Schliesser has been hoping to catch me in an economic error but has been unable to do so. (His strategy in responding to me so far has been to read me uncharitably.) Martin Brock, a loyal BHL reader, on the other hand, did catch me:

You obviously know your experience better than I, but I doubt that your button pushing in a factory required less skill than mopping, and even if some measure of “skill” finds the two occupations equally skillful, the degree of economic loss possible by pressing the wrong button on a mass production assembly line presumably is greater, so the level of responsibility, if not the skill, of the button pusher presumably is greater, and the proprietor of a production line will pay more for a more responsible worker.

…The way you tell the story, your $16.25/hr sounds like some sort of gift from the factory owner, who simply has more to give than a grocer employing you to mop floors, but marginal value is not this sort of gift at all.

I responded,

Yes, you’re right that I exaggerated* the lack of difference between the two jobs. And you’re right that much more was at stake. Quite literally, if I pressed the wrong buttons, I would have instantly destroyed $45,000 or more in electronic equipment.

Sean II added,

“so the level of responsibility, if not the skill…”

Being able to handle responsibility is a skill. From an employer’s point of view, it’s probably the most important skill of all.

An IV infusion pump is operationally not much different from a milkshake machine. The difference between the person you trust to operate the one, and the person you trust to operate the other is NOT just a difference of applied capital.

I had the floor-mopping job in high school and the button-pushing factory job when I took a semester off from college to earn enough money to finish. The people who were hired to do the latter kind of job were different from the people hired to to the former. For the factory job (at Analog Devices), one needed work experience demonstrating responsibility and a high school diploma.

*It’s not a complete exaggeration, though.