7 ms·

One can apply the exact same logic to free trade.

dehugger 2y ago
An excellent point! Perhaps unregulated free trade isn't the ultimate means of production?
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Well, there are good arguments that free trade is not always a good thing, especially when there exists actors (e.g. corporations) who are the main beneficiary of the differential in economies to extract more profits. Free trade implies YOU getting a cheaper price sometimes, but it also implies that SOME workers will no longer have jobs due to their inability to compete on a global market. The limiting case is telling: an alien race comes and offers all of our goods for 1/10th of their Earth price, made possible by their insanely advanced technology. Is that a good thing?
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Or gives the product away --- a certain shoe company's gifting of footwear destroys the business of local cobblers.
  - norir 2y ago
    Yes and once they have destroyed the competition, then they start charging.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Yeah, predatory pricing and its logical extreme, giving the product away, is another common strategy of big business.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      There are three kinds of prices: 1. below the competition - predatory pricing, dumping 2. same as the competition - collusion, price fixing, cartel 3. more than the competition - gouging, profiteering All three are illegal. There's no legal way to set a price.
      - vouaobrasil 2y ago
        Below the competition ins't predatory if you can make a profit off of it. Predatory specifically means that you price it at a serious loss and then jack up the price when the competition dies.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        Companies have sales at a loss all the time. Would you rather they put the merchandise that doesn't move into the landfill? > then jack up the price when the competition dies. That never happens, for good reason. Think about all the money a big corporation would lose trying to sell below cost to drive out a mom and pop.
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    I'm assuming this isn't a random hypothetical but I don't know what shoe company you are talking about.
    - kevvok 2y ago
      I’ve heard this about TOMS
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  I have to share this. So my cousin says we need to stop treating jobs as solutions to social problems. Here's more detail on her thoughts, which I think are kind of silly but are interesting nonetheless: "It's hard when the overarching belief is that the unemployed is unemployed 100% because of their own free will. Bad business conditions mean no jobs, and that's often not a worker's fault. A job exists because a business needs it to perform a business function, and that's really the only reason it should exist. But for various non-business reasons, jobs are often favors to be given out and it makes the economy less efficient when you have jobs that don't really need to be done, or could be done better, but exist only as favors to people. Putting the puritan work ethic on a pedestal directly contributes to this and harms our economy as a result. UBI and some form of guaranteed housing (or guarantee against losing your current housing) would be much cheaper than all the fake jobs needed to deliver favors."
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    > "It's hard when the overarching belief is that the unemployed is unemployed 100% because of their own free will. Bad business conditions mean no jobs, and that's often not a worker's fault. There's another point, which is even more sinister. The unemployed offer liquidity in the employment pool, which offer more flexibility for the growth of the machine. Local communities that are more self-sufficient would want to take care of their own. The emergent properties of the anonymous machine see unemployment as a variable to be optimized.
  - quesera 2y ago
    What percentage of jobs does she believe are fake/unnecessary? I'd agree that most workers are not particularly efficient. But I have never seen efforts to make them more efficient succeed. So, the fact that there are eight employees doing the work of three at the grocery store does not count, because the missing efficiency is not available to the employer.
    - RiverCrochet 2y ago
      She tells me that she's seen the situation most often with older people who "have kids" or "have a family to take care of" - they either keep them in the role despite substandard performance, or covertly or overtly adjust the role expectations, and sometimes they get promoted into roles that seem to have been created for them (like "director of project management") or roles they aren't specifically qualified for (like a manager/team lead role). She really believes any business with more than 50 people has at least 1 or 2 employees of this type, and more so if the culture of the firm tends to skew towards government contracts or older people--but when pressed for data, she said that was just her gut feeling. > the fact that there are eight employees doing the work of three at the grocery store does not count If you know three people could do the work of eight then fire 5 people or modify a process. The business is choosing to be inefficient, or there may be other factors. It may not really be inefficient if the cost of the 8 people is lower than the cost of automation or whatever is needed to improve the process. People are expensive in the U.S. so I tend not to assume that but it is possible.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > there are good arguments that free trade is not always a good thing Arguments are one thing, results are another. Free markets always result in more prosperity, from top to bottom. Free trade is just one aspect of a free market.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    > Arguments are one thing, results are another. Free markets always result in more prosperity, from top to bottom. Free trade is just one aspect of a free market. More prosperity but often at a cost to local environments and commons that are not priced into the market. And prosperity itself, measured purely in terms of economic gains, is not always a good thing either.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > And prosperity itself, measured purely in terms of economic gains, is not always a good thing either. I don't know anyone who prefers to be less prosperous.
      - vouaobrasil 2y ago
        Prosperous can be measured in different ways. For example, right now, I am "less prosperous" by an economic measurement, but much more prosperous in terms of free time. And I'm much happier being "less prosperous" by the economic definition.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    > Free trade is just one aspect of a free market. This is wildly misleading. Free trade in the 21st century generally refers to trade across national boundaries. Nations represent markets that are not subject to the same basic conditions as each other. Moreover, free trade (the international kind) almost always seems to involve a lack of restriction on the movement of goods, capital and profit, but rarely allows labor the same benefit. The 21st century version of "free trade" is about expanding the scope and scale of capital markets and the movement of goods and profits across national (and thus market-jurisdictional and -conditional) boundaries. It has almost nothing to with the "old" notion of free trade within a given market.
- scotty79 2y ago
  > but it also implies that SOME workers will no longer have jobs due to their inability to compete on a global market. It's so bizzare that making things more efficient and in effect saving humans from the burden of inefficient labor is seen as negative. Tying people's survival to their ability to sell their labor is such a terrible idea in this day and age.
pessimizer 2y ago
We do. We just enjoy it when wages are driven down, because as investors and owners, we are the beneficiaries of that.
- hooverd 2y ago
  It's a situation where we want everyone else's wages to be driven down. But not our own of course.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The way to increase one's pay is to increase one's productivity. If your productivity is producing $100 in value for $10 in pay, other businesses will line up to offer you more money. If your productivity is $9, expect to get laid off. The Law of Supply and Demand is in effect, as always.
  - deepnotderp 2y ago
    Once again nonsense, productivity has been increasing in America over the last 20 years but real wages have not. As always, don’t confuse textbook theory with real life!
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Comparing with real wages is erroneous. One has to look at total employee compensation, instead. This includes: 1. worker pay 2. so-called employer's social security contribution 3. stock purchase plans 4. 401k company benefits 5. employer provided health care 6. retirement plan contributions 7. paid time off 8. other employee benefits This adds usually around 40-60% of wages. Another factor is the increasing share of the productivity is extracted through government taxation and deficit spending. Big government is expensive.
      - piva00 2y ago
        Now look at corporate profitability and CEO pay vs total paid per employee over the last 30 years.

An excellent point! Perhaps unregulated free trade isn't the ultimate means of production?

Well, there are good arguments that free trade is not always a good thing, especially when there exists actors (e.g. corporations) who are the main beneficiary of the differential in economies to extract more profits. Free trade implies YOU getting a cheaper price sometimes, but it also implies that SOME workers will no longer have jobs due to their inability to compete on a global market. The limiting case is telling: an alien race comes and offers all of our goods for 1/10th of their Earth price, made possible by their insanely advanced technology. Is that a good thing?

WillAdams 2y ago
Or gives the product away --- a certain shoe company's gifting of footwear destroys the business of local cobblers.
- norir 2y ago
  Yes and once they have destroyed the competition, then they start charging.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Yeah, predatory pricing and its logical extreme, giving the product away, is another common strategy of big business.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    There are three kinds of prices: 1. below the competition - predatory pricing, dumping 2. same as the competition - collusion, price fixing, cartel 3. more than the competition - gouging, profiteering All three are illegal. There's no legal way to set a price.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      Below the competition ins't predatory if you can make a profit off of it. Predatory specifically means that you price it at a serious loss and then jack up the price when the competition dies.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        Companies have sales at a loss all the time. Would you rather they put the merchandise that doesn't move into the landfill? > then jack up the price when the competition dies. That never happens, for good reason. Think about all the money a big corporation would lose trying to sell below cost to drive out a mom and pop.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  I'm assuming this isn't a random hypothetical but I don't know what shoe company you are talking about.
  - kevvok 2y ago
    I’ve heard this about TOMS
RiverCrochet 2y ago
I have to share this. So my cousin says we need to stop treating jobs as solutions to social problems. Here's more detail on her thoughts, which I think are kind of silly but are interesting nonetheless: "It's hard when the overarching belief is that the unemployed is unemployed 100% because of their own free will. Bad business conditions mean no jobs, and that's often not a worker's fault. A job exists because a business needs it to perform a business function, and that's really the only reason it should exist. But for various non-business reasons, jobs are often favors to be given out and it makes the economy less efficient when you have jobs that don't really need to be done, or could be done better, but exist only as favors to people. Putting the puritan work ethic on a pedestal directly contributes to this and harms our economy as a result. UBI and some form of guaranteed housing (or guarantee against losing your current housing) would be much cheaper than all the fake jobs needed to deliver favors."
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > "It's hard when the overarching belief is that the unemployed is unemployed 100% because of their own free will. Bad business conditions mean no jobs, and that's often not a worker's fault. There's another point, which is even more sinister. The unemployed offer liquidity in the employment pool, which offer more flexibility for the growth of the machine. Local communities that are more self-sufficient would want to take care of their own. The emergent properties of the anonymous machine see unemployment as a variable to be optimized.
- quesera 2y ago
  What percentage of jobs does she believe are fake/unnecessary? I'd agree that most workers are not particularly efficient. But I have never seen efforts to make them more efficient succeed. So, the fact that there are eight employees doing the work of three at the grocery store does not count, because the missing efficiency is not available to the employer.
  - RiverCrochet 2y ago
    She tells me that she's seen the situation most often with older people who "have kids" or "have a family to take care of" - they either keep them in the role despite substandard performance, or covertly or overtly adjust the role expectations, and sometimes they get promoted into roles that seem to have been created for them (like "director of project management") or roles they aren't specifically qualified for (like a manager/team lead role). She really believes any business with more than 50 people has at least 1 or 2 employees of this type, and more so if the culture of the firm tends to skew towards government contracts or older people--but when pressed for data, she said that was just her gut feeling. > the fact that there are eight employees doing the work of three at the grocery store does not count If you know three people could do the work of eight then fire 5 people or modify a process. The business is choosing to be inefficient, or there may be other factors. It may not really be inefficient if the cost of the 8 people is lower than the cost of automation or whatever is needed to improve the process. People are expensive in the U.S. so I tend not to assume that but it is possible.
WalterBright 2y ago
> there are good arguments that free trade is not always a good thing Arguments are one thing, results are another. Free markets always result in more prosperity, from top to bottom. Free trade is just one aspect of a free market.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > Arguments are one thing, results are another. Free markets always result in more prosperity, from top to bottom. Free trade is just one aspect of a free market. More prosperity but often at a cost to local environments and commons that are not priced into the market. And prosperity itself, measured purely in terms of economic gains, is not always a good thing either.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > And prosperity itself, measured purely in terms of economic gains, is not always a good thing either. I don't know anyone who prefers to be less prosperous.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      Prosperous can be measured in different ways. For example, right now, I am "less prosperous" by an economic measurement, but much more prosperous in terms of free time. And I'm much happier being "less prosperous" by the economic definition.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > Free trade is just one aspect of a free market. This is wildly misleading. Free trade in the 21st century generally refers to trade across national boundaries. Nations represent markets that are not subject to the same basic conditions as each other. Moreover, free trade (the international kind) almost always seems to involve a lack of restriction on the movement of goods, capital and profit, but rarely allows labor the same benefit. The 21st century version of "free trade" is about expanding the scope and scale of capital markets and the movement of goods and profits across national (and thus market-jurisdictional and -conditional) boundaries. It has almost nothing to with the "old" notion of free trade within a given market.
scotty79 2y ago
> but it also implies that SOME workers will no longer have jobs due to their inability to compete on a global market. It's so bizzare that making things more efficient and in effect saving humans from the burden of inefficient labor is seen as negative. Tying people's survival to their ability to sell their labor is such a terrible idea in this day and age.

pessimizer 2y ago

We do. We just enjoy it when wages are driven down, because as investors and owners, we are the beneficiaries of that.

hooverd 2y ago
It's a situation where we want everyone else's wages to be driven down. But not our own of course.
WalterBright 2y ago
The way to increase one's pay is to increase one's productivity. If your productivity is producing $100 in value for $10 in pay, other businesses will line up to offer you more money. If your productivity is $9, expect to get laid off. The Law of Supply and Demand is in effect, as always.
- deepnotderp 2y ago
  Once again nonsense, productivity has been increasing in America over the last 20 years but real wages have not. As always, don’t confuse textbook theory with real life!
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Comparing with real wages is erroneous. One has to look at total employee compensation, instead. This includes: 1. worker pay 2. so-called employer's social security contribution 3. stock purchase plans 4. 401k company benefits 5. employer provided health care 6. retirement plan contributions 7. paid time off 8. other employee benefits This adds usually around 40-60% of wages. Another factor is the increasing share of the productivity is extracted through government taxation and deficit spending. Big government is expensive.
    - piva00 2y ago
      Now look at corporate profitability and CEO pay vs total paid per employee over the last 30 years.