Boy, I am not 100% sure how to frame this and so I hope that you bear with me as the topic is pretty sprawling.
I want to talk about businesses and labor in this society, and how they behave towards one another. I will state from the onset that it is my belief that labor is currently taking it in the shorts, and that I have some moral issues with that.
Anyway, it seems to me that there have been some fundamental changes that have happened in the way that we look at things that are worth mentioning. Specifically, in what is tolerated in terms of how management treats labor.
The saying goes that businesses exist for the sole reason of making money. That their primary responsibility is to make money. Moreover, the folks that say this tend to (in my experience) be the same folks that are in favor of lesser regulation, as they seem to believe that regulating businesses is bad for the economy in that it stifles growth.
I think that what this boils down to is that I want some help in understanding that perspective. It seems to me that labor is only ever as protected as the laws that we have in place to protect them, and that businesses with treat them as poorly as is legal.
Is the case that the people that are OK with this are immoral? I tend to doubt that as I have never really encountered evil on that “evil overlord” type level, and for the most part I believe that the opposition wants what is good as much as I do, and just has a different vision of how to get there.
So what am I missing? How is it that some folks seem perfectly fine with treating people as commodities? Help a guy out.
What you are missing is that the market works in favor of labor, too. Businesses aren’t required to offer medical benefits, and yet most do. Why is that? Why aren’t ALL workers paid the minimum wage? Absent government regulations, businesses will try to “get away” with as much as the marketplace, or their own conscious, will let them. Workers will do the same thing. If they can get a union to force their employer to give them higher wages, they will.
I used to be a hardcore ‘marketeer’ as the phrase went. But as I aged and climbed the corporate ladder I find myself softening my position in favor of a ‘largely unregulated’ market.
In short, I find that society as a whole has a larger responsibility to the individual member than the corporate member but that the balance of societal power is skewed the other way. I find a disconnect to exist there and it troubles me.
We know, from past experience, that when the labor supply is excessive businesses will exploit that ruthlessly and we also know this can lead to unrest. Societal unrest is, to me, a bad thing and should be avoided. Therefore some form of restraint on corporate power should be considered to be a benefit to society (and its members) as a whole.
Many of the arguments I find in favor of a unrestrained market center on the ability of the market to bring about greater efficiency. Well and good. But do we truly want a perfectly (and maximally) efficient society? The reductio ad absurdum there leads us to the execution of those not contributing to the GNP…the poor, the infirm, and the aged as examples. And I feel pretty certain no one wants people ground up into fertilizer (unless I get to choose which people).
So therefore I come to the conclusion that even the free marketeers (as I still am to a good extent) don’t actually want a completely free-market driven society. The question then becomes not ‘whether’ to have regulation but ‘to what extent’ to place regulatory bodies in control of the market.
I kind of knew that I was going to leave stuff out of the OP, as it is admittedly a pretty big topic. Your post does bring up an interesting point, though.
I think that I agree that, to a point and assuming that we have businesses competing with each other for labor, the free market will favor Labor (the group). Where I think that my Liberal stripe shows is that absent regulation and having only to respond to the free market a lot of businesses wind up really hurting individual people before they get around to favoring labor.
In the end, I don’t know where that leaves my philosophy. On the one hand, I can see that some regulation tends to have a lot of unintended negative side effects that wind up being bad for labor in the long run. On the other hand, absent regulation I think that business tends to directly harm individuals and that if you are one of those individuals it really sucks to have to wait around for the market to correct the situation.
I think it depends on how much your labor is worth. If you are an unskilled, uneducated worker, you are easily replaceable and will be treated as such. If you are a highly-skilled, highly-educated worker, you will be treated much better. Businesses treat labor as a commodity because that’s what it is. Sure, people themselves aren’t a commodity, but their labor is. They use it as such, too. That’s how they move to better jobs and how they improve their situation. They say that they will take their commodity (labor) and add it to another business if their current one is not satisfying them. Obviously, they are very much limited if their commodity (labor) is worth very little. If that’s the case, they need to add some value to it (more skills, more education, etc.)
I agree with you that people should not be treated badly, but that also applies to those who own a business. Just because they own a business or have some money does not mean that they should be targeted for punitive regulations or excessive taxation. I say let management and labor work it out amongst themselves the situation of their relationship, with no special favors on either side. Government should not play favorites between the two groups.
I think that government laws to help laborers actually, in the end, hurt them. Look at the minimum wage. When you set an arbitrary price on the commodity of labor then you are going to exclude those whose labor is not worth that price. Similarly, so-called safety regulations tend to add to the cost of doing business and take away from a business’s ability to hire new workers, expand its operations, or do other things that will create wealth in society.
In the end, I think both labor and management do better in a society where do-gooders haven’t tinkered with government regulations.
