10 ms·

>> > You will always need the job more than Comcast will need you > Where is the evidence for this? It does not require a great deal of imagination to understa

by czep 10y ago

>> > You will always need the job more than Comcast will need you > Where is the evidence for this? It does not require a great deal of imagination to understand that a large corporation and single prospective employee are not equal parties. If you fail to get a job, you will starve. If Comcast fails to hire you, they most clearly will not face an existential crisis. This is most certainly not a free market at work. Comcast wants this power because it will give them a significant negotiating advantage and result in lower wages. Eliminating this advantage is one small step in leveling the playing field between the two unequal parties.

krapp 10y ago
Nothing about a free market requires all power dynamics to be equal among all participants - that would be impossible without regulation, and a free market must by definition be free of any regulatory influence.
- czep 10y ago
  No, a free market is not defined by absence of regulation! Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc. A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information.
  - jnordwick 10y ago
    > A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information. That is completely false. Asymmetric information and imperfect information are expected with free markets. The price of gathering information is very well studied.
  - meanduck 10y ago
    > A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information. Its free as in freedom; to do anything. You are free to ask anyone about anything anytime. You can do anything except be physical aggresive (like states). > Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc. All of these has free market solutions. All of these peope you speak of are not free market supporters. They are statists.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      That's the logical extreme, but that is not what free market economists actually say. The GP is accurate. The free market is a great tool, but no tool is universal. Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc.
      - meanduck 10y ago
        There is no such thing as "free market economists". That was halfly my point. They are statists in disguise. > Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc. You are imagining. I am claiming no such things.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    > A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information. I disagree - it's where neither party is using force or fraud.
pliny 10y ago
>It does not require a great deal of imagination to understand that a large corporation and single prospective employee are not equal parties. If you fail to get a job, you will starve. If Comcast fails to hire you, they most clearly will not face an existential crisis. Is Comcast the only company hiring people? If you don't get a job with Comcast you get a job with a different company. That is a market, many sellers of labor, many buyers of labor. The buyers look for the best labor and the sellers look for the best price.
- czep 10y ago
  Comcast is simply the example here. Yes you can look for another employer, but if they are doing the same thing -- requiring disclosure of salary history -- then in aggregate this will put more negotiating power in the hands of employers and thus reduce workers' incomes.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - meanduck 10y ago
    Do you think market will forget this ? Govts seem to forget that despite being big, they are market actors themselves. And it wont be the Comcasts but many SMBs. In todays volatile world, noones existence is certain. And govts need to realize this soon before they spend all of their capitals like this.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      I'm not sure I understand what side of things you're coming down on, but personally I'm in favor of tilting things somewhat more in favor of labor than they are now. Partly this is because I don't think a market can function justly on a principle of enforced asymmetry and imbalance. As I see it, if we allow people to pool capital together to gain greater collective leverage than any of them would have individually, and reap greater returns as a result (also known as a corporation), we must also allow people to pool their labor together to gain collective leverage and reap greater returns (also known as labor unions, worker protections, etc.). Having one without the other does not appear ethically justifiable to me, and rigging laws to strengthen one significantly at the expense of the other is similarly unjustifiable. Partly this is because of the relevant history. Much of what people have convinced themselves constitutes a "free market" was in fact deliberately rigged to artificially preserve and benefit one side (capital) at the expense of the other (labor). Look into employment law from the 1800s, for example, and it's very clearly designed to prevent competition between companies in the market and ensure they each can comfortably remain immune to several important market forces. But somehow we've idealized that period as one of "laissez-faire" and "free markets" despite it being nothing of the sort, and then whenever an attempt is made to un-rig the system we hear that it's bad for business, will kill business, will hurt business, is anti-business, etc. -- being in business for business' sake is not an end worth pursuing in itself, and if a business can't survive without the market rigged in its favor, well, the true free-market position is that that business shouldn't survive.
WalterBright 10y ago
> If you fail to get a job, you will starve. That sort of implies that you were born to have that job, and Comcast was formed to provide you with that job. Furthermore, any job that pays more than minimum wage implies there was negotiating going on and either party was willing to walk away.
- foldr 10y ago
  I think there can be a bit of a disconnect between tech and the "real world" on this point. We're lucky that at the moment it's easy to get interviews for programming jobs. If you can program, you can eventually get a job somewhere that will pay a wage you can live on. Most people's experience of looking for jobs is putting in hundreds of applications and maybe getting one or two interviews. So by the time you are at the interview stage, you really can't be too casual about throwing the opportunity away.

