Comment by throwaway420 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway420 | Hacker News Reader

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> I find that post you linked disgusting. Now I see why we need laws for things I feel are obvious. I feel like that person should be reported to the authorities or something. Not hiring people because they refuse to regularly work over 40hrs/week should be illegal.

It's interesting that you're so adamant about having the ability to make your personal choices here when you're advocating to take choice away from others.

The article states that the employer demanding 80 hour work weeks cannot find anybody to fill that role for 4 months and counting. Employers have to compete for labor just as employees have to compete for jobs. If somebody offers an 80 hour per week job without offering adequate compensation (multiple times the market rate, a large percentage of ownership, etc), then they'll fail to fill that role.

Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

Ah yes. Here we go. The fabled "free market".

I'm impressed that you seem think there are functioning markets, of any kind, without the rule of law.

Contract law, intellectual property laws, labor laws, health and safety, etc.

Plus a fair and impartial judiciary.

But I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard before, and chosen to ignore.

The alternative to the rule of law is might makes right. Which is exactly what all the libertarian "free market" scams all boil down to.

No thank you.

If libertarian free markets were perfect then Somalia would be the tech capital of the world.

If socialist centrally planned economies were perfect then Moscow would be the tech capital of the world.

Well, that didn't solve anything. Maybe one-liner hyperbole doesn't add much to the conversation.

I probably shouldn't respond, considering the (very stoner) name of "throwaway420", but the employer is in a position of power, so it is not unreasonable to want laws that draw bounderies around your commitment, especially with salary workers.

Fortunately, we work in an employee driven industry, so employers who demand extraordinary commitment can't find employees.

For now.

They'll always find someone who is hungry.

> they'll fail to fill that role.

while this is true (mostly), the assumption is that there is competition, which isn't always the case. Civilized society should set some decent standards to which employers must adhere to, because the invisible hand of the free-market doesn't take into consideration human conditions when it optimizes for profit.

> Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

Actually, doing precisely that is at the core of living in a civilized, democratic nation. If you think full-on free market is better, there is a (not-so-well) working exemplar over in Somalia.

Because Somalia was such a paradise back when it had a government...

'Free market' does not necessarily imply no government. Most libertarians wholeheartedly agree that bringing harm to another, either directly by initiating violence or indirectly by fraud, is wrong and should be legally punished. That is the core of living in a civilized, democratic nation.

The idea that some people should be able to make laws to tell other people what they can or cannot do in completely voluntary arrangements is in fact a return to tyranny, however well-meaning it may be.

> 'Free market' does _not_ necessarily imply no government.

'Free market' doesn't really have any consistent, coherent meaning in terms of actual objective features.

> Most libertarians wholeheartedly agree that bringing harm to another, either directly by initiating violence or indirectly by fraud, is wrong and should be legally punished.

The juxtaposition of this sentence with the last suggest that "Free Market" is a label for whatever a majority of current libertarians prefer; I think this is almost accurate (in use, it seems to mean more whatever any particular self-described libertarian prefers at the moment), and illustrates my previous point.

> The idea that some people should be able to make laws to tell other people what they can or cannot do in completely voluntary arrangements is in fact a return to tyranny

No, that's not true "in fact", its an equivalence based on a subjective value proposition.

Most libertarians wholeheartedly agree that bringing harm to another, either directly by initiating violence or indirectly by fraud, is wrong and should be legally punished.

You don't think that requiring people to work 80 hours/week for months or years on end does them harm? Really?

You think that all of OSHA is tyranny? You think that weekends are tyranny? Vacation is tyranny? Laws against sexual harassment at work are tyranny?

> Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

Meanwhile.... http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/25/mori...

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