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jrodefeld posted:SOME business owners collude with the State. There is a limited viability to any plan to retroactively redistribute all coercively redistributed wealth that occurred during a century of State control over the economy. Everyone is forced to deal with the system as it exists, to survive in the best manner they can. Now, as I've said before, if property was legitimately stolen and it can be proven to be stolen, then said property should returned to its original owner. However, the burden of proof must rest on those that want to overturn existing private property claims. Hmm very reasonable jrodefeld. People are just surviving however they can, in a rigged system. This leads to inequality and theft. quote:This will all get sorted out in short order during a transition to a free economy. For some reason. quote:The State protections and privileges including the entity called the limited liability "corporation" will fall to the side and these businessmen will no longer have a shield to protect them from liability for their actions. They will either satisfy consumers on the market, or go out of business and look for a new occupation. For some reason, getting rid of all the constraints on businesses will make them less powerful, and all rent-seeking will cease. quote:To conclude, stolen property should be returned, but those that seek to overturn existed property claims must be expected to provide proof of theft. And, no, "theft of labor" as Marx would put it does not count. For some reason. quote:As I've explained elsewhere, since the worker provides his services to the employer voluntarily and they have reverse time preference orders, then no exploitation has occurred. The worker chooses to accept a stable, steady guaranteed income and basically subsidizes the entrepreneur who assumes the risk, the risk to his personal capital and the risk of bankruptcy. Were black ex-slave sharecroppers farming their former masters' crops exploited? Or did they simply have reverse time preference orders?
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Sep 30, 2014 06:48
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Karia posted:Read this. Then try again. The idea that someone can only produce $6 per hour is ridiculous. Someone putting boxes onto shelves for eight hours a day is worth more than that, with no training. The amount of productivity that workers have is skyrocketing, thanks to improved management, technology, etc. Wages aren't following. Less than $10 per hour for any worker is absurd. How do you know how much a worker is worth? Serious, how do you know? A product on the market is worth what people will voluntarily pay for it. Your argument here is exactly the same as if I said "You know how much a Sony Playstation 4 is REALLY worth? $900." No it's not. It's worth $400 because that is what people are willing to pay for it on the market. People might be willing to buy even more of it if it was selling for $300 but then Sony would not make a profit. So the market has decided that the price for a new video game console is $400 because people are willing to pay that much and Sony is willing to sell it for that much. It would be ridiculous for me to claim that I know that the PS4 is worth $900. My personal opinion is not more valuable than millions of economic actors working in their own self interest who appraised the product and determined its value to them. I don't know more than the market researchers at Sony who spent thousands of hours picking out the perfect price point that the market would stand that would still net a slim profit to Sony. To say otherwise just reveals ignorance and hubris in equal measure. Why would labor services be categorically different from any other product that is sold on the market? You may have an opinion that a janitor is really worth $20 an hour for cleaning up bathrooms but how do you know? There are not an indefinite number of workers applying for all positions. Employers do have to lure good workers away from other job opportunities. And one of the ways they do that is to offer a higher wage rate than other employers are offering their workers. That is why if a worker is being paid significantly lower than what his job is worth, then he must be foregoing other economic opportunities for his labor services. If his skills can command a higher wage then other businessmen will bid up his wages until it reaches his true market wage. There are cases where a workers skills simply become outdated and no one will hire him regardless. The maker of horse-drawn carriages was unemployed rather quickly after Henry Ford introduced the Model T. But this reflects a changing market and since peoples value judgments are subjective, there is no "true" value to someones labor separate from what people are willing to pay.
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Sep 30, 2014 06:57
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Why does the corporation have a right to draw from a pool of healthy employees who use public education, public roads and public security to remain unharmed? I mean, clearly someone else bore the cost of bringing workers to this level, clearly the corporation needs to pay a reasonable compensation? "But we should be able to decide it" Yes. We do. We told that lower than this ain't cool.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:00
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jrodefeld posted:Why would labor services be categorically different from any other product that is sold on the market?
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Sep 30, 2014 07:01
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Unless we decide to make a law for it, of course. Then we can say exactly what a laborer is worth. If businesses don't want to pay it, they can do without workers or go out of business.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:02
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jrodefeld posted:I've returned from hiatus. I can't locate my other thread so I'll start on this thread. Real life intruded and I don't have the luxury of posting on random internet forums as much as I might like. In any event, I actually like this forum. While I disagree with most of you, I genuinely find it to be especially well run and the discussions are substantive and interesting. And, evidenced by this thread, you all seem to having more than a passing familiarity with libertarian ideas. Believe it or not most of us actually don't dislike you or necessarily dislike talking to you either. We're all nerds who post in a debate and discussion forum on the internet. Since this is not Ender's Game, we understandably aren't doing so for unlimited world power but out of a genuine desire to actually talk about things.  I apologize in advance for cutting your post at odd places, but I'm trying to keep like with like when it comes to ideas so that I don't repeat myself. quote:With that said, I want to discuss the subject of a minimum wage (or even minimum basic income). From what I have read on this thread, most of you are in favor of a minimum wage and/or basic guaranteed income. I find that support for either belies an ignorance of basic economics. I'd love if you could prove me wrong however. I'd critique you for calling us all ignorant right after saying we make substantive replies, but someone called you a shitheel so we don't exactly have a the moral high ground. quote:I favor an immediate abolition of all minimum wage laws. I don't understand how anyone could imagine that creating an artificial minimum legal wage rate could actually improve anyone's standard of living.A few points. In the first place, a worker will receive an income that is determined by the market. His marketable skills are valued based on the marginal productivity of his labor. If a worker can only provide $9 of value to an employer per hour, why on earth would that employer pay him $10 an hour? Businessmen are not running charities. The businessman is seeking profits which can only be done by satisfying consumer demands on the market. Therefore wages must be lower than the productivity of the labor. The marginal productivity of a laborer provides the upper limit of the wage rate that he or she can expect to receive. What makes you think that most workers have a wage that comes anywhere near what the 'value' the provide to their employer actually is? I touched on this earlier in the thread, but I'm curious why you think that this is the case when historical evidence disagrees with that assumption. For example, we know what productivity was in the 1970's and we also know what the minimum wage was in the 1970's. Most studies suggest that productivity now, per worker, is double or even triple what it was in 1970, yet wages remain stagnant. If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity, it would be at roughly $25 an hour. So how do you explain this? If most workers were paid something approximating their value to their employer, shouldn't wages have been steadily increasing for decades? The amount each worker makes for their company, and thus their value has increased nearly three fold in four decades, but adjusted for inflation wages have barely increased at all, and the minimum wage is even lower than it was in 1970. If on the other hand, most workers are NOT paid anywhere even close to the value that they bring in, that is to say a worker brings in $20 or $30 or $50 while making minimum wage, then we would see what we statistically do see when minimum wage is increased, which is little to no effect on employment. Most businesses simply do not make hiring or firing decisions based on the minimum wage unless we are talking a theoretical minimum wage that is totally out of wack with current conditions like a hypothetical $100 minimum or something. Similarly, what about a worker such as Ben, my local hobby store clerk. He opens the store every sunday from 10-6, and without him the store would not be open. Do you really think that the owner is simply going to close down his store for an entire day because of a $1-5/hour increase in the minimum wage? Do you think that even significantly factors into a budget where roughly 70% of his cost is inventory, 15% is fixed cost and perhaps 10% is labor? quote:I can anticipate that some of you will argue that without a supposed floor for wage rates, the greedy businessmen will simply push wages as low as possible forcing workers to work for 50 cents an hour. The reason this won't happen