If people were willing to pay a fair wage for a good job then we wouldn’t have had to create laws telling people to pay a fair wage. We needed government to step in and protect people. Ironically, their rights were made clear by government intervention. If the free-market is so good, why was there such exploitation before, particularly of children? There shouldn’t have been the need for laws, right?
What in the hell is a ‘fair wage’?
Why does any business EVER pay more than the minimum wage? “Low” wages exist because resources are scarce, do you think you can just pass a law to create the food and shelter everone needs? Seriously, stop for a second and think about it.
What is the right wage for helping me out by giving me a ride to the store as a friend? Is there a right wage/payment for that? Sure you can say “friends should just help each other out there shoud be no payment” but maybe you can’t afford to take me to the store, so what is the right amount for me to pay you? I’m guessing you’d say “well that depends on the circumstances”, and the fact is there are thousands of different circumstances that could effect just this one little ride to the store, there’s no possible way government could know the right amount. So we come to an agreement that works for both of us. We each know the our own circumstances. If the government sets the “Ride to the store” wage, it will set it too low, so you decide you can’t afford to help me out, or it will set it too high, so I decide to walk to the store instead. We are forced to not come to an agreement that would help us both, we both suffer.
The only difference between the scenario above and a wage for an actual job is that there is less of an ability for either party to be negatively exploited, there is no strong bond of friendship where one party can take advantage of the others feeling of a duty to help a friend. There is only the seeking of a mutual agreement that helps both parties. A job is nothing but 2 people coming to an agreement to HELP each other. If the government passes a law mandating a certain wage or working condition, the only outcome that can lead to is FEWER people helping each other, less people employed, less production, less food, less shelter, and more people in poverty.
Lets say the government doubles the wage to all farm workers, now a lot of people want to work on farms, but the farms can afford to hire fewer people, so there is less food. In response the government decides to try the opposite and cuts farm wages in half, now the farms want to hire many more people, but no-one wants the farm jobs, again less food is produced than if they were left free. The fact is mandating a “fair wage” does nothing but hurt people, whats important is allowing incentives to lead people to produce more. Leaving people free to come to agreements that suit them will lead to more production, and less scarcity, which means less poverty.
If you are unconvinced, please reply here and state what you disagree with, and why you think it’s is wrong.
Why do you keep starting these ridiculous threads? Do you know how to use the reply buttons? Do you really think any of your arguments are valid? Have you ever composed a thought before typing words on the screen? Are you aware of the search function? Can you use google? Do you even read these responses?
“Why do you keep starting these ridiculous threads?”
Please don’t knock him for asking this question. It is a good question. One that many many people have. Just show him the truth as the previous replies are doing.
It’s Eugene’s little brother, don’t be too harsh on him.
This article called “The Trouble With Child Labor Laws” by Jeffrey Tucker covers some of your questions:
Where is the justification for wage in the first place? Labor, as a part of the self, is inalienable.
My browser ate my long post. I hate this.
First off, what do you mean by “inalienable” in this context? Second, and once again, do you mean that no one is physically able to “alienate” his labor, or do you mean that it’s only illegitimate for him to do so? And if the former, then can you prove it?
It is centanly possible to alienate (/transfer title of) one’s labor to someone else in feudalism and capitalism, but it is illegitimate because selfownership is inalienable.
You seem to be mixing descriptivity and normativity together. Let’s see if I can separate them.
You seem to be really saying that feudalism and capitalism consider it legitimate to alienate one’s labor to someone else, but you think it’s illegitimate. Does that sound right? If so, do you see how that only involves normativity?
Let’s unpack this question.
If people were willing to pay a fair wage for a good job then we wouldn’t have had to create laws telling people to pay a fair wage
Since when has the government enacted laws with the best of intentions? Do you think we went to war in the Middle East to spread democracy and freedom? Do you think Jim Crow laws were enacted with the best intentions?
These questions are strengthened by the historical fact the the progressives at the turn of the century who are so lauded for being the founders of the workers’ rights movement were themselves racist and eugenicist. They wanted to use the government as a tool of social control to marginalize groups they didn’t like. This article gives a good overview:
Further examples are the David-Bacon Act during the Great Depression and minimum wage during apartheid:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=13974
Then, perhaps, you will have the question of “well how come the government had to step in to stop businesses from discriminating against blacks in the 1960s?”
This, once again, overlooks the history of the matter and the underlying government interference that caused the problem. First of all, companies even as far back as in the 19th century had decided that segregation was expensive and that integration of the races was more economical. The problem? The state mandated separate arrangements and the courts prevented companies like railroads from integrating:
http://archive.mises.org/13502/jim-crow-government-against-market-forces/
Furthermore, while the institution of slavery is (rightly) given extensive discussion in school to show how inhumane it was, Jim Crow laws are generally merely mentioned and not studied at all, when in fact Jim Crow laws allowed slavery to essentially continue to exist within the United States. I think that even libertarians sometimes underestimate the horror that are Jim Crow laws, something I am just beginning to research. They restricted movement, employment, and general aspects of liberty we so take for granted today. They essentially made blacks the property of their owners, who could not enjoy their freedom outside of their employment. Discrimination was mandated by law. For a very long time!
If the free-market is so good, why was there such exploitation before, particularly of children? There shouldn’t have been the need for laws, right?
Because people were poor? I don’t think you understand the history of the world before the Industrial Revolution. People were POOR. Hence, they needed to have their entire family to work. Otherwise, they would STARVE. Subsistence farming isn’t fun! I’m doing my best to channel Tom Woods on this one, but here is the man himself:
Furthermore, an economic analysis of child labor laws show that they were in fact not instrumental to the removal of child labor:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.childlabor
So what was instrumental? An increase in the productivity of the public. This meant that parents could now afford to not have their children work and could instead either have them stay at home or go to school for a longer amount of time.
