[chongli]

OK, what are you looking for? Rich people get one shot at doing something, and if they fail, the government comes riding in and takes all their stuff?

I can't speak for the person you replied to, but how about this? Less downside for the workers. We're talking about thousands of people losing their jobs. These people then go into a smaller labour market where they compete with other vulnerable retail workers, affecting far more people.

If we want an appropriate measure of downside in a situation like this, we should look at all of the externalities. Few people ever do, though, and society marches on.

[jerf]

"We're talking about thousands of people losing their jobs. These people then go into a smaller labour market where they compete with other vulnerable retail workers, affecting far more people."

Expand your time horizon a bit. Having freed up the malinvested resources, other enterprises will arise which will hire them, at jobs that are now almost by definition more solid than the one they left behind, since the one they left behind couldn't sustain itself.

"But what if they can't wait around?" They don't necessarily have to. The job market is not so tight that one job has to instantly open up as soon as one person is fired. There is some fluidity in it. The only place there will be any particular trouble would be around the HQ of Toys R Us; the individual stores are going to be in economies where the store going out of business is just a tiny blip hardly affecting the local retail employment environment.

"But what about the permanently unemployed?" Well, if you're used to the "new normal", be sure to have a look at the current unemployment trends before getting too far into that sort of argument.

And you have to consider the flip side as well. What if you got to go to work for Toys R Us, and it was guaranteed that you would be employed indefinitely there no matter how badly things went for Toys R Us? Sweet deal, right? Well, sure, but it's not going to be unique to Toys R Us, right? It's going to be the deal for everybody. We've got experience with what that "sweet deal" produces; read about the Soviet Union's economy. Would you rather have to find a new job every so often and live in the US, or be stuck in the Soviet Union? We don't have to hypothesize the answer to that; people are still falling over themselves to get into the US.

It is vital that people understand that creative destruction trades some short-term inconvenience for massive long term wins, lest we foolishly legislate short-term conveniences for massive long-term losses because we collectively stopped understanding the full story.

[kelleoeo]

Employed to what end is a question you seem to not be asking at all

Continue piling onto the stash already very wealthy people have is primarily all this economic activity is accomplishing now as they crater retirements, cut healthcare or inflate prices out of the reach of the majority (which globally ~80% lives on ~2.50/day.)

What’s the point of 40-50+ hrs a week for me now if some whithered old geezer can change a law and flush the effort down the drain

How about meet basic utilitarian needs of food and healthcare, common ones of all humans, in the domain of the government

And what we spend on time on otherwise is up to us. Let’s all punch a clock to make earrings and baubles to support the ephemeral economy? Why does one need to be compelled to make consumer garbage? Oh cause stock prices or we can’t anger a small portion of the population: rich people

They have no divine right to wealth you know?

It’s self eating shitshow of stupid ideas that reinforce stupid ideas.

Steve Jobs is right: none of the rich are any smarter or more capable than your avg college grad. They just got lucky sooner

[harryh]

Poorly performing companies going out of business in order for new, better companies to flourish is a necessary step for the creation of a healthy job market.

[smcl]

It probably feels very good to type a comment like that while imagining some invisible force gently guiding these newly unemployed people to their new careers. However in reality thousands of people have now lost their income and likely their health insurance, and will have to compete in what in many places is a pretty brutal and not at all healthy job market.

It sucks, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it ... but pretending that this is actually a good thing for anyone but a handful of rich guys who will have made out like bandits on the whole debacle is just fantasy.

[airstrike]

Economics isn't something you can just fabricate an opinion on. There are countless academics who have actually studied the labor market who would correct you if you would spend any time trying to learn rather than pontificate. This isn't subjective.

[smcl]

I know many economists would disagree with me - they're the same who would also be OK with the decline of industry in places like the north of England and the Rust Belt and would point to the overall raise in the GDP per capita and the rise of the service sector and say that this roughly cancels this out. However they can afford to treat the country like a big "system" and can ignore the plight of the individuals who have been left behind in this system and the communities where they live.

The main thing is that just I hate that otherwise smart people find it so easy to "other" a big group of people and find ways to back their belief that ultimately this groups suffering is just and good. It's not. As I said, maybe we can't do anything about it ... but the least we can do is not be so fucking smug about it.

Rant over.

[airstrike]

> and say that this roughly cancels this out. However they can afford to treat the country like a big "system" and can ignore the plight of the individuals who have been left behind in this system and the communities where they live.

You're missing the big picture. People in e.g. China are better off now because they are enjoying the upside from wage growth. Americans enjoyed this in the 1950s, but the ensuing globalization meant the improvement in wages would go to the lowest paid workers. In theory, once developing nations reach the same minimum wage as the U.S., American workers will start reaping the rewards of increased wages. In the meantime, Americans can pat themselves on the back for having a strong currency, cheap products made with cheap Asian labor, a great justice system, and employment and education opportunities galore.

The globalization genie is out of the bottle. It's not a matter of being able to afford to think the country as a big system -- you're the one who's myopically looking at it from the perspective of a cherry-picked subset of workers.

Americans can either wait until the developing nations catch up or they can invest in education (and write legislation) to bring more workers into the 21st century. Swimming against the tide of globalization is akin to fighting the Industrial Revolution -- I suggest giving up on that idea.

[kelleoeo]

Actually economics are exactly that

Capitalism have built assumptions to its origins that protect capital holder: divine right was often used in the era of its origin

The US Constitution considered landowners above others due to them contemporary belief of divine rights

Our contemporary system is built upon historical record

There’s historical record that plainly shows humans deciding to write a law this way because it favors company X or ideology Y

There’s plain historical record that shows obstructionism to social evolution in favor of entrenched players

And scholars and academics measure THOSE results

So your argument is based upon built in bullshit

Economists have been PAID to peddle bullshit, corrupting their facts

My god I can’t even. Is this really what they teach in college now? Economics and physics are one and the same despite a ... there are decades of government documents detailing their collusion and manipulation of invention and investment for the benefit of power players

But yeah our contemporary economy is a greenfield implementation lol

[harryh]

The job market is actually pretty healthy right now. Unemployment is nearing a 45 year low and prime age labor force participation rate has been on the upswing for about 3 years. We're also starting to see some growth in wages which is nice.

And sure, it's weird to contrast a theory of firm destruction being necessary for a vibrant economy with the reality of individuals you can point to losing their jobs but the fact remains that doesn't really distract from the truth of my statements. Just because it's a bit harder to point at specific individuals who will benefit from the demise of Toys R Us doesn't mean the link isn't real.

[munificent]

> prime age labor force participation rate has been on the upswing for about 3 years.

...which is still lower than it's been since 1986 [1], and is significantly lower than Australia, Japan, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, and Sweden [2].

[1]: https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet (set from to 1948 and click "Go")

[2]: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/12/raw-data-the-...

[chongli]

I don't see it. Working at Toys R Us may not have been great, fine, but it sure beats pissing in bottles in a sweltering/freezing Amazon warehouse.

Amazon is a lot more profitable than Toys R Us ever was but that doesn't mean they make the job market, let alone society, healthier.

[harryh]

I bet you spend more money at Amazon than you did at Toys R Us. You might not see it, but your wallet does.

[chongli]

Yes, and I can complain about sweatshops in India and Bangladesh without foregoing clothes. Appeals to hypocrisy are the weakest sort of argument.

[harryh]

It was not intended an appeal to hypocrisy. It was demonstrating that a lot of people (including you and me) get a tremendous amount of value out of Amazon and society is healthier as a result.

[refurb]

Toys R Us was going under if this LBO didn't happen.

So in essence they are no worse off than if it didn't happen.