Yes, but you haven’t raised any objections to the worthy goal of keeping companies from dumping the middle aged, just pointed out a flawed method of doing so. It is important when creating such laws to consider that many companies will do almost anything in preference of doing the right thing.
That’s not my point. Your posts always assume that the players in the worker vs. corporation are on even ground, and of course they are not, they are on vastly uneven ground, and whenever someone suggests levelling the playing field, you come along with this libertarian nonsense about I have my heart, my hands, my etc. Everybody has that. Consider it a given. It’s not a realistic response to the problem.
Would I have been wrong 20 years ago? Seems to me that 20 (maybe it was a tad more) years ago the Europeans when through some fairly radical changes, privatizing a lot of formerly nationalized companies, putting in some market reforms, weakening somewhat the strangle hold unions had on their various economies…and started the whole EU thing, right (well, it really started in the 50’s IIRC, but didn’t get formally ratified until sometime in the 90’s). Seems pretty radical to me…and IMO its what helped keep them going to this point.
Still, you are correct…I could very well be wrong. I don’t have a magic time machine to peer into the future. It could be that the Europeans will find a way to have their cake AND eat it too, to have booming economies along with all the other goodies they get. I don’t see it, and from my view point they are going to have to make some additional ‘tweeks’ to what they did in the late 70’s early 80’s in order to keep the gravy train rolling along…and maybe that gravy train is going to need to leave a few cars behind as well. Time will tell I suppose.
-XT
Oy. You really could use a break.
First of all, I had never in my life mentioned, assumed, or otherwise conceived “even ground”. That was Clairobscur, and I was responding to her. Second, the listing of body parts was from a famous Gerome Ragni song, whom I credited, and was a joke in response to a joke. Third, you’re the one who brought up posting from theory only when in fact you’re the one who has admitted that you never owned a company before. And finally, you really could use a break.
I’ve worked in several companies, so I’m not posting from theory. I’m posting from experience. And I AM taking a break from work when I post here. Slow day at work, so I"m not really in need of a break, I’m rested and rarin’ to go.
I think people are losing sight of major technological innovations.
These innovations make an overbearing governmental bureaucracy a burden rather than a boon to the worker.
First off, globalisation. The half-assed method of freeing up tariffs and removing trade barriers that we’ve been going through has been good for big business but does very little for the worker. These trade barriers are intended to keep the worker safe, but they do not. The simple reason is this, that the average person cannot afford to trade internationally, but corporations benefitted by economies of scale can. Removal of these trade barriers would allow the individual to get into the market, where they can buy and sell anywhere that the internet and Fed Ex reach.
The internet is growing, the entire world is wiring up as quickly as possible, and in some cases they are wiring with broadband that is faster than is available in America, because they don’t have existing entrenched broadband lines to compete with, so they can start with fiber to the premises immediately. The same is true for cellular phones. Cellular phones catch on in areas where there are no land lines because it is prohibitively expensive to lay the cable. These newly wired people are an expanding market, who can buy and sell on a global scale.
Companies are taking recycled PCs from the US and sending them to developing nations.
The United States, China and the EU are the biggest players on the scene, and every single one of them is showing growth that will be compounded with the growth of developing nations that begin to build business relationships across borders.
The internet allows us to transmit information more easily. This needs to be taken into account. Companies like buyblue.com and alonovo.com will help us to keep track of which companies are shafting us, and which have a good rating. These are private organizations that will do the job of the better business bureau far better than the bbb ever could.
In America the big travesty is how much goes to waste. For some reason our culture discourages digging in the trash, but most of the people I know who are willing to do a little dumpster diving come up with buried treasure, half of my friends homes are furnished with found items, as is mine. One can even find valuables that can be sold. Oftentimes in New York people dispose of perfectly good furniture that just needs a little fixing up, maybe a good sanding and refinishing, and then the item can bring someone hundreds of dollars. This is the brilliance of ebay.
The real problem in America is the poverty mentality. There is so much abundance here and people just don’t realize it, they focus so much on what they don’t have that they miss a lot of opportunities. I see it constantly, as smart people languish in their depression.
