3 ms·

The free market could do that without unions. Doing so increases the cost of labor in the product as % of the total price. You're super highly valued employee,

The free market could do that without unions. Doing so increases the cost of labor in the product as % of the total price. You're super highly valued employee, your employer will be more than happy to buy your work in packages of 4 days instead of 5 if it suits him and you. Also if this is not suitable for one party of the deal (either employee or employer) both can go and freely trade/buy their labour. However, generally advocates propose a blanket "mandatory 35 hours week", which have many negtive consequences: - Why do you need to "enforce" that to other people who can't or wan't earn the same way and are more than happy to work overtime because they need to say earn more to pay medical bills or want to save to buy a house? Isn't that limiting the amount I as a person can sell my own work hours to the business? - How can the business compete on the local market when other companies aren't forced to do work with the same cost base for the labour component in the final product? - How can the business compete with the Mexican company across the border who can do it for even cheaper? Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. In tribes in the olden days, when a person got sick/too old, many tribes just left him to die, because they couldn't afford to feed him. Societies are much wealthier now, but we shouldn't forget that starvation and poverty are the default state, not the other way around.

Pet_Ant 11mo ago
> Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. At first, you seem like a sensible person, but then you seem to be completely ignorant as to what "moral" means.
- freefaler 11mo ago
  You can't feed poor people with "morals", you need a productive tax base and good redestribution system to do that. If you have a farm, you can't kill your chicken to feed the starving neighbour if your own chidren are starving. You need to keep the chicken alive because they will feed you and if they produce enough eggs you can help your neighbour too. When you overtax your companies you make them uncompetitive and you have less tax to redistribute. It's just simple mathematics, no morals are needed to understand that. No tax = no social safety nets. Tax comes from profit. Profit comes from margin. Margin is destroyed by higher costs. If you increase the cost, you need to close the border so all the companies can share the same cost of labor. You'll squeeze more from the companies and make more social payments but less capital for the companies to invest and hire more people. So you're just making the stuff companies produce more expensive for all. (because you need to close the border to remove outside competition) It's not rocket science. When societies got rich then they started having social nets, not before.
  - robocat 11mo ago
    > Tax comes from profit This idea leads to ungood thinking. If true it would be equally true to senselessly say that expenses/wages come from profit? This is clearest when you think of the variety of cases where an employee pays their own taxes.
    - freefaler 11mo ago
      Where do you think the tax comes from? If there is no profit, there is no business and there is no tax base? Taxes currently are for both the busness and the employees. On the producer side: - business pays tax on sales (or VAT) - business pays tax on profit left - business pays tax on each employee in the form of empolyers "contributions" (just another way to tax the work of the empolyees) - persons pay income taxes and social contributions - persons (owners) pay divident taxes On the consumer side - sales/VAT tax - import duties on stuff you buy - various local taxes on property, vehicles and etc In EU many contries have on the producing side 35-39% and on consuming side around 20% VAT, e.g. the govenment takes about 50% of an average workers pay. Who pays the worker? The business by making a profit.
analognoise 11mo ago
> The free market could do that without unions. I suggest doing some reading about labor movements, the Gilded Age, or about current issues - wealth inequality, housing costs, environmental impact, healthcare costs, enshittification. The free market has failed miserably across multiple dimensions - even Trump has the government owning companies now (Intel). The “free market” has been a failed idea for a long time. > In tribes in the olden days, when a person got sick/too old, many tribes just left him to die, because they couldn't afford to feed him. We have archeological evidence that contradicts this directly! What are you even talking about? This isn’t a good way to structure a society, but your whole point about mixing morality with capitalism is perhaps the worst one. If you can’t look at the damage to people (and the environment) under our current system and point out how it is broadly immoral, I would suggest taking a closer look at the very least.
- freefaler 11mo ago
  Read about how the Japanese left their old in a practice called 姨捨 (Ubasute) . You miss the point of the argument, that when there isn't enough food, then this happens.
- freefaler 11mo ago
  I've read a lot and I have been in the buisness since I was 21 years old, almost homeless student in a big city that had to postpone my degree to survive so I've had years to think from the both sides of the "inequality" divide and I got a degree in economics. You assume that if there is a price on it than there is a free market for it. It's not true at all... Compare the freedom of the markets that are inefficient in your example: - housing: one of the most regulated and non-transparent markets with zoning laws and NIMBYism blocking new supply to the market - healthcare: even more regulated market for practitioners (licence to heal), medical supplies (licences for medicines) and a brocken system that incumbents can't enter (check cost+drugs Mark Cuban's post about how shitty the system is and how far away from normal free market) - enivronmental impact: that's what the taxes are for and to have a good tax base you tax the polutants, but it's not "the market" it's "the people who consume" in any market free or not you'll get the resources used. In non-free markets you will just use more resources, because the encumbents will extract +400$ for 8Gb ram upgrade of your macbook pro or 10000 USD for a broken leg, that could've done much more if it wasn't inefficiently extorted. - enshittification: this happens only in the "ecosystems" with no markets inside. If you go to the freeer markets you'll see that the prices got down, not up. (check the price of computers, electronics and clothes for example). There are some areas where the market is not the answer, but there humanity hasn't found a better way to optimize resources and ensure freedom unless the people have the ability to change their goods freely without restriction of the third party.

