Hacker News Reader

Comment by TOSSAWAY_1 | Hacker News Reader

Its humans behaving exactly as expected when given the choice against free money and working for money.

I’ve found that most people seek fulfillment by being useful. Being useful means that you can see how your labor benefits the people in your community. Many jobs that exist today don’t feel useful because there are too many layers of abstraction between the labor and the societal benefit. Many people even feel that their labor is a net negative for society. Unemployment benefits may provide a living but I don’t think it’s viable for your soul long term because you know you’re not being useful. However, it’s better than working hard for no good reason and getting paid the same, or less.

If our society is too efficient, we run out of ways to give people meaning.

An additional data point: retail.

Retail workers are treated incredibly poorly, and the American customer frequently uses the interaction to establish the social class hierarchy for themselves.

This group was also ongoingly and repeatedly thrown to the wolves in COVID responses, being most exposed to the possibility of dying from the virus.

It is no surprise that the places which can't find workers are restaurants and retail outlets.

Perhaps spend a few years cleaning toilets for a living and report back to us on how fulfilling it is to benefit people in your community. The very same people who will look down on you as a total looser for doing such a shitty job. Perhaps that will change your mind?

Obvious that a lot of folks in the tech community did not grow up a poor Appalachian boy.

Welfare is a plague.

I know so many people who did not work because it would cut into their welfare.

I know so many homes that lived lies (separate fake addresses, never marrying) so they could get welfare.

I've seen welfare programs (wic, food stamps) exchanged for cash..

I've seen emergency rooms abused with medical cards (something most yuppies do not even know exists --- most do not seem to know most poor people already get free healthcare).

It's a sad thing. Reality on the privileged persons terms, I guess.

So using your logic, we should also stop having CEO’s because some of them enrich themselves instead of doing their job? And stop having politicians because some of them are corrupt and take bribes? And get rid of all police because some cops are dangerous and corrupt? Where do we stop? Or do you think that only rich people deserve to cheat and misuse the power they have? Why are you selecting only the most desperate and low status/underprivileged people for punishment? Yes some people, rich and poor, take advantage. That doesn’t mean that all should pay for it.

Are you saying since other people do bad things we shouldnt aim to design systems that put productive people first?

At least in these other, and we agree equally scummy cases, theres some run-off benefit we can assume given the higher levels of profit and/or related risk.

"...get rid of all police because some cops are dangerous and corrupt" because I said I've seen welfare do more harm than good? Geez, makes total sense.

It's humans behaving exactly as expected when given the choice of barely enough money for survival (unemployment benefit) vs not enough money for survival (pay too low to afford daycare or rent). If anyone out there is having trouble getting gig workers or low-level employees and wants to blame very low unemployment benefits and a one-time stimulus check, I suggest offering more money instead.

"I suggest offering more money instead" To an extent that's true, but this type of sentiment is airily tossed around by people who've never had to make payroll. There's often little or even no profit to be made at the rate offered - should the business increase their offer to the point where a loss is guaranteed?

> To an extent that's true, but this type of sentiment is airily tossed around by people who've never had to make payroll. There's often little or even no profit to be made at the rate offered - should the business increase their offer to the point where a loss is guaranteed?

Maybe they shouldn’t be in business.

Imho, these are effectively zombie businesses, and it would probably be better for the overall market efficiency (esp. wrt labor and asset allocation) if they closed.

I suspected that would be the response. If you close down all the businesses that can't survive paying more for unskilled or semi-skilled labour, what do all the unskilled and semi-skilled people do? Where do they get the opportunity to upskill?

> If you close down all the businesses that can't survive paying more for unskilled or semi-skilled labour, what do all the unskilled and semi-skilled people do?

They get deployed in other commercial activities that can make more efficient use of their time, and hence, pay them more.

Very good in theory. Any suggestions on how to get from here to there in the real world, without massive disruption to people's real lives? The consequences of massively & rapidly increasing the number of unemployed doesn't seem to be covered in the libertarian literature. History books do cover this though.

This is a strange argument. Are you saying that we should never raise minimum wage? It isn't even keeping up with inflation.

As for the history books, I recall we've raised the minimum wage in the past. The US still exists, so i guess the history books say its ok?

It's not strange at all, you just didn't understand the point. Libertarian theory has all kinds of bizarre reasoning about human nature, which doesn't translate into the real world. History, on the other hand, does provide a guide to how large numbers of actual people have behaved in the past, when cast on to the scrap heap of life. Human nature doesn't change rapidly. I'm not taking your bait (never raise minimum wage), but it's important to be aware that, at the margin, increasing the cost of any business input will result in business attempting to substitute that input to the extent possible - i.e. fewer jobs.

They don't, so there will be much more unrest.

Keeping zombie businesses alive for the sake of steady employment is one of the reasons that Japan has been stagnant for many years. A healthy economy needs creative destruction.

As someone who has seen this firsthand while living in Japan, I agree with your statement.

What is more, one of the things that I love about the US is that we seem to be fairly good at deconstructing and reconstructing relatively quickly and efficiently. Our system isn’t perfect (tends to favor the capital class and stick it to labor more than I would prefer), but I personally think it’s much better than what Japan has done.

But if you don't close those businesses, you get people who are one financial emergency away from bankruptcy. You get people who have no chance of bettering their lives. I do not have a solution, but that does not mean that I cannot call out what I see as the problem.

I agree with you in theory. Theory often fails to survive the first contact with the enemy (reality) though.

Reality is not the enemy here, hard life is and I'd like to think that we're all in this together & we'll help each other out. :-) I'm hoping we're becoming an advanced enough society that we'll be able to at least provide food, shelter and basic health insurance for everyone free of charge. But enough dreaming for today...

At that point the business should either pivot to a new strategy, or liquidate in an orderly fashion and return any remaining capital to investors. If your business is on an unsustainable path then there's no point in continuing.

If the only way for the business to be profitable is to pay less than a living wage, then that business is in fact _not_ profitable. I'd rather subsidize people that are between jobs rather than business owners (because I'd still have to subsidize food stamps for their employees). If the company cannot make money without exploiting workers, maybe it shouldn't exist? And then I'll happily pay the (now ex-) owner's unemployment benefit until they land a job.

Yes, if your company pays so little that your employees need state aid to eat and pay rent, they aren't on welfare, you (the employer) are.

Eh we agree on the solution, but only if the problem isn't manufactured via welfare as it currently is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com