The big problem with hiring older workers is that they're better at knowing what they're actually worth. They also tend to avoid personal sacrifices (mainly time and health) that are of net benefit to the company but not to themselves.
My experience is older workers are much better (and more productive) than young workers if you can provide them a stable work environment. If the nature of your business is such that this is impossible, then most older workers will struggle and blame the boss for everything. This does not make for a fun time if you are the manager.
You do raise why most manager are not so devoted to the bottom line - it is not their business. Who do you hire - the older employee that will make the business a ton of money, or the young employee who will do as they are told and make the manager's life easy?
are you saying that it's your experience that older workers tend to "blame everything" on the manager--even when particular instability is beyond the manager's control?
i should think the more experience one has, the more likely they are to understand the source of a given impact on their work and the more patient they are likely to be--ie, they've seen it before, and don't take it personally.
at the same time, if indeed the instability is in fact the manager's fault, then i suspect one with more experience is more likely to identify that fact and bring it to the manager's attention.
While I am not claiming to be a perfect boss (far from it), most of the causes of rapid change my employees have faced are external factors totally outside my control. Small companies are by their nature prone to being buffeted by outside forces. It makes things exciting, if not predictable.
In my experience if there are external forces beyond the manager's control causing problems for the workers, then the cause is likely someone further up the chain than the manager. Eventually you have to reach someone that is responsible for what happens inside the company.
My only defence is I was young and inexperienced. I thought I was being smart by hiring the people other businesses discriminate against. I did at least learn.
I agree with you that there maybe other confounding variables and that there are certainly older workers that are able to thrive in such jobs, just my experience makes me wary. I am also wary of putting younger workers into positions where sustained focus is required. Ultimately neither old nor young workers are bad, they just have different strengths and weaknesses and you need to match the best person to the job.
No need to say more.
You say anti-social behavior. The courts say 'maximizing shareholder value'.
Do they now? https://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism
there is no legal requirement to maximize shareholder value. That's just a myth.
Many of the things put forward as "maximizing shareholder value" are talking about short-term value, and do so at the expense of long-term value.
Paying labour as little as possible is capitalism. Competition between companies means there is no choice other than to seek to maximize this.
Overly simplistic, and incorrect.
Crucially, I'd argue that we don't get fair capitalistic pricing of labor when there is asymmetric information in the market: Employers pay for access to salary data so they know how much you are worth (approximately), but you have no such knowledge (though this is better than it used to be with services like Glassdoor and Paysa and Salary.com). You're guessing as to the supply and demand for your skill set. Add in the common practice of requiring past salary history to be submitted as part of the application process, and you've got a recipe for suboptimal outcomes, at least on the employee side of the labor equation. If your price gets set below your market value early in your career, it may remain permanently below your actual value because employers often adopt policies which only allow for paying a candidate 10% (or some arbitrary number) more than their last position. This can happen because you underestimate your value initially, or price yourself according to the local market and then move to another market later (say from Salt Lake City to San Diego), or you're out of the labor force for some time (like mothers or fathers who spend them first couple years at home with their new child). The smart candidates will insist on keeping their compensation history confidential (I.e., not sharing it with potential employers), and pass on those organizations who insist that the data be shared. Force them to tell you how much your skill set is worth to them. I've used this strategy to move to a new employer with a 68% increase in compensation. I've also passed on opportunities which required compensation history to be submitted before an offer would be issued. Hopefully legislation will be enacted to make this unnecessary in the future and employers will simply be banned from asking for such data.
Plus, there's a host of policy-related distortions which I won't go into, but basically, no, what we have is not a free market, and not capitalism. What we have is a mess.
How much would you pay to get an HR professional to give you an accurate quote, backed by solid data, on what your compensation should be at your next job interview? $250? $400? And if they could advise you in salary negotiations? Would you pay a % of the increase they help you get?
I bet there's a real business opportunity here.