The natural minimum wage that the market determines (absent all regulations) is $0 per hour and is called slavery. Enlightened people have moved passed the idea that the “market” alone should determine the minimum wage.
Exactly. Ever heard of scrip[0]? We have historical proof that companies won't even pay their employees with real money unless the government mandates that they do so.
> We have historical proof that companies won't even pay their employees with real money unless the government mandates that they do so.
Well, we have historical proof that nearly all companies do pay with real money in the total absence of such government mandates. We definitely don't have proof of the proposition you claim, which is immediately falsified by the most cursory examination of history.
Note also that scrip is denominated in currency and accepted at par. The problem was generally not that you had a lot of scrip and couldn't spend it; the problem was that the company store charged high prices. But the store charged the same prices whether you were spending company scrip or currency.
Someone will want to enslave people. This has been so for almost all of history for sufficiently large civilizations. In general humans exploit one another when they can get away with it. In the absence of government/societal regulations slavery will occur and thus the “market” minimum wage is 0.
Government regulations can be good and they can be bad. In enlightened countries enough good ones are in place to prevent a minimum wage of 0.
> In the absence of government/societal regulations slavery will occur
Slavery cannot occur in the absence of governmental and societal regulations, because in that case there's nothing stopping the slaves from leaving. Any such obstacle would be a governmental or societal regulation.
> and thus the “market” minimum wage is 0.
Slaves are paid much more than zero wages. In every culture, a slave in a good position is much better off economically than a freeman in a bad position.
… because in that case there's nothing stopping the slaves from leaving
Obviously this is false and you can find examples of people being enslaved in countries where it is outlawed. There are plenty of examples of an enslaved person being prevented from escaping even in the presence of laws prohibiting slavery. It’s as if you don’t understand human behavior.
You have a fanciful notion of slavery and what it entails. In another thread you bring up cases where the enslaved had it “good” and act as if this is normative in such circumstances. I am thankful views such are yours are no longer acceptable to most people. Within in your views on this topic one will not find common sense or decency.
That you find it worth your time to try to convince people of the benefits of slavery says much about you and nothing about slavery.
> There are plenty of examples of an enslaved person being prevented from escaping even in the presence of laws prohibiting slavery. It’s as if you don’t understand human behavior.
Or perhaps it's as if I'm labeling that prevention a "societal regulation". Go look at my comment again.
There are countries in Europe which do not have a minimum wage mandated by the law - rather, it's the unions that negotiate them - and they still end up with more than people get in US. I guess you could term such negotiations "regulation", but it'd be really stretching it.
Regulating a broken system is an exercise in futility. We need a system in which the feedback loops produce the desired outcomes in the first place.
I’m pretty sure slavery is outlawed in all European countries so that alone prevents a 0 minimum wage. That itself is a regulation. There are lots of “regulations” (government interventions) that prevent a zero minimum wage. Indeed the legal protections and regulations regarding unions, social programs for the unemployed, universal healthcare, etc. all contribute to an environment where the lowest wage isn’t zero. It is not a stretch at all to say that the legal infrastructure surrounding unions and requirements surrounding dealing with them count as “regulation”.
There are lots of instances where regulations fixed a broken system. Government regulations fixed the broke system of using child labor and fixed the broken system of slavery.
Does that mean open source work should count as slavery? You're right that the natural minimum wage is zero, but there's more to slavery than simply being paid nothing. I would think the enlightened you speak of would also know the difference between volition and compulsion.
I do not at all understand the reason for your response. Do you really think that I was saying that doing something for free is always a form of slavery? I think it’s obvious the meaning and intent of what I wrote and only a disingenuous interpretation could have led you to respond as you did.
Please stop with the motte and bailey. I interpreted what you wrote and what you wrote was itself disingenuous. You stated that a zero-dollar income in a laissez faire market is sufficient to render anyone earning that amount a slave. You made no exceptions. As to the claim that the "more enlightened" are those who would reject the laissez-faire system, you've presented no credible evidence to that either.
Obviously it was a whimsical way of saying “slavery is the natural minimum wage” in the absence of all regulations (which is a proxy for government/societal interventions). Some person/company will be willing to enslave people if they can get away with it. Clearly volunteering is not what people mean by “working for $0 per hour”. This is obvious to anyone who reads what I wrote without being disingenuous. Equally obvious is that a laissez-faire system is neither possible, desirable, or scalable. I won’t convince you of this and you won’t convince me otherwise.
