[lemmsjid]

Agreed. It reminds me of one of the lessons of capitalism--how Henry Ford increased the wages of his workers so that they could buy his cars, thus benefiting them and himself. He did so because he didn't have a sufficiently large body of consumers for his goods. This is seen as an example of how capitalism is ultimately motivated to uplift all people to consumer status.

The problem is when the chain of supply and demand grows longer and longer (i.e. covers more distance in terms of culture, national borders, multinational markets, etc), as it does today. In the modern era, what if Henry Ford's factory was in a third world country? There would be no shortage of first world consumers of Ford's products, so in that scenario there is no capitalist incentive to raise the workers' wages. Especially since the first world consumers are buying the products for the very reason that Ford is paying wages impossibly below first world pay scales.

This scenario is also not without precedent, for what it is is the isolation and exploitation of one population in favor of another population, which is a colonialist scenario (as opposed to a Marxist scenario where classes are stratified in a single society). In such a scenario, nothing capitalistically motivated will come to the aid of the exploited population until a very long chain of supply and demand has been unwound.

[philwelch]

Ford raised wages so he could hire the best workers and retain them in a competitive hiring environment in a growing industry. The main reason his workers could afford his car wasn't because they were paid so much, but rather because Ford reduced his production costs overall so that the car cost so little. A lot of that probably had to do with being able to demand a lot from his workers because he could hire the best factory workers.

Paying your workers enough to buy your own products is mathematically impossible to profit from--they're just paying you back money you paid them in the first place, and they can't pay you more than 100% of their salary, so you always pay them more than they pay you.