I have very little in common with the arguments of the Leave Campaign, and in particular reject the anti-immigration thrust of the Campaign. However, I welcome Brexit as offering an enhanced ability and chance to experiment with new policies that dare more economic freedom.
We need more entrepreneurial freedom to creatively exploit the opportunities of our burgeoning technological age, accelerate progress. The tendency of the EU to regulate and ‘harmonize’ more and more aspects of social and economic life in the name of protecting citizens and in the name of creating a level economic playing field is paralysing entrepreneurial innovation and leads to stagnation. The UK society and economy can now escape from this paralysing embrace of the EU’s one-fits-all the next prosperity potentials of our civilisation can only be explored and discovered if the straight jacket of the nanny state is gradually loosened and dismantled.interventionist regulatory overreach. Whether it will make decisive steps in this direction is of course another question. There is no guarantee, but now there is at least this possibility which did not exist within the EU frame. I believe that all the seemingly entrenched societal problems of our time—endemic unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, the so-called housing crisis, retirement finance crisis, social mobility crisis etc. etc. are so many invitations for an unleashed entrepreneurial problem solving creativity, once the state gets out of the way.
I am convinced that the next prosperity potentials of our civilisation can only be explored and discovered if the straight jacket of the nanny state is gradually loosened and dismantled. (The bigger the scale of a country or block, the easier it becomes for the state to expand its scope. That’s why I favour small countries: they must keep their state action small in scope and cannot afford to erect trade barriers or impose heavy tax and regulatory burdens.) It’s time to roll back the state and for us to take the risk of giving more freedom and self-responsibility to us all, unleashing entrepreneurial creativity, organisational experimentation as well as individual aspiration and empowerment. I think we are ready and well equipped for this, at least in the most advanced societies and in the most advanced arenas of the world economy. One-fits-all rules are not the way to create a fair, meritocratic, competitive, level playing field. The inevitably differentiated world societal landscape needs adaptive elbow room everywhere. If the same rules are imposed on different contexts then there can be no fair competition at all. Real competition requires real freedoms. If the most advanced arenas impose their standards on less advanced arenas then they only protect themselves via political (police) means, avoiding economic competition. Gladly the UK still has less restrictive employment rules than EU countries like Germany, France, Italy and Austria. A firm like ZHA does not exist and could not exist in Germany. I cannot imagine how we could stay cutting edge, if each redundancy round The only real effective protection of employees is an unhampered and therefore fluid employment marketwould leave us not with the people we most value but with the people protected by the prescribed social indicators.
I believe the whole approach of trying to protect employees via the imposition of rules is misconceived and backfires to the detriment of all. The only real effective protection of employees is an unhampered and therefore fluid employment market, where employees find plentiful alternative work opportunities or find it is free and easy to set up shop themselves, due to a very liberal business environment. Labour markets will be rich and fluid when firms no longer have to anticipate paralysing difficulties to sever relations if things do not work out, and where all are freely creative in their contracting offers and can freely compete and improve accordingly. In contrast an overregulated labour market is a frozen labour market where holding a job becomes an entrenched privilege and reinforces the unproductive mentality to hold tight even if satisfaction is missing on both sides of the employment bond. Protections, e.g. anti-discrimination laws, came in far too late, after real discrimination had already disappeared in the advanced countries and the respective protections (prescribing what nobody violates) seem to have largely degenerated into a tool for routine abuse by those who cannot or will not perform. (Discrimination goes against the vital incentives of employers for whom only merit delivering market-measured success can count and therefore always and everywhere emerged from the workforce itself rather than from the employers’ side.) The UK has only been semi-independent from the EU’s restrictive tendencies, and the results of EU employment dispute cases have until now been feeding into UK case law. Generally, my view is that the law should arbitrate freely contracted relations rather than imposing universal standards that constrain voluntary arrangements and arrest the potential adaptive agility and evolutionary dynamic of the legal system.