You are free to desire to live in a world where a wage of 0 is a reasonable thing for an employer to pay. Fortunately for me people like you have little chance of seeing this desire come to fruition. There is no point in responding further but I will read and contemplate whatever response you decide to make.
> Obviously it was a whimsical way of saying “slavery is the natural minimum wage” in the absence of all regulations (which is a proxy for government/societal interventions).
Then you should have said that to begin with. It shouldn't be incumbent on me to account for whimsy botching one's meaning.
> Some person/company will be willing to enslave people if they can get away with it.
Enslavement doesn't require a coherent political or economic philosophy. Hobbes has already proven that. Even governments have and continue to enslave people. I don't see how regulations solve that as governments have no higher power to answer to, except perhaps for atom bombs.
That some company may violate an individual's rights in a laissez-faire system does not itself prove that enslavement is an inevitable outcome of such a system. That is a false induction.
> Clearly volunteering is not what people mean by “working for $0 per hour”. This is obvious to anyone who reads what I wrote without being disingenuous.
What difference is there between volunteering and working for $0 an hour exactly? If one volunteers for an organization, that does not mean that one lacks a de facto or de jure employer. One may still need to sign a contract and still be required to perform tasks to a certain standard. Volunteer work is not required to be accepted indiscriminately.
> Equally obvious is that a laissez-faire system is neither possible, desirable, or scalable. I won’t convince you of this and you won’t convince me otherwise.
You and I benefit from one of the great successes of laissez-faire capitalism: the commercial Internet. It's obviously possible (in fact, it has already succeeded for the past 30 years), desirable, and nearly infinitely scalable.
> You are free to desire to live in a world where a wage of 0 is a reasonable thing for an employer to pay. Fortunately for me people like you have little chance of seeing this desire come to fruition. There is no point in responding further but I will read and contemplate whatever response you decide to make.
A wage of zero is a reasonable wage for the employer and employee to agree upon. What is not reasonable is forcing someone to accept a wage of zero under duress or threat of force.
That's wrong; much of it is wages. Sometimes those wages are paid in cash, but in the more common case where they aren't, the slaves still get paid in food, clothing, and housing. Each of those is a direct transfer of value to the slave.
> the slaves still get paid in food, clothing, and housing.
If those are in the form of earned compensation to which the slave is entitled (which, sure, along with actual wages is common in some historical forms of slavery, but not really the norm in chattel slavery), they are benefits, not wages. If they are (as is typically the case with chattel slavery) discretionary items given at the pleasure of the employer based on the perceived future value to the employer of the worker having them now, they are just maintenance costs of the slave as an industrial machine.
> If those are in the form of earned compensation to which the slave is entitled (which, sure, along with actual wages is common in some historical forms of slavery, but not really the norm in chattel slavery), they are benefits, not wages.
Pure sophistry. There is no reason to call the same thing by two different names. Ask the IRS whether the food and housing your employer gives you count as wages.
> If they are (as is typically the case with chattel slavery) discretionary items given at the pleasure of the employer based on the perceived future value to the employer of the worker having them now, they are just maintenance costs of the slave as an industrial machine.
Not much better. The transfer of valuable goods to a slave is a maintenance cost in exactly the same way that the transfer of valuable goods to an employee is a maintenance cost. Nobody's paying salaries out of the goodness of their hearts; they pay salaries because that's what it costs to have work done.
> Ask the IRS whether the food and housing your employer gives you count as wages.
Ok, but, that works against you, because it is never counted as wages.
If it is provided to attract or retain employees it is treated as a taxable fringe benefit.
If it is provided on the employer’s business premises, for the employer’s convenience, as a condition of employment, it is not taxed for the employee at all.
I don't know where you get that idea. In the historical Deep South of the US, slaves had to work the plantation all day without pay, then go home and grow their own food on the worst strips of land not deemed worth cultivating by their owners.
Traditional African American foods, like hog jowls and chitterlings, were based on the discards that White slave owners would not eat.
