13 ms·

>Plus, nobody forced them to accept those jobs. And again, what would be the alternative for people with no skills? Unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills

>Plus, nobody forced them to accept those jobs. And again, what would be the alternative for people with no skills? Unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills etc. No thanks. So nobody forced them to accept those jobs, yet their only other option is unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills, and other reasons that you yourself find unacceptable? How would you define "force"? It seems to me that victims of sexual harassment suffer the same choices. I'm assuming you think sexual harassment should be illegal. Is that not "force"?

jjoonathan 13y ago
Libertarians typically neglect the forces imposed by the lower tiers of Maslow's hierarchy (and by those controlling access to whatever is necessary to meet such needs) because once you start paying attention to those forces the claim that free-market capitalism maximizes individual freedom becomes significantly harder to prove. EDIT: changed "laughable" to "significantly harder to prove" because I'm not in the mood for a fight today.
- VMG 13y ago
  By that logic, not only Amazon, but everybody who refuses to hire those workers or pay them more than their work is worth is exerting force. It's absurd.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    Only if you adopt a libertarian's view of the word and concept of "force". On the other hand, if you're willing to accept that life has nuance, it makes a great deal of sense.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    It might be disappointing that the concept of force/consent doesn't simplify the "which system is best" problem, but I don't see how it's absurd. If a moral dilemma vanishes when you look at it from a different viewpoint, the most likely scenario is that the new viewpoint is obscuring the crux of the problem rather than miraculously simplifying it.
    - Crito 13y ago
      Say my neighbor and I both own small farms: My neighbor calls up a local employment firm and hires 50 people to harvest his fields with sickles. He pays them minimum wage for this backbreaking work. They go home with blistered hands, crinks in their backs, and barely enough money to afford groceries for the week. I instead pay another local farmer, one with deeper pockets, to harvest my field with his swanky combine harvester. He sits in his air-conditioned cabin sipping on a bottle of coke, and gets the job done in two days. For his time and machinery, I pay him a few thousand dollars. How do these two situations compare? My neighbor is arguably "exploiting" workers who are down on their luck. I am paying a single guy with some entrepreneur spirit arguably too much money to get the same job done. On the other hand, I have failed to provide jobs for 50 workers. Had I forsaken mechanization, the increased demand for labor that my farm would have created could have improved the working conditions, or at least pay, for those bottom-tier farm hands. Instead I eliminated those jobs and the money stayed with me and the wealthier farmer. Is my neighbor abusing the manual laborers? Am I abusing the wealthy combine owning farmer? Am I abusing the manual laborers? Is the wealthy combine owning farmer abusing me? Surely the manual laborers are not abusing the combine owner, but is the combine owner abusing the manual laborers? Nothing is being obscured here, it is an extraordinary simple situation that actually plays out every day.
      - msandford 13y ago
