Comment by EdJiang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EdJiang | Hacker News Reader

This is a really interesting topic. If you go to conventions for different trades, they usually make sure to emphasize that the convention is not a venue to discuss specific pricing, as that could be seen as collusion and anti-competitive. You wouldn't want a plumber's convention to be a place where they collude to fix prices!

With technology enabling more peer-to-peer connections, the game changes. If you're a productive plumber, why join a company and work for a salary when you can work directly for the consumer and enjoy higher margins (and higher risk)? However, as time goes on, more plumbers will make the same decision and enter the market. This results in a more efficient economy: more people can get plumbing at lower prices, and more people can work as plumbers.

But what if some business owners cost structures (due to mismanagement, poor productivity) do not result in good wages? (eg, XYZ Plumbing struggles to stay in business while ABC is doing just fine). Or what if the market forces end up in a clearing price that's too low? In today's economy, it's considered normal for some businesses to shut down if they cannot make money (know of a restaurant that has closed due to COVID?). But do we as a society want individuals taking on that much risk? If not, how can we insure against that risk?

One solution could be to target 100% employment and have the risk state subsidised (Through a guaranteed government wage). If the government is forced to spend money to employ people (The military could be argued to be a weak form of this), irrespective of need, I’m sure someone would figure out a solution to the government’s labor surplus. Pretty easy to implement too — just conscription - with the ability to opt in and out as you choose other jobs instead or leave those jobs.

Overall, this means individuals are free to attempt different employment at market rates. That could even be below the guaranteed government wage, just there’ll be no subsidies that if individual can’t make the economics work out.

Hard to argue that the 1.2% employment rate in 1944 wasn’t helping drive the economy forward.

And what would this army of people be doing?

I have an image in my head of all my neighbors working at the same company. WTF would we be doing?

I’m a software engineer, my wife a reporter, my next door neighbor a nurse, the guy across the hall plays video games all day. His girlfriend is a cleaning lady.

This doesn’t include the sex offender down the street, the guys who shoot guns in the middle of the night, the drug addicted and mentally ill who hang out near the bus station, or any other “hard cases.”

So what would we be doing?

A vast quantity of paid labor is great for infrastructure projects. This is what pulled the US out of the depression, and is the reason we have so many gorgeous post offices and public buildings everywhere. (Particularly on the post office front, this included stone workers, but also artists and architects and engineers.)

(Expanding on edit...) And really, infrastructure is about building the solid foundation on which the nation runs. Fix the digital infrastructure at all levels of government. Put out wild fires, and provide other emergency relief. You're already paying people; that's generally the expensive part...

Infrastructure work requires specialized training... that I don’t have. And most people don’t have.

We could certainly build a construction corps. But I don’t think many people in my neighborhood could be part of it.

Modern construction is far more technical than in the 1930s. Failure isn’t tolerated. Environmental impact statements are needed.

It’s insulting to the highly trained construction workers to say the average person could be conscripted into doing their job.

Re-institute the Manpower Board then, the government’s management of large amounts of manpower means they have a vested interest in their training. Look to the military, kids turn into marines, fighter pilots, engineers.

Only 30% of young adults meet the requirements for military service.

Most previous mass mobilizations focused on young men.

I still can’t imagine what sort of work my neighbors and I would be doing.

Not building roads, that’s for sure. Lots of bad backs.

The US has a long history of conscription, I don’t think this concept is as foreign as your response indicates. Conscription, the word, though, is not confined just to military service, but to state service.

Targeting 100% employment is a way of providing a UBI while also allowing the government to extra some value. It doesn’t particularly matter what they do, the government is just subsidising some economic activity (But the money is already spent, they just need a place to spend the labor, which is a good that is taxed by time itself). Works could be provided to companies or industries that are deemed a social good even. Maybe it is advantageous for a government to subsidise farms with labor instead of dollars due to the stability 100% employment could give to people.

I think you’re missing the overall point, though, which is that this is the default case. There’s nothing stopping a worker from getting hired at a private entity for whatever wage they want. You can still be a software engineer at your company, your wife still report. What it guards against is labor being priced below the government’s rate unless there is another reason to take the job.

The original commenter asked for a way to mitigate risk of people becoming independent contractors competing to a below market wage, this is one solution that seems to alleviate that risk by providing a minimum market wage.

> You wouldn't want a plumber's convention to be a place where they collude to fix prices!

Why not? Maybe we have fewer plumbers at higher prices, but we also have a saying: "you get what you pay for."

"But do we as a society want individuals taking on that much risk? If not, how can we insure against that risk?"

We insure against it by making sure there is always an alternative job they can go to in the local area paying the living wage.

A Job Guarantee.

Then people are encouraged to have a go and take the risk since there is little to lose. The Job Guarantee can be calibrated so that it will pay people setting up businesses their wage for a few months so they can get established - and they have access to that service once every, say, five years to stop Phoenix operations.

And of course having access to an alternative job paying the living wage means businesses have to pay the living wage to get any labour - and set their hours accordingly. No more trying to squeeze out profits by exploiting staff. Instead only businesses with genuine value add survive.

Having a powerful Federal automatic stabiliser isn't just good for the demand level in the economy. It ensures that bad businesses die, and the good ones survive. Just like thinning a forest.

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