The imposition of standards also impinges harmfully on the development sector. The amount of “protective” standards for real estate developments in the UK is as ludicrously prescriptive as elsewhere in the EU. There are national standards, London standards and impositions from the various London Boroughs. For residential developments every room The amount of “protective” standards for real estate developments in the UK is as ludicrously prescriptive as elsewhere in the EU.size is prescribed, the overall size of apartments cannot be below a certain minimum, the number and size of balconies, the overall unit mix, the maximum number of apartments accessible via a shared core etc. etc. On top of this come the prescriptive land use and density allocations, as well as ancient, overly restrictive right-of-light restrictions no longer compatible with the high density requirements of our post-Fordist network society craving for (high productivity) urban concentration. Then 30-40% of so-called “affordable housing” (compulsively rationed housing) is imposed on all developments above a certain size, which according to London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s intention is soon to be increased to 50% across London.
One really wonders what (if anything) is left to the creativity of developers and their architects? What can developers compete on in this context? How can they use the market as a discovery process to tease out and test the desires and requirements of a dynamic population during our changing times? And who are these standards meant to protect? Protection from what? All that I can see in such restrictions is the curbing of choice, and thus the devaluation of everybody’s incomes as none of us gets to spend our money on the kind of things, places, locations and life we would like to spend it on. Especially the rule that demands minimum apartment sizes pushes many out of the more central locations they would like to live at, happy to trade centrality for size. However such trades are prevented and we are all that much poorer for that.
a post-Brexit UK will be more accessible to the world’s talents who feel attracted to London and its employment opportunitiesFinally, concerning immigration, I believe that despite the fact that the Leave Campaign was all about curbing immigration, I feel that Brexit entails the chance to evolve a more open, immigration-friendly society and economy. The conservative government understands full well that the UK’s prosperity relies on immigration to enhance the UK workforce. The problem is that for immigration to work, immigration rules must be carefully crafted in relation to welfare entitlements. Immigration cannot imply a free for all, not even in a contained zone of relatively advanced prosperity like the EU, as conditions are still far from even across the EU. The UK government’s proposals to limit access to welfare benefits for EU immigrants for the first years—aimed at immigrants from Eastern Europe where welfare provisions are very different—were denied by the EU as an unacceptable form of discrimination. This inability to sensibly manage the relationship between immigration and welfare meant that some other ways had to be found to contain overall numbers and this containment effort hurts globally competing businesses like ZHA, who look at the whole world labour market as search space for professional creative talent, talent which is being trained here but has to be sent home due to the UK’s current lack of freedom to manage its immigration.
According to this analysis, we might hope that a post-Brexit UK will be more accessible to the world’s talents who feel attracted to London and its employment opportunities, and who should in my view get the chance to prove themselves, thrive and make us—and the world—more productive and prosperous in the process.
59 Comments
Filed under, a case for neo/post deregulation and probable reregulation.
Sounds like he knows what he's talking about. There will be a lot of downfall with decreased trade and mobility, but it sounds like the EU had a lot of problems--mostly the same kind of data and prescriptive urban design by statistics that puts everyone in stray jackets. Its the same thing that is now being prescribed in the U.S. as an antidote to housing costs and inequality.... the same prescription that birthed modernist slums and shoddy construction. Obviously the CityLab crowd isn't going to agree--they have a thousand maps of New York City to show you why your wrong.
Architects/artists are the last defenders of human values, it seems.
I agree with much of what he's saying here...
Can't believe the head architect of an office is capable of stating such things and still be having CVs submitted to their inbox...
Social problems solved by individual entrepreneurship.
Fair competition governed ¿by the law of the jungle?
Less restrictive labour legislation so companies don't have to anticipate paralysing difficulties to sever relationships... do you mean can lay of a couple dozen workers tomorrow if I was not wise enough to know my end of year balance would be in the red?
Unhampered labour market... really?
Workforce trained here but sent home? You mean interns won't be hireable anymore?
This is amazing.
I agree with all above by Schumacher, contrary to David Graeber's
The Iron Law of Liberalism states that any market reform, any government initiative intended to reduce red tape and promote market forces will have the ultimate effect of increasing the total number of regulations, the total amount of paperwork, and the total number of bureaucrats the government.
We need more disruption, especially in the banking and insurance industries. As Schumacher notes, he likes small states and many small states is much better than one "reactive" overly regulated state to ensure those in power maintain their positions.
I can only understand this as an ironic statement in support of capital as a means to bring about the revolution..
He's ultimately talking about decentralization which imo is the greatest hope for the future.