There are tons of for-profit and non-profit grants available for people. Computers are dirt cheap and every software you need one to have to get a job can be had for free. The real problem is that resources are laying fallow while people bitch about their lot in life. We shouldn’t create more restrictions on employers so that people have an excuse not to get up and be entrepeneurial. I might be willing to support a national healthcare system, but I certainly do not believe we should impose restrictions on the market. The real evil awful thing that has happened recently however, is the bill that was passed that says that companies can take people’s land and use it for a more profitable purpose, that’s downright awful, though it’s the sort of thing that’s been done this entire country’s history.
The information age is changing the way money is being transacted. If you really want to empower people, help find a way that every person can maintain electronic transactions without paying Visa’s high CCbill vendor costs, or have to deal with paypal’s shadiness. A much healthier economy would be one where we could make transactions in small amounts constantly. The faster the money moves through the economy the healthier it is for the economy.
Another thing I’ve seen is people unwilling to spend money on their friends. They have no problem blowing 50.00 on dinner and a movie, but if their friends put together a party, spent thousands of their own money to make it happen and days of effort, they are unwilling to spend 10.00 to get in out of some sense of entitlement.
The real issues in this country are purely cultural, they are not at all governmental. People need more healthy communities, but the suburban attitude has completely eroded the community. I’m tired of people always looking to a paternalistic government to solve all of their problems when the solution is right beneath their noses.
Erek
I’m not sure how it is that debates like this ever get so vehement and appear polarised, when it simply isn’t the case that anyone is occupying the extremes of “no, never at all” and “Yes, always”. I mean, we’re talking about where a line is drawn aren’t we?
Or at least I hope I’m right in assuming that nobody in this thread is actually arguing either that:
- companies should be allowed to do whatever they want to their employees, completely without exception.
or - Employees should be able to do what they want (including doing nothing at all)and never suffer any consequences
So is it then agreed that:
-There is a set of things that companies must not do to their employees
and
-There is a set of reasonable behaviours to which an employee must adhere if he wishes to remain employed.
?
So what exactly is the argument here? If the above is agreed, then the capitalist* camp cannot be arguing to the extent that “this restriction is intolerable because all restrictions are intolerable”.
And the socialist* camp cannot be arguing that “this restriction is necessary to guarantee the employment of individuals who have no natural merit”.
So could someone perhaps provide a pithy summary of the arguments on either side? Capitalists*; what makes this restriction different from other restrictions that do represent reasonable limits on the actions of companies?
Socialists*; what makes this restriction necessary when there are other, reasonable actions a company can perform unrestricted?
*[sup](nothing more than convenient, if not entirely accurate, labels).[/sup]
To me, it’s the person spending that much on a party and then wanting me to pay for it who has the sense of entitlement.
No, I don’t think anyone in this thread believes that there should be zero government oversight. I would go with ‘minimal’ myself, but where to draw the line of course is the question.
You’d need to ask ‘the other side’ about this one. I have the distinct impression that while they might not go quite to this extreme, that its a matter of degree. When folks start sliding towards the whole business is a tool of society, that jobs are a right, etc, you are moving towards this extreme. However, I don’t want to speak for the other guys. 
Of course. Where to draw the line though…
Again, devil is in the details. I think that roughly we can all agree on all this stuff…where we would disagree and where it gets nasty is where you attempt to draw the line.
Since we are out of the realm of pure capitalism or pure socialism we are on a sliding scale somewhere between those two extremes. Many of the European nations are further towards socialism on the scale…the US and maybe a few of the Asian Tigers are more towards the capitalism side. There are several nations that are pretty much in the middle between the more extreme European nations and the US.
