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Sure, if only some restaurants in an area do this. But what if they all did it?
by cstejerean 9y ago
Sure, if only some restaurants in an area do this. But what if they all did it?
- eropple 9y agoI'm not trying to jump on you, but I rarely find "what if"-inging collective action problems to be a particularly useful mode of thinking. "What if"--but they won't, so perturb not those electrons and stick to the real, yeah?
- cstejerean 9y agoYou are missing the point. Changing the law forces all restaurants to play by those rules. If only a handful of restaurants decide to pay livable wages and therefore raise their prices then their competitors will be cheaper. So we know this doesn’t work well. But if minimum wage rises for all restaurants then they will all be on a level playing field. That was the “what if” I was referring to. Let me give you another example. If one or two car dealerships decide they don’t want to be open on Sundays then their competitors will get that business. So everyone is forced to be open both days to be competitive. But what if all dealers were closed on Sunday? Well, in that case consumers would be forced to do all their car shopping on a Saturday and nobody would lose any business. So this is exactly what happened in Texas. The dealers lobbied to make sure car dealerships can only be open one day per weekend (either Saturday or Sunday, but in practice they all chose Saturday to be open). So that’s the value of asking “what if”.