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I have always been a big supporter of #unions but lately I have been second-guessing that and debating with myself if I might actually change my views to be against unions....
My thinking is simple.. I am a huge supporter of anti-trust laws. Essentially I dont think companies should be allowed to create coalitions with the intention of price-fixing the market. This makes sense to me, companies **must** compete or else they can become too powerful.
If i believe in that logic then I should, by similar logic, be against unions. Unions are effectively large groups of people getting together to carry out price-fixing of their labour.
@freemo Unions is to give the workers a fair treatment, isn't it? To stop companies from acting like assholes to their workers.
Price-fixing labour sounds not as bad as price-fixing the market. After all, what is minimum wage if not price-fixing too? Or did you want to get rid of that as well?
@trinsec Everyone wants more, everyone thinks they arent treated fair. Companies think they pay too much for employees and may just as well view themselves as the one not getting fair treatment.
The anti-trust laws on companies is specifically there to ensure fair market value (no price fixing), so thats already how they get fair treatment.
I am also against minimum wage, it has caused enormous harm to the poor.
@freemo How does minimum wage cause harm to the poor?
@trinsec Because minimum wage is well known to cause unemployment shifts towards the poor... Higher minimum wage means hiring shifts so that fewer poor/low-educated people are hired and more higher-education people are hired. Minimum wage effectively increases unemployment amongst the group of people that you are trying to help (the poor) doing more harm than good.
It literally has no effect other than to cause all the people who are making less than a minimum wage and barely able to feed themselves into people who now have no job at all and are in a much worse position, starving, meanwhile more educated/skilled people have replaced their job, people who would have made a living wage regardless.
No it doesnt fix a problem.. it makes a problem much much worse and fixes nothing.
I am entierly serious, and not stirring a pot.
If you think taking away what little money someone makes because it "isnt enough" is somehow solving a problem then I hate to tell you but it sounds like your the one who isnt serious here.
You dont solve the problem of people making a less than living wage by taking away what money they make. That should be obvious.
@freemo @trinsec You aren't paying attention.
There is a group of people who don't get enough money to live.
You get a group of them enough to live. That solves part of the problem.
Now discuss how to get the other people enough to live. Basic income? Instead of tossing out minimum wage think about how to help the other live.
@freemo @trinsec Let me put it another way.
I worked on software that had a bug. I found the problem and thought I'd fixed it. Nope, the bug still appeared. I found another place and fixed that bug. Since the first one didn't work, I reverted the change. Bug is still there.
Both fixes were needed to fix the bug.
That's analogous to the issue of minimum-wate. There are two bugs. A group that should be able to earn a living wage but can't. Then another group that is somehow unable to work to earn a minimum wage.
Fix the second bug.
Sure, we agree there are two bugs, one is that they can work but not make enough to live well, the other cant work at all.. sure those two bugs exist, agreed.
Minimum wage fixes neither of those bugs.. it ensures the people who cant work at all continue to not work, but it also ensures the people who cant make a living wage now get fired since its illegal to continue to employ them at the value they deserve... so now you made things worse, no bugs fixed.
@rmerriam @trinsec
"Solving" the fact that people dont have a living wage by making it illegal for them to have their less-than-living-wage job and essentially firing them leaving them with less than they had before.. is NOT solving anything.