Pet_Ant 11mo ago

> Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. At first, you seem like a sensible person, but then you seem to be completely ignorant as to what "moral" means.

freefaler 11mo ago
You can't feed poor people with "morals", you need a productive tax base and good redestribution system to do that. If you have a farm, you can't kill your chicken to feed the starving neighbour if your own chidren are starving. You need to keep the chicken alive because they will feed you and if they produce enough eggs you can help your neighbour too. When you overtax your companies you make them uncompetitive and you have less tax to redistribute. It's just simple mathematics, no morals are needed to understand that. No tax = no social safety nets. Tax comes from profit. Profit comes from margin. Margin is destroyed by higher costs. If you increase the cost, you need to close the border so all the companies can share the same cost of labor. You'll squeeze more from the companies and make more social payments but less capital for the companies to invest and hire more people. So you're just making the stuff companies produce more expensive for all. (because you need to close the border to remove outside competition) It's not rocket science. When societies got rich then they started having social nets, not before.
- robocat 11mo ago
  > Tax comes from profit This idea leads to ungood thinking. If true it would be equally true to senselessly say that expenses/wages come from profit? This is clearest when you think of the variety of cases where an employee pays their own taxes.
  - freefaler 11mo ago
    Where do you think the tax comes from? If there is no profit, there is no business and there is no tax base? Taxes currently are for both the busness and the employees. On the producer side: - business pays tax on sales (or VAT) - business pays tax on profit left - business pays tax on each employee in the form of empolyers "contributions" (just another way to tax the work of the empolyees) - persons pay income taxes and social contributions - persons (owners) pay divident taxes On the consumer side - sales/VAT tax - import duties on stuff you buy - various local taxes on property, vehicles and etc In EU many contries have on the producing side 35-39% and on consuming side around 20% VAT, e.g. the govenment takes about 50% of an average workers pay. Who pays the worker? The business by making a profit.

analognoise 11mo ago

> The free market could do that without unions. I suggest doing some reading about labor movements, the Gilded Age, or about current issues - wealth inequality, housing costs, environmental impact, healthcare costs, enshittification. The free market has failed miserably across multiple dimensions - even Trump has the government owning companies now (Intel). The “free market” has been a failed idea for a long time. > In tribes in the olden days, when a person got sick/too old, many tribes just left him to die, because they couldn't afford to feed him. We have archeological evidence that contradicts this directly! What are you even talking about? This isn’t a good way to structure a society, but your whole point about mixing morality with capitalism is perhaps the worst one. If you can’t look at the damage to people (and the environment) under our current system and point out how it is broadly immoral, I would suggest taking a closer look at the very least.

freefaler 11mo ago
Read about how the Japanese left their old in a practice called 姨捨 (Ubasute) . You miss the point of the argument, that when there isn't enough food, then this happens.
freefaler 11mo ago
I've read a lot and I have been in the buisness since I was 21 years old, almost homeless student in a big city that had to postpone my degree to survive so I've had years to think from the both sides of the "inequality" divide and I got a degree in economics. You assume that if there is a price on it than there is a free market for it. It's not true at all... Compare the freedom of the markets that are inefficient in your example: - housing: one of the most regulated and non-transparent markets with zoning laws and NIMBYism blocking new supply to the market - healthcare: even more regulated market for practitioners (licence to heal), medical supplies (licences for medicines) and a brocken system that incumbents can't enter (check cost+drugs Mark Cuban's post about how shitty the system is and how far away from normal free market) - enivronmental impact: that's what the taxes are for and to have a good tax base you tax the polutants, but it's not "the market" it's "the people who consume" in any market free or not you'll get the resources used. In non-free markets you will just use more resources, because the encumbents will extract +400$ for 8Gb ram upgrade of your macbook pro or 10000 USD for a broken leg, that could've done much more if it wasn't inefficiently extorted. - enshittification: this happens only in the "ecosystems" with no markets inside. If you go to the freeer markets you'll see that the prices got down, not up. (check the price of computers, electronics and clothes for example). There are some areas where the market is not the answer, but there humanity hasn't found a better way to optimize resources and ensure freedom unless the people have the ability to change their goods freely without restriction of the third party.