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Imagine that due to an excess amount of handwavium, my world has humans ranging from only a couple of inches, to around 20 feet. Society has evolved to include people of all sizes into the workforce and cities (a la Monster's Inc or Zootopia) but after the industrial revolution hit, a problem arose. How do I, the leader of this world, keep wages fair?

Goods cost money to produce on an equivalent value to our system, therefore small items for small people cost small prices and inversely the same applies to large people. Paying everyone equally for the same work creates the problem that giant people will fall into poverty and little people will gain massive wealth. All despite doing the same work for the same hours.

If I pay people differently however, they will receive less/more money in total for the same effort. Even having jobs for certain sizes results in a sort of economic segregation, which is an obvious civil rights nightmare.

Ignoring the impossibility of such creatures existing, how can I assure everyone is paid fairly and equally when people vary in size?

Brythan
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TrEs-2b
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    We already have people of varying sizes and capabilities; the answer seems to be letting people do jobs they're suited for at whatever price is reasonable for that job. – Erik Jul 05 '17 at 08:15
  • The easiest way would probably to adjust the prices of the goods so that there are very high taxes on things for small people, normal taxes on things for average sized people and low taxes on things for large people. – Secespitus Jul 05 '17 at 08:22
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    I doubt there is a way with different pay. While you may try to pay according to physical work done (a huge person can lift much more than a small person), all non-physical jobs have a problem, since a huge person can probably do the same thinking than a small person. So every job that doesn't include heavy work, but, for example, different pay for accounting, management, art, etc. will be hard to justify (and if you pay some people less, obviously these people will take all of these jobs). So, by paying small people less for, example, accounting, most accountants will be small. – Florian Schaetz Jul 05 '17 at 08:24
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    First of all, what is "fair"? To pay more to the person that does a better job or to the person that needs more? Everyone should get as much money as they need? Well, people of a certain size should maybe get more tax-free allowance, maybe you should treat it as many treat disabilities. But do not give them more wages or else they will no longer be employed. Minimizing the size of your work force would have a completely different meaning in your world. Please be aware that most stuff like that is done via trial&error and iteratively over decades, theory is worth little here – Raditz_35 Jul 05 '17 at 08:28
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    An S-size shirt usually costs exactly the same than the XXL-size of the same shirt. Prices and wages are set by a law of offer and demand, and the raw cost of materials is insignificant. A skimpy bikini is more expensive than a full swimsuit. I don't think the price of items for small people would be much lower than those for giant people. Maybe tiny people could spend less in food and housing, but even that is not for sure. – Rekesoft Jul 05 '17 at 10:10
  • How about employing communism? Everyone does a job suited to their abilities. In return they receive a suitable amount of food, clothing, shelter and transportation – Darren H Jul 05 '17 at 11:39
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    "A world with differently-sized Humans"... That's called Earth! – n00dles Jul 05 '17 at 11:51
  • What size of computer does one inch person have? – Kyslik Jul 05 '17 at 11:53
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    @FlorianSchaetz: Of course, that assumes the tiny quarter-inch brain is just as capable of mental tasks as the full size variety.... –  Jul 05 '17 at 12:20
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    The little people don't only have advantages. (I am a little person too.) At such huge differences, they need ladders to get at top shelves in shops, extra sets of steps to get into buildings, etc. Think of the hobbits in Bree and expand it. A little person house, coat, bicycle has the same detail as a big person item, it only uses less material, but the work input is the same. They eat less food but it needs the same preparation. – RedSonja Jul 05 '17 at 12:36
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    what is the technology level of this world? the lower tech the world the more large people benefit, the higher tech the more small benefit. So it heavily impacts the decision – dsollen Jul 05 '17 at 13:01
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    I think it would actually be interesting to explore a world where tiny people are the upper-class. – Michael Jul 05 '17 at 17:00
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    The only way to keep wages fair is for the government to stay out of the free market for everything but ensuring competitive practices are not being abused. If little people have more money then the price of their products will naturally increase because they'll be willing and able to pay more. Likewise, if giants have to spend more on food, they'll have less for clothes which will drive the price of giant clothes and other products down. The only reason prices won't reach natural price points (excluding unusual circumstances e.g. drought) is when the government tries to make things "fair". – Dunk Jul 05 '17 at 17:26
  • The answer of "wealth" comes down to "how much disposable income you have and what will that buy?" A large person can't buy a small person's TV (although a small person could buy a large person's regular TV as if it was a small person's large TV--wait, are these even different things?) So "$1000" might be enough disposable income for a small person to have [some standard of living] but it takes $3000 for a large person to have the equivalence, then large people need to be paid more...but not necessarily triple. How much more depends on the cost of staying alive: food, shelter, etc. – Draco18s no longer trusts SE Jul 05 '17 at 17:52
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    I think the flaw in this argument is that large people will be able to do more physical work and will be paid more for it. In an economy with abundant muscle power the development of machines would follow a very different path. So large people would do the work of train engines, electrical generators, cranes, etc. – Myles Jul 05 '17 at 18:04
  • You're going about it all wrong. Have the small people somehow create a culture that regards the big people as somehow inferior, then make them slaves. This is a tried and true technique. – Hot Licks Jul 05 '17 at 21:51
