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Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

It's about time. Unfortunately not time for this audience...mostly. It mainly applies to low wage workers, though there is a loose garden clause as well as provisions for hourly workers (which I guess can include us contractors/freelancers).

It's a step in the right direction but falls flat in addressing the competition in high tech with SV...which sounds like exactly the sort of timely pandering a guy like Baker would do right before re-election season: let the working class know he's "got their back" while still keeping the people lining his pockets happy. For a guy who calls himself a Republican he's sure got a backwards idea of how free market competition works.

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>It's a step in the right direction but falls flat in addressing the competition in high tech with SV...which sounds like exactly the sort of timely pandering a guy like Baker would do right before re-election season: let the working class know he's "got their back" while still keeping the people lining his pockets happy. For a guy who calls himself a Republican he's sure got a backwards idea of how free market competition works.

Well, as long as we're being political, speaking as both a Mass resident and a Millenial American in general, when Republicans talk about "free markets" they mean free from state interference specifically. They make no guarantees, even rhetorical ones, about making sure the markets stay competitive. If you're hearing that from them, you're hearing what you want to hear, rather than what they're saying.

And it's not like the Democrats are super-good on this issue either! The parties can, by now, be viewed as coalitions of cultural and economic sectors squabbling over how to distribute the outputs of, and authority over, a fundamentally low-productivity, uncompetitive, oligarchical system in which you "ask permission, not forgiveness" if you want to get something done. Neo-Brandeisianism is the most under-appreciated political idea today[1].

[1] https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/the-...

"And it's not like the Democrats are super-good on this issue either!"

Democrats don't claim to be "super-good" on free markets. Democrats would rather see fair treatment of employees and consumers, even if it makes the markets "less free".

>Democrats would rather see fair treatment of employees and consumers

It's been a strongly Democrat-controlled MA legislature that has avoided passing non-compete reform for a decade or more.

Plus false equivalence is a way of dismissing anything you can't support. Dems should be more likely to support this because it helps individuals. It also likely helps the whole business economy too.

I don't know where you're getting this isn't supported. I'm entirely on board with this; I just wish it went further.

>Democrats don't claim to be "super-good" on free markets. Democrats would rather see fair treatment of employees and consumers, even if it makes the markets "less free".

One would think that fair treatment of workers and consumers would involve significantly more stringent enforcement of antitrust law. This is why I appreciate having Elizabeth Warren as our Senator: she has spent her life fighting for our basic interests on issues that weren't sexy enough to get a thousand-person protest march going.

I also admire Warren's emphasis on competitive markets. It's the main thing that draws me to Warren-style capitalism, and I'm with you that "competitive markets" is a worthy rejoinder to "free markets".

Free markets deliver monopolies. Competitive markets deliver innovation.

>This is why I appreciate having Elizabeth Warren as our Senator: she has spent her life fighting for our basic interests on issues that weren't sexy enough to get a thousand-person protest march going.

She'd have been able to do a lot more good for us if she were still fighting those fights instead of toeing the party line as a senator. There's plenty of other senators to toe the party line day in and day out. Politicians that want to protect consumers are much rarer.

Just so you know, the phrase is “toeing the party line”.

Have you seen the co-determination and anti-corruption bills she just proposed? They're excellent.

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of Republican rhetoric. They frequently argue that markets free from government interference will be more competitive. It is perfectly reasonable to hold them to account for that line of argument and to insist that markets need to become more competitive and not just more free from government interference.

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