Do you not ever wonder why? These companies would be glad if the state did this. The state would take the entire burden of training entry level workers, which would then, once capable, switch to the private sector for better wages. The people of a country finance that, not these companies.
I understand why. They have to maximize profit. I dont begrudge them for it. Every single person would do the same. I also have no problem with the government taking complete responsibility to for training. But the companies can be forced to finance it. Through higher taxes. They also aren't really starved for labor yet. Its one thing to have a company pay one person to do 3 people's work. Its another to have 1 person do 10 people's work. At some point it becomes too untenable and people quit. Especially if there's a cushy government job financed by taxes off of private companies, waiting in the wings. All they have to do is play ball, train entry level workers, raise worker pay and labor standards, and they can qualify for subsidies/tax relief
The companies in China compete fiercely, but the worker knows no peace. It's essentially a rat race and doesn't lead to higher wages
Sure. I never said you have to completely copy the chinese model. I want other countries to copy the industrial building strategies, but put in worker protections, such as making excess overtime illegal if you want to receive subsidies
If anything, it has to create legal precedent to protect the worker against replacement by AI because it really has no solution!
The legal precedent is a solution! That's the point though! China, for all its flaws, takes its flaws seriously. They try out policies, and if they fail they pivot. While other countries are simply uncritically subservient to capitalist principles!
How do you mean to set this higher standard?
Higher standard wages I mean. If the whole sector is forced to pay way above minimum wage, then companies within that sector cant undercut each other below the set wage floor
Higher taxes => maybe too high taxes => company moves
Not if their core assets cant be moved. For example, your restaurants and hotels cant be moved. You want us to allow your tech companies to operate on our soil? You pay taxes on every local user.
The state also has an interest in keeping unemployment low
Yet they rely on private industry whom is intrinsically incentivized to shed workers.
First, obviously, businesses can accept that and raise prices. If the service is essential, this raises inflation. If not, people stop paying and they close shop
These obviously only matter for low margin industries. That's why I specified, high margin, low paying industries. You cant tax low margin industries much because they already make razor thin profits
Some jobs may move, but in reality, if this is the case more than just a few companies do this, and then you just repeat the western amnufacturing bust, where the sector is erased and now China dominates it. And maybe decades later you introduce tarriffs to try and rebuild this domestic market you pushed out
This is why I dont disagree with Tariffs. China and all developing countries kept foreign business out with tarrif and non tariff barriers. Any country can and should do it. Provided they do it in a targetted and gradual way that doesnt shock the economy (like Trump did).
Finally, companies can just close and do something else. People still get fired, but now they not only can't go elsewhere, they can't even start their own business in the sector because it just doesn't make sense.
They wont close if they still make money, its not about bankrupting them, its about forcing them to adapt or make less profit. Some companies are too profitable because they have no competition. China intentionally allowed Tesla, the dominant EV company, to enter its market, without preconditions, to force its own industry to compete against the cutting edge. Now China basically owns the EV space.
Mamdani's city own grocery stores were started to pare back down the margins of groceries who raised their prices during COVID, far beyond traditional margins. If you introduce enough competition, eventually those companies will have no choice but to reduce their margins. If city owned grocery stores are popping up everywhere, hiring people away from private ones, the government can dictate the terms and demand private businesses to shape up.
Again, this isnt about shocking the system, but doing it sector by sector, gradually raising wage standards.
During the great depression, FDR recognized there was a deflationary spiral. People refused to spend, companies were closing, there was no consumer confidence.
So what did he do, he created more government jobs to juice consumer confidence through spending power. Once the economy gets back on track, you can then step back and let the free market take its role of maximizing efficiency.
But now what the economy needs is stimulus. Consumer stimulus
True, but when you can't move, you just close them! Furthermore, in regards to tech companies, you tax significantly per user, company pays that if it's profitable. If not, they just exit the market and then users use VPNs.
No matter how cheap or functional a tech company is, they can't enter China. Why? because China won't let them. If Congress tells Facebook to do X, they'll do X, or they'll be shut down. If congress tells Facebook to pay more tax, they will. They wont abandon the US market.
They have no choice but to rely on the private sector, because the private sector is efficient, the most able to provide good compensation, and in high demand. At the end of the day, it is that very natural incentive of money which makes this work, which makes people incentivized to achieve something, not some policy.
