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Truly cringeworthy. At a global scale, wages are increasing at their fastest rate in history [1]. Wage growth for the middle class has stagnated in the US, but

Truly cringeworthy. At a global scale, wages are increasing at their fastest rate in history [1]. Wage growth for the middle class has stagnated in the US, but not nearly as much as some people (myself included, until recently) believe [2]. The primary cause of this slowdown in wage growth is slowing productivity growth [3], while the major secondary cause is growing income disparity. Growing income disparity can be traced [4] directly to growth in exactly the type of regulatory restrictions that the author thinks are needed to prevent some dystopian neo-feudalistic future. While the author is fixated on Uber and the rest of the sharing economy, he misses the bigger picture, which is that an increasing number of occupations and business activities are being placed behind regulatory barriers to entry [5], to protect incumbents from competition, so that they may better extract economic rent. Even the sharing economy is under threat from these incumbents, who are funding a sophisticated PR campaign [6] (which I suspect involves a significant dose of astroturfing) to make ordinary people advocate for policies that go against their own interests, and support prohibitions on their right to compete. In the author's world, anticompetitive organizations like unions are good for wages. This is no different than the ideology created to justify the medieval guild system, which created a set of haves and have nots, while massively inhibiting economic/wage growth. The more things change, the more ideologies to justify coercive control remain the same. Another thing that strikes me about these kinds of missives for prohibition of services like Uber is what a paternalistic attitude it has toward the drivers, who are choosing to drive for Uber because they perceive it as being the best option available to them. The author wants people who currently drive for Uber to no longer have that option, for their own good. The author presumes he has more perfect knowledge of a potential Uber driver's best interests than they do. The author and their judgements are just as imperfect as the drivers', and more so on the matter of the drivers' own best interest, as the author doesn't have the benefit of knowing the driver's personal circumstances and options like the driver does. [1] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-glo... [2] https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-has-all-the-income-gone https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where... [3] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stagnation/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stag... [4] https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why-the-1-earn-so-much-and-what-to-do-about-it/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why-t... [5] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2015/01/27/nearly-30-percent-of-workers-in-the-u-s-need-a-license-to-perform-their-job-it-is-time-to-examine-occupational-licensing-practices/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2015/01/27/nearly-30... [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hot...

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
Nah, I think the author is simply just not a fan of exploitation, voluntary or involuntary.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  As I made an effort to demonstrate, you and the author's assumptions about these voluntary interactions being exploitive, and the cause of income disparity, are incorrect. What you and the author are advocating, which is prohibitions on voluntary interactions that you've concluded are exploitive, will in fact exacerbate income inequality, by artificially reducing competition, which allows incumbents to exploit the public by extracting economic rent.
  - uoaei 9y ago
    More ideological "free-market fanboyism." In a world where everyone has the money they want to (or must) spend, this is certainly true. But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them. The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little. Any form of investment, monetary or otherwise, requires some upfront value to be presented. Usually this is capital. If you don't have this you are left in the dust by those who have the luxury to put that money up now. The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die from being crowded out. This is, from my perspective, the driving force for the libertarianism of modern SV: policies and actions which help people with money make more money will be adopted because they have the upfront capital, etc. to enact it. This will breed inequality as those policies in general are not helpful or even directly hurt those with less money.
    - Jabanga 9y ago
      >More ideological "free-market fanboyism." Comments like this are not at all constructive, and contribute to a poor intellectual environment. I made significant effort to provide objective evidence for my position, and provide arguments that don't rely on a person accepting any ideological beliefs. That my argument concludes that the free market is economically more efficient doesn't automatically imply that it's blindly ideological. If anything, your blind dismissal of my argument, and use of the term "free-market fanboyism", is what demonstrates an overly ideological approach to a complex topic that requires open-mindedness. >But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them. You're using your own personal definition of "voluntary" which is not inline with the conventional definition. Someone being poor is certainly capable of engaging in voluntary economic interactions, and there's no evidence at all to suggest otherwise. >The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little. How is this at all apparent? Where's the evidence that makes it apparent? Did you read the analysis I linked on the cause of growing income disparity, and how regulatory restrictions play into them? How is it apparent that the poor are unable to engage in such interactions when wages for the poor are growing at their fastest rate in history? Did you actually bother reading the sources I provided? >The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die from being crowded out. Does the evidence bear this out? The evidence I collected suggests that the current market institutions are leading to the fastest wage growth in human history, and that the slowdown in wage growth in the US is due to exactly the type of regulatory restrictions against voluntary interactions that you're advocating. Again, I suggest you look past the anecdotes, and look past what's in the media focus, like Airbnb and Uber, and look at the bigger picture, in terms of percentage of occupation and business activities requiring a license, and what the statistical evidence suggests is the cause of growing income disparity. Theories that are light on evidence and heavy on speculation about ideological conspiracies by the wealthy are not conducive to coming to accurate conclusions about economics: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html

Caveman_Coder 9y ago

Nah, I think the author is simply just not a fan of exploitation, voluntary or involuntary.

Jabanga 9y ago
As I made an effort to demonstrate, you and the author's assumptions about these voluntary interactions being exploitive, and the cause of income disparity, are incorrect. What you and the author are advocating, which is prohibitions on voluntary interactions that you've concluded are exploitive, will in fact exacerbate income inequality, by artificially reducing competition, which allows incumbents to exploit the public by extracting economic rent.
- uoaei 9y ago
  More ideological "free-market fanboyism." In a world where everyone has the money they want to (or must) spend, this is certainly true. But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them. The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little. Any form of investment, monetary or otherwise, requires some upfront value to be presented. Usually this is capital. If you don't have this you are left in the dust by those who have the luxury to put that money up now. The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die from being crowded out. This is, from my perspective, the driving force for the libertarianism of modern SV: policies and actions which help people with money make more money will be adopted because they have the upfront capital, etc. to enact it. This will breed inequality as those policies in general are not helpful or even directly hurt those with less money.
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    >More ideological "free-market fanboyism." Comments like this are not at all constructive, and contribute to a poor intellectual environment. I made significant effort to provide objective evidence for my position, and provide arguments that don't rely on a person accepting any ideological beliefs. That my argument concludes that the free market is economically more efficient doesn't automatically imply that it's blindly ideological. If anything, your blind dismissal of my argument, and use of the term "free-market fanboyism", is what demonstrates an overly ideological approach to a complex topic that requires open-mindedness. >But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them. You're using your own personal definition of "voluntary" which is not inline with the conventional definition. Someone being poor is certainly capable of engaging in voluntary economic interactions, and there's no evidence at all to suggest otherwise. >The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little. How is this at all apparent? Where's the evidence that makes it apparent? Did you read the analysis I linked on the cause of growing income disparity, and how regulatory restrictions play into them? How is it apparent that the poor are unable to engage in such interactions when wages for the poor are growing at their fastest rate in history? Did you actually bother reading the sources I provided? >The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die from being crowded out. Does the evidence bear this out? The evidence I collected suggests that the current market institutions are leading to the fastest wage growth in human history, and that the slowdown in wage growth in the US is due to exactly the type of regulatory restrictions against voluntary interactions that you're advocating. Again, I suggest you look past the anecdotes, and look past what's in the media focus, like Airbnb and Uber, and look at the bigger picture, in terms of percentage of occupation and business activities requiring a license, and what the statistical evidence suggests is the cause of growing income disparity. Theories that are light on evidence and heavy on speculation about ideological conspiracies by the wealthy are not conducive to coming to accurate conclusions about economics: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html