These kinds of principles are sensible at their core, and I am a big proponent of the mindset, but the main problem as a sibling comment pointed out in a way is that this assumes that everyone is striving for an honest and accurate correlation between display of effort and value, and that everyone is looking deep enough into and behind that display to recognize the true value behind it. But actual effort, let alone value, is not always clearly visible or honestly displayed, and the perception of it is also subject to your own biases.
You could say that people have the responsibility to demonstrate that they put in the effort and created value, but then you get the situation where people naturally optimize perception of effort or value over actual effort or value, because in the end that is what is rewarded. Then you can also say that people also have the responsibility to look a bit closer before estimating real value, but that takes more effort and people naturally strife towards efficiency. I would guess that the problem today is that the balance between these two is off, and we're doing too much of the former and too little of the latter.
an honest and accurate correlation between display of effort and value
Hmmm. Your choice of words here has just sparked a realization for me.
Before you said this, I was completely on board with the original post. But in juxtaposing effort with value, it illustrates that we're basing the idea on the Labor Theory of Value. That idea seems intuitive, and Adam Smith wrote about it 250 years ago. But it turns out that LTV is very wrong. Economists showed that effort does NOT impart value.
Labor theory of value is a Marxist idea, not an Adam Smith idea. Internet Marxists sometimes point to a passage in The Wealth of Nations to suggest that Smith also supported a labor theory of value, but this is—in the most generous interpretation—a misreading. Smith says that the value of a thing can be measured by how much labor it can be exchanged for: an exchange theory of value, not a labor theory of value (which says the value of a thing is based on how much labor it takes to create).
I mostly agree with your criticism of my post. I was being generous trying to avoid being inflammatory here, since I know there are readers that strongly support socialist ideas (in the strict sense, not just the "safety net" sense). It was certainly Marx that pushed it so hard.
But researching this a bit, I find that it still predates Marx. I find:
Sir William Petty, 1662: "If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn, then one is the natural price of the other."
More important, it seems that David Ricardo (a big name in economic history), in 1817 latched onto what Smith had written and states it quite definitively.
Use value or exchange value?
I’d push back on this, I think people have a very intrinsic sense of what is valuable and often if you think it’s “perception” of value being rewarded, it’s just that you value something different than that person.
Even in performative scenarios, like say someone gets promoted at work over another person because they are a great “performer” and always make noise, whereas the other actually delivers - they’re being promoted because the promotion is defensible and legible for their superior. That is true value for them, just not to another viewer.
I experienced a similar interaction recently, where this principle was hard to apply, when I was emailing with a CTO / hiring manager who had some "deeper" screening questions. It was essentially:
1. HM: AI generated email with "tailored" questions
2. Me: AI assisted response with answers (I confess)
3. HM: AI generated email with a "thoughtful" response + invite
4. Me: AI generated "thank you & looking forward" response ...
Looking back at the thread, I have to laugh and cry at the same time. It's so obvious and sad.