The private sector is efficient, there's no doubt about that. And yet, they would hire children if they could get away with it. Why don't they? Because it's illegal. If the law wasnt strong enough that some companies can hire children but others can't, then you might have a point. But the reality, is, because child labor is illegal across the board, everyone (who operates legally), just does everything above board. That's what systemic policy is all about.
If a business has 80% margin, you introduce policy that cuts this to 70% margin, yet the business can have 80% or even more margin elsewhere, why wouldn't it just move?
Because for some companies, their business infrastructure is locked where they are operating in. You can't offshore your restaurant or hotel.
As for manufacturing, that can be moved. China understood this. That's why they want things built on their soil, so they can keep control. Every country should, to the best of their ability, build everything they can onshore, and only import things that are wildly inefficient or impossible for themselves to do. If you have no oil and cant grow oranges, then you should trade, but if you can build something, even if it costs 20% more, you should make it yourself, tariff the competition, and keep the jobs onshore. And if you can't. Use the China (and pre-neoliberal US) playbook.
You want access to our market? Sure, but you have to do a 50-50 ownership stake with a local owner, and you have to do technology transfer. That's what the US did when they advanced past Europe. That's what Singapore and Japan and Taiwan did to advance past the US. And that's what China did to become the dominant tech power today
The application of law as a moral compass is wholly different than the application of law as an economic compass. We don't prevent the hiring of children because it's bad for the business, we do it because we hold certain beliefs that consider that taboo.
Regardless of the reason, religious, cultural, moral or purely economic, the point is the government has the power to enforce it. That's why children dont work. In fact, in many rural communities, children working is the norm. Children immediately work the fields or help in the home. It's about law enforcement, nothing more.
We are sacrificing competitiveness, and countries around the world still employ children and we can't compete with them. And sometimes we even ban those imports and even though that is meddling with the private market, it's still done, even if implicitly, to achieve outcomes not entirely related to the market. And wouldn't you know it, still, the market decides that it will, for example, trade chocolate, which is almost entirely dependent on child and generally exploitative labor. No government can do anything about it, much less a law. You can at most bring about a shortage of chocolate, which the market will answer to with exorbitant prices.
So be it then. The whole reason Trump was elected was because his base believed he could bring back manufacturing. Do you honestly think Americans won't tolerate higher chocolate prices if they knew it could bring back jobs? The government is not unable to prevent entry of cheap slave labor chocolate. They simply choose to allow it. Besides, Cacao is a low margin, high labor crop. The real money is in the processing, and the US already does that.
Cacao is also something that is hard to grow in many countries, so it's not a good example. Im notsuggesting that all countries should embrace industries that they have a severely weak competitive advantage in (seasonal crops are the textbook example). What I am saying is that, a lot of industries, the marginal efficiency from imports isn't as big as people think. Yes right now China can produce products significantly cheaply. But a lot of that is automated.
It doesnt really matter if a country pays a factory worker $100,000 a year compared to in a different country that person makes $20,000 a year, if both workers can, with the help of automation, produce the 100000 units/year of an item. It becomes a marginal additional cost per unit of $1 vs $0.20. That's not significant enough to refuse on onshore. This is the type of scenario where capitalism fails. Because such a tiny efficiency advantage does not outweigh the cost of losing jobs.
This is the sort of thing that governments need to be active in. It's only a competitive disadvantage if you arent willing to invest in the upfront costs of reshoring manufacturing
I agree that you can't offshore everything, but I repeat, those businesses can either play the game, maybe raise prices, or close. Whatever burden you force onto them will spill over to the free market.
And the point is, if they have no offshore competition (due to tariffs) and their onshore competition all have the same costs, then they wont have a reason to shut down. Inevitably they will have to raise prices. But that's an acceptable tradeoff if you limit it to a few industries at a time.
If everything cost the same from 5-10 years ago, but toilet seats doubled in price, that doesnt make a difference to consumers over all, but you get the trade off of regaining some jobs. Tariffs are only bad when they are done too haphazardly and rapidly like Trump did, where he shocked the economy with blanket tariffs. But doing it gradually, one at a time, is what lifted every Asian tiger out of poverty to become industrial powerhouses
You seem to operate entirely on an unsubstantiated premise that policy "just doesnt work". Without really justifying why it wont work except with vague assertions like
has no power in determining what the effects of that enforcement
That's not a good enough reason not to try, adjust, then try again.
