drethelin

theunitofcaring

I also want to, like, specifically say that employers are not cutting hours to be jerks, employers are cutting hours because it’s not profitable to have the doors open for more hours. If you think of the problem as ‘employers jerkishly don’t want to pay employees well’ you’ll be very confused by behavior like ‘keep hours at this franchise, close this one on weekends, close this one on Wednesday afternoons’, yet those are the sort of decisions actually being made.

drethelin

I think something a lot of people are ignorant of which would be helpful when it comes to a lot of these kind of conversations is the actual margins in the businesses they view as the enemy. Walmart has a 3-5 percent profit margin. Oil companies make around 6 percent. Health insurance profit margins are around 4 percent. Fast food franchises can range from near zero to over 10 percent. Thanks to the cutthroat nature of capitalism in many industries, businesses run along the very edge of existing at all. You can’t mandate any significant savings to the consumer or increased payment to employees without actually making those businesses fail.

mitigatedchaos

Not unless you’re very clever about it, and most of these plans are not.

Source: theunitofcaring the invisible fist

We can only say that a company and a prospective employee have equal leverage, and thus achieve an actually-fair deal (in a number of senses, but not all senses), if they actually have equal marginal/proportional consequences for not taking the deal.

For low-skilled workers in a work-or-starve environment where employment is scarce, that means that the executives of the company will potentially be out on the streets begging if they do not hire the worker.

Minimum wage, however, among its many other effects, can close some of this leverage gap.

Now of course, there are ways of managing this while retaining markets and capital, but not if you accept Capitalism as a morality in itself.

the invisible fist

collapsedsquid

mitigatedchaos

We propose that the packaging of mandatory binding arbitration clauses as a condition of employment masks the true price of these agreements due to a mismatch in the available leverage of firms and employees in many markets.

To increase the efficiency of the market for the waiver of legal rights of redress to wrongdoing by private parties, we propose that mandatory binding arbitration clauses as a condition of employment shall be prohibited and struck out as null and void. Binding arbitration agreements shall then be negotiated between employers and employees, offering material compensation, allowing them to float in price so that the market can work efficiently and determine the true price of cyberpunk dystopia.

@collapsedsquid

collapsedsquid

How do you prevent the company from simply firing anyone who does not sign the arbitration agreement in a week?

mitigatedchaos

Well I tagged that as #shtpost for a reason.

My actual proposal depends on just how much power I’m being given to reshape the economy.

Assuming I could only impact arbitration, my move would be to require compensation at a minimum of $4,000 per-employee annually or X% of salary, whichever is greater, pro-rated by the number of hours compared to fulltime employment. Or something along those lines, perhaps. Maybe. I’d have to think about it.

My temptation is to set a huge “anti-monopoly trap” instead that triggers when the amount of binding arbitration in a district exceeds a certain percentage and tragedy of the commons the companies for irony purposes, but of course that’s a bad idea.

But the real move, with greater power, would be to severely limit binding arbitration and make all employers take out employment health and safety insurance for all employees (and for their products) while reducing regulations and creating a special court system and regulatory regime for the insurance that pays out much more regularly than one-sided corporate arbitration would. I would then require that the workplace health and safety insurance amount be listed prior to employment, informing prospective employees of just how dangerous the job is. This would all be occurring in a scenario where wage subsidies reduced working class desperation by increasing available jobs. (That would have its own program.)

This specialized insurance court system would be streamlined to lower the regulatory legal burden on both companies and individuals, while making it easier to file and resolve legitimate claims. It would be possible to appeal to higher levels of courts as well.

This would accomplish the stated goals of binding arbitration - reducing regulatory burden, reducing legal expenses on small matters without overloading the court system, etc - while wrecking the unstated goals of screwing over employees and consumers.

It also distributes the costs in a smoother, more predictable way. (That is, your bakery in specific doesn’t end up on the hook for $100,000 just because there’s a one in a million risk of a $100,000 bakery injury, and your bakery just happens to be the one it happened to.)

Source: mitigatedchaos the invisible fist policy

@collapsedsquid

shtpost the invisible fist

@collapsedsquid

As far as I can tell, even though uneven exchange of trade between nations means that someone, somewhere must be taking on debt or selling off assets, only Nationalists actually care about the trade deficit.

The Left in general would prefer to see the end of nations, and want “reparations” to go to “brown people” from the developed countries for the sins of colonialism. (Never mind the colonialism of their own movements.)

The Liberals also want an end to nations, and everyone singing along happily together, but under Capitalism. Also they really are individualists, so they don’t think countries have a ‘right’ to hang onto their wealth.

The Capitalists like it because, aside from making the money themselves, weakening nations and loading them up with debt messes with the state’s abilities to regulate their behavior and make them do things like quit using child labor. Further, weakening nations weakens the states themselves, but most people cannot see this.

“Global trade, but we don’t keep a net trade deficit or surplus across the total of our trade with all nations” would likely be beneficial to American workers, but who cares about that?

politics the invisible fist

collapsedsquid

vox.com

Trump just made a humiliating economic error in front of South Korea’s president

And trade was supposed to be Trump’s sweet spot.

Zeeshan Aleem

collapsedsquid

The president’s distaste for trade deficits with any country is not news, but that last sentence is striking — Trump is claiming that trade deficits are at the root of the national debt.
That is a creative explanation — and an incorrect one.

Vox just made a humiliating economic error in front of its readers.

mitigatedchaos

> seriously this is what you hit him on?

Might I suggest this is ideological in nature. Global types don’t want America balancing its net imports/exports. They want a net flow of wealth out of the country.

the invisible fist quick post

ranma-official

theunitofcaring

The solution to this, of course, is to just give low-wage workers money instead of making laws that try to force their employers to do it. No one should have to live on the money they can bring home from $9/hour? Agreed! Give them money.

ranma-official

What will happen as a result is, of course, that companies will routinely underpay their employees, effectively outcompeting companies that pay fair wages purely on the taxpayer’s dime, which is by the way what already happens when people who work are paid low enough to be eligible for welfare.