is that competitive firms, in their competition with each other, will be in need of good workers. If an employer is paying his workers too little for their abilities (i.e. too much lower than the marginal productivity of their labor) then a competitor will bid them away from their current employer. Thus the wage rates for workers will inevitably rise towards the level of their marginal productivity but never exceeding it. This sounds well and good in theory, but the mechanics you are talking about do not exist in a vacuum. People frequently refer to sweeping generalizations like this one as the frictionless surfaces and perfect spheres of the economic world, ie, the 'I took econ 101 and nothing else' effect. The problem is that these basic models where everyone competes and the market is a perfectly functional self regulating machine don't work outside the textbook because people are flawed, flawed creatures. Take for example, the recent Google/Apple Antitrust lawsuit. The short version is that several of the largest silicon valley firms colluded together to depress the wages of their employees by simply refusing to poach or entice employees of their competitors in order to keep the costs of labor down. This real world example flies in the face of everything that you hypothesise would happen and more stunningly occurred in a field of specialized and educated labor. Moreover the issue was only resolved by the intervention of the ever hated 'state'. quote:It is an intellectual error to simply claim that all workers are worth, say, $10 an hour. Frankly I think it is an intellectual error to assume that employers will actually most pay employees what they are worth when recorded history proves that this is not the case. quote:How could you possibly know that? Only a free market for wage labor can possibly determine the per hour value of labor services. What minimum wage laws amount to really is compulsory unemployment, period. The take of most of the posters in this thread would be that the minimum wage for a full time job should be enough for someone to live with dignity. That is absolutely a condition that society is capable of placing upon the marketplace by whatever means at our disposal, be it a mincome, or a minimum wage or whatever. quote:In a free society without a State that erects barriers to economic activity, all economic actors will have far more options than they do today. Just to be clear, you do understand that the state is only one of the myriad of reasons that there can be barriers to entry. I think you do understand that this is true but I want to be absolutely sure. Other examples are things like natural monopolies such as telecommunications where start up costs for simple hardware could be in the hundreds of millions and so forth. Moreover, this is a feel good statement with no real substance. The government puts up barriers to entry and once we knock them down people will have far more options to... not have fire extinguishers on the property? Not provide occupational health and safety protections. Not pay overtime. Fire employees without cause. Brutally suppress unions with everything shy of physical force? Sexually harass employees? quote:So it is furthermore wrong to assume that workers will have no recourse but to work for wages. On the contrary, each worker will have an ability to become an entrepreneur himself, risking his capital for the potential greater reward of future profits. It is a far riskier proposition than trading his labor for wages but without the regulatory barriers and bureaucratic red tape, the cost of entry into the market will be exponentially lower than it is today. Again, this is why I'm asking if you understand that barriers to entry are not the primary fault of government. As just one personal example. In 2010 I briefly flirted with the idea of opening a business before deciding it was unsuitable in the current climate to do so. Do you know how much 'barriers to entry' actually figured into my business plan? Perhaps 1%. Of greater concern were things like, 'eating' and 'massive risk due to debt burden'. To suggest that if we just eliminated the minimum wage and other regulations people would suddenly jump into the market creating businesses is naive at best and disingenuous at worst. You suggest getting rid of all sort of government intervention, but do you think people would be more or less likely to start a business if they knew that they had a social safety net? How about if they know that they have healthcare? When I was pondering my business I didn't even have to consider it, but can you imagine the extra risk I'd be taking if we'd first eliminated my access to universal healthcare and THEN suggested I start a business? quote:A third option would be for workers to organize together and form mutualist coops, where workers pool their resources and collectively own the means of production. This would be an intermediate step between being a wage laborer and an entrepreneur. The potential for return on investment would be greater than that of a wage laborer but less than that of an entrepreneur. However the risk to a personal capital would be far lower than an entrepreneur. It would be, in a very real sense, voluntary socialism or even voluntary Marxism. We do this now. Nothing about this would be unique to your suggested 'minimumwageless' world, so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up here other than in an attempt at trying to appear centrist and open minded. Also I've snipped out a quote here and moved it to the bottom because it deserves special attention. quote:Minimum wage laws are immoral, they hurt the least skilled and most vulnerable in society. No they are not, and no they do not. Making sweeping moral generalizations isn't going to win you an argument and I wish you'd understand that. If you said "I feel minimum wage laws are immoral..." I wouldn't even be commenting on this, but you're trying to frame the argument as if you've already won on a point that we BOTH know that you we disagree on. quote:The only genuine way to sustainably raise the standard of living for workers is to improve their marginal productivity, thus allowing them to command a higher wage rate on the market. To this end, it is valuable to encourage young people to gain more work experience when they are younger, develop on the job training and skills that improve their value to employers. Improved skills expand ones economic opportunities. How do you account for the fact that marginal productivity has been going up for decades with no associated increase in wealth for the workers. I'm genuinely curious as to your answer on this issue. Moreover, are you aware that minimum wage jobs are not just for 'young people' anymore? They haven't been for over a decade. The median age of a minimum wage worker is 28. Because of the poor 'trickle down' economic garbage we were sold for a generation many people will be working service jobs like this until they retire, so suggesting they simply increase their value to employers (god does that sound creepy by the way) is not a real fix. quote:I thought this would be a good topic to get back into this discussion. Where am I going wrong? How can you rationally defend minimum wage laws and/or mandatory basic minimum income in light of economic law and logic? Well, in the face of logic... gee I don't know. How can you rationally defend the abolition of a current pillar supporting the poor when recorded history shows that employers can and will abuse works for less than subsistence wages if they can get away with it? quote:All of these economic relationships are valid provided no one uses aggression against any other peaceful person. Okay, this got brought up in the last thread after you left so I'm going to assume you haven't read it. The whole crux of your argument boils down to the idea that aggression is bad, and taxation is theft because its your money, government is aggressing against you etc etc. Libertarians do this in an attempt to frame the debate as them the plucky pacifist up against the big forces of everyone else who wants to impose on them. But when is it okay for you to use force? Well in your theoretical society it is okay for you to use force when someone does it to you first. Typical examples aren't really 'force' per say, but interacting with property. If I walk onto your land and stand there, you have the right to remove me, we both agree with that. You link this in with a whole weird homesteading philosophy, but at the end of the day I propose that the only reason your land is your land in this example is because everyone agrees. Admittedly they agree that your homesteading idea is the basis of property, but it is that communal weight of society that justifies your force as defensive. If everyone didn't agree that the land was yours, then you wouldn't be justified in using force. We know its not simply your philosophy because philosophy doesn't carry that weight. If it did then we'd have examples of real world people using the homesteading philosophy to justify force. So in the above example, if I went onto your land and stood there you could remove me. If I were bigger than you, you could call someone to remove me. If I resisted and say... hurt one of them, I could be put in a cage and if I really resisted I could be killed. Sound familiar? It sure does to me. The difference between Libertarians and 'statists' is not a matter that one things aggression is justified and the other does not. The issue is a matter of who owns what, in the 'statist' case we simply believe that a certain portion of income belongs to the state. And we can do that, because what belongs to who is entirely a subjective issue determined by the rules of the society. Caros fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 07:04
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jrodefeld posted:How do you know how much a worker is worth? Serious, how do you know? A product on the market is worth what people will voluntarily pay for it. Your argument here is exactly the same as if I said "You know how much a Sony Playstation 4 is REALLY worth? $900." No it's not. It's worth $400 because that is what people are willing to pay for it on the market. People might be willing to buy even more of it if it was selling for $300 but then Sony would not make a profit. So the market has decided that the price for a new video game console is $400 because people are willing to pay that much and Sony is willing to sell it for that much. Does farting count as an initiation of force?