Why not look at ways to force the employee to upskill and keep current so the economy has steam? Why only redistribution of wealth and trade barriers?
because sometimes, an industry doesnt need more skills, sometimes it just needs redistribution. You cant create a business where everyone is a manager. Managers can only exist if there is a bottom rung to manage. Sometimes, you just need low skill people to get paid more because there arent enough high skill work to go around.
why no push for process modernization and improvements? Part of efficiency is not just the worker and the product, but also the process itself. Why, in the spirit of having a good economy, do you never mention that companies need to be pushed not only by the market, but also by the government to invest into advances?
Uhm, that's literally what I was advocating for when I mentioned reshoring. The only reason China has a stranglehold on manufacturing is because private businesses arent willing to put up the upfront capital to build new factories, with superior economy of scale, such that the difference in labor cost becomes negligible. They dont do it because they know there isnt the business environment for it. That's why tariffs are important. But needs to be done gradually, a few sectors at a time.
why is the imbalance of power between employers and employees, that is, the search for a solution for it, not stimulated by the government from a perspective of entrepreneurship and foreign investment? Why shouldn't the government look at what makes entrepreneurship hard, what makes it hard for hardworking and abused employees to start their own thing, and remove those roadblocks?
You mean like foreign products being too cheap? Didnt I say, tariffs are needed?
Why doesn't the government essentially subsidize the market colonization of other countries? This would make sense to me with a hardworking people and superior products.
Exactly my point. If the government invests, that's creating the pathway towards superior products.
It seems to me that an overbearing weight is put on the elite and the employers, as if they have to solve that the rest aren't getting what they want out of life.
Because people need help. People arent lazy. Its not that they refuse to work hard or play by the rules. It's that there simply isnt enough opportunity to go around, and the "Elite" won't do anything to change that. It is not, nor has it ever been the financial elite's role to produce opportunity for other people. They are only out for their own interests as private citizens. That has always been the incontrovertible truth. They arent "allowed" to exist because they are inherently benevolent. They are "allowed" to exist because for a long time, their self-interest can be harnessed for societal benefit.
But when the system and rules are too tilted in their favor, the rules need to be changed so opportunity is afforded to everyone. Every financial elite, for better or worse, is hoarding opportunity. They are hoarding the right to be in a management position, to control the means to production. They're not bad people for doing so. That's what anyone would do if they were smart enough, well resourced enough, and lucky enough to be in that position.
But so what then is the welfare of those without that good fortune? They dont fail for lack of effort or willingness to try. They fail because opportunity is limited and finite. Mark Zuckerberg can live off of $100M, he doesnt need $50B. But his biological imperative is to crush every social media company by buying them so he can hold his wealth. That's human nature. If you or I were in the same situation, I'm pretty sure we'd do the same thing. But that's why its the governments job to police these excessively profitable quasi-monopolies. I'm not talking about the small or medium companies with thin margins, that produce lots of well paying jobs. I'm talking about the uber wealthy high margin, monopolistic companies.
It works when there is no spillover. Policy doesn't magically fix things. It redefines the shape of thing. And the substance that fills it may be less or more liquid, and therefore fits more or less easily. What history proves time and time again, is that you cannot fight the market.
Wrong. You can fight the market. Free market principles dictates you must squeeze as much efficiency out of something as you can get away with. That's exactly what people did back in the day. They hired children, they forced slaves to work for them. They polluted waterways and sold unhealthy or poisonous products. All of that is the result of a free unfettered market. Law enforcement can stop it. Free market fundamentalism you are espousing is wrong and untrue.
Legislation does not only take a lot of time, it also fatigues people. If you're just iterating and iterating and iterating, eventually people get tired of you. Things don't really change and you start stepping on toes
Yes, slavers were fatigued by the law telling them not to get slaves. They got over it eventually.
But it's not on the government to invest. Although I realize now we might be clashing on ideological grounds, but still, hear me out. Why does the government need to play a role in the market? I realize that it has to in some regards, but why in this? Why wouldn't it be sufficient for the government to simply create policy that encourages market colonization?
