[extropy-chat] Jack's right, he's not ready for reality

[Technotranscendence]

On Sunday, November 20, 2005 6:42 PM Olga Bourlin fauxever at sprynet.com
wrote:
>> ### Minimum wages and labor laws. Illegitimate
>> and destructive.
>
> Yeah, Rafal, why not go back to the days of the free
> lunch, as in "let them eat cake"?

Where did you get that from?

> And to celebrate the end of labor laws, let's take a
> nostalgic walk down memory lane:
> http://www.csun.edu/~ghy7463/mw2.html

This can all be handled by people voluntarily contracting for such
working conditions and also suing employers who provide conditions that
are unreasonably dangerous.

> And to celebrate the end of minimum wage laws,
> why not do something completely different (and
> retro-radical) and bring back the idea of working
> simply for the *privilege* of working?  With such
> work incentives and privileges, I ask you, what
> patriot would even **want** to work for wages?:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

Huh?  This has nothing to do with patriotism.  Were people in the US
before the advent of minimum wage laws all slaves?

The point is people can negotiate for whatever wages they can get from
an employer and not have a third party -- the government -- dictate what
the outcome of those negotiations are.  In essence, slavery is what?
Forcing people to do what they don't want to do, right?  If you agree
with that, then if someone wants to work for less than the government
imposed minimum wage or wants to work under rules different than the
government mandates, then why is that anyone else's business?  Forcing
her or him to do otherwise is, in essence, almost like slavery because
you're limiting her or his choices.  Now you might not like the
particular choices a person has or makes, but that's no reason to limit
that person's choices from the start.

And the end result of minimum wage laws has been unemployment.  Yes, in
the short run, there might be a boost in wages, but employers will soon
start cutting staff.  There's really no way to escape the law of supply
and demand -- not by wishful thinking or by government edict.  Put
another way, a minimum wage law does not raise the price of labor as
such.  It merely puts some laborers off the market -- anyone who labor
is not worth as much as the minimum wage.  (This has the side effect of
protecting other laborers from competition, which is why unions like
minimum wage laws.)

Regards,

Dan
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/