Just to be clear, I was not trying to make a case for no government regulation. I was only pointing out that there are other factors that determine who business owners treat their employees since you asked “what am I missing?”
In the early history of our Republic, it was much more true than it is now. Of course, there’s never been a perfectly free market, but that does not mean that it’s not an ideal by which we can measure ourselves.
Anyone in the U.S. can organize a union if he or she wants to do so. However, the necessary corollary to that law is that any employer should be able to fire any employee for any reason he or she wants (including joining a union). That is not the case.
Similarly, many states have laws that make union membership mandatory if the labor force is unionized. Some states have rectified this injustice by passing “right to work” laws that leave you free to be non-unionized if you so choose.
I am not really up on my early American history, so I would appreciate some clarification on your point. Are we talking pre or post industrialization here? Is the case that Labor was better off at this time? If so, how would this play out in our current industrialized, global economy?
Renob, Sorry, either you lost me or I am not getting your point. My understanding is that you are claiming that Labor was better off back then. Assuming that I am understating your claim, my question for you is “how so?”.
“quote. However, the necessary corollary to that law is that any employer should be able to fire any employee for any reason he or she wants (including joining a union)” That is not the case.
**so really there is no legally binding obligation(a statutory act) for an emloyer to allow his employees…if they so desire…to join a trade union…is this what you mean **
Jobs were plentiful, you didn’t need a variety of government documentation to get one, even very unskilled labor had a chance at a job, and those who were ambitious had a chance to develop their potential without government arbitrarily stopping them.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. If employees want to join a union, the boss has to let them. He cannot fire them for doing so. What I’m saying is that it is wrong to force an employer to continue employing a union worker. A boss should have the right to fire any one for any reason, including joining a union.
OK, from the business owner’s point of view I can see that this statement may be true. If you assume some frontier type economy than yes, anyone with the will to stake a claim could set up a business and not have to worry about pesky environmental and worker safety regulations and the potential for profit was probably much higher.
I fail to see how this would have been better for Labor, though. We have plenty of jobs for unskilled labor now. Are you saying that the average unskilled laborer had better working conditions and a better lifestyle back then, prior to any regulations to protect him?
You do seem to be arguing on the side of “let the market regulate everything”, and to some extent I can respect that. I can even at least theoretically see how this may benefit Labor in the long term (although I am a bit dubious).
My problem, as I stated earlier, is that even if I believe the theory that the Market will correct inequities to the benefit of Labor, it still seems to me that the Free Market types are pretty cavalier in their willingness to stand by and watch individuals suffer while this happens.
You really think there was more opportunity when the US was primarily an agrarian society that relied heavily on slave labor and indentured servitude?
Protected from what? Descrimination? Harassment? Being fired?
In its simplest form, employment is simply an agreement between a person and a company for the person to provide some work in exchange for money. Basically the market sets the wages and the person is employed as long as it makes sense. You find a job for more money, you quit and go on your way. Business is slow or skills obsolete, sorry, don’t need you anymore.
Over time, the labor/employer relationship has expanded. Labor expects the workplace to provide more than just a safe work environment and a paycheck - they must now provide healthcare, child daycare, arbitrate disputes, other various forms of compensation, even life fullfillment. The workplace also expects more and more from their employees.
From the perspective of the business, there are a bunch of costs, of which labor is just one. To stay in business, the company has to be profitable (otherwise no one works). There seems to be this perception that just because a company makes a lot of money, it can afford to pay it’s workers whatever it pleases. This is untrue.
From labor’s perspective, the only economics that matters is their household.
It may be that I am going about this debate the wrong way. I think that I probably need to re define a few things.
First, at least the fundamentals of how the system works are not a mystery to me. I get that at the most basic form it is just one set of people exchanging work to another for money and as long as both sides of that equation are content with the relationship, nothing changes.
So let me try to pin down what I am getting at here: Whenever there is a debate or a discussion that centers on, I don’t know, some complaint of a business practice that is being called unfair or the plight of the poor, what have you, there is always a pretty vocal group of folks that dismiss the issue as just how the free market works. I find that these posters tend to be Conservative.
I think what I am trying to understand is how it is that people can think that way. It is not as if we are talking about gravity or the weather. We set up the system and we can pretty much dictate how it will work.
Is the case that they believe that any attempt to manipulate how the Market works will cause more harm than good? Do they see it like gravity or the weather (i.e. a force that can not be manipulated)? Is the big picture so much more important to them that they don’t see or don’t care about the human suffering that the system allows? Do they believe that people are 100% responsible for their circumstances, and that society has no obligation to its members?
it’s your opinion (quote) Basically the market sets the wages and the person is employed as long as it makes sense(unquote)
I would like to ask you who determines the market forces…Capital or Labour in its most elementary form