> First of all, thank you for the well thought out and articulated reply.
It's my pleasure - I think we're on the same team here, so I want to do what I can to spread some good. At the risk of bringing politics up, I'm one of the more liberal people I know and have spent a lot of time internationally. When I think of issues, I don't think just "my country win, everyone else on their own" - I try to look at how to build the best possible complete world. This reply turned out pretty long too, but I hope there's some ideas of value in here for you.
> Your point is a valid one, and it is true that even in an economy where there aren't regulations to determine wages the free market does dictate just as you say: higher wages attract better workers. It's a good point, and I don't deny the validity of it in many aspects.
Cool, cool. One thing that didn't really sink in until I was in China is that people who try to do right for themselves are in the long run forced to do right by other people. The funniest was seeing the price of cooked food and ice cream go up as I hiked up the mountain. There were more purveyors of food and wares at lower prices lower on the mountain, and it got more expensive and less frequent as I went up. Crazy stuff to see.
> Fact is though, that in some places, there either is no shortage of skilled labor, or no need for it.
I've got mixed feelings on this point. That's because there's an unlimited amount of value things that could be done in the world. That means that as long as there isn't a shortage of food, anyone can do something valuable in exchange for food (and all the other stuff people need and want). To make a wage, a person simply needs to do something that someone wants done that they'll pay for.
> Because of this, there's no reason for the companies to treat workers better because the workers have no other choices at hand. It has nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof, but if the skills you posses aren't in demand you will take whatever you can get, fair wages or not.
There's actually a huge point in here - people who are desperate do actually get treated much worse in the job market. If someone isn't desperate, they can look for a new job, get training, etc.
Now, most people have options at a young age when they're healthy. Most societies need some basic manual labor, at least to build buildings and houses, distribute goods, provide basic services, they could serve in the military, etc. These won't provide a Western standard of living, but they will provide a decent life, let you raise some kids and be sheltered, etc.
The big problem is when people get stuck - because they're ill, or a family member is ill, etc. I personally try to support charities that help people who really bad luck/bad circumstances hit. When I've donated to charity and ran fundraising events in the past, I've choosen St. Jude's Children's Hospital in the USA, Great Ormond Street Children's in England. A friend of mine in Japan is helping starting a Therapy Dog program over there, so that's one I support in Japan now too.
The other thing I support is education for developing countries. I almost opened a bilingual school in China with my girlfriend at the time, but alas, life went into different directions. I'm still convinced that that would've been a good life if we'd gotten married and I'd lived there, helping run the school(s) and being part of Chinese culture.
I digressed again! (Sorry!) The point here is that I believe that I've personally observed that in functioning countries that have the basics of stability and aren't completely corrupt, it's possible to find work. And I've been to some really poor places. People get in trouble when they get stuck due to bad circumstances, and I absolutely think we should help them, their families should help them, their community should help them.
> I think part of the misunderstanding is that we are talking about two different things. You are speaking of hard labor for which people are compensated fairly, and I am speaking of labor for which the compensation is not fair.
I might be mistaken, but I really think that the provinces that I spent time in in China are exactly the places that most people claim the compensation isn't fair and would like to do something about.
Oh, it's poor, don't get me wrong. There's lots of problems there. The quality of life is much lower. The pollution is totally gross in the cities - Chengdu has a hazy pollution cloud over it and is filled with smog. I don't mean to glamorize Sichuanese life - it's a poor place with a low quality of life.
The thing is, there'll be better paying, worse job conditions available anywhere. If we go in and mandate that conditions are improved, pay will fall. If, say, waiting tables and doing factory work took the same skills, the same amount of unpleasantness, and has the same chances for advancement/prestige/etc, then they'd pay about the same. To get someone to work in a less nice, less prestigious factory, you'd have to pay more.
Unless they're stuck that is - have to work there due to illness, the company threatens violence if they don't work, Communist Party Commisar assigns them to work there, etc. Then they get shafted.
> Sadly, the latter still occurs as I have witnessed it firsthand in several places in the world. As long as people have viable choices and aren't forced into poor pay and poor conditions by the realities of the economy, there is nothing wrong with working hard for an honest day's wage.
Cool, I'm with you. You're a heck of a writer and I've read some really sharp comments by you, and you seem like a fairly enlightened cat. The worry I have is that imposing Western ideas of what a workplace looks like is going to reduce opportunities for poor people in China. It's really unpleasant to look at and think about people doing unpleasant work in unpleasant conditions - even here in the USA, where laborers get paid pretty well.
It seems to me that the areas that are the most desperate and destitute aren't the ones that have no labor laws. Instead, they're the places that either have a lot of corruption/no stability (much of Africa), or are highly regulated. If a businessman improves the quality of work in a workplace so that it's even with a more pleasant job, he will pay as much money to workers as people pay people in more pleasant jobs.
The post I aimed to answer asked this, "What evidence do you have that low wages mean better working conditions for workers? What economic mechanism do you suppose will guide companies to pay unskilled laborers more as the company becomes more profitable? Or are you banking on the general goodwill and fairness of the employer here?" Here's my attempt to answer those directly:
Owners pay higher wages or someone won't work for them. Companies don't pay unskilled laborers more as the company becomes more profitable unless the workers become skilled in their role and thus more productive. (Well, sometimes they do, but it's being charitable - they're not forced to and continue to do well even if they don't.) Some owners have goodwill and a sense of fairness, some don't. Owners are just people like the rest of us - they run the spectrum of charitable to not charitable, focus on money exclusively to focus on other things, and so on. The reason they do wind up paying more is so that their businesses win and flourish.
It's necessary to pay people better as an economy improves, because more enjoyable jobs are created. Thus, unenjoyable jobs need to be made more enjoyable or paid well. Your point that people who are stuck get underpaid is totally true though - my personal answer to that, on moral, ethical, and practical levels is to help the people get unstuck - help them get educated, get healthy, cure their children or illnesses. I don't think the answer is to mandate working conditions reach a certain level, because that takes opportunities away for people to trade working conditions for higher pay, as I personally did for a few years and it paid off great for me.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and if I may answer questions or continue discussing with you, I'm happy to be at your service.