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by onraglanroad 253 days ago
> It is indeed pretty impossible to fire people

It isn't really. In fact, it's usually very easy: you just have to follow the exact procedure that is written down for you.

Every example I've seen when people have claimed differently, they haven't followed that procedure. Literally every time.

1 comments

It’s very easy: spend an insane amount of money, usually at a time when your business can’t afford it.
That's not how it works. You just can't fire at will.

If your business can't afford to fire people it probably shouldn't be hiring too.

How do you know at the time of hiring that months or years down the road the business won’t go well?
Isn't that part of the job of being in top management? Being paid millions of bucks for your skills that should tell what your business need?

If the signs are showing that you might need to fire people, you need to think and work for that: set enough money aside to pay for severance and/or buy-outs, not just decide "oh shit, I can't pay them, and I can't pay what is needed for me to fire them", that's just incompetence.

The way you present this is like business leaders are victims that were helpless on forecasting what their businesses need, which is exactly their fucking job to do.

If you are a business owner, the business doing well is your fucking job. If you can't do your job you should fail.

What you want is the freedom to be shitty at running your company, and offload your incompetence by exploiting the workers under you.

It’s not “you” failing. If your business fails, everybody gets fired. Why is everybody getting fired better than firing a few people?
If the business fails, the owners will have to use their assets to adequately compensate the employees according to what they are owed, and the employees are free to find another job.

Let's not mince words here - if the business fails it was because of the incompetence of those managing it, and it would fail whether or not it was treating employees unfairly. I won't accept this as an excuse to erode labor rights.

Moreover, what weak-ass crybaby rhetoric is that now? I always hear that business owners should earn more because they take risks. Failing is a very real possibility when you take risks. If you don't want to take risks just don't start a business.

Your problem, not mine, lol.
Actually it’s everybody’s problem, since job inflexibility is one of the reasons why Europe is so poor compared to other first world countries.

Who exactly benefits from a business going under? Its bigger competitors? The less well off are the ones that suffer the most from oligarchic sectors and cartels.

> Europe is so poor compared to other first world countries.

By GDP per capita, 7 of the top 10 countries in the world are European.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Given this fact, will you now question your priors, or try to find a new justification for them?

> Actually it’s everybody’s problem, since job inflexibility is one of the reasons why Europe is so poor compared to other first world countries.

Except it is not. I chose to live in the EU when I had the option to move to the US, and it is fine.

Unless your measurement of "being poor" is that you can't exploit people in a get rich quick scheme and make destructive amounts of money but being acquired or dumping your IPO in the stock market.

>Europe is so poor compared to other first world countries.

is it?

>Who exactly benefits from a business going under? Its bigger competitors? The less well off are the ones that suffer the most from oligarchic sectors and cartels.

The big thing going under right now is legacy auto manufacturers in Germany. That's sad, but the same happened in US without all the labor protections. It's just a lifecycle of industries -- they got fat and comfortable.

The way German manufacturers managed to outlive US ones while having stronger labor laws seems to contradict you story big time.