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    Worth considering that technology level will have a big impact on how important the size difference is - in a modern society with lots of technology and service industries it would be much less pronounced than in an agrarian society. – Matt Bowyer Jul 06 '17 at 01:30
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    @Kyslik: Don't know about 1 inch people, but I'm convinced that a lot of modern electronic devices are built for (and by) people about 2 feet tall. For instance the portable music player on my desk: the first joint of my thumb covers every control. – jamesqf Jul 06 '17 at 05:03
  • What is the line from discworld? Something like "For a man, a $2 loaf of bread is a meal for a day, for a gnome a $2 loaf of bread is a meal for a week, and if you don't eat the crust a home for a month" – Frames Catherine White Jul 06 '17 at 06:26
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    Alter the price of food/sustenance for a human to fit a fair curve. If a 20ft person earns a lot more because of his/her size, that's because they can perform more physical labour, and also because they will need more money to sustain themselves. In contrast, a 2 inch person could munch on the same loaf of bread for days. – nurettin Jul 06 '17 at 08:44
  • @jamesqf thats exactly my point how do you make high resolution screen, for person of that size. – Kyslik Jul 06 '17 at 09:42
  • @Kyslik: Smaller eyeballs means lower resolving power, so small people will probably be happy with the same screen resolution as big people. – Beta Jul 06 '17 at 18:25
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    We need you to define two things: What is the tech era and stage of economic development of this society? You mentioned when the industrial revolution happened... but not where we are now? Has it just happened? Are we living in a Victorian fairy tale? This is very important because the more technology the less big labour is worth. ALSO. EVEN MORE IMPORTANT - What is the distribution of size for the population?! Is it a normal bell curve spread?! What is the median size? Are there as many small as big people? VERY IMPORTANT ECONOMIC CONSIDERATION!!! Please edit question to define! –  Jul 07 '17 at 08:54
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    The tiny folk need to buy tiny food. As an average-sized human, tearing a fresh loaf of bread in half takes a significant effort; someone with 1/36th the size and even less muscle mass would find it rather challenging to rip off even the paltry chunk of bread it would take to feed them. And just cracking an egg to make their own would be difficult, since they can barely measure up to the size of a quail's egg. Their food would be specialty items, and wildly expensive. (Plus, when tech comes around, their devices will be far less powerful.) Giants, on the other hand, can just shop at Costco. – JessLovely Jul 07 '17 at 15:03
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    Tiny people have tiny brains, so they will be essentially grossly intellectually disabled and will earn less because they will be too stupid to do anything useful. Mind you, who better to crawl down the sewer and manually unblock the pipes or work at the DMV? – Bohemian Jul 07 '17 at 22:57
  • @Kyslik: Well, the aforementioned portable music player has a screen that's little more than an inch (maybe 3 cm) square. AFAIK there's no technical reason it couldn't be made smaller, but I can barely read the thing as it is. Here's a 0.27 inch diagonal, 640x480 display: https://singularityhub.com/2009/07/01/reportedly-worlds-smallest-lcd-screen-created-027-inches-in-diameter/ And I'm sure that with an STM &c you could get to microscopic sizes. – jamesqf Jul 08 '17 at 05:03
  • @Beta not sure that follows. Why would a normal eyeball that is just smaller have less resolving power? – JohnP Jul 08 '17 at 13:46
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    @JohnP: A smaller retina means fewer receptors. (Also, you can have diffraction problems if the iris is too small, and focus problems if it's too large, relative to the focal length, but there might be ways for biology to ameliorate that a little.) Do you think evolution would have given us big delicate vulnerable eyes if small ones worked just as well? – Beta Jul 08 '17 at 20:37
  • @Beta not sure that automatically follows. Otherwise short people would all be needing glasses, and you would be effectively blind below a certain height. – JohnP Jul 09 '17 at 00:06
  • @Beta: How big is the imaging sensor on your cell phone? – jamesqf Jul 09 '17 at 05:12
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    @JohnP: In the fantasy world, a very small person has very small eyes. In the real world, height doesn't correlate well with eyeball size. Broadly speaking, the eyeballs of tall people and short people are the same. – Beta Jul 09 '17 at 13:51
  • @jamesqf: A lot smaller than my eye, with less angular resolution, a much smaller field of view and photosensors of a very different design. – Beta Jul 09 '17 at 13:56
  • That problem was solved 2500 years ago already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes – Damon Jul 09 '17 at 14:44
  • @Beta - That still doesn't follow. Many birds, insects and small mammals have small eyes that function in a much greater capacity than the human eye. Just because an eye is smaller doesn't mean they don't function as well. And as you say, in a fantasy world, there would be fantastical adaptations for small to huge sizes. – JohnP Jul 09 '17 at 18:13
  • @Beta: The field of view is an artifact of designing a camera that takes reasonable photos. A fisheye lens could easily be added. As for sensor design, of course. Things don't simply scale uniformly with size. But it demonstrates that small sensors can produce decent images - as does the existence of small bird & insect eyes that apparently function quite well, e.g. a hummingbird or dragonfly. – jamesqf Jul 09 '17 at 19:07
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    @jamesqf: Yeah, a small eye can produce decent images and a larger eye can produce better ones, a dragonfly's eyes are good enough to keep the dragonfly alive, but maybe not good enough to appreciate HD television; we are no longer talking about anything real. – Beta Jul 09 '17 at 22:10
  • @Beta we left anything real with 2" humans :p – JohnP Jul 09 '17 at 22:15
  • @JohnP: That depends on one's idea of what constitutes "human", no? Given enough time and appropriate evolutionary pressures, there's no real reason not to evolve very large & small individuals from the same ancestral stock. E.g. Chihuahuas and St. Bernards both from the ancestral wolf. – jamesqf Jul 12 '17 at 04:48

16 Answers16

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You don't need to 'do' anything - economics takes care of it

Much like it does in the real world.

