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The war on drugs only reduces the labor pool by what... 2% max? The premium capital makes on labor is often 100% or more. The lost labor is worth it to them for

The war on drugs only reduces the labor pool by what... 2% max? The premium capital makes on labor is often 100% or more. The lost labor is worth it to them for the chilling effects. Regarding conspiracies.... There's no conspiracy. Like I said, I think most business owners realize they are making money off their employees. They just don't benefit from paying people a fair wage because they don't have the infrastructure to capture the additional value created by a growing human being. It makes sense when you think about it: The reason they are a capitalist and not labor is that they don't want to have to do repetitive work, or sometimes don't want to work at all. As your employees develop new skills and abilities, it takes work to restructure the business around them. It's repetitive. "Oh, another one of my tech support people wants to train to do product design. Great." Most capitalists find it easier to just structure the company to support one kind of labor and then try to prevent employees from growing out of it. Due to information technology, we're getting close to being able to scalably restructure organizations around a group of people with continuously progressing skills, but it's a hard problem. Only a handful of companies (with great management) are able to do it by hand today. So for now, labor is stuck in a low energy state, even though there is a stronger equilibrium at a higher, "fair" pay. Individual companies don't benefit from going against the norm, so there's a chicken and egg situation, which creates an opening for the afformebtioned disruptive technology.

civilian 10y ago
This is the quote from your original post that I find odd: > so they subconsciously collude in cultural movements which make work seem scarce, and life scary and chaotic. I agree that business owners will offer someone lower wages, because the job they're providing is very stable. (i.e. my friend had a choice between being an assistant manager at a chain sandwich shop, or being a manager of a new restaurant in a different city. He's taken the low-risk option.) I also agree that there are structures that exist that encourage the drug war to go on. The iron triangle between: Politicians passing drug laws and other harsh criminal laws, DAs who want perfect records, police & prison guards who want more overtime and toys, and the unions that represent police and prison guards and lobby for more laws. It's the business owner -> drug war link that I find tenuous. I know several business owners, of multi-million dollar companies. They aren't consciously thinking like you say they are, they are simply thinking "who do I need to hire to get this job done". Admittedly, maybe I need to be talking to the CEO of a company that primarily employs retail or blue-collar workers. You also make the claim that it's subconscious, so I don't even know how to collect evidence in regards to that... I don't think your theory is falsifiable. Because you're making conjecture about someone's subconscious, and about a small group, it's nearly impossible to prove or disprove. What kind of evidence would you need to change your mind? //edit and I have to give credit to the other replies--- the prison workforce is a great counter-example to why the drug war would be useful from an evil capitalist perspective. I feel embarrassed that I missed that :/

civilian 10y ago

This is the quote from your original post that I find odd: > so they subconsciously collude in cultural movements which make work seem scarce, and life scary and chaotic. I agree that business owners will offer someone lower wages, because the job they're providing is very stable. (i.e. my friend had a choice between being an assistant manager at a chain sandwich shop, or being a manager of a new restaurant in a different city. He's taken the low-risk option.) I also agree that there are structures that exist that encourage the drug war to go on. The iron triangle between: Politicians passing drug laws and other harsh criminal laws, DAs who want perfect records, police & prison guards who want more overtime and toys, and the unions that represent police and prison guards and lobby for more laws. It's the business owner -> drug war link that I find tenuous. I know several business owners, of multi-million dollar companies. They aren't consciously thinking like you say they are, they are simply thinking "who do I need to hire to get this job done". Admittedly, maybe I need to be talking to the CEO of a company that primarily employs retail or blue-collar workers. You also make the claim that it's subconscious, so I don't even know how to collect evidence in regards to that... I don't think your theory is falsifiable. Because you're making conjecture about someone's subconscious, and about a small group, it's nearly impossible to prove or disprove. What kind of evidence would you need to change your mind? //edit and I have to give credit to the other replies--- the prison workforce is a great counter-example to why the drug war would be useful from an evil capitalist perspective. I feel embarrassed that I missed that :/