skill is high and what is low. At the end of the day, what is more important: Is it really your ability to use your laptop and surf the Internet that gives you life? Or is it the hygiene in your food and water that keeps you alive? Isn't it embarrassing that you know how to balance accounts and treat people yet do not know how to wash your own clothes or work the oven or clean the toilet until it is sparkling?

Then again, it will be completely unfair to say that the professionals have it easy because I know they don't. In Politics and Law, we learn about proportional representation in voting systems. I wonder if anyone has thought of proportional wage redistribution - a system where everyone gets paid what they have worked for. This theory basically works like this: the firm divides its profits proportional to the number of workers in each department of profession. So skills are categorised.

And then, from there each department will have another distribution in terms of their own skills. See, what is different about this is that you compare the scarcity of skills in the market of its own skills. Like for example, there are many kolo mee sellers but only a few stalls' kolo mee are good. You can't compare kolo mee with laksa because they are of different natures and therefore, the eventual judgement will be biased. Likewise, you can't compare the skills of one toilet cleaner with that of a lawyer. So you would compare kolo mee with kolo mee to be fair in determining what defines a good kolo mee, no? Similarly here, you compare which toilet cleaner is more efficient in his or her work with other toilet cleaners. Who cleans more toilets in a given period of time? Or whose toilets are cleaner? From there, you derive a definition of good toilet cleaners. This induces a scarcity of good toilet cleaners and therefore, these toilet cleaners get paid a higher wage that is proportional to their skill in cleaning toilets and which justifies their effort and efficiency.

The only reason why these workers are being paid minimum wage is because their skills are deemed as homogenous (that means identical). It does not matter whether you clean the toilets sparkling clean or not. What matters is that the toilets are cleaned. And if the boss is not satisfied, boss merely scolds the cleaners and order that the toilets be cleaned again as if it were such a easy task to clean toilets. There is no scarcity in the supply of labour for toilet cleaners because toilet cleaners (and other similar jobs) have no trade unions to control their supply. In professionals, there is a clear standard to distinguish a good lawyer from a bad one. The good lawyer inevitably gets paid a higher wage. But because this is not the case for labourers, they get paid the minimum wage no matter how hard they work or how skilled they are at labouring.

The world needs to interact. The world cannot be kept in balance if everyone is so selfish. That is why we cannot compare labouring skills with professional skills. Fundamentally, both are already different! It takes no genius to figure that out. So there needs to be another different set of standards. Through the proportional wage redistribution, you recognise the skills in a labourer and they get paid better if they do a better job. In a way, it serves as a n incentive for them to work harder. And you get better toilet cleaners and better security guards who do not doze off during their working hours.

Because the amount of wage for each department is allocated, the best worker will earn more and the weaker workers will earn less. This keeps the competition alive. But rest assured, as mentioned, the profit is redistributed in proportion to the number of workers so even the weaker worker will be paid the minimum wage. This theory applies to the professionals as well. Goodness knows how many under-qualified doctors, lawyers and accountants there are out there. So through this system, the good ones get paid more and the lousy ones get paid less. It will motivate the weaker ones to improve themselves so that their standard of living, material wealth wise, will improve.

This is not communism because not everyone gets paid equal. You reap what you sow - that is the basis of this theory. Of course in practice, it will be far harder to perfect, but hey, like perfect competition, if everyone aims for this, social welfare will definitely become better. And with less government intervention!

In EALD, I had to write a movie review about The Blind Side, explaining on whether one person can make a difference. Yesterday I read in loyarburok.com that today's generations of Facebookers and Twitterers are promoting laptop activism - as the name suggests, it is social activism behind screens. We stop working towards making a change. We think that writing a status in Facebook and Twitter is enough. It is not, so they claim.

Well, in the spirit of the movie review I have just written, I believe that if I post this up, I will at least be able to influence a few of my friends to be nicer to the uncles and aunties they see sweeping the streets they walk down everyday. And perhaps as the very good friends that they are, they will help to to preach what I have just written.

I concluded my essay by stating that it takes one initiator and a lot of influenced people to make a difference. I hope this peice has changed your perspective at least a little bit. I have the utmost respect for my friendly neighbourhood cleaners because I know that I will never be able to find the strength in me to serve people like they do.