{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":125,"pdf_page":133,"physical_index":133,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6a3b4d0b93232825f7188aca9352efbbbc298d107fc448111024d6f886b1d7c0"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Work on historical semantics ofers some evidence of the historicity of the modern notion of objectively fair economic exchange, at least in the case of the English-speaking world. According to the investigations of linguist Anna Wierzbicka (2006), it was only quite recently that the English term fair came to take on its contemporary ethical sense, which has connotations of equality.6 Before the nineteenth century, fair meant proper adherence to an agreed-on procedure. The earliest usage of fair in this procedural sense is found in the expression “fair play,” the first records of which date to the sixteenth century. Fair play—simply following the agreed rules of a game—captures to some degree the formal moral dimension of modern economic transactions. However, Wierzbicka notes that the meaning of fair play is distinct from the modern sense of fair as equal—the sense that is present in notions such as the “fair wage.” This point becomes clear when considering the respective antonyms of fair (play) and fair (exchange of equivalents). The opposite of fair play was foul play, which means flouting the rules of a game. To play foully is to break rules, to cheat in some sense, with the assumption that the players of the game freely agreed on those rules before play began. For a player not to follow those rules thus involves reneging on an agreement, the breaking of a compact. Although the procedural sense of fair (the sense involved in fair play and foul play) is clearly still in common use today, that sense does not capture the contemporary, substantive, and essentially distributive notion of fairness, with its connotations of equality and, therefore, commensurability.7 The antonym of that sense of fair is just unfair, the meaning of which is broader than foul play. While unfair can mean deviating from agreed-on rules, it can also mean substantively unequal, as in not getting a fair share of some good. It is the latter sense of unfair that is used to refer to unequal exchange, where the quantity of value given by one party is greater than the value received in return from the other party. An exchange can be judged by an observer as unfair, in the sense of being unequal, whether or not the observer knows the “rules of the game” and indeed independently of whether those rules were freely agreed on by the exchanging parties.8 The earliest mention of unfair is found in the mid-eighteenth century, but Wierzbicka suggests that the modern meaning of the word did not fully emerge until well into the nineteenth century. The emergence of fair as meaning equal thus, significantly, coincided with the rise of industrial capitalism and wage labor.\n\nEconomic Fairness and the Wage Labor Background\n\n125","previous_page":124,"next_page":126}