Also, yes individual entrepreneurship does create mobility. Street venders selling CDs on blankets or empanadas from Folding tables is a form income...prior to NY becoming a overly regulated sterilized city many immigrants supported themselves like this. our overly regulated system prevents desperate people from doing such things to make a living. The "public streets" have become regulated to the point that they are only for the wealthy to use as a means of economic mobility...de regulate and empower the people to Lift themselves up with minimal interference from the state.
He has a point - the state can make it really inconvenient to exploit unpaid interns and use them for unregulated slave labor a la ZHA and other starchitect operations.
At least a clear vision... And I mean Bykovski, not this...
Jla-x. Do you REALLY think selling CDs on a blanket is a remotely thinkable way of "lifting" a human being? Haven't you read his attack on right-of-light in favor of "density"? 3 it's outrageously favoring speculation over humane living conditions!!!
That was one of many examples. Yes, having the freedom to sell something in the street without fees, licenses, and beurocratic hoops is beneficial for real people...especially when jobs are scarce....why do you think people do it...?
Because of F... DESPERATION! This "example" that you chose has behind mafias of criminals that make the bootlegged copies by the thousands, and exploit this desperate people giving them the false hope of a future. You know why they do it, because they operate ILLEGALLY!!
Ok, fruit stands, hot dog stands, homemade baskets, etc...you get the point. At a larger scale you have solar city shitting on local REGULATED monopoly utilities, UBER, local farms, microbreweries, Home based offices, African hair braiders, houses converted to small boutiques, etc...whatever
He (Schumaker) and ZHA are probably going after some big government contracts. Thats all. Massive fail coming from someone that employs so many immigrants.
Case in point:
"A firm like ZHA does not exist and could not exist in Germany" - The reason it couldn't exist in Germany is in a big way, linked to the people they can hire, that need to speak only English and COULD assimilate much easier in the UK, because the system was laid out to be immigrant friendly. Brexit attacks this very fundamental tenet. Dumbo.
Also, he seems like a closeted Libertarian.
"A firm like ZHA does not exist and could not exist in Germany" - The reason it couldn't exist in Germany is in a big way, linked to the people they can hire, that need to speak only English and COULD assimilate much easier in the UK, because the system was laid out to be immigrant friendly......
wait whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat I only speak English in my office in Berlin because we work on large scale international projects....as for assimilation at the moment I feel much safer as a Polish person in Germany than in England. We were going to hire a British office in London to take care of the interiors for a large scale project in the Mid- east, however after this brexit vote that contract was cancelled. Instead we are aggressively hiring in our office and will take care of that ourselves...as a matter of fact we even hired Syrian refugees to help us out..
"I believe the whole approach of trying to protect employees via the imposition of rules is misconceived and backfires to the detriment of all."
That'd be cute if it were coming from someone other than you, Patrik. Zaha was known for storming around the studio being nothing but rude to her staff. Stories of her tantrums abound. Note that I love your work, and I'll defend the hell out of it whenever the archinect morons start complaining about the person rather than the work itself. The problem here is that you don't think the culture at ZHA is anything other than toxic.
"This inability to sensibly manage the relationship between immigration and welfare meant that some other ways had to be found to contain overall numbers and this containment effort hurts globally competing businesses like ZHA, who look at the whole world labour market as search space for professional creative talent, talent which is being trained here but has to be sent home due to the UK’s current lack of freedom to manage its immigration."
And that's what's going to kill you. The locals don't take too kindly to the abuse. It's just the way things are.
And I probably just outed myself.
Oh well.
archinet, you are reinforcing my point. The only reason design firms in Britain were doing so well is because or the relative ease in hiring talented Europeans, like yourself. Now that that is gone, I wonder how these firms will survive.
