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by gojomo
5221 days ago
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So having no job is better than a low-paying job, in your analysis? Brazil has a minimum wage. If it's not enforceable maybe that's because it's based on wishful thinking, pandering to those with an unrealistic mental models, rather than what's sustainable. These 'vast marginal neighborhoods that no one wants to live in', they are empty ghost towns because no one wants to be there? I don't think so. And the favelas would just disappear if the firm-handed authorities were just a bit more insistent everyone get paid more (or nothing at all!)? Rich societies can afford nice neighborhoods and rigorous building codes. Societies get rich by accepting every opportunity for voluntary coordination and incremental improvement. Societies stay poor by enacting showoff policies that appear generous but destroy more productivity than they enable, satisfying the aesthetic hopes of comfortable do-gooders, but trapping the really poor. |
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Perhaps yes.
A price is a signal. As with any restriction on free speech, outlawing certain prices (low wages) should show a clear and easily demonstrated social benefit.
In this case, private free enterprise is clearly harmed, but the benefit returned to society is an intangible, a void: society receives only the absence or reduction of sweatshop working conditions.
I think we are actually in violent agreement on most of these issues.
The major exception, I think, is that I am deeply skeptical of a society's ability to check the worst behaviors of private corporations. I believe that certain entire business models are better legislated against and rendered completely illegal, to prevent regulatory capture [0].
EDIT: This view seems to be controversial. May I suggest a little light reading? [1]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle