The difference between anyone and everyone ...

[Thomasio]

... is what some people still have to discover.

 

When I hear people like Stefan talk about the capitalist system being fair, because he seems to believe all it takes is make an effort to accumulate enough money to make a living, I believe he's missing the main point.

 

Obviously there are lazy people who never get anywhere and there are diligent people making every effort to make a living, so it's easy to get the impression, all it takes is make an effort and you'll be fine.

But in a world where 1/2 the population is sufficient to produce all the goods and services needed, there will always be 1/2 of the population in poverty, no matter how hard they try to get out of it.

As long as there are enough lazy people, it's easy to blame their misery on their lack of effort and at least in the western world it's in fact possible for about anyone to get out of poverty, but it's not possible for everyone.

 

Personally I made the effort myself, I managed to make a living and up to the moment the whole system collapses I'll be fine, but I do realize, I was able to do this only because I outcompeted others.

The world as a whole cannot compete, because it doesn't have anyone to compete against, there are no people on Mars the world could outcompete.

Competition requires a loser and whoever that is and for whatever reason he lost, he will be poor.

The more people are willing to make an effort, the more effort everyone has to make to get anywhere, but under all circumstances 1/2 of the people will remain poor.

 

I believe the only way to even out inequality without ruining the whole world through increasing competition is limiting the amount of effort a single person can make.

Something like: Once you made a living, once you have achieved a decent life of a given preset level, you have to stop making more and give others a chance to catch up.

[shirgall]

There is always an improved standard of living to strive for. Compare our lives now to those of royalty 100 years ago. Heck, I can compare my life at 18 to my life at 36 to my life now at 47.

[Thomasio]

No @shirgall there isn't.

 

Comparing royalty to capitalism, I'd agree, capitalism is far better, but fair is something else.

Capitalism is fair as far as it provides the same chance for anyone to achieve something, but since every winner in capitalism leaves behind one or more losers, overall it cannot be fair.

 

If you compare your own life to 20 years ago, you're seeing the fruits of your own efforts, which is your success in outcompeting others.

You don't take into account how bad those you outcompeted are doing now.

Maybe you consider those as just too lazy, maybe they made it easy for you to beat them, but rest assured, in a globalized world with ever bigger free trade zones, you will soon compete against Chinese workers, living in gigantic factories, working up to 16 hours a day, earning $30 a month and getting fired at the age of 30 because they are burned out.

 

In other words, you see what anyone could reach, but you overlook that if everyone else had done the same you did, you wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

 

For the moment in the western world we're still able to find holes in the market, where our efforts can lead us to a success and sure enough, the more effort you put into it, the more success you can gain, but that's exclusively because you outcompete others.

On a global level you cannot outcompete anyone, because for the world as a hole, there isn't anyone to compete against.

[ParaSait]

The error in your thinking is that you assume there's this fixed amount of people to get all the work done. But the more people there are available in the workforce, the cheaper labor becomes, so the more people can be employed for the same cost (law of supply and demand). Not only the employment evens out, we can also reach a higher standard of living more easily.

If we want more people to be able to get a job, we could start by abolishing the minimum wage. All that the minimum wage laws make sure is that people who could otherwise earn a little, now earn nothing (including the valuable experience that would enable them to grow...), because they can't legally negotiate a low wage.

Income and corporate tax makes work much more expensive than it need be, too. Any element of disruptive force that's involved hits the weakest among us the hardest, really.

 

Hope that helps!

[Laforge]

Owwh i totally understand how you think, Thomasio. It is how i was raised.

Don't confuse Stefan's use of the word capitalism with anything political. He just means 'freedom', 'no force'.
Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JApAQlANyzg
To note on your practical example, let's imagine a world where:

- the store where you buy your food/clothes/lumber/ipad/car is NOT forced to pay taxes on every transaction
- none of the merchants and producers who produced those things are forced to pay taxes on any of the parts or worker wages
- none of the transporting companies are required to pay taxes on the diesel for their trucks. No petrodollar.
- anyone can start selling stuff from their house and become a 'legal' employer with the snap of a finger.
- no employer is ever forced to pay a minimum wage + pension + health care to any worker
- any "poor worker" could buy/loan a cheap second hand car or camper van and live out in the woods, permanently, practically for free

Now;
Do you think this worker will be poor when everything is so cheap and everyone can find a job?
or
Do you think he'll be able to work for 4 hours/week as a cleaner and be able to live comfortably with all conveniences?

There is no way to compare prices in this world to a free world. Everything is way too manipulated by government and their buddy-bankers.
I bet our current high-tech computer automated world is much more wealthy than anyone would guess.
 

[Mister Mister]

I believe the only way to even out inequality without ruining the whole world through increasing competition is limiting the amount of effort a single person can make.

How?

If I "outcompete" all the other energy companies, and am able to offer clean electricity at $5 a year to the average household, who am I leaving behind?

 

Can I ask do you subscribe to a utilitarian approach to ethics?  It sounds to me like you do.  To me, it is a fool's game to try to weigh all the people who benefit vs all who suffer, from one person's actions, let alone an entire system, especially if you include the past, the present, and the speculative future.

[Frosty]

Do you have any examples of diligent workers who work hard but remain poor? Do you have any examples of those people in a capitalistic state?

[shirgall]

There are things commonplace now that could not be had for any price two decades ago.

[Thomasio]

Do you think this worker will be poor when everything is so cheap and everyone can find a job?

or

Do you think he'll be able to work for 4 hours/week as a cleaner and be able to live comfortably with all conveniences?

 

I think this worker wouldn't find a job for 4 hours a week, because where merciless competition rules, there would be literally millions of people willing to work 20 jobs of 4 hours a week simultanously for a lower wage, just to outcompete the others.

This free competition would replace the wealthy by the diligent, like the switch from royalty to capitalism has replaced the royals by the capitalists, but it wouldn't solve the problem that competition requires a loser.

 

Lowering the level of income, paying lower wages and making everything cheaper is the same story as it is right now, only on lower level.

 

 

Do you have any examples of diligent workers who work hard but remain poor? Do you have any examples of those people in a capitalistic state?

 

Actually I do.

[LibertarianSocialist]

Thomasio, It seems you are set on the idea that the half of the world with productive capacity is hell bent on producing for everyone? Is this just within the context of our current society? Surely any reasonable man would prefer to share his labour burden, I find it hard to believe that Chinese workers would voluntary choose to produce all our stuff if they didn't have too. All I am saying that you have reached what I believe is a false conclusion of human nature (outside a system of for-profit market economics). If this is merely a stance taken within the context of capitalism I understand.

[Laforge]

I think this worker wouldn't find a job for 4 hours a week, because where merciless competition rules, there would be literally millions of people willing to work 20 jobs of 4 hours a week simultanously for a lower wage, just to outcompete the others.

This free competition would replace the wealthy by the diligent, like the switch from royalty to capitalism has replaced the royals by the capitalists, but it wouldn't solve the problem that competition requires a loser.

 

Lowering the level of income, paying lower wages and making everything cheaper is the same story as it is right now, only on lower level.

 

Before the government took us off the gold standard, one working man could support an entire family on a low pay job. Buy a car and a house. (If, back then, he invested in precious metals, he also would have a nice pension)

 

After the huge fiat manipulations in the last 40 years, what happened?

We have now have women in the work force and huge improvements in automation. Who got richer? The average person or the political banker?

Really we currently have nothing even remotely close to a free capitalism.

The average not-so-ambitious Joe will not work 20 different boring jobs if one is sufficient. He will have time to spend with his children, do art, music, lay at the beach or whatever.

 

[Thomasio]

Thomasio, It seems you are set on the idea that the half of the world with productive capacity is hell bent on producing for everyone? Is this just within the context of our current society? Surely any reasonable man would prefer to share his labour burden, I find it hard to believe that Chinese workers would voluntary choose to produce all our stuff if they didn't have too. All I am saying that you have reached what I believe is a false conclusion of human nature (outside a system of for-profit market economics). If this is merely a stance taken within the context of capitalism I understand.

 

How shall I say?

Personally I've made a living out of just that.

I grew up in a halfway small town, there was only one newspaper and they had 4 boys hired to deliver their newspapers every morning.