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Sep 30, 2014 07:06
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Hey guys, I know we all want to jump on the 'a ton of libertarians are racist fucks' bandwagon, but can we keep it out of this thread? It got done to death round in circles in the last thread and I'd really rather see something new and exciting. Just a request.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:08
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VitalSigns posted:All right, jrodefeld, explain the appalling work conditions of the 1900s, like say the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, in which 150 people burned to death because their employers let combustible materials build up and they locked the drat doors from the outside to prevent revenue loss from unauthorized breaks. It is always fallacious to look to the distant past and apply our modern standards for worker safety and living standards to presuppose that modern "Progressive" regulation and minimum wage laws would have improved matters. I don't know the specifics of the case you cited, but unless the workers explicitly agreed that the doors would be locked, then this was a rights violation and the employers should have been held accountable and charged with murder. If an unexpected fire breaks out in a factory and the workers expect the doors to remain open for them to be able to exit the building and instead they are locked shut by order of the owner, then that is murder clear and simple. I expect the truth is more nuanced than that. This is a variation on the common left-progressive argument about the horrors of pre-Progressive era regulation. They tout the success of child labor laws, minimum wage laws, safety standards and things of that nature. Then they cite improved working conditions and greater prosperity as evidence of their success. This is the common post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. You erroneously assume that since living standards continued to improve and general working conditions and wage rates rose throughout the early and mid 20th century, that these regulations were the cause of that improvement. The truth is that the working conditions, poverty and child labor (among other similar phenomenon) in the 19th century had far more to do with the constraints of reality placed on an industrial economy still in its infancy. You see, prior to the Enlightenment era and the concepts of Classical Liberalism that informed our revolution and similarly but to a lesser extent inspired the industrial revolution in Europe, life for the vast majority of mankind was as Hobbes said "nasty, brutish and short". Apart from a small group of a privileged "noble" class, most people lived at a subsistence level and died of disease very young. It was the concepts of private property rights and market economics, along with steps taken to restrain State power that permitted, for the first time in World history, the ability of the masses to improve their standard of living. Do you realize that the entire population of the United States in 1850 was 23 million? In 1900 it had more than tripled to 76 million, still a far cry from the 320 million or so that we have in 2014. The problem with the US economy in the 19th century which led to the need for child labor, for poorer working conditions and (relative) poverty was that the economy was simply not physically productive enough for the masses of the people to live with the sort of luxuries that later generations enjoyed. Parents had their children working not because they were bad parents but because they needed to work or else they would starve. An industrial economy in its infancy, taking it's first steps out of the dark ages of feudalism and aristocracy, was very physically unproductive and these first generations of Americans had to work very hard to build up the capital and wealth that later generations would enjoy. And it was very clear that a person living in 1900 was vastly better off, enjoying exponentially higher real wages, better working conditions and more leisure time than a person just thirty years prior. The natural course of a market economy is to become more physically productive, meaning more capital investment in equipment, more goods and services on the market at lower prices. That means that a family could, for the first time in history, afford to keep their kids at home or send them to school. Do you think anyone was crusading against the evils of child labor in the 16th century? No one ever thought that a society could be prosperous enough that children wouldn't have to work alongside their parents! It is only when we apply our modern sensibilities to the past do we view previous living standards as so abhorrent. For it's day, however, the United States of 1880 was the place that provided the highest living standards for the working man. When productivity started to rise, workers could afford to be more choosy in where they would work. Workers could demand better working conditions and reasonably expect them. That was due to the greater number of choices that rising above subsistence living allows.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:27
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jrodefeld posted:Do you know the percentage of the US labor force that earns the Federally mandated minimum wage? The answer is 4.3 percent. The problem with your statistic is that is is JUST minimum wage workers. A guy who makes $7.26 doesn't get counted in those statistics, nor does a guy who makes $7.30 etc. If you actually account for those people, then Obama's proposed raise to $10.10 would raise 27.8 Million americans, or roughly 8.8%. Or roughly double the impact you're suggesting. Raising the wages of what is essentially the bottom 9% of americans is a pretty good goal in my opinion, though I'd prefer a higher wage. quote:If workers are so helpless and businessmen so all powerful, we don't we see far more people being paid the minimum? Why are any workers being paid salaries of $30 to $40 an hour and higher? Why aren't theses businesses pushing down their wages to subsistence levels? Because they are skilled workers and thus don't need the benefit of the minimum wage. Its an apples and oranges thing. The reason why the minimum wage exists is to protect unskilled, uneducated labors who would otherwise be exploited, especially in situations like the one we have now where there are multiple job openings for every open job. You suggested in earlier posts that you don't expect the wage to go down, in which case the question would be, whats the harm. If you don't think that employers would drive wages down and thus pay $4 or $6 then the minimum wage must have no effect. If on the other hand you think that people will be offered jobs at $6 or $4 then why don't you believe that there will be a severe downward pressure towards those wages considering that there is more supply than demand for labor. Econ 101 would tell you that if not for the price fixing wages would be substantially lower right now, no? quote:The answer is obvious. Like I said, these workers have a high marginal productivity and are able to command higher wages on the market. Their employer knows the going wage rate that the market has set for your skill set and job position. They know that if they lowball you and offer you wages that are too low, you will simply leave and work for someone else. This is how it works for more than 95% of wage earners who earn more than the minimum wage. 91.2%, but yeah. That is how it works to an extent when you have skills, an education or are working a union job. That isn't what we are talking about however, we're talking about uneducated workers which is who the minimum wage exists to protect. quote:You take about asymmetry of the field but you absolutely discount the risk that is assumed by entrepreneurs and businessmen, provided they are not receiving subsidies from the State or are protected from failure (i.e. "too big to fail", Fed guaranteed banks). It is no small thing to lose a job, but you should never discount the personal catastrophe of losing a lifetime of savings in a failed business venture. A failed entrepreneur can lose everything, go DEEPLY into debt and face severe personal consequences for making an error in judgment or failing to accurately anticipate consumer demand. Well, discounting the fact that we support protections for start up businesses (such as bankrupcy law and universal healthcare!), we don't ignore or discount those risks. I get that if someone starts a business that produces something they should be rewarded. I'm not a straight up marxist, nor are most of the people in this thread. What does this have to do with the minimum wage? quote:Have you ever tried to start a business? I have friends who run their own businesses. My mom earns a very meager salary