by czep 10y ago

krapp 10y ago

Nothing about a free market requires all power dynamics to be equal among all participants - that would be impossible without regulation, and a free market must by definition be free of any regulatory influence.

czep 10y ago
No, a free market is not defined by absence of regulation! Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc. A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information.
- jnordwick 10y ago
  > A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information. That is completely false. Asymmetric information and imperfect information are expected with free markets. The price of gathering information is very well studied.
- meanduck 10y ago
  > A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information. Its free as in freedom; to do anything. You are free to ask anyone about anything anytime. You can do anything except be physical aggresive (like states). > Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc. All of these has free market solutions. All of these peope you speak of are not free market supporters. They are statists.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    That's the logical extreme, but that is not what free market economists actually say. The GP is accurate. The free market is a great tool, but no tool is universal. Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc.
    - meanduck 10y ago
      There is no such thing as "free market economists". That was halfly my point. They are statists in disguise. > Why are we more concerned that we stick to an ideology - it's treated as a fundamentalist religion, treated as the solution to every problem and something with which any disagreement or deviation must be shot down - and not the people who are rich or poor, safe or suffering, educated or not, healthy or not, etc. You are imagining. I am claiming no such things.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information. I disagree - it's where neither party is using force or fraud.

pliny 10y ago

>It does not require a great deal of imagination to understand that a large corporation and single prospective employee are not equal parties. If you fail to get a job, you will starve. If Comcast fails to hire you, they most clearly will not face an existential crisis. Is Comcast the only company hiring people? If you don't get a job with Comcast you get a job with a different company. That is a market, many sellers of labor, many buyers of labor. The buyers look for the best labor and the sellers look for the best price.

czep 10y ago
Comcast is simply the example here. Yes you can look for another employer, but if they are doing the same thing -- requiring disclosure of salary history -- then in aggregate this will put more negotiating power in the hands of employers and thus reduce workers' incomes.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- meanduck 10y ago
  Do you think market will forget this ? Govts seem to forget that despite being big, they are market actors themselves. And it wont be the Comcasts but many SMBs. In todays volatile world, noones existence is certain. And govts need to realize this soon before they spend all of their capitals like this.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what side of things you're coming down on, but personally I'm in favor of tilting things somewhat more in favor of labor than they are now. Partly this is because I don't think a market can function justly on a principle of enforced asymmetry and imbalance. As I see it, if we allow people to pool capital together to gain greater collective leverage than any of them would have individually, and reap greater returns as a result (also known as a corporation), we must also allow people to pool their labor together to gain collective leverage and reap greater returns (also known as labor unions, worker protections, etc.). Having one without the other does not appear ethically justifiable to me, and rigging laws to strengthen one significantly at the expense of the other is similarly unjustifiable. Partly this is because of the relevant history. Much of what people have convinced themselves constitutes a "free market" was in fact deliberately rigged to artificially preserve and benefit one side (capital) at the expense of the other (labor). Look into employment law from the 1800s, for example, and it's very clearly designed to prevent competition between companies in the market and ensure they each can comfortably remain immune to several important market forces. But somehow we've idealized that period as one of "laissez-faire" and "free markets" despite it being nothing of the sort, and then whenever an attempt is made to un-rig the system we hear that it's bad for business, will kill business, will hurt business, is anti-business, etc. -- being in business for business' sake is not an end worth pursuing in itself, and if a business can't survive without the market rigged in its favor, well, the true free-market position is that that business shouldn't survive.

WalterBright 10y ago

> If you fail to get a job, you will starve. That sort of implies that you were born to have that job, and Comcast was formed to provide you with that job. Furthermore, any job that pays more than minimum wage implies there was negotiating going on and either party was willing to walk away.

foldr 10y ago
I think there can be a bit of a disconnect between tech and the "real world" on this point. We're lucky that at the moment it's easy to get interviews for programming jobs. If you can program, you can eventually get a job somewhere that will pay a wage you can live on. Most people's experience of looking for jobs is putting in hundreds of applications and maybe getting one or two interviews. So by the time you are at the interview stage, you really can't be too casual about throwing the opportunity away.