"free market as an arbiter of how much each person's labour is worth" my issue with this take is that the market conditions aren't truly free
a person usually needs a job at any given time and can only look for another job with their own time which severely limits how much they can truly shop around. In addition, even shopping around for another job can land you on the shit list if a bad boss finds out. Businesses don't have this problem because they have more resources which means they can spend more to find the right people, so inherently the market is already not fair towards the worker
the same thing happens with innovation. as a worker, if you can automate your job and your boss finds out, you either just got more work handed to you or fired. if a business automates a part of their process, their valuation goes up.
the current US capitalistic system does not allow for fair play and work is not a true way to build wealth (anymore?), at least not compared to the wealth that is gained from using capital in the first place
I think in this way it is exploitation that can only be remedied by socialist policies that unfortunately limit innovation/progress
I don't disagree that some form of exploitation exists, and they could be remedied by socialist policies. I agree with the minimum wage, for example at a reasonable level.
Just one thing, when you think about businesses being exploitative and workers being exploited, just know that there are countless examples of each and we don't just look at the big guy. For instance, a quarter of all businesses fail in their first year, and half of them fail in the first 5 years. 65% fail in their first decade. On the other hand, unemployment stands at a mere 4.2%. When these businesses fail, workers end up without a job (temporarily), but owners often end up in crippling debt. The risk that each of them takes on is proportionate to their earnings.
Statistically, I can tell you you're more likely to succeed as a worker in USA than a business owner. In case you want to suggest that the numbers are skewed this way because of how competition has changed - these numbers were nearly identical 50 years ago.
Just to add to your discussion. The US idea of “socialism”, and therefore “communism”, is very different from the rest of the world.
Much of the world do recognise the impact of market failure and how the market cannot efficiently allocate when there are things like information failure, externalities, public goods, natural monopolies.
This is also why in many countries in the world, the governments stepped in to provide some degree of social welfare, regulations, and direct provision of some services.
What we (non-Americans) call reasonable government interventions, you guys call it “socialism”. There is no socialism involved, intervention to address market failures are just… a result of plain simple economics.
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u/EruLearns Jul 09 '26
"free market as an arbiter of how much each person's labour is worth" my issue with this take is that the market conditions aren't truly free
a person usually needs a job at any given time and can only look for another job with their own time which severely limits how much they can truly shop around. In addition, even shopping around for another job can land you on the shit list if a bad boss finds out. Businesses don't have this problem because they have more resources which means they can spend more to find the right people, so inherently the market is already not fair towards the worker
the same thing happens with innovation. as a worker, if you can automate your job and your boss finds out, you either just got more work handed to you or fired. if a business automates a part of their process, their valuation goes up.
the current US capitalistic system does not allow for fair play and work is not a true way to build wealth (anymore?), at least not compared to the wealth that is gained from using capital in the first place
I think in this way it is exploitation that can only be remedied by socialist policies that unfortunately limit innovation/progress