> In the historical Deep South of the US, slaves had to work the plantation all day without pay, then go home and grow their own food on the worst strips of land not deemed worth cultivating by their owners.
This is fairly thoughtless modern propaganda, not a description of the historical Deep South.
Some quotes from Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery:
> "Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote James H. Hammond to his overseer, "as it adds to the comfort, happiness, and health of those entering upon it, besides insuring a greater increase." The economic inducements for marriage generally included a house, a private plot of land which the family could work on its own, and, frequently, a bounty either in cash or in household goods.
> about 6 percent of slaves worked in towns, and 20 percent of those living on plantations were employed as artisans and semiskilled workers of various sorts.
> The belief that the typical slave was poorly fed is without foundation in fact.
> More careful reading of plantation documents shows that the slave diet included many foods in addition to corn and pork. Among the other plantation products which slaves consumed were beef, mutton, chickens, milk, turnips, peas, squashes, sweet potatoes, apples, plums, oranges, pumpkins, and peaches. Certain foods not produced on most plantations were frequently purchased for slave consumption, including salt, sugar, and molasses. Less frequent, but not uncommon, purchases for slaves included fish, coffee, and whiskey.
> the average daily diet of slaves was quite substantial. The energy value of their diet exceeded that of free men in 1879 by more than 10 percent. There was no deficiency in the amount of meat allotted to slaves. On average, they consumed six ounces of meat per day, just an ounce lower than the average quantity of meat consumed by the free population.
> The high slave consumption of meat, sweet potatoes, and peas goes a long way toward explaining the astounding results shown in figure 34. The slave diet was not only adequate, it actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients.
> The most systematic housing information comes from the census of 1860, which included a count of slave houses. These census data show that on average there were 5.2 slaves per house on large plantations. The number of persons per free household in 1860 was 5.3. Thus, like free men, most slaves lived in single-family households.
> Descriptions in plantation records and travelers' accounts are fragmentary. They suggest a considerable range in the quality of housing. The best were three- or four-room cottages, of wood frame, brick, or stone construction, with up to eight hundred square feet of space on the inside, and large porches on the outside. Such cottages had brick or stone chimneys and glazed windows. At the other pole were single-room log cabins without windows. Chimneys were constructed of twigs and clay; floors were either earthen or made of planks resting directly on the earth.
> the houses of slaves compared well with the housing of free workers in the antebellum era. It must be remembered that much of rural America still lived in log cabins in the 1850s. And urban workers lived in crowded, filthy tenements.
> When slaves worked at times normally set aside for rest, they received extra pay -- usually in cash and at the rate prevailing in the region for hired labor. Slaves who were performing well were permitted to work on their own account after normal hours at such tasks as making shingles or weaving baskets, articles which they could sell either to their masters or to farmers in the neighborhood.
> Year-end bonuses, given either in goods or cash, were frequently quite substantial. Bennet Barrow, for example, distributed gifts averaging between $15 and $20 per slave family in both 1839 and 1840. The amounts received by particular slaves were proportional to their performance. It should be noted that $20 was about a fifth of national per capita income in 1840.
> Masters also rewarded slaves who performed well with patches of land ranging up to a few acres for each family. Slaves grew marketable crops on these lands, the proceeds of which accrued to them. On the Texas plantation of Julian S. Devereux, slaves operating such land produced as much as two bales of cotton per patch. Devereux marketed their crop along with his own. In a good year some of the slaves earned in excess of $100 per annum for their families. Devereux set up accounts to which he credited the proceeds of the sales. Slaves drew on these accounts when they wanted cash or when they wanted Devereux to purchase clothing, pots, pans, tobacco, or similar goods for them.
I'm sure it varied considerably. I'm certainly no subject matter expert.
I know there was a historical uprising someplace where slaves objected to plans to set them free. I'm unfamiliar with the details.
There is also the fact in some of the Caribbean islands, slavery was so harsh that average life expectancy was 3 years at one point, IIRC. They outlawed the importation of slaves well before they outlawed slavery and during that period the slave population shrank. They were not reproducing fast enough to hit replacement levels.
I read two or three books on the situation in the island or islands in question. Scholars speculate that slaves must have been using some means of herbal birth control as a protest to bringing children into such harsh conditions.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip#Company_scrip