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Comment by rhuru | Hacker News Reader

> the NLRB and FTC—are "unconstitutional."

Neither of them are "core public institution". NLRB has probably destroyed more jobs that all recessions combines and might have hurt the poorest and most vulnerable population lot more. They have worked to spread the cancer of collective bargaining powers, coercive unions and other protections for their favourite people at the expense of american consumers.

> FTC

This should be considered unconstitutional. If you provide a service that is cheap you are "predatory", if you provide a service that is very expensive you are "price gauging" and if you are average your are "colluding".

FTC is an evil eye of sauron that is on every damn successful business.

I hope "trader joes" succeeds in putting a stake into hearts of these two vampires.

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I see the temporarily embarrassed aristocrats are out in force again.

I'll put it as simply as I can: the NLRB and FTC are there to prevent force and fraud, same as every other liberal institution. You just don't like it because you want your particular brand of coercion to be treated as a right.

The NLRB protects workers' freedom of association from capital's long-standing, multigenerational attempts to cancel[0] that freedom. The FTC protects the market from privatized attempts to impose price floors or ceilings. Large businesses wield power commensurate with governments and should be regulated proportionally to their ability to do government things.

Big business has spent over 50 years insulating themselves from market forces through regulatory capture, selective deregulation, and the complete dismantling of antitrust. Hiding your coercion behind the guise of helping the American consumer is unhelpful, because those consumers are also workers. You are beating up kids for lunch money with the promise that you might give some of it back.

[0] Cancel as in Twitter.

> If you provide a service that is cheap you are "predatory", if you provide a service that is very expensive you are "price gauging" and if you are average your are "colluding".

If you unsustainably provide a service for less than it costs you to undercut competition then yes it is predatory.

If you coordinate a standard price with your competitors then yes that's collusion.

If you overprice your service or good to extract a massive margin now that there's no competition (or the competition is also doing the same thing) or the consumer otherwise has no other choice then yes of course that's price gouging.

These really aren't that complicated of concepts.

Sure but often these are levied by insiders to shut down outsiders. The long term problem with regulatory bodies is capture. Which is another reason that the core of this issue the Chevron doctrine is bad law. Regulator should be required to hue closely to their legislative mandate.

Businesses are collective entities. They enjoy efficiencies of scale when crafting legal strategies and negotiating with workers. Workers should enjoy collective rights similar to business owners.

Workers can 'enjoy' ponying up the capital and risk and start employee owned business.

Employees already shoulder the most risk in business due to how much of their income comes from the business. You can’t diversify your job across an arbitrary number of employers like a shareholder can diversifying their portfolio across many asset classes and potential movement directions as a hedge.

Very few people have the resources and connections to be able to do that.

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