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Comment by maybelsyrup | Hacker News Reader

> This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of the problem.

Good! I've been hearing about "the business side of the problem" my entire life -- lectured sternly about it, in many cases. All while few of the Adults and Experts - people with Real Power, in other words - dare even mention some of the topics laid out in the link.

> I'm just saying that both sides of the equation need to be examined, i.e. the plight of the worker AND the plight of the business.

There is no "plight of the business". There's a business that's making money, losing it, or breaking even. The people working there may feel the consequences, but a business cannot "suffer".

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Imagine scenario where you have $100k and you can open a small restaurant, create jobs, maybe not best jobs but still some people will be putting food on the table with your help, some students will pay for their collage.

But you count the costs and it turns out you will break even in 50 years or if anything goes bad never, like, one bad hire will drown you.

You look at Google, Apple, Facebook stocks ... there is always a risk but no one got fired for buying IBM right? If you put your money in that stocks you don't have to worry about bad employees, sanitary inspections, paying rent, bad customers.

That is what those Adults and Experts are trying to tell you, local business is not some "magic" that makes money or loses it. Behind every local business with shitty jobs there are people, don't make every business equal to faceless Facebook, Google or Apple. Your local pizza shop has an owner who is as much an employee as his staff.

https://academictimes.com/economic-news-reporting-suffers-fr...

No. News sources are focusing on business instead of labor's issues, because news statistically favors business interests, not labor's.

If your hypothetical business owner is unable to start a business without paying a reasonable wage, then that business should not exist. And your hypothetical business owner should invest in Apple, Facebook, or otherwise.

If this causes less business entrepreneurship, then so be it. A business that cannot pay employees is not a business that adds value to society, and nothing of value is lost. This is a fundamental tenet of capitalism, the same way we say that businesses that cannot sell their product also deserve to fail.

But that is creating tragedy of commons that we have now. People who are having money are investing in stocks or ETFs, buying real estate because it is still better than having cash. Which inflates stocks/real estate bubble and when it bursts it will be much bigger mess than paying low wages but in constant manner, spread out over multiple people and multiple years.

I definitely did not write about business that cannot pay its employees. I wrote about business that lets people put the food on the table, which means also pay the bills.

> buying real estate

Tax positive externalities at 100%

"If this causes less business entrepreneurship, then so be it. A business that cannot pay employees is not a business that adds value to society, and nothing of value is lost. This is a fundamental tenet of capitalism, the same way we say that businesses that cannot sell their product also deserve to fail."

This is a false and dangerous, in that it ignores that the world isn't a free market, wage markets don't exist in a vacuum. Businesses might be able to pay higher wages if they weren't hindered by high rents, or if other restaurants raise prices in unison (e.g., in reaction to higher labor prices).

Just because a business can't pay a living wage in some setup doesn't mean it has no contribution.

What's a reasonable wage? Should any business in developing countries exist, given the incredibly low wages? Their wages can't be considered reasonable, right?

You just compared the US to developing nations.

It's an apt comparison.

"A business that cannot pay employees is not a business that adds value to society, and nothing of value is lost."

Value is a tricky expression here. There is a short term value and a long term value, and they may be very different.

Let us say that a mom-and-pop restaurant that cooks fairly healthy meals is squeezed out by McDonalds and shuts down. 50 years down the line, the fast food triumph has serious consequences on health of the nation.

But immediate market interactions cannot capture this development. The short term "Yay for salty and sugary food for less money!" win does not include the fact that you are buying an invisible "Type 2 diabetes and morbid obesity at the age of 40" item, too.

'suffering' for a business is just code for being on a path towards the workers suffering the consequences of no profit. That might mean not paying shareholders dividends and the company's share price losing value, but not all companies are public or pay dividends. If the money runs out, suddenly the business can't pay rent or pay the workers and thus goes bankrupt. No, the business's feelings aren't being hurt and it's not being physically assaulted.

The thing is, “the business” tends to always treat the employees as if money is running out. To the limit permitted by law.