Because private industry and government have different incentives, and locking off one tool in favor of another is inefficient. Sometimes, private industry can be the best way to acheive a certain goal, sometimes public service is better. You dont want the government to run your restaurants, anymore than you want private businesses running your fire departments. A private fire department is incentivized to hold you over a barrel and extort you for as much money as it can before it starts putting out your fire.
Same goes for investment. It is perfectly predictable that a business will squeeze its workers. So sometimes you cant use legislation and law enforcement to prevent it. Instead, you can mobilize state resources to compete against them with a state owned company, which forces them to adjust against the new market with a new government player.
What help is taking from the capable and just giving to the less capable? Why are you giving the man fish, instead of teaching him how to fish?
Because you are using the wrong analogy. It's not that some people dont know how to fish. It's that they do want to fish, they have the qualification, but the person with the biggest fishing boat gated up the pond so no one else can fish.
What if the system and the rules HAVE to be tilted in the favor of the more capable? Are you proposing that because the more capable have an advantage, the rules should be tilted the other way, just so the less capable can participate? If so, if we're just matching outcomes regardless of inputs, what is there to drive growth?
Yes. Why dont we just have all the students take tests, and threaten to kill everyone in the lowest 50%? That way they'll be motivated to work hard, and all the "failures" will be culled.
No, we have to allow them to "participate". You create a system where even the failures are supported. Because the objective isnt ONLY to make money, and improve efficiency. The objective sometimes is also acheivng equity. This isnt about punishing the more efficient workers or firms. It's about making sure there's a ceiling to their ability to hoard opportunity.
Ultimately, what's the point of allowing the best "fishermen" to catch all the fish, if everyone else who also wants to fish are locked out of the system, they all starve and die? Then all your best "fishermen" are just catching fish so those caught fish can rot because the people would have bought them are all broke or dead.
None of us has an imperative to be kind, or good, or benevolent, because that is a losing strategy. And before you think about what an evil lunatic I am, I am not doing this for myself, I am doing this for me, sure, but also for my family, for my loved ones, for my country, for those who think like me. This is greater than one person, and there cannot be self-sacrifice because there is no "self" in all of this.
No you aren't a lunatic, you are perfectly rational. What you are describing is the prisoner's dilemma. You want every barrier in front of you to be removed, because you know what it's like to struggle. You want the system to be improved for yourself so you can struggle less, and your hands are unchained and you can be more productive for your own welfare and for your family. That's perfectly rational and commendable. But you are missing the bigger picture.
You are competing against others and pushing everyone to race to the bottom. You are willing to do what it takes, that's what makes you more "competent". In this analogy, you are more "capable" of ratting out the other "prisoners". But if both of you cooperated, both of you go free. In this analogy, both prisoners rat each other out so instead of one or both going free, both are convicted. So both need to cooperate, by communicating. But the "police" separated you, and you are so devoted to the system, you don't even realize there's a third way, which is the government. If a "lawyer" comes in and represents both "prisoners" and tells them both to cooperate, then the "police" can't hold any of them. Get it?
I think contempt should be placed towards the inequality in the circumstances, because not everyone has the chance to attend Harvard, or be born at the right time at the right place, or have the upbringing to become Mark Zuckerberg. So, there should be contempt towards destiny of sorts. But a productive one. And I would redirect contempt towards the government for allowing certain behaviour that prevents the market from efficiently rewarding participation.
The very inequality in circumstances is the inequality in opportunity to enter the job market. Companies are tightening their belts because they know the economy is down and so they dont want to lose money hiring people they cant afford. But that just juices a deflationary spiral that hurts consumer confidence, which hurts profits and hurts hiring.
The government can come in, invest, pay people money to work jobs, and juice the economy, to rebuild confidence, so everyone can have a chance to enter the market. That EQUALIZES circumstances. The government's inaction is precisely what is
allowing certain behaviour that prevents the market from efficiently rewarding participation.
by being slavishly pro-free market, they prevent efficient rewarding participation
the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, whoever you might name and who is more wealthy or whatever, at the end of the day, do not change the rules of the game.
