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If politicians didn't regulate businesses, we'd still be working 100 hours a week for 1€/hour. So yeah, politicians try to defend the general interest best the

If politicians didn't regulate businesses, we'd still be working 100 hours a week for 1€/hour. So yeah, politicians try to defend the general interest best they can. Sometimes they make mistakes of course. Countries with strong regulations can thrive. I live in France. People like to bash on our social system and on our strong regulations, but we are still one of the worlds greatest economic powers. Same goes with Germany.

self_awareness 7y ago
> If politicians didn't regulate businesses, we'd still be working 100 hours a week for 1€/hour. That's not true. All it needs is for one business among hundreds to require working 90 hours a week. Then all employees would want to work 90 hours a week instead of 100 hours. Then automatically lots of people would want to work in this company instead of all the others. The other companies in order to keep workers in their companies would also want to lower the bar to 90 hours. And if everyone would require 90 hours a week, then when 1 company would lower the bar to 80 hours a week... etc.
- maweki 7y ago
  And this is why we have a mandatory minimum work week instead of a maximum one, so that companies can get something ... anything ... done. Did I get this right?
  - self_awareness 7y ago
    No, if a company would not be able to produce anything, it ceases to exist. So there is a minimum number of hours of work every week. A company will not be able to get lower than its minimum. How much is that depends on the work itself, the efficiency of work, and the efficiency of management.
- simias 7y ago
  The parent's comment was overly simplistic but yours is even more so. What you describe works if companies struggle to hire people and need to compete with each-other for workforce. Nowadays in many sectors throughout the world (and often for less educated workforce) it's the other way around: there are more people looking for a job than there are vacancies. Clearly in this situation it works the other way around: the worker who's ready to work longer for cheaper will be hired over the others. Then it's a race to the bottom.
  - self_awareness 7y ago
    Of course the comment was simplistic. How much information on such complicated topic can be stuffed into a few sentences? The point of the comment was to point out the parent was wrong, and provide an example where it's wrong, not to describe how the world works.
    - simias 7y ago
      And I was merely providing an example where your comment was wrong. Nuance is important if we want to have a constructive political discussion. Beyond that, I often feel like most people on HN are hugely privileged when it comes to job hunting and working conditions and it shows in the discussions. It's easy to lose track of the difficulties the majority of people experience when it comes to finding a job when you have half a dozen recruiters fighting over how much money they're going to throw at your face at any given moment. "I wish those recruiters would stop spamming my inbox" is not a problem the average human being has ever (and probably will ever) experience.
      - self_awareness 7y ago
        I don't think recruiters work the way you've described. I also don't think a sane person would like to stop receiving messages from recruiters. I'm also not sure I understand what you have in mind when you write "privilege".
        simias 7y ago
        >I don't think recruiters work the way you've described. Why not? >I also don't think a sane person would like to stop receiving messages from recruiters. If you're not looking for a new job it's a useless distraction. Emails aren't too bad, phone calls are more annoying. >I'm also not sure I understand what you have in mind when you write "privilege". Then try re-reading my comment with a less adversarial attitude, I think it's fairly transparent. You seem more interested in winning the argument than engaging in constructive discussion, but maybe it's just one of these situations where the text medium fails to convey enough nuance and context cues to judge a person's intentions.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  When labour is scarce and desired, this is true. People who are in-demand right now can indeed set their terms (buddy of mine at a place with "unlimited vacation" took 2-3 months off a year because he knew they desperately needed him). For everyone else, though, this works the other way too. All you need is for one person who's facing foreclosure to put in 110 hour weeks before it becomes the norm. Hell, how many people here are on Slack at the weekend because their colleagues are and they fear looking lazy, and not because they're "passionate" (or whatever BS word we're using to describe abuse)
  - self_awareness 7y ago
    This is why we need less regulations so that there will be more alternatives to choose from. More employers = more chance there will be an employer that will not raise the bar of how many hours a worker needs to work in a week. By introducing more and more regulations, it's more complicated to run the business. Less people are creating businesses, because it's so complicated to run it, and regulations change from year to year. So, the only real beneficiary of regulations are businesses established 100 years ago, where there were not much regulations, and they had their 'hothouse' conditions allowing them to grow without much competition. In my country in small towns there are i.e. 3 companies to choose from when a person is trying to find a low-tech job. The owner of the first company is a good buddy with the mayor, the second company has a big legal department and is able to pull lots of million of PLNs from EU's dotations, and the third one will probably end their life in few next years, because it's too hard to compete with the previous two. So, in this context, it is possible that the previous 2 will just raise the work time bar and nobody will shed a tear about anyone.
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      Plenty of countries exclude small businesses from regulation.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      The idea is nice but we've tried this, and it got us hellish levels of inequality (gilded age, etc.). I do see what you're saying, for instance setting a maximum interest rate on payday loans caused lenders to shift to that maximum (even those which were below before), and having rules about what's part-time or full-time work does tend to solidify jobs around those points (get as much work out of them as you can without providing health insurance, etc.) but the alternative doesn't seem to work.
krona 7y ago
If politicians didn't regulate businesses, we'd still be working 100 hours a week for 1€/hour. Except that's not how it happened, at least in England and the US in the 19th century.
- bainsfather 7y ago
  In the uk, we had e.g. the ten hours act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factories_Act_1847 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factories_Act_1847

self_awareness 7y ago

> If politicians didn't regulate businesses, we'd still be working 100 hours a week for 1€/hour. That's not true. All it needs is for one business among hundreds to require working 90 hours a week. Then all employees would want to work 90 hours a week instead of 100 hours. Then automatically lots of people would want to work in this company instead of all the others. The other companies in order to keep workers in their companies would also want to lower the bar to 90 hours. And if everyone would require 90 hours a week, then when 1 company would lower the bar to 80 hours a week... etc.

maweki 7y ago
And this is why we have a mandatory minimum work week instead of a maximum one, so that companies can get something ... anything ... done. Did I get this right?
- self_awareness 7y ago
  No, if a company would not be able to produce anything, it ceases to exist. So there is a minimum number of hours of work every week. A company will not be able to get lower than its minimum. How much is that depends on the work itself, the efficiency of work, and the efficiency of management.
simias 7y ago
The parent's comment was overly simplistic but yours is even more so. What you describe works if companies struggle to hire people and need to compete with each-other for workforce. Nowadays in many sectors throughout the world (and often for less educated workforce) it's the other way around: there are more people looking for a job than there are vacancies. Clearly in this situation it works the other way around: the worker who's ready to work longer for cheaper will be hired over the others. Then it's a race to the bottom.
- self_awareness 7y ago
  Of course the comment was simplistic. How much information on such complicated topic can be stuffed into a few sentences? The point of the comment was to point out the parent was wrong, and provide an example where it's wrong, not to describe how the world works.
  - simias 7y ago
    And I was merely providing an example where your comment was wrong. Nuance is important if we want to have a constructive political discussion. Beyond that, I often feel like most people on HN are hugely privileged when it comes to job hunting and working conditions and it shows in the discussions. It's easy to lose track of the difficulties the majority of people experience when it comes to finding a job when you have half a dozen recruiters fighting over how much money they're going to throw at your face at any given moment. "I wish those recruiters would stop spamming my inbox" is not a problem the average human being has ever (and probably will ever) experience.
    - self_awareness 7y ago
      I don't think recruiters work the way you've described. I also don't think a sane person would like to stop receiving messages from recruiters. I'm also not sure I understand what you have in mind when you write "privilege".
      - simias 7y ago
        >I don't think recruiters work the way you've described. Why not? >I also don't think a sane person would like to stop receiving messages from recruiters. If you're not looking for a new job it's a useless distraction. Emails aren't too bad, phone calls are more annoying. >I'm also not sure I understand what you have in mind when you write "privilege". Then try re-reading my comment with a less adversarial attitude, I think it's fairly transparent. You seem more interested in winning the argument than engaging in constructive discussion, but maybe it's just one of these situations where the text medium fails to convey enough nuance and context cues to judge a person's intentions.
CalRobert 7y ago
When labour is scarce and desired, this is true. People who are in-demand right now can indeed set their terms (buddy of mine at a place with "unlimited vacation" took 2-3 months off a year because he knew they desperately needed him). For everyone else, though, this works the other way too. All you need is for one person who's facing foreclosure to put in 110 hour weeks before it becomes the norm. Hell, how many people here are on Slack at the weekend because their colleagues are and they fear looking lazy, and not because they're "passionate" (or whatever BS word we're using to describe abuse)
- self_awareness 7y ago
  This is why we need less regulations so that there will be more alternatives to choose from. More employers = more chance there will be an employer that will not raise the bar of how many hours a worker needs to work in a week. By introducing more and more regulations, it's more complicated to run the business. Less people are creating businesses, because it's so complicated to run it, and regulations change from year to year. So, the only real beneficiary of regulations are businesses established 100 years ago, where there were not much regulations, and they had their 'hothouse' conditions allowing them to grow without much competition. In my country in small towns there are i.e. 3 companies to choose from when a person is trying to find a low-tech job. The owner of the first company is a good buddy with the mayor, the second company has a big legal department and is able to pull lots of million of PLNs from EU's dotations, and the third one will probably end their life in few next years, because it's too hard to compete with the previous two. So, in this context, it is possible that the previous 2 will just raise the work time bar and nobody will shed a tear about anyone.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    Plenty of countries exclude small businesses from regulation.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    The idea is nice but we've tried this, and it got us hellish levels of inequality (gilded age, etc.). I do see what you're saying, for instance setting a maximum interest rate on payday loans caused lenders to shift to that maximum (even those which were below before), and having rules about what's part-time or full-time work does tend to solidify jobs around those points (get as much work out of them as you can without providing health insurance, etc.) but the alternative doesn't seem to work.

krona 7y ago

If politicians didn't regulate businesses, we'd still be working 100 hours a week for 1€/hour. Except that's not how it happened, at least in England and the US in the 19th century.

bainsfather 7y ago
In the uk, we had e.g. the ten hours act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factories_Act_1847 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factories_Act_1847