Whats best? Well…that depends on what you are measuring, whats important to you, doesn’t it? THATS where we all disagree. Personally I’d like the US to go further towards pure capitalism but still staying on the sliding scale…i.e. keep SOME government regulations and controls, but stay the hell out of the market. I’d also like to see a lot of the government agencies that just don’t work but that suck up huge amounts of money junked and something new tried…IMO they have had their chance and after years they just ain’t makin it. I’d like to see government work within a budget, and have that budget be smaller than it currently is…where many of the services currently provided by the government at high cost with shitty service would be provided by private interests that would be forced to react to market forces…i.e. if we don’t like it we take our business somewhere else.
Obviously others what to go to the other extreme, maybe some even would like to see something thats further towards socialism but still on the sliding scale (hell, there may be some mad dogs who what to get off the scale completely and just go socialist 
) than the most extreme European nation.
Myself the difference is between a dynamic economy with unlimited possibilities…and on the other side safety but stagnation. I’ll take the dynamic any day.
-XT
Thanks for the rational response. I’m still trying to get a handle on this.
OK, so would it be unreasonable to argue, on a similar basis, that companies should not endure any legal obligation to provide materially safe working environments for their employees? - after all, if the employees don’t like working in dangerous conditions, they can go work somewhere safer, can’t they?
Will not the market take care of this issue anyway by enforcing the natural unprofitability of unsafe working practices?
Do we need laws (and if so, why?) restraining employers from exploiting their workers by not caring enough (or at all) about health and safety?
Nope. I was responding specifically to a comment by ** Liberal ** asking me more or less why someone shouldn’t use his property solely as he sees fit. It was a broader question than the topic of this thread. I just meant that I’ve no isue to put limitations or restrictions to the way one is using one’s property, generally speaking.
Very broadly, my points are that property rights are for a large part arbitrary, and more importantly in a practical way, that the ability to earn money and eventually own property is essentially completely dependant in the modern world on what is provided to you by society (for instance existing infrastructure, free education, accumulated knowledge, and thousands of other things without which you wouldn’t be able to make any money at all). As a result, society has a say in how you could use a wealth that you couldn’t have get at the first place without its support.
Actually, it was a mispelling. I meant debates with “libertarianS” and dropped the “s”. I wasn’t refering to debates with the poster previously known as “Libertarian”, but with various other posters.
Actually, the 35 hrs weeks was coupled with an increase in work flexibility, which had ben a strong demand of the employers (for instance, allowing longer work hours during busy periods, compensated by shorter ones during other periods, without overpay) , mostly negociated by branch, and often accompanied by a redefinition of what was including in working time, often resulting in a sigificantly lower work time reduction that it would appear (it was previously 39 hrs/week, for the record).
Also, unemployment actually was reduced following this implementation, before rising again later. But in both case, I don’t think it’s possible to attribute the variations specifically to this law. Many other factors (economic cycles, other work-related laws…) could have caused these variations. I don’t think one can conclude anything about the result of this implementation regarding unemployment rates, since there was not strinkingly obvious difference that could be linked without doubt to the 35 hrs week.
As I mentionned above, I wasn’t refering to Libertarian but to libertarianS. I actually think it’s with other people that I had lenghty debates about this topic.
Maybe they could be. It depends on the circumstances and traditions (like in Scandinavian countries where you can’t prevent people from staying on your property). And anyway there are various limitations on how you can use your backyard already, even in the US (actually, particularily in the USA, from what I read on this board about local regulations concerning what you’re allowed or not to grow in your backyard, which would irritate me to no end. once again cultural expectations).
Anyway, it’s mostly practicality. Property and use of a piece of land and the laws refering to them don’t have the same social onsequences at all than property and use of a business, hence should be treated differently. That’s pragmatism as opposed to philosophical principles (upon which we’re never going to agree, anyway).
More importantly, in one case you’re talking about property, and in the other about contracts. Which are completely different issues. You can build any kind of factory you want, genrally speaking, using your property rights. But when it comes to staff it, we’re no more talking about property anymore but about contractual law. You just can’t equate one and the other. Labor laws are about what kinds of contracts should be deemed unfair, not about what you can do with your property.
I assume you would apply this reasoning both to employers and to employees, yes?