        Ultimately one of the big problems we face today is that the various central banks print money and in doing so keep the interest rate artificially low. That artificially low interest rate makes it possible for this mechanization/automation battle to play out in many sectors of industry that it normally wouldn't. $1mm for 10 years at 2% interest is $9200 a month, give or take. $1mm for 10 years and 10% interest is $13200 a month, roughly. $13200 a month is enough to provide a job, fully loaded including salary, benefits, space, etc for at least a $60k/year job, maybe $80k per year or more depending on fixed vs variable overhead, etc. $9200 per month would, given the same assumptions, perhaps pay only $30k-$50k again depending on the mix of variable and fixed costs. So what we've seen is that the automation "horizon" has been pushed lower by the low interest rates. And it's displaced jobs that normally would have been done by low skilled labor that while not fun were at least employment. As the pool of jobs available to low skilled folks shrinks competition gets more fierce and wages drop. The central banks are massively more damaging than they are generally understood to be.
  - waps 13y ago
    And by libertarian logic anyone whose cost of living is higher than his/her usual pay (at least 40 million Americans) deserves to die. Can we please just admit that a weak point of exterme libertarianism is what happens to the weakest members of society ?
    - mpyne 13y ago
      I would agree, but on the other hand an extreme libertarian would simply say, "it's a feature, not a bug".
      - brazzy 13y ago
        I think that more specifically they'd say that this should be adressed by volountary charity. Which is nice in theory but ignores how inefficient that tends to be.
        mpyne 13y ago
        Not just inefficient. It's literally "the bystander effect" and "division of responsibility" principles writ large. Bottom line: if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible. No amount of pithy sound bites or quotes from Austrians will change that. If anything it's a wonder charities have been as successful as they have. At least with a liberal government system, there is a single point of ultimate responsibility for issues like this: the government itself, as the legal embodiment of "the people" at large.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Maybe look at validity of the logic itself, instead of just wether you like where it leads.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    This is the entire point of a strike. Their work is worth what it can be purchased for. Striking workers are refusing to sell their labor at its current price.
    - VMG 13y ago
      I'm totally fine with collective bargaining.
- thisosound 13y ago
  Nobody is exempt from the need to consume resources to survive. This is how life is. But which way of obtaining resources is the best? 1. Trade (a voluntary interaction from which both parties expect to benefit from) 2. Charity (a voluntary interaction from which one party expects to other to benefit from) 3. Extortion (an involuntary interaction achieved through force or threats)
  - mpyne 13y ago
    This conversation normally comes up in the context of taxes for #3. To which I say, if you're willing to allow the government to deport someone who doesn't pay taxes I'd tend to agree with you, but as it stands the balance is actually tipped the other way: Government (usually local) is forced to figure out clean water, last-resort healthcare, schools, etc. simply by people being present, whether they pay taxes or not, yet government has no ability to simply "get rid" of people I say the libertarians go find a nice area somewhere with a failed state, take it over, prove its supremacy and be a big shining beacon on the hill for libertarians everywhere to finally prove once and for all that it's better, and then I'll care about "taxes as extortion".
  - hbmnn 13y ago
    I guess its comforting to have such a simplistic worldview. Time to grow up.
masklinn 13y ago
> So nobody forced them to accept those jobs, yet their only other option is unemployment Also, not sure about Germany but it's not uncommon for employment offices to start withholding benefits if you refuse jobs "you're fit for". That would likely include warehouse grunt.
- mercer 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's the case in Germany too.
Houshalter 13y ago
You are right that they have no choice but wrong that it's exclusively amazon's fault. It's also the fault of every other company that won't hire them. If amazon automated it's entire workforce tomorrow and fired everyone, those people would be even worse off, yet no one would be protesting amazon over it.