There are two different economic issues: Value of work (money in), and cost of goods (money out).

On the latter, sure, it might cost significantly more materials to feed/clothe a larger person, but making smaller goods (and providing smaller services) is significantly more difficult.

Essentially, anyone can sew buttons onto a shirt for the largest individual, but only the smallest can do the same for the smallest. This means the increased material cost would be offset against the need for less available skilled labour. The smaller the goods, the more difficult. That's why microprocessors are not ten-a-penny, and if you're dealing with a ring or lace dress for a two inch individual, is that really going to be less expensive?

Plus think about services, like going to the barbers, not to mention additional costs you would need: e.g. cat protection.

Further the job market would balance according to skillset. E.g. the police, Constables would likely be required to interact with their own populations, but in the larger context a large policeman could catch or spot a fleeing suspect, a small one could spy or examine details, or take something like woodwork: if you were building, say, a chair: a large person transports the goods, saws the wood, the average assembles it, the small engraves the details. Each valuable and necessary, in their own way.

I do wonder how you would stop larger individuals abusing their physical advantage though.

Glorfindel
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David
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    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Monica Cellio Jul 06 '17 at 02:13
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    additionally for larger individuals they have an advantage for many kinds of physical labor, to offset disadvantages at others. Imagine you are a potter, dill porter, or warehouse owner (all require a lot of fast stacking), are you going to hire the 20 foot guy or the 5ft guy and buy a 20ft ladder. higher demand means higher wages. – John Jul 06 '17 at 15:30
  • For clothing that might be true, but what about real estate? Even just the price for an adequate piece of land will differ immensely. What about transportation? The economy class seat on a plane for a 20 feet person is the first class seat for many many inch-sized persons. The same goes for energy: The giant's lighter can heat the whole house of an inch-sized person... – yankee Jul 07 '17 at 07:00
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    @yankee - this is probably not the place to start another long discussion, but i assume planes are not in issue for industrial era citizens. And I think the energy costs are offset against other expenditures and differing incomes: as a tiny person, you probably dont want to just live in a matchbox and be done with it and you need protection - from the enviroment, from animals, from larger people (intentional or unintentional) - e.g. look at how children in industrial Britain were not treated particularly well. They got paid next to nothing and were often used for fixing machinery – David Jul 07 '17 at 08:11
  • for their tiny hands, much like we are suggesting tiny people do here, resulting in regular, serious injury.Even assuming there are some form of equal rights law in the scenario the OP mentions, since most industrial era work is relatively unskilled, the majority of work available to a person of either class is work that can be completed by one large person in the same time as dozens or hundreds of tinies, and likely paid to reflect the work done. Though there are likely rich and poor in each class, I think generally tinies are likely paid less which offsets the lower cost in some areas. – David Jul 07 '17 at 08:11
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    I'd -1 this if possible, but I can't, so instead, I'll comment: this answer is just incorrect. There's no theoretical justification for the position that free markets distribute resources in an optimal way, in fact most of economics is devoted to the how and why of market failure i.e. why free markets don't automatically do this, and what policy makers can do about this. – goblin GONE Jul 07 '17 at 08:48
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    "You dont need to 'do' anything - economics takes care of it" That kind of talk got us into a great depression! –  Jul 07 '17 at 08:53
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    @goblin - I didn't suggest it was optimal, just that it achieves its own balance - essentially that there are natural advantages and disadvantages to being big, and some to being small, and that the disposition to use to the benefit of both the individual and the employer would even out on a societal scale. For clarity: I think it would still be inherently unfair, but for reasons of privilege and opportunity affording by existing wealth/position rather than size (assuming protection for small people from being abused). Much like both then and now. – David Jul 07 '17 at 09:24
  • A Barber for small people would usually be small - a mismatch would need either a microscope or a ladder! – rackandboneman Jul 07 '17 at 19:09
  • @inappropriateCode Oversimplifying a complex issue and doing it using faulty evidence... Contrary to common opinion, leading up to the great depression the new economic theory (Keynesian) was used. I don't remember if it was Hoover or Harding, but his autobiography listed how his economic advisors suggested treating it as any other depression and to take a light approach. The very next line says "But I knew better." – user2259716 Jul 07 '17 at 20:00
  • @user2259716 your first sentence is what I apply to faith based beliefs in the magical power of the free market, as well as faith in our ability to control it. The free market like other systems is chaos and entropy. To presume, it'll all just be fine if we leave it be, is as dangerous as the belief computers would mean no more boom and bust. I can't see how the statement quoted could be understood as something other than free market fundamentalism? Nature does not balance and nor do markets, that's ecological superstition. –  Jul 07 '17 at 20:38
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    @inappropriateCode I ended up typing up an actual answer below... "Free Markets" are never truly free and never will be. Whatever level of freedom or control, markets have issues. There is no perfect system. Free markets do however get most of what is economically desired done, but ultimately cause a lot of civil issues (particularly they have a tendency to become not free through the liberal usage of economic incentives on government authorities causing all manner of issues). Regardless, you made a blanket statement that was wrong and so I responded, even if OP grossly generalized. – user2259716 Jul 07 '17 at 20:50
  • @inappropriateCode Link to my answer --> https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/85592/32643 – user2259716 Jul 07 '17 at 20:53
  • @user2259716 what I said was correct. In the 20s people and government thought it'd be fine because the markets sort themselves out. They lived in a global interconnected marketplace, the stocks which were going up madly were backed by solid heavy industry! They thought it'd all work out because the markets balance. That assumption is flawed, same sentiment expressed in quote. –  Jul 07 '17 at 21:03
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    @inappropriateCode Small spaces, I will try to summarize. A depression was going to happen and likely was caused by that mentality, but it is questionable if it had to be the Great Depression. There is a myth that the government did nothing until the New Deal, and WWII pulled us out. The first is not true, there was a centralization of control over institutions and tariffs imposed. The second is, but not why people think. Wartime production and the New Deal did not, but destruction of most factories (EU), USA's new political clout + allies, and global usage of US Dollar did (result of war). – user2259716 Jul 07 '17 at 21:25
  • @goblin There is plenty of theoretical justification. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory – user9403 Jul 09 '17 at 15:12
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Why would you want wages to be fair? And what is "fair" anyway?