This is a fact.

Factual solutions only. No pandering.

wirehead-wannabe

Do you actually disagree with any factual statement Kelsey is making here? All I see are value disagreements about “underpaying” and “fair wages.”

ranma-official

A factual statement is what I said.

When companies underpay the employees and you pay those employees instead, you reward companies for underpaying employees.

The correct course of action is to force companies to pay fair wages to employees. The incorrect course of action is to provide companies with more market incentives for not doing so.

That is a factual statement also.

A value judgement would be if you’d disagree with me that people like me are not literal subhumans (which is by the way the universal opinion of people who endorse underpaying as much as possible).

mitigatedchaos

It depends - do we have individuals paying the low wage workers and not a subsidy to all low wage workers by the State? Then the problems with the libertarian plan will ruin it, that’s how the economics works. Do we have state action instead? Then the leverage of all low wage workers will be increased by other economic effects.

Source: theunitofcaring the invisible fist the iron hand policy

@discoursedrome

Honestly, from a business perspective, it’s a totally reasonable and justifiable thing to do. Many of the biggest business costs are tied to peak rather than average throughput, and the previous attempt to solve this, JIT scheduling, was drastically awful. I think the market-wisdom rationale for Uber’s surge pricing was mostly bullshit spin, but in general, you do kind of need to be able to raise prices when there’s excessive demand for an inflexible supply. So my take on it isn’t exactly “oh those capitalists sure are cartoonishly evil.”
But it’s a good example of how capitalism as a whole – and, let’s be honest, most if not all of the alternatives – is kind of horrible even when everyone is behaving reasonably. It’s economically rational for the wealthy and privileged to be charged less for most things and extended advantages others lack, and for the poor and underprivileged to be charged extra and denied opportunities. The natural effect of everyone doing the sensible thing is to exacerbate inequality in a vicious cycle, so it’s little wonder that policies that aren’t sensible have perennial appeal.

I think a lot of such issues could be managed if “we” were more clever about it. (And also had the political will.)

There are a lot more market-flexible initiatives that could be done but which simply aren’t.

We could change the overtime laws so that everyone gets overtime and it ramps up with each additional X hours over, so that businesses can push but are incentivized not to. Or a big city could auction off business start and end times over a two hour window on each side in a revenue-neutral way, spreading out the incredible load on our transit infrastructure from businesses all opening and closing at the same time.

Plans like those don’t say “you cannot,” they say “you can, however-”, which lets the effect be allocated in a more market-efficient way. Friction, rather than a hard wall.

the invisible fist policy

argumate

uk.businessinsider.com

There are almost 20,000 'ghost' homes sitting empty in London

Research from Property Partner shows London is the vacant home capital of the country, with 19,845 homes sitting idle for over six months in 2016.

Oscar Williams-Grut, Business Insider UK

commissarchrisman

The hotspot for ‘ghost’ houses — those left empty to appreciate in value — is in the affluent borough of Kensington & Chelsea in London, where 1,399 houses sit empty. The number represents an 8.5% rise on 2015 and a 22.7% rise between 2006 and 2016.

Why on Earth are any people from Grenfell still sleeping in sports halls after the disaster? London and Kensington especially is chock full of empty luxury apartments being sat on by speculators. These must be opened up immediately.

the-darkest-of-souls

Unless they’re owned by the gov you can’t just take people’s bloody property even if it’s empty that’s why

ace-pervert

thats fucked up

notyourmoderate

The problem in essence is that property owners would rather leave their property empty than to accept less than market value for rent. The question is not “no rent”, it’s “less rent”. Virtually anyone you find sleeping rough on the streets is going to have *some* degree of walking-around money, hardly anyone has literally *no* money. But, the owners of housing don’t want that money, they want market value. They believe that a better offer will come along, and if they accept a low offer they will miss their opportunity for the high offer. It’s a failing of people’s payoff-to-probability calculation.

And also it’s a failing of core concepts of how contemporary capitalism is executed. Not to go too deep into it, the crux is this: If they accept a low offer, their property is worth less. If a fork is sold for five dollars, it is worth five dollars. If a fork is sold for five cents, it is worth five cents. So marking down the rent on a property depreciates the property, marking it up appreciates the property. Because value is determined by common belief rather than any concrete consistencies, sellers try to fix the value of property high and buyers try to negotiate value low. So if one party wants to raise their profit, and one party wants to not sleep on a bench, they have similar ability to set the price but wildly disproportionate levels of need. It’s a conundrum, and there’s virtually no way to feasibly and achievably solve that problem.

argumate

set a reasonable level of land tax, then holding on to an empty house in an expensive area costs you money, encouraging you to rent it out or sell it.

mitigatedchaos

Alternatively, allow them to actually build more housing units. Japan isn’t seeing similar massive price spikes in its cities that are undergoing population growth. Send a guy over there and copy whatever it is they’re doing.

Source: commissarchrisman urban planning the invisible fist

wirehead-wannabe

soundlogic2236

That feeling when you have been clothes/shoe shopping and you want to shout in the middle of the store

Just give me a freaking nanofab already!

vessel-haver

I want to pick some shoe designs, scan my feet, and have a computer deal with everything else.

mitigatedchaos

You don’t need nanotechnology for that, and it’s only going to be about 20 years before it starts to become mainstream.

Source: soundlogic2236 mitigated future the invisible fist

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Trump just made a humiliating economic error in front of South Korea’s president

There are almost 20,000 'ghost' homes sitting empty in London

Just give me a freaking nanofab already!