unpaid or low paid internships have nothing to do with exploitation … they are mutually agreed exchanges … the state only comes in to destroy choices and everybody is worse off (and a “well meaning” former RIBA president’s anti-internship campaign served the same result by means of moral attack) … to demand minimum pay for interns implies that weak students (perhaps 1st generation) have no chance left and have to exit the field rather than finding a chance to catch up … that’s cruel! … if RIBA wants to help it should sponsor interns … …
markets deliver protection through competition between employers ... but also markets deliver protection services competitively, i.e. efficiently and responsively … historically all the insurance, protections, and contractual rights now enforced by the state were first granted voluntarily by the private sector (by mutual aid societies, insurance companies, employers) ... the problem with state enforcement is that is destroys self-organized and self-responsible, sustainable private schemes, provisions and initiatives and substitutes them with unmanageable, very costly, unsustainable systems that are an open invitation to free-riding and abuse ...... again mutual aid schemes, insurance, unconstrained agreements with employers, (or simply personal savings, reliance on friends and family etc etc.) could provide to everyone whatever degree of security any of us feels he/she needs and wants to provide and pay for without temptation of abuse but with a sense of self-reliance ...
where merit based market allocation is prevented it must be replaced by a rationing mechanism (since unlimited universal provision is never possible) administered by someone arbitrarily or according to some explicit rules … exchanges become allocated privileges … the definition of these rules lead to behavioural adaptations that are very difficult to control … this also applies to paid internships .. they become rationed privileges .. the same would apply to sponsorship of interns … who would be eligible to receive the privilege? … the market did/would offer a whole range of internship options from unpaid to highly paid, catering for everybody according to their aims, priorities, abilities
"unpaid or low paid internships have nothing to do with exploitation … they are mutually agreed exchanges"
say no more.
so if your employees/interns aren't paid, do they get food and lodging from expansive, inefficient government? do they starve and die in the streets?
Mr. Schumacker you are describing the law of the jungle, plain and simple.
Since humanity got its name, social meant to defend the wakest, the slowest, the hindered,...
Your arguments and position is bordering the inmoral. And yes, moral and ethics are cultural constructs.
But luckily when it comes to work and employment, they are shared by most of the civilized world.
Here's where the libertarians lose me...to treat any ism as a cultish absolute is foolish. There needs to be a balance that prevents privatized slavery. State oppression and private oppression are still oppression. A basic labor law of minimum wage is really the only way to prevent oppressive labor practices. And in no way does a minimum wage impede your Liberty as an employer as you have the choice to hire or downsize. Period. That's said, if RIBA were to go away and cease to regulate the practice of architecture it would empower new grads to explore entrepreneurial alternatives to traditional practice and possibly open new privatized pathways to training...such as a formalized apprenticeship system, and privatized credentialing organizations...A libertarian system is not the same as Anarchy. Anarchy is the law of the jungle. Libertarianism is the minimalism of law With the goal of promoting maximum heterogeneity/diversity, personal liberty, decentralization, and freedom from tyranny. Sometimes laws and regulations Assist this goal, which is why reasonable libertarians like Gary Johnson support the EPA, sometimes they obstruct it like in the case of erroneous occupational licensing laws, energy monopolies, agricultural subsidies, etc...
Essentially, anarchy is the primitive hut, libertarianism is the Barcelona Pavilion. Meaning...libertarianism is about achieving comfort and order with the least....about form follows function...govt follows the necessity for governance.
Patrick's argument seems to be on right track, but lacks the acknowledgement that all absolutes devolve into tyranny...to the left or right...
"to demand minimum pay for interns implies that weak students (perhaps 1st generation) have no chance left and have to exit the field rather than finding a chance to catch up … that’s cruel! "
This, kids, is the reason one should never work for a Starchitect. They think they are doing a favor to "1st generation" students by now paying them, the truth being that is is these same starchitects that teach in the schools to make the 1st generation students unemployable by other firms.
Native people traded the land for worthless stuffs from European settlers. You can call them as mutual agreements that benefits for both sides. However, we all know it is not a win/win deal. The same goes for unpaid internship. Does it provide opportunity for some students to step into the world? Absolutely yes. But unpaid internship is not serving 1st generation students. It is almost catered to students from well-off families as they have means to stomach. I don't believe it is win/win deal for 1st generation students. But it is win/win for students who can afford to take opportunity. So saying that it will serve financially poor students is dubious claim at best. If you prefer to the look at this kind of agreement as win/win, so be it. But calming to help weak students is not right way to do. You can't have it both way.
Deregulation is is good, but selective deregulation intended to rig the system for one self benefits is heinous thing to do. Most of sensible Libertarian will say the same. Selective deregulation is the root cause of cronyism such as current U.S. finical system. I'm all for deregulation but self-serving selective deregulation. Hell NO! If Brexit can create a deregulated economic system, that's great. I doubt it. It will be at mercy of Brussels sprawling bureaucrats to gain access to EU market.
