5 ms·

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.

by VMG 13y ago

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.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    Both of your proposals are exploitative and needlessly unjust. The big problem with the market is that it forces us to choose between the two. It snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by coupling the "workers starve" outcome to the "workers don't have jobs" outcome. There is no fundamental reason why they need to be coupled. Just because only 80% of people have to work to meet demand doesn't mean the other 20% deserve to starve. Many systems are possible in which marginal incentives are maintained (the farmer and tractor driver get significantly more money than the out-of-work laborers) but the laborers don't go hungry. I search for my favorite solution among these (I'm a big fan of basic income / negative income tax). As you note, we are automating away more and more of our economy every day. If we keep our current course, such automation becomes a club used by those who have enabled the automation (or otherwise accumulated capital) to beat down those who have not. I think that's a terrifying idea that at best leads to terrible injustice and at worst leads to violent overthrow of its perpetrators (including myself). We need an economic model that maintains the dignity of the labor force even in the face of shrinking demand for labor.
    - 13y ago
- VMG 13y ago
  Then let's not call it "absurd", but "not useful". For the sake of argument, let's agree that those who do not have their basic needs satisfied are suffering under the collective force of everybody else who could satisfy the need. What makes Amazon so special? Aren't you also exerting force on those who are less fortunate than you?
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    That's precisely my point. Everybody is exerting "force" on everyone else, sometimes indirectly. The contract between Amazon and the laborer was signed under the duress of threatened homelessness / lack of healthcare / starvation. Amazon signed the contract under duress because it needs people to ship its boxes. Amazon is not special and neither is the worker. Any deal we make must exert force on someone (a restatement of "the world isn't perfect" within our framework). So who should be favored? Put quantitatively, there's a scale between the minimum price at which a person will sell their labor and the maximum price Amazon can pay for the labor and still turn a profit -- where should the actual price lie? Market economics looks to supply/demand balance for unskilled labor and slides the "final price" all the way over to the minimum. A libertarian would claim that this is just (both parties "consented") and reject attempts by the government to meddle on the grounds that the market knows best. A philosophy that rejects the notion that both parties "consented" (both were under duress) opens the door to policy adjustments that push prices away from one extreme end of the spectrum, because it sees these as less just. Since Amazon has all the power under the current system, such policy adjustments would favor the worker. I would prefer that this be implemented IRL using a basic income or negative income tax scheme (ameliorate (!=eliminate) the source of labor's duress at the source) rather than by implementing a minimum wage, but that's beside the point.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  You entirely missed the point of the parent comment. Amazon isn't making anyone's live's worse off. They are better off than they would be if Amazon didn't hire anyone at all and they became unemployed. If Amazon is wrong for hiring them at too low a wage, then every other company in the world is also wrong for not offering them to hire them at all.
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.

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.

by 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.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Both of your proposals are exploitative and needlessly unjust. The big problem with the market is that it forces us to choose between the two. It snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by coupling the "workers starve" outcome to the "workers don't have jobs" outcome. There is no fundamental reason why they need to be coupled. Just because only 80% of people have to work to meet demand doesn't mean the other 20% deserve to starve. Many systems are possible in which marginal incentives are maintained (the farmer and tractor driver get significantly more money than the out-of-work laborers) but the laborers don't go hungry. I search for my favorite solution among these (I'm a big fan of basic income / negative income tax). As you note, we are automating away more and more of our economy every day. If we keep our current course, such automation becomes a club used by those who have enabled the automation (or otherwise accumulated capital) to beat down those who have not. I think that's a terrifying idea that at best leads to terrible injustice and at worst leads to violent overthrow of its perpetrators (including myself). We need an economic model that maintains the dignity of the labor force even in the face of shrinking demand for labor.
  - 13y ago
VMG 13y ago
Then let's not call it "absurd", but "not useful". For the sake of argument, let's agree that those who do not have their basic needs satisfied are suffering under the collective force of everybody else who could satisfy the need. What makes Amazon so special? Aren't you also exerting force on those who are less fortunate than you?
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  That's precisely my point. Everybody is exerting "force" on everyone else, sometimes indirectly. The contract between Amazon and the laborer was signed under the duress of threatened homelessness / lack of healthcare / starvation. Amazon signed the contract under duress because it needs people to ship its boxes. Amazon is not special and neither is the worker. Any deal we make must exert force on someone (a restatement of "the world isn't perfect" within our framework). So who should be favored? Put quantitatively, there's a scale between the minimum price at which a person will sell their labor and the maximum price Amazon can pay for the labor and still turn a profit -- where should the actual price lie? Market economics looks to supply/demand balance for unskilled labor and slides the "final price" all the way over to the minimum. A libertarian would claim that this is just (both parties "consented") and reject attempts by the government to meddle on the grounds that the market knows best. A philosophy that rejects the notion that both parties "consented" (both were under duress) opens the door to policy adjustments that push prices away from one extreme end of the spectrum, because it sees these as less just. Since Amazon has all the power under the current system, such policy adjustments would favor the worker. I would prefer that this be implemented IRL using a basic income or negative income tax scheme (ameliorate (!=eliminate) the source of labor's duress at the source) rather than by implementing a minimum wage, but that's beside the point.
Houshalter 13y ago
You entirely missed the point of the parent comment. Amazon isn't making anyone's live's worse off. They are better off than they would be if Amazon didn't hire anyone at all and they became unemployed. If Amazon is wrong for hiring them at too low a wage, then every other company in the world is also wrong for not offering them to hire them at all.

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.