You don't need a fair system. You need a system that is temporarily stable and which many people believe is the right way of doing things.

In today's world, there are people who are millionaires by the time they are 8 years old, and others who never ever earn a million dollars while working hard their entire life. Yet many people think wages today are fair. True fairness does not exist, it's just an illusion.

So create an illusion. Find excuses to justify why the CEO, sorry, the leprechaun deserves to earn 100 times more than the hard working giant, or vice versa. To keep it realistic, figure out which subrace is currently in power in your world - these will earn more money than the others.

Peter
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    I oft tell people "'Fair' is a 'four letter word' and an 'f-word' and should be treated accordingly." – Cort Ammon Jul 05 '17 at 15:10
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    +1 for "What is fair anyway?" Fairness, as a totally subjective measure, is unreachable. What is to stop someone for crying "unfair" when anyone has anything we want that we didn't work for, but they did? – Andrew Neely Jul 05 '17 at 20:11
  • In some cases it is reachable, for example when sharing a cake. You choose which way to cut it, and the other person chooses the half he likes more. – charlie_pl Jul 10 '17 at 05:46
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    @charlie_pl how do you account for different body size, different taste, different amounts of hunger? Shouldn't the person who likes the cake better get a different amount to keep things fair? Who made the cake? Cutting something in half is not exactly fair, especially if only one person gets to chose which half they get. It does, however, create the desired illusion of fairness. – Peter Jul 10 '17 at 06:06
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Keep prices equal for size-dependent goods and services

Whichever way you try to balance wages, there is still the problem that some goods and services will be size-dependent (food/clothes/transport) and others won't (financial services, mental health, some entertainment). If larger people get higher wages, they'll enjoy a much better relative price for the size-independent services.

So instead, write into law that any services offered must accommodate all sizes and offer equal pricing. Underwrite this with tax credits based on the actual production costs or a percentage sold for each size. i.e. a clothing company that serves 80% huge customers will get much more back than one that markets to the tiny population and sells 90% of units there.

... or go Communist!

As an alternative, adopt communism. With all means of productions owned by local communities, they can divide their profits among the members as needed.

Cyrus
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    Say I sell bread, it costs £2 a loaf. I don't care who I sell it to, that's what it costs. Are you telling me I have to measure each customer to work out what price I have to sell it at to that person, log this on my accounts and claim the difference back from the government? – Separatrix Jul 05 '17 at 09:07
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    No chance, I'm going to run a black market using big people to buy bread then sell it to small people at a higher price then claim the tax back anyway because I sold it to the big people at the front of house. – Separatrix Jul 05 '17 at 09:08
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    @Separatrix Yes, the amount of bread would depend on the size of the customer, so more of a "day's worth of bread". But you make a very good point regarding the weakness to corruption. Ah well, communism it is. – Cyrus Jul 05 '17 at 09:26
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    I have so many wonderful scams I could run in your society, subletting parts of big people properties to small people is probably the best of them since you're having to artificially inflate small people rent to find any sort of balance. – Separatrix Jul 05 '17 at 09:50
  • No, you sell two or more loaves, a £2 large loaf, and 25p tiny loaf. Walk into any supermarket and you will see you can but individual potatoes, packs of 2, 4 or 5kg sacks, same with toilet rolls, chocolate, and lots of other things.

    Retailers often sell different sizes of goods, because even with people of average sizes the need can vary drastically.

     – John Palpatine Jul 05 '17 at 11:33
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    @Separatrix I'm gonna run a similar one with popsicles but sell the wood as lumber when I'm done. – kaine Jul 05 '17 at 14:01
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    @Cyrus, it's well intentioned (but rather naive) people like you that championed the centrally controlled Soviet economy. We all know how that ended - utterly jaw-dropping inefficiency followed by complete collapse. – Contango Jul 05 '17 at 20:00
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You pay people according to the work they do relative to the difficulty of finding people to do that work.

