[threepipeproblm]

Okay, babygoat, you're not familiar with Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, which is the allusion here. Granted it's an obscure one... but one many who have been introduced to this question (wage and price controls) academically would be familiar.

Nozick made a classic argument about how naive concepts of social justice are incompatible with a system in which everyday economic transactions made by free will can be honored. He used the wealth of Wilt Chamberlain as an example (although his argument was actually concerned with wage ceilings, the same thinking applies to wage floors).

You can insert the words "for example" before "basketball player," or fill in another profession if you need this to be an argument. I wasn't really trying to make one, because the burden of argument isn't on me.

When someone claims that capitalism requires coercion in order to pay high salaries, the burden is on them to explain why so many high salaries exist, sans coercion, under capitalism. Or why wages have generally been higher in capitalist countries.

Another problem with wage floors (coercing higher wages) is that -- to the extent they are effective -- they inevitably create surpluses. For example, requiring every fast food worker to be paid $30 an hour would create a shortage of fast food (by the economic definition). Requiring every programmer to be paid $200,000 would create a shortage of programming.

[cornholio]

The primary mechanism for wealth redistribution in capitalism to which I was referring to in the original post was quality and productivity improvements and the resulting lower prices and exponential increase in the quality of life of the poor. The exploited workers of China have access to healthcare, communication, education and transportation that dwarf anything a king could have dreamed of 400 years ago. And these developments are strongly related to market incentives and the free flow of capital.

That's not to say the income distribution aspect is not important, it's another side of the same issue of class relations. But I don't think a claim can be made that capitalism itself is a strong factor of income redistribution. And in the short run, distribution is the only thing that maters to workers.

Crucially, capitalist redistribution, to the degree it works without state intervention, is strongly related to the value of the human capital each person is born with or can acquire in life - it's no coincidence that massive public investments in education were strongly related to increasing equality. Once human capital becomes relatively devalued by thinking machines that can do more and more complex things ever cheaper and faster, we will pass biological limit when workers no longer have anything to bring to the negotiating table: they need the products of capitalism but can no longer capture a meaningful fraction of the income in relation to capital, nor can they amass significant capital due to diseconomies of scale.

The feudal model is thus appropriate: all-powerful lords waging war over turf, a cast of mercenaries fighting the war (knowledge workers and specialized professionals) and a vast mass of peons.

[donquichotte]

"When someone claims that capitalism requires coercion in order to pay high salaries, the burden is on them to explain why so many high salaries exist, sans coercion, under capitalism."

I was trying to make an argument that in capitalist countries without worker protection laws like minimum wage, holidays, worker safety regulations, retirement etc (think China, industrialization-aera Europe), workers tend to be exploited by their employers, rather than receiving part of the wealth they help generate.

[threepipeproblm]

donquichotte, I figured your position was more nuanced than the original comment let on... sorry for being abrupt.

As long as we can define capitalism as the freedom to buy and sell legal goods and one services on whatever prices/terms one wishes, my own conclusion has been the when companies are in a position to exploit workers it's typically because of a lack of free enterprise and not the other way around. I can see why people who think the cause is free enterprise would want to further regulate.

But inevitably when you find powerful exploitative corporations you can dig a little and find that it's usually because they are not operating on a level playing field... the huge exploitative entity is only possible because someone's economic freedom is being restricted somewhere. Typically by writing regulation in their favor -- both in industry-specific ways and with corporate law in general.

The thing to do is to strip away their unfair advantages, not to allow the beasts to exist and "regulate". Because small businesses have a hard time coping with the cost of even well-intended regulation you can end up having the opposite effect. And the regulators end up becoming complicit.