4 ms·

That would be true in an ideal world, with no greed and where every employee loves his company. But in our world, dealing this way might get nasty with some p

• zachlipton 12y ago
  That's how a free market for employees works though. If an employee is truly that crucial to your business, you'd better come up with a package that encourages him/her to stick around. If an employer can fire an employee at will or give him a paycut, then an employee should be just as free to demand a raise or walk to a competitor.
• jjoonathan 12y ago
  > But in our world, dealing this way might get nasty with some people. "Pay me $$$ or I am leaving for XYZ tomorrow". I wouldn't call that greed, I'd call that "the employee demanding their true market value." Employers get the right to fire people and replace them with cheap labor overseas (for example), it's only fair that laborers retain the right to leverage competing employers off of one another. > finding a technologist (or whatever) for such a company is a bit harder than finding a jQuery or Rails guy Then the market demands that they be payed accordingly. > [Anticipated words I'm putting into your mouth:] "You seem awfully focused on the market for someone arguing in favor of regulation." I like markets, but they have many well-known pathologies, and I see nothing wrong with addressing those with regulation. In this case, the issue is that the market can remain irrational longer than someone at the bottom can remain solvent. Sure, in some sense you could say that people who don't read their contracts and demand better terms deserve to be punished. But the market doesn't just punish them, it punishes the people who try to negotiate for better terms. Who would hire a smart worker when a dumb worker can be tricked into doing the same job for less? This is why we ban contracts involving slavery and indentured servitude. If they were allowed, 1/4 of the population would unwittingly walk into the trap-contracts. Even if they were perfectly rational, the next 1/4 would be forced to sign similar contracts by the fact that they had to compete with the irrational 1/4 on price (otherwise they starve). Regulations against this kind of thing don't just protect people from themselves (which is arguably something government shouldn't do), they protect rational workers from irrational workers. The market needs them to function (for any reasonable definition of "function"), and that makes them a good thing.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• glesica 12y ago
  ...finding a technologist (or whatever) for such a company is a bit harder than finding a jQuery or Rails guy :) This is LITERALLY the ESSENCE of supply and demand! The person is rare, therefore s/he commands a rare salary. End of story. If you don't pay well enough, you don't get to have the employee. Non-competes pervert the labor market. Edit: formatting