Hacker News Reader

Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Firm B would be pretty easy to compete with, because it would end up with the worst human capital out of all of the firms, and a firm with better people would find a way to add value that Firm B could not.

Amazon is definitely not Firm B, although I suspect that is what you were driving toward. Amazon has invested more in being competitive than any other company it competes with in almost every area, and despite the nonsense you read in the media, it offers above-average pay and benefits in the industries it is involved in. Despite that, all warehouse and delivery jobs suck and are dangerous, but that says a lot more about those jobs than it does about the company.

View on HN

You seem oddly defensive of Amazon. Do you work for them?

In any case, you've missed the point. If Amazon is competitive and better than others on pay and conditions as you say, sectoral bargaining would be good for them, because it would stop them getting undercut by worse employers.

> Firm B would be pretty easy to compete with, because it would end up with the worst human capital out of all of the firms, and a firm with better people would find a way to add value that Firm B could not.

This is obviously not true. Plenty of companies pay terribly and get away with it, and plenty of companies thrive because treating employees badly is their primary innovation. Uber, for instance, has found success through paying "employees" effectively below minimum wage.

> Uber, for instance, has found success through paying "employees" effectively below minimum wage.

Yeah, but think about why.

Specifically, why doesn't Uber have any competitors that pay better? The only other major player in the US market is Lyft, which is such a clone of Uber that a lot of drivers work for both of them.

This happened because the market won't bear the kind of prices Uber, Lyft, and any other entrant in the market would need to charge in order to pay the drivers more.

This is a perfect example of my previous point about how regulations can constrain the market but don't create demand in themselves: if the government said all Uber and Lyft drivers needed to be full-time employees with benefits and a higher wage, even though the market won't bear the prices needed to make that happen, Uber and Lyft would go out of business. Instead of having low-paying jobs those workers would end up with no jobs.

You keep aggressively missing the point. Uber drivers' wages are nothing to do with "what the market will bear" and everything to do with bargaining power.

In countries with sectoral bargaining, where bargaining power is higher, workers get much higher wages and conditions for those same jobs. And yet, those jobs do not cease to exist. You must be very puzzled at how this is possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com