running her own business and I can tell you from experience that the amount of money that is wasted on property taxes, on bureaucracy and on regulations is insane. It makes it almost not worth trying. Unless you have personal experience in starting a business don't think that you know the unnecessary hurdles and obstacles that the State places in your path. Of course in the absence of these obstacles that tilt the playing field in favor of entrenched business interests, the prospect of becoming an entrepreneur would be more attractive and more feasible for more people. As I mentioned in my last post, yes, yes I have. You are severely overestimating the 'hurdles' of the state compared to the hurdles of not having healthcare, or a safety net to fall back on if you fail. You are completely ignoring the fact that while taxation can impact a business plan, no one goes into starting a business and stops in their tax going 'darn, I could do this if only for the sales taxes' quote:What type of person is hurt by minimum wage laws? The mentally and physically handicapped. The unskilled young. The historically discriminated against. Black teenage unemployment exceeds 50% in many cities. Many places have exceptions to the minimum wage laws for the mentally and physically handicapped. Also the mentally and physically handicapped would be hosed in a laissez faire system so try again. Also don't play the Walter Block 'I'm just really worried about black kids' card unless you want this to turn into race war 2000 again, there are WAY more important things impacting black teenage unemployment than the minimum wage and you know it. quote:Furthermore, the entire concept of a "living wage" is ludicrous on its face. The amount of money required to live for a teenager living at home is far lower than a man in his forties who is trying to raise a family. The minimum wage makes no such distinction. It merely asserts that it is illegal, and thus the State will use violence against anyone who hires a worker at a lower wage than an arbitrarily set amount. I'm happy to work in an exception to the minimum wage to deal with teenagers who are in good home situations. Likewise I'm happy to set up some sort of tax incentive or other benefit to help the man in his forties. quote:This is amoral. The problem for those who earn low or no wages is that their marginal productivity is too low. Instead of thinking that the poor need more "money", understand that what they really need is more skills which makes them more productive, which raises the wage rate they can command on the market and expands their economic opportunities. I'm just repeating my last post now so I'll let you respond to that one. Your morality is not my morality, stop pretending you are god and that you and your warped logic have some universal answer on right and wrong. Alternately, own up to the fact that you believe that so we can pick at that instead.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:30
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Caros posted:Hey Jrodefeld. Welcome back. I am glad to be back. I've said this before, but after participating in other discussion forums online, I've found few that are as well run and interesting as this one. You all are certainly dedicated to maintaining this discussion forum, probably due in part to the $10 cover charge that keeps out the riff raff. There are some good libertarian and anarchist forums, but what fun is it to talk with people who agree with you all the time? Not any fun for me. I'd rather chop it up with people who disagree with me. How else could anything valuable be gained from the exercise?
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Sep 30, 2014 07:33
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Jack of Hearts posted:Having seen your previous posts, there's really no point to discussion until you declare what constitutes a proof in your mind. I don't suppose you'd care to give us a glimmer? This is not a court of law. This is a casual discussion and debate. I don't require peer reviewed empirical studies, I would instead be quite satisfied with logical arguments that are consistent and rationally defended.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:39
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Welcome back jrodefieldjrodefield posted:Therefore it can be reliably predicted that an unskilled laborer whose marginal productivity is lower than the minimum wage, for example a teen only worth $6 an hour, will be rendered perpetually unemployed. I can anticipate that some of you will argue that without a supposed floor for wage rates, the greedy businessmen will simply push wages as low as possible forcing workers to work for 50 cents an hour. The reason this won't happen is that competitive firms, in their competition with each other, will be in need of good workers. If an employer is paying his workers too little for their abilities (i.e. too much lower than the marginal productivity of their labor) then a competitor will bid them away from their current employer. Thus the wage rates for workers will inevitably rise towards the level of their marginal productivity but never exceeding it. You start this paragraph by talking about unskilled laborers, but then the rest of the paragraph describes a situation that only applies to skilled laborers. What happens in your scenario when there is a huge number of unskilled laborers and not enough jobs for all of them? The answer is that they compete for the unskilled jobs, which pushes wages far below the marginal productivity of their labor. Nobody wants to starve, after all QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 07:45
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jrodefeld posted:How do you know how much a worker is worth? Serious, how do you know? A product on the market is worth what people will voluntarily pay for it. Your argument here is exactly the same as if I said "You know how much a Sony Playstation 4 is REALLY worth? $900." No it's not. It's worth $400 because that is what people are willing to pay for it on the market. People might be willing to buy even more of it if it was selling for $300 but then Sony would not make a profit. So the market has decided that the price for a new video game console is $400 because people are willing to pay that much and Sony is willing to sell it for that much. Ah, so that's where I have to start the argument. Okay. An employee creates value for a company by enabling the company to provide services to consumers (those services may be in the form of goods.) The value of that employee is the incremental profit that they bring the company. So if the company makes $x more per time unit when they employ someone based on what that person does, that person has a value of $x/time unit to that company. Makes sense? Honestly, this is pretty much your argument, so we should agree to this point. Here's the thing: when there's a surplus of labor available to choose from, the value of an employee isn't based on that incremental profit. It's based on the relative incremental profit that they bring compared to other people available for the job. Now, sure, they may make $5 more by having that position filled than not. But that's not the important thing that the company needs to judge based on. Having the position filled is a no-brainer, since, boom, $x/time unit (presumably they've factored in paperwork costs, training, etc, already.) Here, let's take some concrete numbers based on that post I linked. $90 per hour generated per worker, via re-shelving boxes, etc. Minimum wage of $7.25. Let's say that the minimum wage is DOUBLED. Suddenly they pay the person $14.50. Now we've got $82.75 per hour per worker. It's still a no-brainer. The additional cost that is incurred by raising minimum wage is insignificant compared to the amount of profit they bring. Sure, the bottom line of the company isn't quite as happy. But in order to cause that worker to run at a loss, the minimum wage has to be $97.25 per hour, which nobody is proposing. And since it isn't, the incremental cost for the worker is only $7.25 per hour, negligible compared to profits. So they'll make money no matter who they hire. And all workers available can only work for at least $14.50. Still worth it to the company. They'll pay. EDIT: jrodefeld posted:This is not a court of law. This is a casual discussion and debate. I don't require peer reviewed empirical studies, I would instead be quite satisfied with logical arguments that are consistent and rationally defended. Also, while trust me, I love logical arguments and am more than happy to engage in pure logical debates... this is not something that's going to get much credit here. Praxeology is, while fun, complete bunk, and while you may be happy if we can present arguments about how humans are completely logical, the simple fact is that a lot of our arguments are about the fact that we're NOT. Peer reviewed empirical studies have shown that humans are illogical. Thank you for citing the labor statistics earlier. More of that will be very useful for you, because we're not going to be satisfied with logical arguments that are consistent, rationally defended, and fly in the face of empirical studies. Just a tip. Karia fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 07:46
