Reason as the Price of Labor

Zera Yacob argued that reason is the universal human faculty, given to all equally by the divine. Applied to labor, this means your wages and working conditions must reflect rational assessment, not tradition or coercion. If you exchange eight hours of your life daily, reason demands asking: Does this exchange honor my dignity? Am I paid according to the actual value I create, or am I being systematically undercompensated? Yacob would frame fair wages not as charity but as rational justice—the employer and employee both using reason to establish terms that respect human worth. This reframes salary negotiation from supplication to mutual rational agreement.