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asdf32 posted:You insufferable idiot. Businesses are not supposed to be responsible for life and death. They're supposed to produce shoes and pencils. When they happen to provide a good loving for people great! When they don't, it's everyone's responsibility to deal with it. Isn't that literally what we're talking about here?
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May 5, 2015 15:58
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VitalSigns posted:You just reversed your position from like two posts ago, where you agreed we shouldn't give a poo poo whether lovely businesses fail in the face of laws that prevent death. It depends on the cost. Low skill workers are plentiful. If Wal-mart wants to employ them it's literally not costing society much at all (i.e. those workers wouldn't be doing more valuable things otherwise) This stands in contrast to other costs, say unsafe working conditions, or pollution, where a business is burdening society and therefore should pay for that.
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May 5, 2015 16:08
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Haha, the robotic poster assumes other people are robots as well. beep boop low utility human detected, adjusting expectations downwards - recalibrating vocabulary circuits
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May 5, 2015 16:12
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Markets aren't some ideal thing that exists in nature which we discover. Markets are defined and operate according to the laws we make based on what we think is acceptable. We decide through law whether human beings can be bought and sold as property on the market, what standards food has to meet to be sold on the market, whether to allow businesses in the market to hire children, or operate without fire exists, or pay overtime, or pay a minimum wage. Talking about how businesses are "supposed to give us pencils" and we have no right to regulate the quality of life of their employees is just ignorant about how the real world and our own economy works.
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May 5, 2015 16:12
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asdf32 posted:It depends on the cost. hmm, if a company is making money off of a worker's action with the cost being provided by government-backed social programs, that's ok but if the company is mildly inconvenienced by providing the support for the worker themselves, OH DEAR
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May 5, 2015 16:13
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Haha, the robotic poster assumes other people are robots as well. In much the same way, unmanned space flights are cheaper because it costs a lot to support life in space.
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May 5, 2015 16:13
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asdf32 posted:It depends on the cost. But society with a minimum wage is better than without, so yes by not having one and suffering all the despair, unhealthiness, and crime of an underclass, we are indeed costing society: the opportunity cost of the better welfare and happiness we'd have with a living wage.
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May 5, 2015 16:17
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Chalets the Baka posted:Read between the lines, human being. There are other metrics by which to determine an exact dollar amount, tying its increase as a function of productivity only determines the rate. sh...shut up b-baka....
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May 5, 2015 16:17
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asdf32 posted:Businesses are not supposed to be responsible for life and death. Businesses are responsible for whatever the gently caress they are told. A business is not some immutable force of nature you watermelon fucker.
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May 5, 2015 16:22
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archangelwar posted:Businesses are responsible for whatever the gently caress they are told. A business is not some immutable force of nature you watermelon fucker. Other people are the ones presenting baked in assumptions that they don't even seem to recognize. I.E. that businesses are supposed to provide a living wage and are somehow costing society if they don't.
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May 5, 2015 16:33
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asdf32 posted:Other people are the ones presenting baked in assumptions that they don't even seem to recognize. I.E. that businesses are supposed to provide a living wage and are somehow costing society if they don't. quote:Businesses are responsible for whatever the gently caress they are told. A business is not some immutable force of nature you demented serial watermelon fucker.
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May 5, 2015 16:37
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archangelwar posted:Businesses are responsible for whatever the gently caress they are told. LOL no they're not. Businesses will try to make it work within whatever institutional structure is present but policy makers are not running a sim.
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May 5, 2015 16:43
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asdf32 posted:Other people are the ones presenting baked in assumptions that they don't even seem to recognize. I.E. that businesses are supposed to provide a living wage and are somehow costing society if they don't. There's not some Platonic ideal of a business that's "supposed" to do some things and not others. Businesses are human institutions, like the market, and they are "supposed" to do whatever we get together and decide they're supposed to do through our governing institutions. If we make a law that says businesses have to pay overtime, then they are supposed to do that. If we make a law that says they cannot turn away customers or job applicants because of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, then businesses are not supposed to do that. If we make a law that says businesses have to pay at least $X/hr then businesses are supposed to do that.
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May 5, 2015 16:44
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wateroverfire posted:LOL no they're not. Businesses will try to make it work within whatever institutional structure is present but policy makers are not running a sim. So in other words quote:Businesses are responsible for whatever the gently caress they are told. A business is not some immutable force of nature you Pinochet apologist watermelon fucker.