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DeusExMachinima posted:jrod you seem to be focusing on wage laws, but I'd be interested in hearing your criticism of basic income/negative taxation since you brought it up in passing. I'm sure you're aware that Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek supported this idea. In the abstract I oppose them because they involve the initiation of force. Help provided to the poor should be given voluntarily, not by a gun in the ribs expropriating me and others to transfer our money to others as a State mandated minimum income. With that said, in certain contexts it would be supported only in relation to other worse alternatives. If it was a replacement for social security, for welfare payments, food stamps and other social services and if it could be constructed such that it would avoid the negative incentives that traditional welfare payments create, then as a pragmatic step towards libertarian reforms, it could be seen as the lesser evil. But I am a radical. I want to move as swiftly and decisively towards a complete abolition of the State as is humanly possible. The State is an abomination and it must be opposed decisively on moral grounds. Just as the abolitionists stood up against the evils of chattel slavery, so too must moral and radical abolitionists of this day stand up and oppose the great moral enormity of our era. As for Milton Friedman and Hayek, they are both dead wrong in this area, in additional to all their other errors. Friedman is not even a libertarian by any definition. Hayek meanwhile is sound only in his theoretical economic works. Otherwise he is actually a fairly conventional leftist.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:49
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jrodefeld posted:Do you know the percentage of the US labor force that earns the Federally mandated minimum wage? The answer is 4.3 percent. You're talking about 3.3 million people. That's a significant number of workers
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Sep 30, 2014 07:51
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jrodefeld posted:It is always fallacious to look to the distant past and apply our modern standards for worker safety and living standards to presuppose that modern "Progressive" regulation and minimum wage laws would have improved matters. I don't know the specifics of the case you cited, but unless the workers explicitly agreed that the doors would be locked, then this was a rights violation and the employers should have been held accountable and charged with murder. If an unexpected fire breaks out in a factory and the workers expect the doors to remain open for them to be able to exit the building and instead they are locked shut by order of the owner, then that is murder clear and simple. I really do have to go to bed, but I'm just going to retort really quickly. You're at best half right on what you say here. The 'improved' working conditions etc came as a result of workers banding together due to massive abuses by their employers, and were solidified in law because otherwise employers can and would continue to push back against those gains. This was particularly wise when you look back at the waning power of unions over the last several decades, and you can see republicans and big business poking at the idea of child labor every now and again to see if its still too hot to touch. To pretend however that the legislation had no effect? I assume you don't know about the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which is the sweeping depression era legislation that effectively ended child labor in the US, which was still a very big thing in the depression. It also introduced the minimum wage and the forty hour work week. Whether you think that things were going in that direction or not, enshrining it in law is really the only way to keep these abuses at bay. Your example that people should be put on trial for locking the doors only works if there are laws against locking the doors. Moreover, you seem to suggest that it would have been okay if the workers knew, which has disturbing implications to say the least. Lastly I'll just say this. post hoc ergo propter hoc, You erroneously assume that since living standards continued to improve and general working conditions and wage rates rose throughout the early and mid 20th century, that the market was the cause of that improvement. You certainly don't provide anything but empty statements that you assume we will accept at face value that you are correct.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:54
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QuarkJets posted:You're talking about 3.3 million people. That's a significant number of workers Oooh, poo poo, I didn't even think of that. Dumb Caros. Jrod, When you get to this, correct my 8.8% number. That was actually derived by taking the 27.8 Million number and dividing by population. What I forgot to account for is that its just 27.8 Million people, not out of the total population. So the actual number of people getting a benefit of the real 155 million US work force is actually about 18%. So yeah. I think a boost in pay to 18% of the population is a drat fine idea.
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Sep 30, 2014 07:59
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SedanChair posted:
This is where you are wrong. The State is a protection racket that benefits the most powerful and influential lobbyists. The businesses that you assume are being regulated by the State are in fact regulating the masses, their would be competitors while benefiting from a labyrinthine system of regulatory capture and special privilege. This is the opposite of some theoretically objective "rule of law". The market, in contrast, is not the "absence of all constraints" but is the exact opposite. The free market is a system of regulation that the consumers impose upon businessmen. The rules are strict and decisive. No one may be permitted to initiate force against anyone else. Live up to your contracts. Respect private property rights. If a businessman anticipates consumer desires and satisfies them, then they are permitted to continue to make a good living. If, on the other hand, they offer a lousy product, poor customer service or they act poorly and attract negative press, then the consumers can put them out of business in short order. This is a far more strict system of regulation than ever comes from a State. SedanChair posted:Were black ex-slave sharecroppers farming their former masters' crops exploited? Or did they simply have reverse time preference orders? This is not even close to a reasonable comparison. In the first place, let's not get into the "you're probably a racist" smearing. On the market where workers accept job offers voluntarily with employers there is no exploitation. There are pros and cons to choosing to work for yourself or choosing to work as a wage earner for an employer. One of the most clear distinctions is in the taking on of risk. The entrepreneur assumes a lot of risk, risk of failure, risk of losing a great deal of savings in losses, and the delayed gratification that comes from going into debt in the short term to pursue the prospect of profits in the long term. The entrepreneur must pay his employees before he pays himself. If there is no money left over, then he takes a loss and hopes for better in the next quarter. If the business goes bankrupt the workers will have to find new jobs but the employer may have lost a lifetime of savings and investment. Profits are how we subsidize the taking on of risk. One of the benefits of being a wage earner is that you assume far less risk. You can bank on getting paid a set hourly rate. Your employer is required by contract law to pay you the agreed to wage for every hour you work regardless of whether the business is making profits or taking losses. That is the trade off between the two options for an economic actor. Each has their benefits. But there is no exploitation if a business owner is fortunate enough to turn a profit. Not only is slavery exploitative, but as Murray Rothbard advocated, justice should compel each and every slave owner to be stripped of his property after abolition and the plantations that the enslaved Africans were forced to work should rightly become their property since they homesteaded that land by mixing their labor with it.