As Brexit is more related to economic system, we should focus on that. It is not the main purpose of economic system to defends " the weakest, the slowest, the hindered,...". Its main purpose is to create equal playing filed with minimum regulations without loopholes. State/gov does not equal system. State/gov is one of many stake holders in the system. As the system is a closed system, the more you increased the role of state, the more you diminish the role of private parties. However, eliminating or diminishing the role of state to non existence is almost equivalent of destroying the system. It sounds like Patrick promoting is almost equivalent of that.
Finally Architects should stop playing the role of social engineers with moral high ground.
I think what is overlooked is the role privilege plays in the "mutually agreed exchange" of the unpaid internship. Logically, only those with other means to provide for their sustenance, i.e. mom and dad, could afford to take these positions. Therefore access to this free exchange is not free at all. It's a formula for an aristocratic system, not a meritocracy.
^exactly. Especially when the regulations mandate the internship thus stifling upward mobility for people with less resources...like the current US system does to a lesser degree.
what is exchanged in an unpaid labor situation?
beta, as Patrick clarified, they do a favor to 1st generation students by hiring them and paying them nothing. Lol.
Hence the firm gives out knowledge which is not taught in the schools they hire from (lets say AA and Bartlett). And lets examine who teaches in these schools? The likes of Mr. Schumacher. Hence finishing the cycle of slavery, in which both the firm and school make money, but the students (or their parents) spend it through the nose.
Sorry I didnt answer your question.
Good conversation: I agree that selective deregulation (serving special interests) is to be rejected in favour of full deregulation. Simply: the political address for rent-seeking special interest lobbying has to be closed down altogether. Then efforts and resources will be re-channeled to the pursuit of better more competitive products and services. The political route to special interest privileges has to be closed.
To clarify: we pay our interns the minimum wage because we have to. But this implies that our scope to get interns in is much constrained and we have to be much more selective. I agree that its hard for weak 1st generation students to take up an unpaid internship BUT it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to get a fully paid internship, and therefore they have no chance to progress from unpaid into paid. The 1950s and early 1960s (before a lot of protections were in place) was a decade full of upward mobility and general progress.
The intern story is a special case of minimum wages in general: it just cuts off the lowest rungs of the employment ladder and consigns those who cannot reach the artificially increased first step to permanent exclusion. The fact is that some – for whatever reason (eg growing up in welfare dependency) – have missed basic steps in their youth (due to truancy etc.) and would first of all need to learn how to function at all in a business environment, never mind delivering the productivity required to earn minimum wage.
Jungle? No, I am imagining a civilized society, where entrepreneurs solve social problems with a creative drive fuelled by the prospects of honour, fame and profits (to reinvest) and where charities will do a much better job for those who really cannot compete anywhere at all than any state authority can ever be expected to do.
This all sounds like one of the early modernist manifestos based on a completely romanticized view of human nature with the usual dash of alarmist bullshit.
"special interest lobbying has to be closed down altogether. Then efforts and resources will be re-channeled to the pursuit of better more competitive products and services"
In what planet are you proposing to close down special interests? And how are you so sure efforts will be 're-channeled'?
"...the artificially increased first step to permanent exclusion. The fact is that some – for whatever reason (eg growing up in welfare dependency) – have missed basic steps in their youth (due to truancy etc.) and would first of all need to learn how to function at all in a business environment, never mind delivering the productivity required to earn minimum wage."
Can you illustrate a 'first step' free of artificiality? Welfare now consigns one to a life of dependency? I hope no one ever lends you a hand for fear you'll loose your competitive edge, which you got all on your own, no doubt.
There's nothing civilized about the society you're proposing I'm afraid to say. EVERYTHING WILL BE DONE WITH MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY!
I'm afraid we've heard it all before.
Patrik, I can't help but hear the perpetuation of the great ruse of our profession - that one's hard work is all the validation one needs. Lets break the cycle of 'hard work' up the ladder only to (pardon the language) shit down on those below under the guise of 'experience'. An unpaid internship exploits age and naivety - it is not an equitable exchange - plain and simple. Imagine if one made a decent wage on the way up and did not resent and patronize those below them once at the top. Might this be a better profession to exist in?
