🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@voidabyss The more we refuse to address the government and accept half-measure broken hacks like unions simply because the government is useless... the more the problem will persist.

This is the failing of the left side of politics, they refuse to fix things the right way, if at all, and tend to accept half measures that make the problem worse or at least harder to fix.

@freepeoplesfreepress

Certainly no arguments there.

@freepeoplesfreepress Yes, unions developed due to a broken system... which is exactly my point.. time to fix the system and cut out the stuff that should have never existed if we did things the right way.

@georgetakei

Holy hell, thats just intentionall pointless racism at this point...

@JonKramer

Walmart was not the reason for anti-trust laws... anti-trust laws goes back way further.

If you are using refgulation to prevent businesses from opening because they got too big.. then you are implementing an anti-trust law already. But your "fix" doesnt address coalitions, at best that may address single companies getting too large.

@trinsec

@JonKramer

This isnt theory, it already happened witht he gas industry and was the reason we needed anti-trust laws. This isnt theory, its history.

@trinsec

@JonKramer

No thats not how data analysis is done, ive mentioned this pattern many times. You would have to look at how the wealth of a country **changes** after a change in its minimum wage.. You cant just look at minimum wage correlation, thats not how you investigate causation.

@trinsec

@JonKramer

Because once the coverage starts to approach a whole niche you have complete control.

Imagine the extreme of either of these cases, where the vast majority of people and companies decide to collaborate. Price fixing allows you to set unfair prices that prevent competition from undercutting you as you can fix the price locally to beat your competition while raising the price marginally everywhere else to make up your costs. Then when your competition goes out of business you just bring prices higher int he area and recoup your costs again.

It completely prevents competition from arising and thus eliminates any possibility of a free market.

@trinsec

@JonKramer

We already know from expiernce that doesnt work. We created anti-trust laws with very good reason, because when they are allowed to coordinate and price fix the markets collapse.

@trinsec

@JonKramer

No one is forced to work against their will, you can quit anytime, you can walk out anytime, you can threaten not to work until your demands are met.. this is all well and good. As long as you dont do it as a union (coordinated and organized).

Same on the anti-trust side.. companies are free to charge higher than market value on any product they want. But the second companies create coalitions and agree to fix the price for all the coalitions mutual benefit, it becomes illegal.

@trinsec

@JonKramer

No higher minimum wage does not put more money into the economy. At best it doesnt really effect the market much, at worse it harms it.

@trinsec

@JonKramer By that logic you should throw away anti-trust laws for the same reason.

Company coalitions and price-fixing would have competition with other coalitions. I can choose to buy from one coalition or another. I as a worker can choose to take their 1$/hr offer or not and always go somewhere else. The coalition provides a service, the means of production, if the buyer doesnt like it they can pay a different company, etc etc...

Sadly that doesnt work in reality because coalitions, like unions, can grow to encompass a whole geographic region and therefore eliminate any real competition.

Unions, like coalitions, are a sign of an unregulated market.. not a sign of a free market, these are different things. The market has been hijacked and the free market pressures have been price-fixed in both cases.

@freepeoplesfreepress

Different laws but more closely related than you may think.

Without anti-trust laws companies could have created coalitions which then could have been used to prevent the worker protection laws from every coming to light. The anti-trust laws are what stop companies from gaining complete control and power and in turn are why we can function to keep them in check at all.

@trinsec

The difference is we already have the tech, its already proven it can be done and its already out int he field doing what it does... so its not speculation, it is reality, and it is here. The only step left is mass production and refinement.

We already have robots that can walk around, open doors, manipulate objects.. they are a hair away from being as capable as humans.

Hell even in the netherlands you have 100% automated cleaning locations that dont need robots either. For example there are bathrooms that **never** need anyone to clean them because they fully automate their own cleaning.

@jimvernon

@jimvernon

It doesnt get rid of labour it shifts it to higher-skilled labour.

We have had automation for thousands of years as part of each step in technology.. Thousands of years ago plumbing was invented, for example, and that was automation very similar to todays.. It put an entire domain of work out of business and replaced it with more skilled people who made pipes, assembled them, fixed and cleaning them, etc. Yes one person can now do the work of 100 its true, but this increased productivity meant people were free to invent new things with new workers.. Its no surprise that despite that automation there was no utopia where no one worked, not then, not now... despite popular beleif it isnt going to eliminate jobs, it will just shift the type of jobs.

@trinsec

@freepeoplesfreepress Of course the laws protect them...if they are enforced... they do nothing when not enforced.... therein lies the problem.

@trinsec

> There are plenty of people who will never have the intellectual capacity to grow beyond a cleaner's job. You're kinda telling them to fuck off here.

Nah, there is no one who is incapable of skills. Technical knowledge is only one very narrow type of skill. There are social skills, artistic skills, wood working skills, tons of skills. Anyone who is truly incapable of acquiring any skills of any kind would be too incapable to even do a cleaning job. I cant tell you how many people who were very low in IQ and do beautiful art.

This is a cop-out I just cant agree with, its out of touch with the reality of their abilities... As for those jobs in a few decades... I think you may be out of touch with just how far robotics has come, a decade will be MORE than enough for robots to have the dexterity and capabilty of humans enough to be able to fully automate cleaning tasks. Hell we are surprisingly close now.

@jimvernon

@trinsec The assumption is that we are obligated to have a competent government... If we assume the government isnt competent then why bother with laws at all.

> And examples.. well I’ve read about the work conditions of Amazon workers, for example. How can that even exist? It’d not be doable here. Not legally.

There are plenty of issues you could find... but again unions are legal in every state so the issues are out of band for this discussion, but agreed they need addressing.

Similarly I couldnt support myself off a Dutch wage, I got paid 1/3 the market value int he netherlands... now its closer to 1/10th... So there are some pretty glaring issues in a highly unionized country too.

@voidabyss I dont think clean safe work should have anything to do with unions. The govt should ensure that.

> Corporations could be involved in wage-fixing the labor market in their favor as well.

If they did this would be illegal and against anti-trust laws.

@VoxDei

People can refuse to work.. as long as

1) It isnt unionized (done through organized coordination)
2) The company is free to fire you for not coming to work

Since i am mirroring this with anti-trust laws that I support thats like saying "price-fixing is just companies choosing to charge more or pay less".. and like the above example this is true.. and yes companies can set whatever prices they want.. but again they arent allowed to 1) organize with other companies to set prices 2) you are free to buy from competition

@trinsec