Here is more on child labor:
http://candlemind.com/projects/progclub/file/michael/child.php
Actually Rothbard did that. I don’t think that selfownership is inalienable because one cannot physacally alienate one’s control of the body, but because it contradictory to the priciple of selfownership (which is an ethical axiom not derived from facts of nature, but argumentation ethics).
You think that the self in alienable?
He most certainly did. I’m not a Rothbardian because of it.
Right, so you simply think it’s illegitimate for a person to abandon what you see as his inherent self-ownership, which is entirely normative in nature.
How do you see alienating self-ownership as contradictory to the principle of self-ownership?
Clearly I do. A person alienates himself (i.e. gives up all rights he purports to have over himself) if he commits suicide, for example. Whether one considers it legitimate for a person to alienate himself is another story (see the is-ought problem). Here I’m speaking descriptively, not normatively.
Now normatively speaking, I do consider it legitimate for a person to alienate his self-ownership.
How do you see alienating self-ownership as contradictory to the principle of self-ownership?
If denying principle of selfownership in an argument is a performative contradiction, then rejecting it in practice is one too. Rejecting an axiom cannot be seen as of confirmation or aplication of that axiom.
[u]Clearly I do. A person alienates himself (i.e. gives up all rights he purports to have over himself) if he commits suicide, for example. Whether one considers it legitimate for a person to alienate himself is another story (see the is-ought problem). Here I’m speaking descriptively, not normatively.
Now normatively speaking, I do consider it legitimate for a person to alienate his self-ownership.[/u]
Alienate means transfer the title (sell, rent, give as a gift). You seem to like to do that- take a specific definition of a word that you like and apply it to something else that the word in it’s other definitions doesn’t apply, coincidentally, the one’s people you talk to use, to prove them wrong (like taking the word property to mean something alienable in order to prove selfownership alienable, disregarding the contradiction stemming from the fact that property follows from selfownership).
Let’s say that alienate means give up all rights. Let’s say that suicide is self-alienation. That would not make slavery legitimate, it would make suicide illegitimate.
What are you positing as the principle of self-ownership? If I don’t believe that people always and necessarily own themselves, then certainly I’m rejecting the principle that people always and necessarily own themselves. Where do you see a performative contradiction here?
There are no right or wrong definitions - only different ones. If you don’t like the definitions I’m using, that’s fine. But I do try to indicate them explicitly.
What contradiction do you see as stemming from the notion (in place of your “fact”, which is incorrect - another instance of you running headlong into the is-ought problem) that property follows from self-ownership?
And why is that necessarily the case?
Principle of selfownership cannot be an a priori norm of argumentation if it’s not, well, a norm. NAP can be, but “aggression is wrong on almost all days, but it’s ok on tuesdays” cannot, it’s double standard makes it self-contradictory, becouse something either is or isn’t right. Likewise with your selfownership is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.
What contradiction do you see as stemming from the notion (in place of your “fact”, which is incorrect - another instance of you running headlong into the is-ought problem) that property follows from self-ownership?
As I said already "ownership of self is inalienable because alienability would make it contradictory. Property follows from selfownership (labor theory of property) and you can’t use a definition of the word property that includes alienability to show the self to be alienable, because that would make selfownership contradictory and thus impossible, making property non existant, because it would have nothing to stem from, but if property is non existant, how can then it’s definition prove the ownership of self to be alienable? Making that line of reasoning contradictory.'.
And this, too, I said already: “Saying that you can sell yourself because you own yourself, is the same as saying you can reject an axiom because you accept it - it is a plain contradition.”
And why is that necessarily the case?
If you take suicide to be a part of the meaning of self-alienation, that would mean that suicide is illegitimate because self is not legitimately alienable.
There’s no contradiction in saying “aggression is wrong except on Tuesdays” per se. But it seems like you’re treating “something either is or isn’t right” as an additional premise. That’s fine, but no one else is a priori obligated to accept it.
I think you’re confusing the notion of self-ownership, which is normative, with the notion of self-control, which is descriptive. Where do you think I said that self-ownership is sometimes right and sometimes wrong? As I see it, if a person gives up his self-ownership, then he no longer has it. For him to then claim ownership of himself would be illegitimate, sure, but since I don’t think he has self-ownership any longer, the notion that his self-ownership at that point is right or wrong strikes me as nonsensical.
Saying something is contradictory doesn’t explain how it’s contradictory. So with the above, you say that ownership of the self is inalienable because alienability would make it contradictory. But that doesn’t tell me how. It’s just an assertion with no explanation behind it. I’d really appreciate it if you’d provide an explanation.
Okay, I think I see what you’re saying here. You’re assuming that a person can’t (in the normative sense) own anything else if he doesn’t already own himself, correct? In that case, the notion of selling oneself is indeed contradictory - at least assuming that “selling oneself” entails taking ownership of what he received in exchange while he doesn’t own himself.
I recognize that, in order to exercise ownership rights one has over an external object, one must have the right to exercise himself with/over that object. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he therefore has the right to exercise himself with/over any other external object. So without the assumption that a person can’t (again in the normative sense) own anything else if he doesn’t already own himself, there’s no contradiction inherent in the notion of selling oneself. It simply means that one retains the right to exercise himself with/over what he receives in exchange, but nothing else.
Assuming (because it is an assumption, like all normative propositions) that the self isn’t legitimately alienable, of course. If one assumes otherwise, then one must logically find suicide to be legitimate.
Let us not forget that the government not only allowed the exploitation of African slaves in America, but also forced those slaves to be returned to their masters if they escaped.