This limit needs be adjusted, that’s all.

hmm the vast majority of people in the US work jobs that offer FAR more in wages and benefits that the smallest amount permitted by law, so clearly this statement is objectively false

> There is no "plight of the business". There's a business that's making money, losing it, or breaking even. The people working there may feel the consequences, but a business cannot "suffer"

For a small business, the business and the owner can be practically one in the same. So in some cases I think that verbiage is pretty spot on.

plight: "a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation."

Pretty sure a business can have plight.

It was hyperbolic, yes, but only a little, I think. The point I was making is that we've drunk a lot of koolaid about corporations being legal persons, as having rights, etc., such that no one bats an eye at anthropomorphisms like "the suffering of a company". My claim is that a) those words in that context are anthropomorphisms, metaphors, and b) that I don't think we've had much of a conversation about the koolaid I'm alluding to. (Outside of wealthy educated elites like ourselves, I mean.)

Nobody talks about “the suffering of a company” - that’s a made up example.

People do say things like ‘the company suffered losses’, but isn’t anthropomorphising.

A company is just a group of people right? Like people talk about the plight of the Syrian people or whatever. What's the difference?

Maybe we're getting a little philosophical here, but I don't believe inanimate entities can experience "difficulty" or "misfortune".

Would you say that a rock suffers "misfortune" if it topples off a cliff into the sea? Is it "difficult" for a glacier to maintain its integrity in the face of global warming? Is my car unfortunate to have been scratched in a parking lot? (OK, I do believe that last one, but I'm anthropomorphising my car to talk about my own human misfortune)

Definitely philosophical. If we can use statements like “a business had a bad quarter” and “a business had a good quarter” and understand that these mean that the financial statements were negative/positive. It isn’t a stretch to say something like “a business has had 10 straight bad quarters” is a plight considering a business can cease to exist.

Is a group of people an inanimate entity to you? Are there only certain types of groups of people that you think are an animate entity?

If you want to get really pedantic about it, a company is not a "group of people": a company is a particular legal structure for organising a profit-making enterprise. So yes, it is an inanimate entity.

When we say things like "that Lions football team suffered a crushing defeat", we're engaging in metonymy -- referring to the suffering of the members of the team but speaking metaphorically about "the team".

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't think whatever arbitrary legal structure there is around a group of people somehow makes the organization not human.

For example, I think it's perfectly normalized to say "that Detroit Lions team suffered a crushing defeat", even though the Detroit Lions are a profit-making enterprise.

I'll go with, there is a group of people involved with a corporation, but it's largely decoupled from the corporation itself.

The group of people are the labourers being exploited, and they're separate from the group of owners that the corporation represents.

Good point, I can think of 1 right away: Toys-R-Us. Miss having them around!

If a business closes, lots of people lose employment + business owners become more employment competition. Increasing unemployment wrecks wages.

It is also not free to give unemployment benefits, it requires higher taxation which moves the sustainability bar higher and more businesses close, etc etc.

You know how people avoid being impacted by a business going bankrupt? They don't take jobs there.

Jobs at more stable places are available and people will take them. The businesses need to fail or be sold.

There will always be businesses on the margin that barely survive, and you want as many of those as possible always to increase employment and wages, even if your world vision is only pro-worker.

This really just raises the question on why employees don't get a share of profits.

They take on all the same risk as owners do

It's certainly not the same risk. If a business goes bust the owners lose capital, the employees lose opportunity cost at worst.

If a business goes bust, those losses can be written of at tax time. A worker losing their job faces homelessness, the inability to see a doctor or pay for their medications, and hunger.

To avail the benefit of writing off taxes, the ex-business owner requires future income. Who's to say that he/she won't be unemployed for a long while after devastating their life savings?

Then they can get a job. Why are they taking on risks that they can't bear with their investments?

What does write off mean to you? If you lose money the government is not giving you money for that loss.

The vast majority of businesses are small businesses, if they go broke the owner is just as broke as the employees.

Most small businesses require the owner to take significant financial risk, or work for free for years or more.

Each growth stage presents tough choices of additional risk, as well.

An employee doesn't shoulder any of this. There is a world of difference!

It's because the law and financial system exalt capital at the expense of everyone else. There's no reason that labor couldn't translate into equity.

Also, the current system enforces the artificial scarcity of capital available to those who need to work for a living instead of living off of their assets.

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