Anyone can do basic admin, it doesn't pay well, smaller people will do disproportionately better out of it. There will by physical tasks requiring greater strength that might require a larger person, if you can't find one then you'll have to offer more money. There will also be delicate or dexterous tasks requiring a smaller person.

Companies without special requirements may well be unwilling to adapt to the smallest or largest when they can cater most cheaply to the mid-sizes, so at the end of the day, expect the people on extremes end of the size scale to be in poverty.

Is that fair? Same work, same pay is fair.

Declining to adapt your facilities for people more than a standard deviation from the mean? That's a legal matter for your society.

Even then your big people are going to be poorer just because of the astronomically different scale of costs they have. They'll probably end up having a fundamentally different society from the small people, a lot more communal housing and catering. A culture based on cost reductions across the board.

All the government can do is enforce equal pay for equal work. To do anything else at that point in the system risks amplifying any already existent discrimination by making one group significantly more expensive to employ than another.

Whether they should choose to subsidise income by other channels is an entirely different question.

Separatrix
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  • "Same work, same pay" is not fair if people are born differently in ways which means they have drastically different cost of living. – Philipp Jul 05 '17 at 10:25
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    @Philipp why? It is only fair way for employer to pay, isn't it? – Mołot Jul 05 '17 at 10:27
  • @Mołot Fair for the legal people (companies), but not for the natural people. In that case it should be up to the government to make the system fair again through taxes for privileged people and subsidiaries for disadvantaged people. – Philipp Jul 05 '17 at 10:30
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    @Philipp, that's up to the government to deal with. From an employer's point of view, why should they pay different people different amounts to do the same work? That's just going to incentivise them to pick cheaper people and you end up with an even bigger problem. Before it was a minor detail to get bigger chairs and desks, you've now said I have to pay them 10-1000 times as much as well. An entire town of small people could live under the bed of a big person. – Separatrix Jul 05 '17 at 10:35
  • @Separatrix OP clearly asked what HE should do as LEADER of the world so the employer's point of view is irrelevant. – Jacques Jul 06 '17 at 12:26
  • @JaccoAmersfoort, do wages not come from employers in your country? If employing one person is cheaper than employing another do they not do so (all other factors aside)? Same work, same pay is the fundamental call of feminism and unions across the board, are you saying they're all wrong? – Separatrix Jul 06 '17 at 12:46
  • @Separatrix You're still approaching this from the employer's point of view, which is completely irrelevant from the question asked. The reason 'employers should pay different people different amounts to do the same work" is because it's the law, should OP so decide it (he is the government/lawmaker in this scenario). Of course we should consider employer's concerns but "that's up to the government to deal with" is nonsense in this context. And stop putting words in my mouth. – Jacques Jul 06 '17 at 13:26
  • @JaccoAmersfoort, fair wages is the same wages. The fact that it's not equivalent wages is not the question asked, the fact that some people have higher costs than others is also not the question asked. Some people are going to be impoverished, because fair wages doesn't cover their costs. – Separatrix Jul 06 '17 at 13:30
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    TL;DR: laws, which are up to the government. +1 – Mazura Jul 06 '17 at 18:49
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The simplest answer I can see is that your world would use Piece Rate as the standard instead of an hourly wage or salary as is more common in our world these days.

If you get paid by the amount of work done (rather than the hours worked or a simple flat rate) then a small person who can only make a few items a day (or whatever equivalent work they are doing) gets paid far less than a big person who can make a lot more items.

Of course this won't always hold true and there will be jobs which small people excel at and can make many times more objects than big people, but this will just help lead to a natural stratification of the job market. Big people won't want to do jobs they are bad at and get paid poorly for and small people will seek out these jobs as a preference.

This system is often unfair and leads to people being underpaid and has largely fallen out of use (in First World countries anyway) but I think with the vast disparity in sizes and the differing needs for income it may work better in your world.

The alternate is some kind of caste system where jobs are rigidly assigned based on size and capability and wages are based on this system so everyone gets a fair amount.

As a side note Terry Pratchett makes note of this in the Watch series of Discworld books where a number of Gnome / Nac Mac Feegle policemen are often mentioned to need far less money because they drink thimbles of beer rather than pints and a loaf of bread can last them weeks.

adaliabooks
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    Just the one Feegle policeman, Wee Mad Arthur, and the relative economy is explained while he's still a rat catcher (and technically a gnome). – Separatrix Jul 05 '17 at 09:54
  • @Separatrix Yeah, I couldn't quite remember if there was more than one or if it was just Wee Mad Arthur. I'm fairly sure he mentions it again later though, when he is a member of the watch. I think it could have been in Snuff or another quite recent one. – adaliabooks Jul 05 '17 at 10:05
  • "there will be jobs which small people excel at and can make many times more objects than big people" This is true to electronic in small devices. – Rodrigo Menezes Jul 06 '17 at 17:11
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In theory services will be performed by those who can charge the least for them.

Tasks that require giants will be performed by giants who charge a liveable giant wage for them while tasks that requires gnomes will be manned (gnomed) by gnomes who will be paid what a gnome requires to live. A gnome can't perform a giant's task and vice versa (a giant can't even survive on a gnome salary thugh so that's a moot point).