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Sep 30, 2014 08:10
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Because Playstations don't starve and die if nobody buys them. True, but that doesn't explain why the same economic laws don't apply for a product that is offered to consumers and labor services that are offered to employers.
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Sep 30, 2014 08:15
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SedanChair posted:Unless we decide to make a law for it, of course. Then we can say exactly what a laborer is worth. If businesses don't want to pay it, they can do without workers or go out of business. You would just be railing hopelessly against an immutable law of economics. Just because you SAY a worker is worth $10 an hour doesn't mean they will be paid $10 an hour. The most likely scenario is that many workers will be unemployed who would otherwise be employed. Some workers will never get their first job and will remain in poverty or on government assistance. You cannot repeal an economic law by fiat.
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Sep 30, 2014 08:18
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jrodefeld posted:As for Milton Friedman and Hayek, they are both dead wrong in this area, in additional to all their other errors. Friedman is not even a libertarian by any definition. Hayek meanwhile is sound only in his theoretical economic works. Otherwise he is actually a fairly conventional leftist. Hayek is basically the only economist claimed by the Austrians with even a tenuous claim to legitimacy, and he didn't believe in the all this "taxes are theft" lewrockwell.com garbage. He believed in a welfare state much more radical and interventionist than our own. Do you ever stop to think that maybe he would consider you doctrinaire? That he might see what the Austrians have become and be appalled? The people who are "wrong" are the ones who take their mechanistic little axioms about force and coercion and ignore real suffering.
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Sep 30, 2014 08:20
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jrodefeld posted:True, but that doesn't explain why the same economic laws don't apply for a product that is offered to consumers and labor services that are offered to employers. A Playstation doesn't have to choose between being bought and starving. Society has no moral obligation to ensure the Playstation is sold, but (I think) it does have an obligation to ensure that people do not starve. The issue isn't whether the same economic laws apply but whether those outcomes are morally acceptable.
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Sep 30, 2014 08:25
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for gently caress's sakejrodefeld posted:This is where you are wrong. The State is a protection racket that benefits the most powerful and influential lobbyists. The businesses that you assume are being regulated by the State are in fact regulating the masses, their would be competitors while benefiting from a labyrinthine system of regulatory capture and special privilege. This is the opposite of some theoretically objective "rule of law". You're right, it is more restrictive. So how do you enforce it without a state? quote:This is not even close to a reasonable comparison. In the first place, let's not get into the "you're probably a racist" smearing. Wow little gun shy there eh? God forbid I use an example with black people in it. quote:On the market where workers accept job offers voluntarily with employers there is no exploitation. There are pros and cons to choosing to work for yourself or choosing to work as a wage earner for an employer. One of the most clear distinctions is in the taking on of risk. The entrepreneur assumes a lot of risk, risk of failure, risk of losing a great deal of savings in losses, and the delayed gratification that comes from going into debt in the short term to pursue the prospect of profits in the long term. The entrepreneur must pay his employees before he pays himself. If there is no money left over, then he takes a loss and hopes for better in the next quarter. If the business goes bankrupt the workers will have to find new jobs but the employer may have lost a lifetime of savings and investment. Yes I know, which is why I was not talking about slavery. I was talking about sharecroppers who were former slaves, tenant farming the land of their former owners. There's no coercion in the present tense; the ex-slave had a choice between starving and sharecropping, and chose the latter. So there's no exploitation, right? And if you think the plantation owner should have their wealth redistributed, well aren't you contradicting yourself? You said that property should only be redistributed when theft is proven. What if Massa threw all his deeds into the fireplace? Where's the proof that his former slaves mixed their labor with the land? 
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Sep 30, 2014 08:30
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SedanChair posted:Hayek is basically the only economist claimed by the Austrians with even a tenuous claim to legitimacy, and he didn't believe in the all this "taxes are theft" lewrockwell.com garbage. He believed in a welfare state much more radical and interventionist than our own. Do you ever stop to think that maybe he would consider you doctrinaire? That he might see what the Austrians have become and be appalled? Legitimacy? You do realize that the Nobel Prize that Hayek won was for him basically just restating a theory that Ludwig Von Mises pioneered more than fifty years prior. Hayek won for his work on rephrasing the Austrian "Theory of the Business Cycle" but he really added little to the theory. Mises did ALL the work and he was the one that deserved that Nobel prize. Hayek was a good economist in his own right, don't get me wrong. But he was not even close to a libertarian when it came to social policy. Why is Hayek "legitimate" in your eyes but the vastly more accomplished Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, to name only a few, are not? I suppose Paul Krugman is a world class scholar and learned intellectual while Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, Henry Hazlitt, Robert Higgs, Robert Murphy, Hans Hermann Hoppe and Joseph Salerno are merely fools? It doesn't take an adherent of the tenets of Austrian economics to respect the substantial contributions which these men made to our understand of economics and social organization. Remember that nearly the entire so-called "mainstream" of economic thought and in academia at large during the early to mid 20th century were people enamored with Communism, proclaiming it's greatness and defending Marxist ideology. It was only Mises and his followers who pointed out the errors of Marx and of Socialist central planning. Fifty years later the Sovient Union collapsed, discrediting Communism and proving the Austrian particularly prescient. Furthermore it was the contributions of Mises, especially his work on the theory of the business cycle which allowed the Austrian adherents to correctly predict with startling accuracy every major economic crises for the past eighty years. Yet how is it that those who got everything so wrong are seen as legitimate yet those who were proven prescient and accurate in their predictions are the ones who you dismiss as kooks and "unserious"?