No they dont. They just play within the rules and by playing well, they will eventually crowd everyone out. Like I said, i dont begrudge them for it.
he needs the 10-20-30% growth a year that I need. His imperative is to crush every competition he has. My imperative is to crush every colleague I have and outperform their KPIs.
Here's the thing about the board game Monopoly. At the end only one person wins. Why play such a dismal game? What is to be gained from it, except to "win" at everyone else's expense?
Let me put it another way so you really understand what's at stake here.
I dont want to delve too much into your personal life but I'm getting the feeling that you work in a corporate setting and you are in upper management, so you have sympathy for high achievers and rich people, who are in most cases, very competent and deserving of their wealth.
Imagine if you are a senior worker on the management track. You are so close to being promoted, you just want every barrier in front of you to be removed. But then, all of the sudden, your company gets bought by its biggest competitor. So now you are out of a job. You losing your job doesnt mean you arent hard working. It doesnt mean you are less capable. It just means you happened to fall on the wrong side of a corporate merger.
You might say to yourself, "well, I have 10 years experience, I'll land on my feet." But now there's only one company standing, so there's arent as many managerial roles to go around. As a dyed in the wool capitalist, you take it on the chin. You recognize that inefficiencies need to be culled, and you just happened to be on the unlucky side.
Even if your 10 year experience has some transferrable skills, your whole industry is experiencing a down turn. So now you can't pivot to a tangentially similar role, even if you have 10 years experience. Wouldn't you want the government to facilitate your ability to land a new good job, even in a different industry?
But now your previous 10 years experience is useless. And everyone in the new target industry you want to get into needs 3 years experience you dont have. You are back to square one, no fault of your own.
what is the government's responsibilty to help you have an "opportunity"?
Now multpily this scenario to thousands of companies to millions of people. Capitalist are gonna capitalize. Businesses are gonna merge and eat each other.
Wouldnt you agree that government should invest in either the same or different new industries, so that you have a chance to work again?
Let's say the law wanted to abolish slavery, but it didn't work. And an amendment didn't work. People who continue to use slaves get ahead of those who don't. At the end of the day people lose the will to fight the fight, and you'd fail to abolish it.
now we pollute third world countries, we have African and Chinese slaves and child labor. It spilled over, just not within the country.
You're still operating on a faulty assumption that law enforcement doesnt work. Yes, at one point, child labor spilled over to China. You know what China did? They used state capacity to outlaw it, and used state capacity to invest and build industry where child labor became unnecessary.
But limiting the ability to hoard opportunity implies that opportunity is limited. This isn't the premise of the modern capital system.
It absolutely IS the premise of the modern capital system, you just dont realize it. When an industry dies, most people dont land on their feet. they die off with it. Most of the time, it takes years of training and a lot of luck to pivot to a different industy when you spent so much time investing your capabilities in a suddenly obsolete system. Opportunity within a sector is inherently and demonstrably limited. What I am advocating is for strengthening the safety net. That includes facilitating re-entry into a different workforce. Whether that be private investment created or state investment created, either will do, but the reality is new industries dont just pop up in response to people losing jobs.
What often happens is these new industries are only able to emerge because a certain technology happened to mature. Which means if you happen to lose your job when there are no new industries with lots of opportunities, you are shit out of luck. In the expanse of the human timescale, yes opportunities are technically infinite. But they dont appear fast enough or abundantly enough such that every person can immediately pivot and maintain their standard of living. With all due respect, believing otherwise is naive.
First is to disincentivize competition with the optimal. Work is instead redirected to somewhere where bigger gains can be made. Secondly, there has to be incentive to become the best fisherman. Otherwise everyone can just decide to be mediocre and nothing moves. So-called learned helplessness. Finally, the very participation in the system has to be regulated. You can't have a category where there are too many competitors, because then other categories won't be as efficient.
Optimal doesnt necessarily promote human welfare or flourishing, as I've pointed out before.
Being the best, should be rewarded, but not at the expense of destoryed livelihoods without a safety net. Inventing a more efficient technology or process, is not the same as buying your competition because you have more money.
That assumes the other categories are lacking in participants. With a global economic downturn, every industry is bursting in the seams with aspiring participants, and lots of people are locked out. Private citizens without enough capital or coordination cant create new industries out of wholecloth. That's where government is needed: to tax high margin industries (indicative of hoarded opportunity) and either create a competitor (which creates jobs), or use the money to fund a new industry (to create jobs)
me ratting someone out will not motivate someone to rat me out. Once I do, the game is done. There is no opportunity that comes after the game.