Tasks that require ordinary sized humans will naturally be performed by ordinary sized humans.

Basically you're getting a caste based work market.

And as long as everyone is fine with their lot and as long as there is no inside manipulation from the market players it might even work.

Of course... without religious strictures surrounding the caste system you'll probably end up with employers trying to find ways to sell off a job to gnomes as they'll work the cheapest. So the gnome job market will likely be the most diverse.

The giants get the short end of the stick since they're the most expensive to maintain and their job marked will hold the least amount of diversity. However, you might want to note that keeping giants happy is a societal survival trait. Your society will probably want to find ways of keeping all giants gainfully employed even if it's costly because when a giant with a lot of spare time on his or her hands have an axe to grind it's usually a huge frickin' axe. (The real world comparison to look into would be failed states with decommissioned armies that have not been properly disarmed.)

The obvious way to keep the giants in work would be to finance giant work projects by issuing taxes and levies on the other castes, which has the double benefit of also going towards closing the wage gap. Of course, employers don't really like levies and taxes so there will be controversy surrounding them, at least until the first giant uprising.

The other solution:

You may want to think about completely separate economies. Giants are paid and purchases things in giant money. Gomes use gnome currency. Never shall the two meet.

Doomfrost
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  • "And as long as everyone is fine with their lot ... " Except this will not be very long. Automation will tend to remove giant suitable jobs from the economy far faster than it will remove gnome suitable jobs. Because a) giants are more expensive and you thus have a greater insentive to automate and b) strength and scale is features that automation handles early. – Taemyr Jul 05 '17 at 11:14
  • Well... I agree. I'm aware that being fine with one's lot is not a primary sentient characteristic so I was never really expecting them to be. Hence my quick foray into "incentives for keeping giants happy and occupied". – Doomfrost Jul 05 '17 at 11:17
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You can't be building a world like this, without intending to draw parallels against our own world. And our own world is not fair.

If you are aiming for fairness, you are worldbuilding a world of tedium and boringness. In the real world, whatever system you find to allocate fairness will be found unfair by some.

  • People should be paid proportionally to how scarce their skills are!
  • People should be paid the same per year!
  • People should be paid the same per hour!
  • People should be paid the same per gram of bodymass!
  • People should be paid the same per dollar earned for the company!
  • People should be paid the same per year they've worked for the employer!
  • People should be paid the same per... what's fair?

Fair, as others have said, is obviously an illusion, and in reality people usually try to be fair, so will find some mix of the above, and more, to try to ensure their staff are looked after.

And in reality there will always be people who get the short end of whatever measuring-stick is applied, and will say it's not fair.

Building a world where this issue does NOT arise, is building a bland, beige world. Instead, I'd argue to build a world where these issues are accepted as part of the world's fabric: hardships to be borne, occasionally argued about or overthrown when it chafes too hard, like the caste and class systems that we see on Earth today.

Strikes and industrial action are a good way to explain the non-availability of resources that might otherwise give your characters an easy solution. Oh, no, the car broke down. Why not just call a taxi? Well, there's public transport strike demanding more sections of secure tunneling for the smaller drivers, after that accident last week...

But it doesn't have to be plot-relevant, it's also just a good way to give the story color, whether it's as a casual reference to how the tiny guy gets to boss around a whole business empire of giants, or how the wealthy giant gets to be constantly groomed by a cloud of little people, or whatever.

I wouldn't make wealth be absolutely linked to size, any more than it is to race or gender today. But I'd pick a size and make them the ones with the privilege, whether it's because they can do more skilled work, or are bigger and stronger, or whatever.

You can also play with people's internal stereotypes. You can set up the giants to have everyone assume they are ignorant, but then find an educated one who explains that sure, they move slow, and talk slow, but not because they think slow. Just because momentum, and caution not to hurt those smaller than them. As for the rest, it's caste-related; nobody writes textbooks large enough for the giants, the ivory towers of educational institutions are built to a scale that excludes them, etc etc. Or vice versa: the little ones are ignorant, not because they have tiny brains and lives too short to learn anything, but because they can't lift the textbooks. Entrenchedly bigoted stereotypes between the sizes allows both for lively humor, but also for deep commentary.

Embrace harsh social realities, but only enough to chafe, not to cut.

Dewi Morgan
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    Note: Fairly often, when someone says "That's not fair!" they actually mean "That's not unfair in a way that's to my advantage!" – Dan Henderson Jul 05 '17 at 21:33
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So you have a XIX century economy. Small kids sweep chimneys and work in tight mines. Adults work at steel mills and other places where strength is a must.

To that you can add company stores (and 16 tons).

Also your problem is wrongly created as you assume that large people can do the same work as small people can. Make a test, imagine the 20 feet person try to pass thread through the needle's eye. They can do that if they have a large needle and large thread. But they can't saw intricate things with that. They can do bags, sails and so on.

SZCZERZO KŁY
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Size is not the only defining factor for your working-abilities. Not all jobs are the same and size/strength is only one determining factor. In a diverse enough society you may find niches for every species. A large, strong species is better suited for work fields requiring raw strength, like heaving heavy crates or producing large scale iron/steel products depending on your level of industrialisation. A small more dextrous species might be perfectly suited for squeezing into small rooms between machinery and repair it nimbly. Or they might get hired for work with very delicate machinery which requires anything but brute force and strength.

