Comment by salawat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by salawat | Hacker News Reader

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That's based on the assumption that workers were being fairly compensated for what Amazon was getting in the first place.

Hint: If you got a wage increase because of a minimum wage bump, you were probably being cheated in the first place.

I don't really understand the mentality in the United States where physical labor to perform complex (unautomatable or impractically automatable) tasks are so severely undercompensated. We pretend that having another human being sacrifice 8 hours of their life, and the costs to show up is worth barely enough where at the end of the month, societal safety nets need to be invoked to stay solvent. It's mystifying.

Is there something viscerally unpleasant to imagining someone flipping burgers for a living being able to afford to rent their own apartment, and be able to have enough to invest in bettering their lot?

The economy is horribly skewed. Labor is getting repeatedly short changed in an infantile quest for "the biggest growth numbers ever". It's a problem that won't be solved until the labor pool refuses to play ball, forcing businesses to grind to a halt. Taft-Hartley or not, Labor is going to be making many large waves in the coming years methinks.

There may be no 'society' anymore, bit there are a hell of a lot of people out there getting played.

> Hint: If you got a wage increase because of a minimum wage bump, you were probably being cheated in the first place.

Let's turn that around and see if you still feel the same way:

> If you keep buying the same product after a store raises its prices, you were probably cheating them in the first place.

Paying less than what you would be willing to pay if there were no other choice is not "cheating". Taken to its logical conclusion, that line of thought leads to the idea that everyone should be paying everything they have for the absolute minimum needed to keep them alive. After all, nothing else is worth anything if you're dead. What would you be willing to give up for a bit of barely-breathable air, marginal water, or half-spoiled food if the alternative was death?

Fortunately the world doesn't work like that; the amount you pay factors in your available alternatives and not just how much benefit a good brings you. Labor is no different. You're not being "cheated" simply because an employer is offering you wages similar to what the next 50 qualified people waiting in line would accept to do the same job.

> If you keep buying the same product after a store raises its prices, you were probably cheating them in the first place.

So. Good point, but I'm not 100% that that's a valid symmetry to assume. On the one hand, you have an industrial scale process to produce massive amounts of commodity with an efficiency that can't be replicated at smaller scales. This industrial infrastructure was iteratively built during a time when companies were more equitably sharing a chunk of the profits with employees, and has seen minimal innovation since we hit the 80's I bet. All today's giants are built upon those toils, and wrapped in a culture that has shunned any type of openness about compensation structures, granting an information asymmetry advantage to the producer over the worker.

>Paying less than what you would be willing to pay if there were no other choice isn't "cheating".

I might believe this if unskilled labor were making enough to be able to build up stock portfolios, and be able to maintain a cushion against potential vehicle failure/medical emergency, etc... I don't see that. I see costs skyrocketing in markets flush with "skilled labor", to the point where normal service industries are having their unskilled staff get priced out of local markets. See San Fran and the Silicon Valley restaurant problem for the most recent example I'm aware of. If you pay attention to your local area, you'll likely see the same forces at work. "Cheating" in this sense, is any behavior that skews success probabilities toward any one side of the population over another. I don't expect equality of outcome, but I do expect equality of opportunity.

>Taken to its logical conclusion...

You make the mistake of attributing to human societies the quality of operating through purely logical mechanisms. Humans have a capacity for logic, but are in no way bound to act purely in logical ways. To preserve the ability to peacefully coexist, it is important to be able to abide by a set of norms that are not only largely logical, but also take into account humanities irrational side. (Juries have final say in the American legal system for instance).

In short, if you have a bunch of McMillionaires, surrounded by people who can barely scratch together a living, don't be surprised when your society can't come together enough, or muster the feeling of unity to thrive.

Put even shorter: When the wave starts lifting a few instead of all boats, watch out; troubled times are ahead.

Good food for thought though. Thanks for the reply.

> "Cheating" in this sense, is any behavior that skews success probabilities toward any one side of the population over another.

So... putting in effort is "cheating"? Working smarter and finding ways to do more with less effort is "cheating"?

> I don't expect equality of outcome, but I do expect equality of opportunity.

I don't expect equality of opportunity, or at least not in the sense you seem to mean. People cultivate opportunities, as well as their own ability to take advantage of opportunities that come their way. A situation which is a perfect opportunity for one person may not be worth anything to another, because one was prepared for it and the other was not. To a certain extent this modern, more expansive take on "equality of opportunity" is just equality of outcome by another name, one level removed.

What I do expect, and what "equality of opportunity" originally referred to, is equality under the law. The law should safeguard everyone's life, liberty, and property from all that would threaten it, regardless of their individual background or status or connections or finances. In any conflict paupers and billionaires and politicians should stand equal before the court, to be judged solely on their actions and not their circumstances. The moment lawmakers or judges attempt to move beyond that, perverting the law to benefit one group at another's expense, the law fails in this first, primary duty.

> You make the mistake of attributing to human societies the quality of operating through purely logical mechanisms.

I never said anything of the sort. I merely pointed out the contradiction which exists in claiming that employers are "cheating" employees by paying less than they would be willing to pay if the issue were forced by minimum wage laws while not applying the same standard to consumers paying far less for the basic necessities of life than they would otherwise be willing to pay. Consumers benefit far more from this arrangement than employers do.

A simple, yet clearly unsympathetic, view to take is that a business does not hire you to make sure you are happy. That your needs to meet a fruitful and positive life are actually met is not necessarily in the best interest of the business. Granted, not all companies have that attitude but for most, that's the way to go to survive in most economic systems in place around the world.

As for the burger flipper, I'm willing to bet there are barriers in place that prevent the flipper from living the life you describe that has little or nothing to do with the joint they work for. Often times there are exterior forces being applied that people are more than happy to ignore so they can blame the wrong target for their own agendas.

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