4 ms·
It's because you can't control materials or rent costs, but you can control (morally or immorally) your employees, simply because you have power over them.
by cercatrova 5y ago
It's because you can't control materials or rent costs, but you can control (morally or immorally) your employees, simply because you have power over them.
- aspenmayer 5y agoThis is hilariously wrong in the case of McDonald’s. They are a real estate arbitrage corporation that leases space to franchises and gives sweetheart self-dealt deals to its wholly owned stores.
- ALittleLight 5y agoI think it's more likely that most people are employees and so are familiar with how employers try to negotiate down labor costs and are not as familiar with how businesses try to negotiate down the cost of materials. I doubt business owners just shrug at rising materials costs, they probably try to negotiate those down too.
- cercatrova 5y agoThey do but it's harder to do so. Two businesses that trade are usually not in such an extreme dichotomy of power differential as an employer and employee; a business is usually at the same level of power as its trade partner, so were it to demand too low of a price of materials, the trade partner would take their business elsewhere. Contrast this to a labor market, where a laborer needs work to survive and thus it already has a lower level of power than its employer, even before any negotiation takes place.
- nyokodo 5y ago> a business is usually at the same level of power as its trade partner That just isn’t true. Companies exploit power asymmetries with trading partners all the time, especially if they’re massive corporations like McDonalds.
- cercatrova 5y agoI'm not talking about McDonald's or other mega corporations, I'm talking about small to midsize companies who are roughly equal in power between each other.
- ALittleLight 5y agoSmall companies are a lot more vulnerable to labor negotiations too.