Alex2006
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  • Welcome to WorldBuilding.SE alex! If you haven't done so already and you a moment please take the [tour] and visit the [help] to learn more about the site. Have fun! – Secespitus Jul 05 '17 at 09:14
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Make smaller people less intelligent

That way with smaller body you will have smaller strength and smaller intelligence. This means that with smaller cost of living you will also have less-paying jobs, and you can keep the same price for square meter of cloth or pound of bread - and at the same time you can keep same pay for equal job.

Of course there will be some specializations etc, just as there are in real life, but overall it will be possible to balance this system to have average life rate independent on size.

Mołot
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If big people cannot buy things, then you will not get rich selling things to big people and then you are leaving behind an opportunity to make a profit. I think this will be a mitigating factor at least, that will make prices for big people go down.

Another mitigating factor is that big things are often much easier to make than small things. So production costs for small people might be higher even if the material used is less. Of course this is up till a certain point, but I think it will hold for many consumer goods. But big people might be more partial to bungalows and small people to relative high buildings.

I think there are also a number of reasons why there will probably be less giant people than smaller people, but that will depend on your handwavery. Growth into adulthood will be much slower, the number of children will probably be lower and at those sizes there are a number of biological reasons why they might not live to get very old (stress on bones, heart, etc). On the one hand this makes the market smaller for big stuff, but it will also make the number of big people available for your workforce smaller. I think we can agree a giant might be extremely handy for many situations, so this should improve wages.

In the end I think food might be the biggest problem. Perhaps you can provide a sort of communal dining facility where every citizen can get a basic meal that will get him or her through the day, regardless of size. Granted, small people might be able to afford more luxury foods from their disposable income, but giant people can at least choose if they want to use their precious disposable income.

Niels
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If you have a sufficiently authoritarian system, the solution is simple: Make it illegal for smaller people to buy or use goods intended for large people. This essentially sets up a parallel economy for each size category.

This is actually going on in the background in Zootopia - one of the "crimes" that Nick commits early on is arbitrage of these price differences: he buys popsicles meant for elephants (and is unable to buy them openly) and melts them down and refreezes them [in the climate controlled arctic district] in smaller shapes for hamsters (along with selling the sticks as construction wood).

You can disguise this in various ways - the supposed reason he can't do this is, IIRC, because he doesn't have a business license and safety inspections, but that doesn't explain the absence of legitimate businesses in this niche - one is left to assume that licenses were arbitrarily denied to anyone who made such a proposal. Small species have a district of their own, which was arguably for their safety, but presumably planned and sized to ensure scarcity of land zoned for them (and thus astronomically higher rents than if larger species were allowed to have them as subtenants).

Random832
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"Paying everyone equally for the same work creates the problem that giant people will fall into poverty and little people will gain massive wealth." That's not really how wealth works. If my shirts cost 17 dollars and Bill Gates's shirts cost 32 dollars; he would not be impoverished and I would not be massively wealthy. I admit that there are other commodities that support your point better than clothing does, like different sized housing and different food budgets. But on the whole, unequal cost of living is a somewhat negligible factor in determining who acquires great wealth. Inherited wealth, the ability to leverage wealth to make more wealth, the ability to own factors of automation, and the ability to get paid for the work each of your employees does are much larger factors in unequal wealth.

It is also the case that, regardless of size, intellect and skill will be a greater indicator of a person's productivity and earning power. So the correlation between size and earning power would not be 1-to-1. But in certain industries, it may be the case that larger individuals may be more productive, or may be able to fill jobs that smaller people can't (e.g. a 10-pound person may not be able to cook or serve food at a restaurant that caters mostly for a 3000-pound peoples' crowd, with stools that are 10-feet tall). This minor advantage in earning power could mildly offset the greater cost of living.

It is also the case that America in the beginning of the twentieth century did not have anything close to resembling equal civil rights for all, nor did it have equal income by race, nor equal income by gender. I'm not sure what the ideological stance of your world is, but in a vacuum, it does not need to be more equal than the real world.

However, if the people of your world are actively striving for approximately equal outcomes for people of different sizes, they could take the following approaches...