"To clarify: we pay our interns the minimum wage because we have to."
Does this mean you would not pay anything if you could get away with it? What world do you live in, Patrik? It is impossible to love your work if this is what it takes to get it done. You need to invest in the younger generation, not break their back to teach them a lesson. Massive fail.
"markets deliver protection through competition between employers ... but also markets deliver protection services competitively, i.e. efficiently and responsively."
Bullshit alert.
That is only true where demand exceeds supply, otherwise, protection services actually fall (see North American Auto Industry; see Pre-Trade-Normalization-with-China North American Manufacturing, see Post-EUCM British Manufacturing).
People get lost in the cracks.
You can argue that the majority of the workforce is better off, but that's cutely-fucked up; the majority of Americans (white and other) were before equal employment laws came into action (and began integrating minorities into predominantly white workplaces); doesn't mean that shit was right (and scenarios like these are why the judicial branch can override popular opinion; JEFFERSON! AMERICA! FUCK YEAH).
Patrik, I can take you on blow for blow. Let's play.
"To clarify: we pay our interns the minimum wage because we have to. "
No. Just stop. 1/2 of your senior staff can't detail a wall assembly or do simple egress calculations. You pay your interns minimum wage because you perpetuate the shitty little misunderstanding that years and loyalty trump competence.
Case in point though: Zaha's net worth was 215 million.
Just to clarify, if someone's work is being used to obtain any kind of profit and the worker is not getting paid, that's the very definition of exploitation. The fact that the worker is learning something is not a trade. [Not to mention that the market this entrepeneur gurus love so much starts to default due to the fact that production costs are based on an anomaly: an unpaid worker. That leads to disloyal competition, prices going down below production costs and also to F.A. Hayek turning in his grave]
Basically what this entrepeneurial discourse means is: "Relinquish your rights, all form of legal regulation and trust us entrepeneurs. We are going to do good by you".
And we all know how fine did that work in a recent past.
So if for example you are a woman, and you want to have a child (As it is your right) and go on maternity leave for 4 paid months, you have to TRUST that your entrepeneur of a boss would do right by you and allow it.
And when you return to work -or should I say IF you retun to work- and you want to breast feed your kid (as it should be your righ) and ask for paid working time to do so, you have to TRUST that same boss (eager to get profit and fame, let's not forget) to ensure you will be able to. No worries that you may very well be replaced by... Let's say 10 unpaid workers / interns ? 20?
Call me crazy but I'd rather rely on the law, on regulation reinforcing my hard earned worker rights and controlling the likes of Mr. Schumacher and their "we pay our interns the minimum wage because we have to" than on profit driven and empty promises.
arquitextonica,
Because of F... DESPERATION! This "example" that you chose has behind mafias of criminals that make the bootlegged copies by the thousands, and exploit this desperate people giving them the false hope of a future. You know why they do it, because they operate ILLEGALLY!!
If regulation serves only to oppress and keep you the small guy from being successful or have financial prosperity, then what's really the crime..... the guy that violates laws designed to oppress them or the oppressive law. Sometimes, you just have to say F-CK YOU to the oppressor or you'll be a slave to the oppression.
Patrik,
Careful.... and slippery slope you are own. Remember, we in the U.S. was extactly once this and actually the business owners cares only about one thing and one thing only.... how to make more money. Donald Trump is exactly a throw back to those times. If you gave him the opportunity to draft laws how he wants.... everyone would work for him as slaves and he would have all the money and do whatever he wants.
In the 19th century industrial revolution, we had slavery and we had people working sunrise to sunset or as many hours as deemed. People were literally worked to death, starved and dehydrated because there was no laws regulating work environment. It wasn't these big businesses that sponsored labor laws. It was the formation of labor unions and the like.
You have to have morals and ethics to begin with from childhood. These rich people like Donald Trump has a moral ethics of a rake (rakehell).
Most of the golden morals and ethics in our culture came to us through the Bible and similar religious books.