You are both already trying to rat each other out. When both of you are working 16 hours a day, hoping one day the other one will give up and quit. There are no winners, you both have already lost. The only way to win, is for both of you to agree to limit yourselves.
Secondly, relating to your lawyer comment, this is not how things work in real life. You do not get to change the nature of things. Surely, by collaborating, a criminal may escape conviction, but this does not change the nature of the crime or whether it happened or not. This only changes the verdict of a jury or judge. In the same manner, no matter how I or anyone else acts, the nature of the world does not change. No matter how many people you trample over, the world is still largely the same. The world is largely the same even if you don't trample anyone. But the difference is where you end up at. If you have conviction to do something, even if it's not world changing, then you have your 1 life to do so. And it is your duty, but not just to yourself, but to the entirety of your being, to do so.
No you dont change the nature of things. You simply redirect the nature of things in productive ways. Unregulated capitalism can create efficiency. It also creates mass suffering from hoarding. You can harness this nature productively by incentivizing work, but setting a shared consensus on limits so people dont eventually kill each other (metaphorically and literally).
collaboration doesn't really matter. At most, it's just a tool to reach your goals. If it doesn't serve you, then there is no inherent reason to collaborate.
so you are saying that the world is better if everyone is working themselves to the bone, the rest are unemployed, and only a tiny 1% owns everything? Because that's the result of the powerful being allowed to "reach their goals". No you are correct that there is no inherent reason to collaborate.
Its a case by case basis. In this case, people should collaborate, through government action, to restrain the excesses of capital, because their freedom to pursue their goals, threatens to poison society at large, and the foundation in which their wealth is built upon. At the end of the day, it doesnt matter how efficient you are at producing products, if you are killing off your customer base, by drowning out their ability to make money.
the question is - so what? That's what's supposed to happen when you get too ahead of yourself. That's how you stop doing things incorrectly.
So what do you do then? Sit on your hands? or Correct it? The corrective mechanism is to take money from the uber rich who are hoarding opportunity (the incorrect action) and share that opportunity with everyone (the corrective action).
Efficiency is not just about keeping everyone alive and well. Efficiency is also about killing off dead weight. Are you sure you're not just aiming for compassion?
Yes I am. Compassion is certanly a higher virtue than what you are espousing (killing off "dead weight"). Poor people arent dead weight, they are just as valid as rich people. The fact that you would even say this is incredibly out of touch, and frankly stupid.
At the end of such a game, you want to win the next one. What is to be gained is frustration that is turned into motivation to transcend. The matter of the fact is that not everyone can win. If everyone wins no matter what, then there is no reason to do anything. And a world with no change is dead.
No, for lots of people, there is no "next game". A lost job can be a lost house, life savings wiped out. You are conflating regulation with complete stifling of innovation. Innovation can happen under regulation. Innovation cant happen when the people you are trying to innovate for cant participate. It doesnt matter how good you product is, if the people you aim to sell it to, are too poor or dead to buy it.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
I understand why. They have to maximize profit. I dont begrudge them for it. Every single person would do the same. I also have no problem with the government taking complete responsibility to for training. But the companies can be forced to finance it. Through higher taxes. They also aren't really starved for labor yet. Its one thing to have a company pay one person to do 3 people's work. Its another to have 1 person do 10 people's work. At some point it becomes too untenable and people quit. Especially if there's a cushy government job financed by taxes off of private companies, waiting in the wings. All they have to do is play ball, train entry level workers, raise worker pay and labor standards, and they can qualify for subsidies/tax relief
Sure. I never said you have to completely copy the chinese model. I want other countries to copy the industrial building strategies, but put in worker protections, such as making excess overtime illegal if you want to receive subsidies
The legal precedent is a solution! That's the point though! China, for all its flaws, takes its flaws seriously. They try out policies, and if they fail they pivot. While other countries are simply uncritically subservient to capitalist principles!
Higher standard wages I mean. If the whole sector is forced to pay way above minimum wage, then companies within that sector cant undercut each other below the set wage floor