  • Decree that certain necessities like food, shelter, and utilities are a universal right. Take public ownership of them. Remove the ability to price them capitalistically for profit, or hoarded. This can especially apply to real estate, which is not man-made, and there's no reason why it should have ever been something people could privately own. Somewhat applies to water as well, but the treatment of water is a man-made activity.
  • Have labor unions that strive to negotiate wages that yield equal wealth regardless of size.
  • A lot of wealth in America's economy gets tied-up in corporate assets, bank assets, and personal wealth. For example, American corporations have $1.9 trillion sitting around in cash. Banks own a lot of real estate that has been foreclosed upon with nobody living in it. This is a lot of capital resources that we allow to be hoarded by non-living entities who don't need them; which we could have instead taxed, added to the federal budget, and maybe given back to civilians. In your world, perhaps people of all sizes could write-off various size-dependent expenses on their tax returns, and then their differing needs would be subsidized by the tax code, which would have higher federal revenue than we have, because the corporations wouldn't be keeping any wealth to themselves.
John
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    I think the point that size is a relatively minor contributor to earning capacity here is good, and is lacking in the other answers. It's also interesting that this depends on the equivalent time period of the society--in pre- or early-industrial societies, physical strength was pretty important to productivity, so the giants would be advantaged in that way. However, in those same societies, food and shelter would be more important fractions of their budget. – tsbertalan Jul 06 '17 at 15:50
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    And, like John says, the giants earning ability in such early societies might outweigh their higher costs. Perhaps in some Star Trek-like future society, scarcity will be reduced enough that the one order-of-magnitude difference in living costs in the OPs population will be an insignificant portion of individual budgets. Everyone's pay (based on skill, intellect, or even basic income) could cover the physical needs of the largest. – tsbertalan Jul 06 '17 at 15:54
  • But, in the here-and-now on Earth Prime, where salaries generally just barely meet the average needs, income inequality is high, and, importantly, strength is no real advantage for earning capability, I think the giants would be decidedly disadvantaged. It would be very interesting to read an epic story in which the transition across the three societies is examined. Maybe, by the time the post-scarcity society rolls around and they could have survived, you'd have the sad outcome of the giants' population tapering off due to inability to support children. – tsbertalan Jul 06 '17 at 15:58
  • @tsbertalan - nowadays strength is no real advantage...because we have technologies instead, that may not be invented in a world where getting big people to do the work is easier than creating a machine. Or conversely, small size is no longer the advantage it used to be - small and nimble fingers, or fitting in tight places, in mines/factories (historically child labor), because we have technologies for small-scale work. And by hand, small delicate stuff requires more time+skill to make. Mechanization would disrupt both people's specializations, making here-and-now very interesting indeed. – Megha Aug 15 '17 at 00:29
2

Your "equality" would never work outside of some sort of dystopian civilization. Rather than making things "equal" your government should be working to ensure things are "equally unequal." If this does not make sense, continue reading.

Complexities between sizing and pricing.

Manufacturing:

In our world, producing small items is actually difficult and expensive. We can do that because we had to create the technology to do so. That technology would NEVER have developed in this world.

In their world, it would actually be easy to make small items but only the small can make these items. Similarly, it has been argued that the ease of slavery deterred tech growth. Because slaves were so convenient.

Small people can make things for small people but cannot make many items for the large people. A 3 inch person making a phone, car, or really any item for a 20 ft person is the equivalent of a normal human making a oil tanker or a death star. Even if possible with enough people (and having too many is a human resource nightmare), it is never going to be mass producible. People of size X and X-1 will make items for size X people. There will be some benefits from small people working on electronics for large people, but generally the economy will be somewhat segregated.

Resource Gathering: Resources are located around the globe, separated by vast distances. A society of 3in or 1ft people would have issues gathering ores and minerals. Transportation and extraction would be difficult. Even if small people can make their own items, they need big people to actually gather and move the raw materials.

Retail:

Stores trying to cater to all sizes would be an utter nightmare. It just would not be possible to keep that stock available. This means either stores are split by sizes, OR stores are just locations to order and have items delivered on demand.

This is not a civil rights issue.

The whole civil rights argument is that a colored (pick one: black, yellow, red, pink striped) man can do the same job as a white man, or a woman the same as a man. A 3 inch person absolutely cannot do the job of a 20ft man, and the opposite is true. They have their roles, and are somewhat restricted by their size. Pretending these people are the same is utterly ridiculous. And any technology you can imagine that MIGHT allow that in our world, might not have evolved or been created in theirs. A completely non-discriminatory (handicap & size based not color) based society is a luxury and is not at all a nature state.

Are all people going to be using the same water fountain, road, building, or side walk? A fountain for a 10ft person might drown a 1ft person. A large car may not see a small car and crush it. Would it really be safe to have an integrated side walk and buildings? Everything would have to be made for large people, which would be difficult and inconvenient for small people. Imagine a 15ft person has a 100 step walk between buildings, now imagine a 3ft person making that walk...

So assuming you read all of this, you are probably asking "Where is the equally unequal?" Here. Some segregation of the economy and society is expected and should be tolerated. Wanting to force a small person to do a big person's job or the opposite is not what you want. "UNEQUAL." What you should be watching is that no one group is actively, hostilely, and maliciously targeting another. They are all people. They all have the same rights, and even if they have different limitations they need to work together. Big people can't just demolish a little person town, because it is in the way. But little people can't just expect to get in the way of big people. "EQUALLY UNEQUAL"

user2259716
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Something that is very important to know in that context: robustness etc. of creatures doesn't scale linearly. And anatomy doesn't scale much at all. Most insects will be fine if you drop them from three foot high onto concrete. Obviously, assuming that people two hundred times taller than an insect should take not much damage from a 600 feet drop, or even a 3 foot drop!, would be completely in error. A six foot insect would have the same problem (that's why they don't exist in that size). Fish seem to be an exception, but then they all aren't good at surviving when there is no buoyancy.

It's even a problem with objects: drop a blueberry and a watermelon the same three feet ....

You might want to be a miser with gravity in your world.

rackandboneman
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Same Wages + Basic Needs

You should provide everyone with same base wages and basic needs such as shelter, clothing and food. So no one will get very poor, and a wise spender can become rich.

As explained by @david, the small goods and the large goods cost will be somewhat similar as in our real world, people pay same for jeans and mini skirts.

Gaurav Gandhi
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