Please stop dropping your dingleberries in every thread.
jla-x,
Seriously, I am no where close to being in every thread.
i can not see how any voluntary, mutually agreed arrangements can be castigated as "exploitative". also: If there would be an extra profit to be had by employing "cheap" interns, then we should expect to see a competitive scramble to catch these profitable opportunities .. they would soon disappear ... the truth is different: interns often take more time than give back valuable production ... and the training one invests soon walks out of the door again ... and only the employer can know what the labor of any worker is worth for him ... there is no inherent worth in anybody's work ... work proves it s value by finding a buyer willing to pay for its fruits ... this can not be set by fiat ... so a minimum wage can only do one thing: set the value of all the labor below its threshold to ZERO ...
A "voluntary agreement" isn't always really voluntary. The need to eat and earn money is not a voluntary act, it's an act of survival. Immigrants and low skilled laborers would be especially vulnerable as their pay would likely be driven down by people hungry and willing to undercut them. As you know, the lowest bidder really controls the price of labor. A minimum wage is necessary regulation.
When people cannot help themselves society bears the consequences of poverty, civil unrest, crime, disease, blight, etc...A minimum wage essentially sets the minimum level of working poverty...which in my opinion is to low. The minimum wage should ensure that a person can live humanely in the given place. And yes, I lean libertarian on many issues...but this in no way violates my Liberty as an employer or employee...it just prevents me from violating the liberty of others...
Patrik,
Employer / Applicant (prospective employee) employment agreement arrangements are almost never a mutually agreed arrangements.
1) Prospective Employee is almost never on a equal leverage and playing field at the negotiation table as the employer as a mutually agreed arrangement would imply.
2) Employer never has to accept what the prospective employee wants because the employer can also choose to go to the next guy on the stack of resumes. There is always an endless supply of prospective employees for any job position.
3) Prospective Employee is almost always in a need for the job position more than the employer needs the prospective employee. This is because the prospect needs to have money to live and survive and don't have the deep cash reserves that an employer may have to wait.
A "voluntary agreement" isn't always really voluntary. The need to eat and earn money is not a voluntary act, it's an act of survival. Immigrants and low skilled laborers would be especially vulnerable as their pay would likely be driven down by people hungry and willing to undercut them. As you know, the lowest bidder really controls the price of labor. A minimum wage is necessary regulation.
I'm agreement with you jla, but I think we need to go one step further: basic income.
The majority of workers are going to be replaced by machines, and the harsh reality is that not everyone is capable of the heuristics-heavy work that will be replaced only much farther in the future. Might as well stop candy-coating shit and start paying people to stay out of the labor force all while eliminating the welfare-taboo.
Patrik is just a sociopath. He puts "zero" at near-starvation of a whole subset of the population, and that's a huge fucking problem.
False, Patrik, false. Every work relation you are describing is almost never equal. Therefore there always is power involved -or at least some avatar of it-. In this case, the intern wants something you have -experience- and that puts you in a position to exercise multiple ways of exploitation (i.e. not paying them). This is even a bigger issue when the system is a twisted, perverted meritocracy where the issue is not really learning or developing a career but, instead, the possibility of checking the box "famous architect" in a resume. Add to that an increasing offer and a decreased demand and you have the recipe for a labor market based on exploitation, bad salaries, discrimination against women (always the first victims) and the constant inhability of our profession to diversify or export its services (Less than 2% of practices in Spain, for instance).
So, and this is actually economy 1.1 and law 1.2, mutually agreed arrangements don't eliminate exploitation. Hate to be the one that uses the examples: Somo "ntrepreneurs" offer a young woman a loan to travel to, let's say Spain, from a country out of the Shengen treaty. In return she has to be a sex-slave for two years. She may agree. That doesn't turn this "mutually agreed arrangement" into something other than exploitation. Again, an example of power and unbalanced relations: She wants to go, HAS to go. NEEDS to go, and that opens the door for exploitation.
Of course i Know I'm using an extreme example. But that is precisely the problem: The law must protect EVERYONE and can't rely on "trusting" entrepeneurs because its must be universal.
In fact, what you are describing is just the state of any labor market before unionism. Each worker, alone, is in a position of clear disadvantage. All the workers together, acting in unison, have power. The power of controlling their labor, the power of workforce. And the big advance in some advanced democracies is that workers had the possibility of forcing some of their achivements into mandatory minimums and laws, which is actually the civilised way to go, instead of this concept of "trust me" you are proposing.
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