[monster_truck]

Perhaps if we taxed the billionaires more we could subsidize increased wages for small business owners or even do something actually good like provide universal basic income so that they cannot be so easily exploited for wildly undervalued labor

[WalterBright]

The value of labor is what people are willing to pay for it.

[actionfromafar]

... what people are willing to pay for it... when the corporations already achieved regulatory capture and can force a partly state subsidized work force to take shit underpaid jobs. It's like a handout to corporations.

[anigbrowl]

Deliberately underpaying people and then telling them their work has low value is one of the most disgusting aspects of capitalists. There's lots of CEOs who are not especially productive, they just have leverage.

[WalterBright]

The government tries hard to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, but so far has failed 100% of the time. The government can implement wage and price controls, but those still do not set the actual value.

For example, in the USSR, the price of bread was fixed by the state. But the real price of bread was how long you were willing to wait in line for it.

BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. Workers can choose to work for you, or not.

[ben_w]

Governments are on both sides of supply and demand: their powers to tax and spend mean they can put their metaphorical foot on the metaphorical scales to tip the balances whichever way they want, to a large degree, with rapid effect.

Central planning is only one of many ways to do this, it can also be managed more locally; and Soviet-style central planning is only one many ways to do central planning, most large businesses even in capitalist nations are also somewhat-centrally planned by the C-suite.

[WalterBright]

Corporations do do central planning, but they do so at the high risk of becoming unmanageable and then they fall, and a competitor replaces them. Government central planning just raises taxes to cover the inefficiencies, until eventually the economy collapses.

[ben_w]

That's a similarity, not a difference.

Even regarding the scale of the organisation, there is lots of overlap between governments — at all levels, from countries, through states, to incorporated municipal governments — and businesses. You could reasonably compare Foxconn to Iceland or Wyoming (I would also list a US city, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP gives me a lot of US Metropolitan Statistical Areas rather than cities, that seems like it would extend beyond the bit with the tax collection rules?)

Even governments get bailouts and/or bankruptcies, both from above (e.g. https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2012/07/13...), and from outside (e.g. Greece).

And corporations, when big enough, become monopolies, and raise prices to cover inefficiencies, until something breaks.

[tpxl]

> but so far has failed 100% of the time

Labor rights have been a raging success. 40 hour work weeks, minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave (in non-shithole countries).

>BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to.

What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Free market is a free market only when there is competition based on the product, not how rich your investors are.

There is evidence the workers are being exploited everywhere if you bother to spend a second looking. Like the parent said, your apologism of capitalists is disgusting.

[ekianjo]

> Labor rights have been a raging success

so much success that now you need two working adults to support a family of 4 while 60 years ago a working man could support a much larger family with a single income.

[nickpp]

> What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion?

Funny you should ask. There was a famous case from the beginning of the last century where German bromide producers price-dumped it the U.S. in an effort to undermine Dow's efforts in the same direction. The result? They failed miserably.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Chemical_Company

> your apologism of capitalists is disgusting

Free market capitalism is the only system proven to work, over and over again. It brought billions out of poverty and it still does to this very day, when allowed to work, of course.

If you find that disgusting - I am guessing you are a big fan of poverty. I would prefer a world in which everyone is rather rich (or at least well off), a world that no system other than capitalism is even close to providing.

[ben_w]

> Free market capitalism is the only system proven to work, over and over again. It brought billions out of poverty and it still does to this very day, when allowed to work, of course.

Capitalism? Yes.

"Free market capitalism"? No.

While regulated capitalism is very effective at aligning everyone's interests, a free market operates without the intervention of government or any other external authority, and rapidly decays into a market for lemons[0] — or worse, arbitrarily negative contractual obligations, which is how serfdom functioned.

Even when the governments start off by only intervening to prevent those two issues, with minimum quality requirements and prohibitions against unfair contracts, they often find themselves having to also intervene directly in the markets, everything from the US ban on trading onion futures[1] to printing and destroying currency to keep inflation in a particular range designed to encourage the spending of money rather than its hoarding on the one hand without also preventing people from saving on the other, and even to intervene in the employment market because 100% employment drives a spiral of wage inflation that the system as a whole would not be able to cope with etc. etc.

Same deal as the Laffer curve: zero regulation is bad, micromanagement is bad, people argue about where the peak in the middle is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

[9rx]

> Free market capitalism is the only system proven to work, over and over again.

How come nobody practices it, then? In fact, right now the world's biggest economy is doubling down on trade restrictions.

[TimorousBestie]

> Free market capitalism is the only system proven to work, over and over again.

Name a country that in 2025 practices free market capitalism.

> If you find that disgusting - I am guessing you are a big fan of poverty.

An aggressively rude misreading of the GP.

[WalterBright]

> your apologism of capitalists is disgusting

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!

BTW, you might enjoy watching the movie Silk Stockings.