7 ms·

Are you suggesting that employee cartels squeezing money from consumers is justified? Want worker protections ask for that, no need to burden businesses any fu

Are you suggesting that employee cartels squeezing money from consumers is justified? Want worker protections ask for that, no need to burden businesses any further.

lykr0n 7y ago
I suggested no such thing. The minimum wage is a burden for companies. Walmart having to pay their employees in USD and not Walmart credit is a burden. Workers having a lunch break and bathroom breaks are "burdens" as well. If you're presenting the argument that cheap products of slave labor is a good thing, then... I'll pray for you.
nkrisc 7y ago
What's the alternative? An individual employee negotiates one on one with... an entire company? The companies have all the power, unions are an attempt to not be completely trodden upon.
joshuamorton 7y ago
A union is just the free market at work. Much as a business is a collection of individuals working toward the common goal of supplying a product, a union is a collection of individuals working toward the common goal of supplying a product (labor). If you believe a union is a cartel that squeezes money from consumers, you must necessarily believe that a company is the same thing.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > A union is just the free market at work. That's not the case. A union is an organization for extracting rents above those the market would ordinarily bear. Rent-seeking activity --- no matter who does it --- makes society as a whole worse off. Bastiat showed that a long time ago. When corporations organize to extract rents, we call them cartels and apply strict penalties under the law. Why should employees have a right to use these same tactics? The market for thee, but not for me?
  - nprz 7y ago
    Doesn't the practice of minimum wage and labor rights also allow the worker to "extract rents above those the market would ordinarily bear"? Do those practices make society as a whole worse off?
    - komali2 7y ago
      The libertarian or whatever this person identifies as will claim yes, which kind of goes to show that we should reject these anti-human economic philosophies, never mind the fact that they're economically unsound anyway.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    Explain to me why region controls exist on digital products and then let's talk about "extracting rents above what the market would ordinarily bear". This is how markets function, and in our current state of affairs we need to benefit the lives of ordinary people that exist within a completely marketized existence.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > A union is an organization for extracting rents above those the market would ordinarily bear. The operative word there is "normally", which makes your claim tautalogical. Unions do increase the cost of labor compared to a market without unions, but this is simply relative. You haven't (and I claim that you cannot) provide a reason that the cost of labor without unions is more natural, and isn't simply unnaturally suppressed by an imbalance in market power between job seekers and providers.
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      > You haven't (and I claim that you cannot) provide a reason that the cost of labor without unions is more natural I reject the premise of your claim. The market price isn't just one of many prices from which we should choose arbitrarily. The emergent market price is special. It's the privileged result of price discovery via distributed transactions. Every time in history someone tries to conform the market into an unnatural shape using wage and price controls, the result is shortages and other dysfunctions. The burden of proof isn't on me to show that the market price is the natural one: it's on you to show that in the case of labor we shouldn't have a free market.
Spooky23 7y ago
I live in a free market and a free society. Why can't I democratically decide to associate with and democratically negotiate in a group and freely enter a contract with a third party? Isn't that what a free market is all about?
- missedthecue 7y ago
  Sure you're more than welcome to do that. And unions should be free to go to the negotiating table. But it should be just that. A negotiation. They should offer something of value in exchange for more compensation other than "give us X or we shut down the business". That's a cartel. Imagine if businesses organized themselves into employers unions and refused to hire anyone above a certain wage? Cartels are bad. They are anti-free market

Are you suggesting that employee cartels squeezing money from consumers is justified? Want worker protections ask for that, no need to burden businesses any further.

lykr0n 7y ago

I suggested no such thing. The minimum wage is a burden for companies. Walmart having to pay their employees in USD and not Walmart credit is a burden. Workers having a lunch break and bathroom breaks are "burdens" as well. If you're presenting the argument that cheap products of slave labor is a good thing, then... I'll pray for you.

nkrisc 7y ago

What's the alternative? An individual employee negotiates one on one with... an entire company? The companies have all the power, unions are an attempt to not be completely trodden upon.

joshuamorton 7y ago

A union is just the free market at work. Much as a business is a collection of individuals working toward the common goal of supplying a product, a union is a collection of individuals working toward the common goal of supplying a product (labor). If you believe a union is a cartel that squeezes money from consumers, you must necessarily believe that a company is the same thing.

quotemstr 7y ago
> A union is just the free market at work. That's not the case. A union is an organization for extracting rents above those the market would ordinarily bear. Rent-seeking activity --- no matter who does it --- makes society as a whole worse off. Bastiat showed that a long time ago. When corporations organize to extract rents, we call them cartels and apply strict penalties under the law. Why should employees have a right to use these same tactics? The market for thee, but not for me?
- nprz 7y ago
  Doesn't the practice of minimum wage and labor rights also allow the worker to "extract rents above those the market would ordinarily bear"? Do those practices make society as a whole worse off?
  - komali2 7y ago
    The libertarian or whatever this person identifies as will claim yes, which kind of goes to show that we should reject these anti-human economic philosophies, never mind the fact that they're economically unsound anyway.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  Explain to me why region controls exist on digital products and then let's talk about "extracting rents above what the market would ordinarily bear". This is how markets function, and in our current state of affairs we need to benefit the lives of ordinary people that exist within a completely marketized existence.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > A union is an organization for extracting rents above those the market would ordinarily bear. The operative word there is "normally", which makes your claim tautalogical. Unions do increase the cost of labor compared to a market without unions, but this is simply relative. You haven't (and I claim that you cannot) provide a reason that the cost of labor without unions is more natural, and isn't simply unnaturally suppressed by an imbalance in market power between job seekers and providers.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    > You haven't (and I claim that you cannot) provide a reason that the cost of labor without unions is more natural I reject the premise of your claim. The market price isn't just one of many prices from which we should choose arbitrarily. The emergent market price is special. It's the privileged result of price discovery via distributed transactions. Every time in history someone tries to conform the market into an unnatural shape using wage and price controls, the result is shortages and other dysfunctions. The burden of proof isn't on me to show that the market price is the natural one: it's on you to show that in the case of labor we shouldn't have a free market.

Spooky23 7y ago

I live in a free market and a free society. Why can't I democratically decide to associate with and democratically negotiate in a group and freely enter a contract with a third party? Isn't that what a free market is all about?

missedthecue 7y ago
Sure you're more than welcome to do that. And unions should be free to go to the negotiating table. But it should be just that. A negotiation. They should offer something of value in exchange for more compensation other than "give us X or we shut down the business". That's a cartel. Imagine if businesses organized themselves into employers unions and refused to hire anyone above a certain wage? Cartels are bad. They are anti-free market