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Sep 30, 2014 09:07
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jrodefeld posted:On the market where workers accept job offers voluntarily with employers there is no exploitation. This is a catch in a lot of your assumptions. For most people, labor isn't voluntary. When I accept a job offer for $10 an hour, it's not because I've done some calculations and made a graph and reached the empirical conclusion that $400 is an acceptable trade for 40 hours of my time. It's because I like eating food and sleeping under a roof. I work for $10/hour because I need a job to do those things and that's the best I could get. If wages became lower, I wouldn't decide it was no longer worth the value of my time; I'd keep on working for whatever I could get somebody to pay me because the alternative is utter destitution. The entire 'voluntary contract between employees and employers' line of reasoning is predicated on the idea that the working classes can just stop working if they don't like any of their contract offers and it's demonstrably untrue. Or are you also advocating a comprehensive and reliable social safety net such that subsistence was not tied to employment? EDIT: here's something I've been thinking about and wondered what the more educated people of the D&D forum could make of it. Under a traditional supply:demand graph, the less I get paid for my labor, the less desirable it would be for me to work. Therefore, decreasing wages should decrease the demand for employment. However, since my needed income is a largely inelastic number, decreasing wages means I actually need to perform more labor to maintain my standard of living, assuming I want to maintain a similar quality of life or am living close enough to subsistence level that I have insignificant further room for downward adjustment. Thus, by reducing wages, employers have actually increased demand for employment and made the labor market more competitive in their favor. Theoretically, this could even turn into a cycle of decreased wages > more hours needed > greater competition > competition drives wages down further > etc. Thank god for the minimum wage. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 09:15
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jrodefeld posted:Legitimacy? You do realize that the Nobel Prize that Hayek won was for him basically just restating a theory that Ludwig Von Mises pioneered more than fifty years prior. Hayek won for his work on rephrasing the Austrian "Theory of the Business Cycle" but he really added little to the theory. Mises did ALL the work and he was the one that deserved that Nobel prize. Please don't call it a Nobel Prize.
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Sep 30, 2014 09:19
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Is jrodefeld for real? He seems to make fairly reasonable arguments, but then also says poo poo like this:jrodefeld posted:But I am a radical. I want to move as swiftly and decisively towards a complete abolition of the State as is humanly possible. The State is an abomination and it must be opposed decisively on moral grounds. Just as the abolitionists stood up against the evils of chattel slavery, so too must moral and radical abolitionists of this day stand up and oppose the great moral enormity of our era. Also, this is the first time I've heard anyone anywhere call Hayek a "leftist". Granted, right-wingers are so far off the wall that think everyone to the left of Pinochet is a communist, so..
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Sep 30, 2014 09:48
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jrodefeld posted:In the first place, let's not get into the "you're probably a racist" smearing. On the market where workers accept job offers voluntarily with employers there is no exploitation... Also, I can not understand how someone who thinks that a free market will be good for everyone can be strongly against minimum wage. You assume that in a true free market everyone who labors will be paid enough for a reasonable live. But this is not the case right now, so clearly the market is not free. Minimum wage moves us from the current conditions toward to what would happen if the markets were free. It might be worse then attacking whatever you call the root cause* directly, but it should be a step in the right direction also from a libertarian view. *I know what a leftwinger would blame as the root cause, what do you blame?
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Sep 30, 2014 10:27
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Voyager I posted:EDIT: here's something I've been thinking about and wondered what the more educated people of the D&D forum could make of it. Under a traditional supply:demand graph, the less I get paid for my labor, the less desirable it would be for me to work. Therefore, decreasing wages should decrease the demand for employment. However, since my needed income is a largely inelastic number, decreasing wages means I actually need to perform more labor to maintain my standard of living, assuming I want to maintain a similar quality of life or am living close enough to subsistence level that I have insignificant further room for downward adjustment. Thus, by reducing wages, employers have actually increased demand for employment and made the labor market more competitive in their favor. Theoretically, this could even turn into a cycle of decreased wages > more hours needed > greater competition > competition drives wages down further > etc. This is exactly why the minimum wage exists. The income required to maintain existence in a given economy is fairly inelastic, and paying labour below this number simply externalises the difference into crime, lowered productivity and a whole host of other generalised economic effects, even if you go full  and ignore the idea that you are saying the unproductive should starve.This, and the fact that the labour market is not like any other market because its participants and commodities can be coerced by forces outside their control and hence can NEVER be rational economic actors, seem to be the major fundamentals that Austrian "economics" cheerleaders like jrodefeld don't get. e: I should add that obviously a guaranteed minimum income is a more effective way of accounting for these effects that places the burden on society as a whole rather than individual businesses, but jrodefeld doesn't believe in a GMI either and a GMI isn't forthcoming in any OECD nation any time soon. Quantum Mechanic fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 10:37
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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jrodefeld posted:Legitimacy? You do realize that the Nobel Prize that Hayek won was for him basically just restating a theory that Ludwig Von Mises pioneered more than fifty years prior. Hayek won for his work on rephrasing the Austrian "Theory of the Business Cycle" but he really added little to the theory. Mises did ALL the work and he was the one that deserved that Nobel prize. This is a long, ideologically driven rant which has little actual reflection in reality, which is disappointing for someone who wants arguments which are logical. Mainstream economics outwith the Soviet bloc was never enamoured with Communism, John Maynard Keynes was not enamoured with Communism, Keynesianism is not Marxist & it's overwhelmingly disingenuous to imply that it is. It makes taking you seriously rather difficult when you claim that Hayek is a leftist. Because it's absurd & lacks nuance. Which I guess is fitting, as libertarianism also is absurd & lacks nuance.
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Sep 30, 2014 11:12
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jrodefeld posted:It was only Mises and his followers who pointed out the errors of Marx and of Socialist central planning. Fifty years later the Sovient Union collapsed, discrediting Communism and proving the Austrian particularly prescient. Furthermore it was the contributions of Mises, especially his work on the theory of the business cycle which allowed the Austrian adherents to correctly predict with startling accuracy every major economic crises for the past eighty years.
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Sep 30, 2014 11:22
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Voyager I posted:EDIT: here's something I've been thinking about and wondered what the more educated people of the D&D forum could make of it. Under a traditional supply:demand graph, the less I get paid for my labor, the less desirable it would be for me to work. Therefore, decreasing wages should decrease the demand for employment. However, since my needed income is a largely inelastic number, decreasing wages means I actually need to perform more labor to maintain my standard of living, assuming I want to maintain a similar quality of life or am living close enough to subsistence level that I have insignificant further room for downward adjustment. Thus, by reducing wages, employers have actually increased demand for employment and made the labor market more competitive in their favor. Theoretically, this could even turn into a cycle of decreased wages > more hours needed > greater competition > competition drives wages down further > etc. Jrod has already discussed this. Based on a D/S curve, workers would have less demand for work the lower the wages are. This is also common sense. However, employers cannot just arbitrarily decrease wages, as competitors will simply undercut (overcut? the fact businesses are buying labor makes everything a little flipped upside down) them by offering higher wages. The market will find a point that is high enough for workers to agree to work for, and low enough that firms consider it profitable.