In other words, I couldn’t get a job unless I benefited from all the things you mentioned that are provided by society, and therefore there is nothing inherently wrong with limiting my rights vis-a-vis where and how I worked. People could be drafted into essential or hard-to-fill industries, for instance, or union contracts with excessive pay raises could be vetoed at society’s behest.
So if “at will” doesn’t have to apply to employers, is there a reason why it should apply to employees? If you have to justify firing me, shouldn’t I have to justify leaving? If I can’t cut your pay and make you accept it by firing you if you object, you shouldn’t be able to force a pay raise and make me accept it by leaving if I object.
That is to say, is everyone’s property rights over their job arbitrary, or only one side?
Regards,
Shodan
I saw this after I posted.
I understand the distinction, but I don’t think it is relevant. If “at will” contracts are inherently unfair for employers, wouldn’t they be equally so for employees?
If it is unfair to fire someone without a good reason, isn’t it equally unfair for an employee to quit without an equally good reason?
“I can make more money if you don’t work for me” = unfair.
“I can make more money if I don’t work for you” = unfair.
Right?
Regards,
Shodan
Your point is moot, Shodan. I am sure there are some people who quit good jobs with little or nothing in the way of a good reason, but for the most part, people who have a good job have to have a very good reason, and will often endure much to keep said job. Sure, there are a lot of bad jobs out there that don’t pay a living wage, but my view is, if an employer can’t be bothered to pay a living wage, they are not entitled to complain about anything, ever.
No, I wouldn’t go that far. Again, from my personal perspective some government regulations are warrented and even necessary. This would be one of them. I would even say that environmental regulation is warrented and necessary as polution impacts everyone and should be part of the business model…and won’t be unless regulated. There are some things that the market is very good at reacting too…and other things that it isn’t (such as worker safety). What I’m getting at is minimal government regulation…the minimum necessary. Before you ask, no…I don’t have a fully formed idea of exactly where to draw the line either.
Eventually I suppose it could, as workers choose not to work in unsafe areas or for extremely low wages and instead go to work for other companies with higher standards. Of course this presupposes that unemployment is low enough that desparate workers aren’t forced to those jobs as an only option. Other market forces would would public outrage over poor or dangerous job environments and the lack of wide spread public patronage of the companies who perpetuate those environments.
Over all though I think that this is a good area where government regulation can help and is needed, so its kind of moot.
By the same token though I DON’T think the government should set a minimum wage or control wages…that should be left to the market.
Yes, IMHO I believe that such laws are helpful not only to the workers but to industry in maintaining a standard we, as a modern society, have come to expect. Ideologically pure Libertarians would disagree with me of course…but then, I’m not exactly ideologically pure. 
-XT
Thanks for your open-mindedness and calm honesty on this, xtisme. I’m not sure where I draw the line either; most likely at least slightly to the left of yours, I suspect, but I respect your reasoning.
Not necessarily because I could operate a dangerous shop and pay 20% more than my competitors.
I’m all for reasonable restrictions and requirements that are in all of our best interests. Safety is good for everybody.
Forcing employers to keep unproductive workers is bad for everybody except low producing Joe.
Certainly…in fact, thats what happens today. Some jobs are just more dangerous than others (like deep sea divers that work for oil companies, or Alaskan king crap fishermen)…and those jobs tend to pay more as compensation for the dangers involved. And I do believe the market would eventually compensate in some way for worker safety…either through higher wages or by forcing companies who provided extremes in poor conditions to change their ways due to poor public image (and therefore faltering sales or loss of market share)…but it would be sluggish IMHO. So…this would be a good place for the government to step in and simply regulate for acceptable working conditions. The hit on the market is worth the price to maintain the standards we have come to expect.
Definitely. Myself, I think such practices will eventually bite those nations who insist on it squarely on the ass, and they will eventually be forced to chance their ways. This will be a major disruption and wreak havoc on their economies short term as its always easier to grant incrimentally more than to take something away. I’m thinking of the pain the UK went through in the 80’s with their mine workers…something along those lines is what France will go through at some point. Painful but necessary if they are to move forward.
-XT