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May 5, 2015 16:48
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The economy is meant to serve as a method of distributing resources. Private property itself is predicated on a utilitarian argument, even the ones grounded in natural law (Locke, Grotius etc). Therefore businesses exist solely for the good of the society that they inhabit.
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May 5, 2015 16:48
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At long last! The return of asdf chat!
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May 5, 2015 16:49
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As long as people's quality of life are resting on the shoulders of private business, those private businesses must be required to provide an acceptable level of quality. There is no point in having businesses put people to work at wages and hours that make daily life a struggle. Our entire economy is based on private enterprise, and as such those private enterprises must be held accountable.
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May 5, 2015 16:54
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Ocrassus posted:The economy is meant to serve as a method of distributing resources. Private property itself is predicated on a utilitarian argument, even the ones grounded in natural law (Locke, Grotius etc). Therefore businesses exist solely for the good of the society that they inhabit. Yeah but the utilitarian argument has been settled decisively in favor of the minimum wage, so all right-wingers have left is crying about the burden of placing life and death on the shoulders of business and how taxes and regulation just aren't fairrrrrr to Walmart, as if whether laws give Sam Walton a sad is of any consequence.
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May 5, 2015 16:58
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Ocrassus posted:The economy is meant to serve as a method of distributing resources. Private property itself is predicated on a utilitarian argument, even the ones grounded in natural law (Locke, Grotius etc). Therefore businesses exist solely for the good of the society that they inhabit. Yep and this is fundamentally a practical argument. Make practical arguments all day long. "Minimum wage is the best policy for X". But that's much much different than the unstated value judgement inherent to many of the "businesses should pay a living wage/business is costing society by not paying a living wage" arguments being made here.
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May 5, 2015 16:59
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Man this thread is rancid loving dogshit
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May 5, 2015 17:01
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Okay so the minimum wage is justified on practical grounds, and whether it's unfair to plucky little business and makes them sad because they're "not supposed" to be responsible for a living wage is beside the point. Glad we got that settled then.
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May 5, 2015 17:02
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asdf32 posted:But that's much much different than the unstated value judgement inherent to many of the "businesses should pay a living wage/business is costing society by not paying a living wage" arguments being made here. And saying that businesses shouldn't be permitted to pollute isn't a value judgement? The only difference between air pollution, sound pollution, and low wages in terms of social externality is where you personally draw the line in terms of "business are responsible to provide X level of service to society"
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May 5, 2015 17:04
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Chalets the Baka posted:As long as people's quality of life are resting on the shoulders of private business, those private businesses must be required to provide an acceptable level of quality. There is no point in having businesses put people to work at wages and hours that make daily life a struggle. Our entire economy is based on private enterprise, and as such those private enterprises must be held accountable. A business should not be forced to close just because it can't afford a one-size-fits-all price control on wages. Why should a small business be forced to pay the same wages as a grossly profitable megacorporation?
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May 5, 2015 17:05
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Typical Pubbie posted:A business should not be forced to close just because it can't afford a one-size-fits-all price control on wages. Why should a small business be forced to pay the same wages as a grossly profitable megacorporation? Seems that if competition is that tight the mega corporation would have no problem recruiting all their staff and forcing them to go out of business anyway.
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May 5, 2015 17:07
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There is also simply the argument of economic necessity, the only way to get consumer spending up is to get wages up at this point and the US has reached the limits of monetary policy and our fiscal policy is basically locked. Businesses don't do so well either if people can't buy their products because no one has any money. (Also, a minimum wage increase is far far far more likely than a comparable increase to the EITC.)
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May 5, 2015 17:08
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Typical Pubbie posted:A business should not be forced to close just because it can't afford a one-size-fits-all price control on wages. Why should a small business be forced to pay the same wages as a grossly profitable megacorporation? They aren't US Departmet of Labor posted:Who is Covered?
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May 5, 2015 17:11
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Popular Thug Drink posted:And saying that businesses shouldn't be permitted to pollute isn't a value judgement? The only difference between air pollution, sound pollution, and low wages in terms of social externality is where you personally draw the line in terms of "business are responsible to provide X level of service to society" That's not really true. A lot of people are getting hung up on the triviality of "if Walmart paid more the government would pay less". But that doesn't actually mean anything, we could replace Walmart with literally anything and it remains true. It tells us nothing about whether Wal-mart has "cost" society or not because cost is actually a judement call which includes a notion of responsibility - exactly the responsibility I don't think exists or should be expected here. By contrast if a company pollutes the responsibility is clear.