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Sep 30, 2014 12:09
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jrodefeld posted:It is always fallacious to look to the distant past and apply our modern standards for worker safety and living standards to presuppose that modern "Progressive" regulation and minimum wage laws would have improved matters. I don't know the specifics of the case you cited, You don't know the specifics? It's the go-to example for why safety regulations are necessary and spurred major union action for workplace reforms....but okay I provided a link so I'm sure you'll read it instead of making up a bunch of bullshit. jrodefeld posted:but unless the workers explicitly agreed that the doors would be locked, then this was a rights violation and the employers should have been held accountable and charged with murder. If an unexpected fire breaks out in a factory and the workers expect the doors to remain open for them to be able to exit the building and instead they are locked shut by order of the owner, then that is murder clear and simple. Nope, the workers knew the doors were locked during business hours and continued working there voluntarily, they in no way expected them to be unlocked and still agreed to do the job. In fact wikipedia posted:Because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits, a common practice used to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and pilferage, many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors to the streets below. It was in fact, a common practice at the time. Employers should have been competing with each other to offer safer factories because for a tiny expense in shrinkage, they could offer workers their very lives on top of the wages, but this didn't happen. Why? "Ah," you say: jrodefeld posted:The truth is that the working conditions, poverty and child labor (among other similar phenomenon) in the 19th century had far more to do with the constraints of reality placed on an industrial economy still in its infancy. Wrong. This happened in 1911, not in the 19th Century. The constraints of reality did not make "keeping the loving exits unlocked and sweeping up fabric scraps" uneconomical. In fact afterwards: Wikipedia posted:New laws mandated better building access and egress, fireproofing requirements, the availability of fire extinguishers, the installation of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, better eating and toilet facilities for workers, and limited the number of hours that women and children could work. In the years from 1911 to 1913, sixty of the sixty-four new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with the support of Governor William Sulzer. So don't dodge the issue with this "the economy couldn't handle it, our businesses would fail, for fair Dame Industry could never move forward so cruelly hobbled by fire safety" crap. The cost of fire exits and fire safety was small, it was something businessmen should have been doing anyway to protect their assets, and after it was mandated by law the textile industry in New York continued on just fine. It should have been literally impossible, according to your theories, for owners of firetrap factories to find workers willing to put their lives on the line needlessly, yet they had no shortage of applicants. Please explain, did the women who burned to death just have shorter time-preferences than the owners who couldn't even be assed to safeguard their own capital assets by having the floors swept of fabric every day?
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Sep 30, 2014 12:25
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Voyager I posted:EDIT: here's something I've been thinking about and wondered what the more educated people of the D&D forum could make of it. Under a traditional supply:demand graph, the less I get paid for my labor, the less desirable it would be for me to work. Therefore, decreasing wages should decrease the demand for employment. However, since my needed income is a largely inelastic number, decreasing wages means I actually need to perform more labor to maintain my standard of living, assuming I want to maintain a similar quality of life or am living close enough to subsistence level that I have insignificant further room for downward adjustment. Thus, by reducing wages, employers have actually increased demand for employment and made the labor market more competitive in their favor. Theoretically, this could even turn into a cycle of decreased wages > more hours needed > greater competition > competition drives wages down further > etc. Ah you're thinking of this.  It's called the backward-bending supply curve of labor. Starting at point C, going down the curve, as wage (Y-axis) falls, labor supplied falls too because once their needs are met people would prefer more leisure (or time to do housework, cook meals, let their kids go to school, etc) over working 80 hours a week, but once you hit C', the family is just above subsistence and they start putting in more hours, kids get jobs after school, whatever to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. If wages fall further still, the family is desperate to supply more and more labor (working three jobs, pulling kids out of school to work full time, whatever) until point A, the maximum possible hours the family can supply, at which point they get sick and die and the labor they're willing to supply drops off toward AA. Go the other way from C and as the price of labor increases, the family is willing to supply more until they hit some point D at which they're indifferent to any more, after which the number of hours they're willing to supply drops off again. A high-paid lawyer may bust his rear end 80-hours a week to bring in $500,000, but that doesn't mean he'd be willing to work 100 hours a week for $625,000. Of course, this is completely different to the way Playstations work: if Sony could sell twice as many Playstations as it does now for the same per-unit price, Sony would do it: open new factories, hire extra shifts, whatever. Also unlike a person, Sony would cease supplying Playstations completely if the market price fell below what they cost to produce, rather than continue producing them desperately, and selling them for whatever they can get as the factories slowly fall apart from lack of maintenance. But of course this is expected, since Playstations and people aren't the same thing and only an idiot would blithely assume that they act the same way on the market. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 12:32
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VitalSigns posted:You don't know the specifics? It's the go-to example for why safety regulations are necessary and spurred major union action for workplace reforms....but okay I provided a link so I'm sure you'll read it instead of making up a bunch of bullshit. Question: what do you suppose would have happened if there was no state to enforce those laws? Would the workers have continued to blindly work in the unsafe factories after such a major, publicised event like that fire happened?
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Sep 30, 2014 12:41
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The Mutato posted:Question: what do you suppose would have happened if there was no state to enforce those laws? Would the workers have continued to blindly work in the unsafe factories after such a major, publicised event like that fire happened? I think you're assuming they would have a choice, as that is highly depending on the job market, locality of resources, and skill of labor force. Really, they might as well have existed under a feudal system where it's either work in these conditions or starve. The people who died in the Bangladeshi factory collapse weren't really making that choice under full agency of economy and risk-vs-reward analysis. And considering how there are very few businesses who would lower their profit margin otherwise, the idea of working elsewhere is an illusory choice to start.
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Sep 30, 2014 12:54
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Does Libertarianism have an opinion about resolving our climate issue?The Mutato posted:Question: what do you suppose would have happened if there was no state to enforce those laws? Would the workers have continued to blindly work in the unsafe factories after such a major, publicised event like that fire happened? i am harry fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 12:57
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The Mutato posted:Question: what do you suppose would have happened if there was no state to enforce those laws? Would the workers have continued to blindly work in the unsafe factories after such a major, publicised event like that fire happened? Well hmmm, did every garment worker in one of those similar unsafe shops in NYC quit the day after the disaster? No? Well. It's 100 years later and people are still working in collapsing factories in countries where safety laws aren't enforced. In that specific instance, the workers even brought structural problems to the attention of the managers and tried to get the regulators to do something about it, yet they continued to work there anyway because the alternative to maybe dying in a collapse was definitely dying from starvation. So no, they would not blindly work there after the disaster. They would hopelessly work there after the disaster. Stupid questions like this are why Libertarianism has failed on the free market of ideas. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 12:58
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| # ? May 14, 2024 14:33 |
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The Mutato posted:Would the workers have continued to blindly work in the unsafe factories after such a major, publicised event like that fire happened? What choice did they have?
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Sep 30, 2014 13:00
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