jjoonathan 13y ago

Libertarians typically neglect the forces imposed by the lower tiers of Maslow's hierarchy (and by those controlling access to whatever is necessary to meet such needs) because once you start paying attention to those forces the claim that free-market capitalism maximizes individual freedom becomes significantly harder to prove. EDIT: changed "laughable" to "significantly harder to prove" because I'm not in the mood for a fight today.

VMG 13y ago
By that logic, not only Amazon, but everybody who refuses to hire those workers or pay them more than their work is worth is exerting force. It's absurd.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  Only if you adopt a libertarian's view of the word and concept of "force". On the other hand, if you're willing to accept that life has nuance, it makes a great deal of sense.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  It might be disappointing that the concept of force/consent doesn't simplify the "which system is best" problem, but I don't see how it's absurd. If a moral dilemma vanishes when you look at it from a different viewpoint, the most likely scenario is that the new viewpoint is obscuring the crux of the problem rather than miraculously simplifying it.
  - Crito 13y ago
    Say my neighbor and I both own small farms: My neighbor calls up a local employment firm and hires 50 people to harvest his fields with sickles. He pays them minimum wage for this backbreaking work. They go home with blistered hands, crinks in their backs, and barely enough money to afford groceries for the week. I instead pay another local farmer, one with deeper pockets, to harvest my field with his swanky combine harvester. He sits in his air-conditioned cabin sipping on a bottle of coke, and gets the job done in two days. For his time and machinery, I pay him a few thousand dollars. How do these two situations compare? My neighbor is arguably "exploiting" workers who are down on their luck. I am paying a single guy with some entrepreneur spirit arguably too much money to get the same job done. On the other hand, I have failed to provide jobs for 50 workers. Had I forsaken mechanization, the increased demand for labor that my farm would have created could have improved the working conditions, or at least pay, for those bottom-tier farm hands. Instead I eliminated those jobs and the money stayed with me and the wealthier farmer. Is my neighbor abusing the manual laborers? Am I abusing the wealthy combine owning farmer? Am I abusing the manual laborers? Is the wealthy combine owning farmer abusing me? Surely the manual laborers are not abusing the combine owner, but is the combine owner abusing the manual laborers? Nothing is being obscured here, it is an extraordinary simple situation that actually plays out every day.
    - msandford 13y ago
      Ultimately one of the big problems we face today is that the various central banks print money and in doing so keep the interest rate artificially low. That artificially low interest rate makes it possible for this mechanization/automation battle to play out in many sectors of industry that it normally wouldn't. $1mm for 10 years at 2% interest is $9200 a month, give or take. $1mm for 10 years and 10% interest is $13200 a month, roughly. $13200 a month is enough to provide a job, fully loaded including salary, benefits, space, etc for at least a $60k/year job, maybe $80k per year or more depending on fixed vs variable overhead, etc. $9200 per month would, given the same assumptions, perhaps pay only $30k-$50k again depending on the mix of variable and fixed costs. So what we've seen is that the automation "horizon" has been pushed lower by the low interest rates. And it's displaced jobs that normally would have been done by low skilled labor that while not fun were at least employment. As the pool of jobs available to low skilled folks shrinks competition gets more fierce and wages drop. The central banks are massively more damaging than they are generally understood to be.
- waps 13y ago
  And by libertarian logic anyone whose cost of living is higher than his/her usual pay (at least 40 million Americans) deserves to die. Can we please just admit that a weak point of exterme libertarianism is what happens to the weakest members of society ?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    I would agree, but on the other hand an extreme libertarian would simply say, "it's a feature, not a bug".
    - brazzy 13y ago
      I think that more specifically they'd say that this should be adressed by volountary charity. Which is nice in theory but ignores how inefficient that tends to be.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Not just inefficient. It's literally "the bystander effect" and "division of responsibility" principles writ large. Bottom line: if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible. No amount of pithy sound bites or quotes from Austrians will change that. If anything it's a wonder charities have been as successful as they have. At least with a liberal government system, there is a single point of ultimate responsibility for issues like this: the government itself, as the legal embodiment of "the people" at large.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Maybe look at validity of the logic itself, instead of just wether you like where it leads.
- superuser2 13y ago
  This is the entire point of a strike. Their work is worth what it can be purchased for. Striking workers are refusing to sell their labor at its current price.
  - VMG 13y ago
    I'm totally fine with collective bargaining.
thisosound 13y ago
Nobody is exempt from the need to consume resources to survive. This is how life is. But which way of obtaining resources is the best? 1. Trade (a voluntary interaction from which both parties expect to benefit from) 2. Charity (a voluntary interaction from which one party expects to other to benefit from) 3. Extortion (an involuntary interaction achieved through force or threats)
- mpyne 13y ago
  This conversation normally comes up in the context of taxes for #3. To which I say, if you're willing to allow the government to deport someone who doesn't pay taxes I'd tend to agree with you, but as it stands the balance is actually tipped the other way: Government (usually local) is forced to figure out clean water, last-resort healthcare, schools, etc. simply by people being present, whether they pay taxes or not, yet government has no ability to simply "get rid" of people I say the libertarians go find a nice area somewhere with a failed state, take it over, prove its supremacy and be a big shining beacon on the hill for libertarians everywhere to finally prove once and for all that it's better, and then I'll care about "taxes as extortion".
- hbmnn 13y ago
  I guess its comforting to have such a simplistic worldview. Time to grow up.

masklinn 13y ago

> So nobody forced them to accept those jobs, yet their only other option is unemployment Also, not sure about Germany but it's not uncommon for employment offices to start withholding benefits if you refuse jobs "you're fit for". That would likely include warehouse grunt.

mercer 13y ago
I'm pretty sure that's the case in Germany too.

Houshalter 13y ago

You are right that they have no choice but wrong that it's exclusively amazon's fault. It's also the fault of every other company that won't hire them. If amazon automated it's entire workforce tomorrow and fired everyone, those people would be even worse off, yet no one would be protesting amazon over it.