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May 5, 2015 17:23
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But as you said, it doesn't matter whether the company is "costing" society or not. What matters is whether the minimum wage is a practical way to get closer to the outcomes we want: an economy that provides a basic standard of living to all workers. And it is. We don't make pollution laws out of some cosmic sense of fairness either. We make them because they are a practical way to get the outcome we want: less pollution.
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May 5, 2015 17:28
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asdf32 posted:Yep and this is fundamentally a practical argument. Make practical arguments all day long. "Minimum wage is the best policy for X". Minimum wage is not the best policy necessarily, but it is one of many potentially sufficient policies that are necessary to justify the ongoing existence of private property and businesses, all of which require a more substantial redistributive effort over what we currently have. As I said before, the economy exists to serve people. If it isn't serving people (and per every major justification of private property, it is not meeting these conditions) then it needs to change.
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May 5, 2015 17:30
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asdf32 posted:That's not really true. A lot of people are getting hung up on the triviality of "if Walmart paid more the government would pay less". But that doesn't actually mean anything, we could replace Walmart with literally anything and it remains true. It tells us nothing about whether Wal-mart has "cost" society or not because cost is actually a judement call which includes a notion of responsibility - exactly the responsibility I don't think exists or should be expected here. We can absolutely calculate Wal-Mart's costs, as we can see that they pay some employees below poverty wages and then tally up the public welfare expenditures given to Wal-Mart employees. All these things are quantifiable. Just because you arbitrarily draw the line of responsibility in one spot does not mean that someone else's arbitrary reckoning of social responsibility is less invalid.
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May 5, 2015 17:31
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wateroverfire posted:There are lots of reasons to think that. Productivity in some things has gone up but real prices have been competed down. A company like Walmart posts a net margin of 3-4% - that's profit after paying out employees and taxes, but not the owners. That's still billions of dollars, sure, but not a lot compared to the size of the operation. They make 16 billion dollars every year and have a GDP larger than Pakistan. You know who shops a lot at Wal-Mart? People who make minimum wage. Wal-Mart can only benefit from its customers (some of whom are their employees) from making more money. And it has the side bonus of the Feds not needing to help fund a private businesses lovely labor practices through SNAP.
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May 5, 2015 17:58
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Popular Thug Drink posted:We can absolutely calculate Wal-Mart's costs, as we can see that they pay some employees below poverty wages and then tally up the public welfare expenditures given to Wal-Mart employees. All these things are quantifiable. Yep we can easily quantify an almost infinite number of things Wal-Mart doesn't pay for. The next step is to construct reasonable arguments for why you think they're supposed to pay for those things. That's what's included in the notion of cost.
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May 5, 2015 17:59
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wateroverfire posted:Small restaurants in innumerable towns in the U.S., for one. A lot of them already skirt the law because if they didn't they'd be broke. So you can't actually name one.
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May 5, 2015 18:03
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asdf have you ever hosed a watermelon?
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May 5, 2015 18:04
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If you went to the lawless frontiers, like the deep ocean, or Amazon or the deep sahara, you would find wild businesses competing in nature without the inefficient hand of government interfering.
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May 5, 2015 18:06
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asdf32 posted:Yep we can easily quantify an almost infinite number of things Wal-Mart doesn't pay for. The next step is to construct reasonable arguments for why you think they're supposed to pay for those things. That's what's included in the notion of cost. People have already made this reasonable argument - a living wage is better for society as a whole. You rejected this argument with blather about useless people and your opinion about the responsibility of private business. Nobody has an obligation to jump through your weirdo rhetorical hoops.
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May 5, 2015 18:07
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asdf32 posted:Yep we can easily quantify an almost infinite number of things Wal-Mart doesn't pay for. The next step is to construct reasonable arguments for why you think they're supposed to pay for those things. That's what's included in the notion of cost. Because it's more practical to get the money to pay for these things from people who have the money, instead of people who don't
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May 5, 2015 18:08
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Businesses: creations of law, but should they be bound by law?
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May 5, 2015 18:10
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euphronius posted:Businesses: creations of law, but should they be bound by law? I long to see businesses run free across the plains, as they did in ages past.
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May 5, 2015 18:11
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You have so fair failed, in your duty to me, to provide a rational argument as to the arbitrary imposition of age limitations on so called "child" labor. Why do you want to punish the most productive preadolescents in our society? Why do you want to reward the low-skill nonpubescent?
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May 5, 2015 18:12
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