That was an hour of work before school and they paid for that a free scooter also for private use, plus about twice as much money as my parents gave me for pocket money.

I've applied for that job, because I wanted a free scooter, but all the jobs were taken, so I offered them, I'll take all 4 jobs, I work 4 hours every morning before school, I deliver all the newspapers and they save the costs of 3 scooters.

I got that job the next day, the other 4 got fired and for the next 4 years there was only one paperboy in town.

Even today, 35 years later, that's one single job, adjusted for inflation they still pay the same money, but now they have a 35 year old guy, a professor for English who can't find a job as a teacher or translator or whatever else after the state has cut funds for schools.

Today no school kid would have the option to do what I did, today there are no little jobs for them anymore, because all the former small jobs children could take aside of school are taken by adults who can't find any regular job.

 

Did I need the extra money back then?

No, but it allowed me some extras no one else at my age could afford and I enjoyed it.

I didn't have the slightest intension to share my labor burden, I was able to outcompete 4 others and I did.

 

Later on I learned programming, not in a school, because those schools didn't even exist back then, I learned on my own and to make a living while learning I took a job in security business.

I got paid minimum wage, but I compensated that by working 30 days a month, 14 hours a day, meaning I took away the jobs of 3 or 4 others.

I never took a vacation, I had my vacation paid in cash and worked through on top of that, meaning for vacation time I earned twice as much.

This way I was the most reliable worker in the company, I was allowed to choose the post I wanted and obviously I've chosen the easiest one, where I had nothing else to do but being present, so I could study coding during working hours.

After 6 years of that, not only I had made enough money to make more money through investments, but I had learned enough coding and computer technology to get a better paid job in a computer company.

And again, I could have done with less money, but I had nothing better to do anyway and the extra money I used to have a better life.

 

Back then security business was full of failed lives, some had tried to run their own business and failed, were drowned in debt and willing to take any job, some had dropped out of school and never learned a thing, some alcoholics no one else would hire and people like that, so for me back then it was easy to outcompete everyone else.

Today security business is full of graduate students who can't find any other job and the failed lives who used to find a low paid job there are now unemployed and homeless.

But one thing hasn't changed, those people still work 300+ hours a month without any intension of sharing.

 

Recently I've seen a documentary from Greece, how things are going there now.

They had an opening for one job, where they offered 300 EURO a month, which is about 1/2 the minimum wage in Greece, still they had about 200 people lining up for the job.

After 2 hours of interviews the manager came out stating, the job will pay only 150 a month and those not willing to work for that may go home.

 

Am I set on the idea?

Well, I believe without any kind of regulation limiting the amount of work a single worker can do, open competition will always lead to loads of unemployed people, simply because in our industrialized world the workforce needed to get all the work done is in fact far less than there are people and nobody is willing to share his job as long as that also means lowering his income and/or comfort in life.

Just the opposite, while more hours mean more income, almost everybody volunteers to work as much as possible, regardless how many others they might outcompete.

Chinese labor is taking over the production for the world and unless the western world raises walls of import duty to protect themselves from these low paid jobs, the western world will get drowned in poverty simply because nobody can compete with 25 year old Chinese people devoting their lives to nothing but producing goods in an industrialized environment, while getting paid $30 a month.

[Laforge]

Chinese labor is taking over the production for the world and unless the western world raises walls of import duty to protect themselves from these low paid jobs, the western world will get drowned in poverty simply because nobody can compete with 25 year old Chinese people devoting their lives to nothing but producing goods in an industrialized environment, while getting paid $30 a month.

 

Imagine for the moment that you're right and the fact that so much is currently produced in China has _nothing_ to do with an obscene amount of government laws and regulations in the west.

But now also imagine the west is suddenly enlightened by anarchy. No more taxes, licenses, permits and fiat money.

 

Now;

Do you really think people will massively start starving in the streets?

or,

Do you think people will start growing their own food, re-building factories and selling goods and services in win-win negotiations?

 

[Thomasio]

Do you really think people will massively start starving in the streets?

or,

Do you think people will start growing their own food, re-building factories and selling goods and services in win-win negotiations?

 

The answer to that you can see for yourself if you pay a visit to Detroid.

2/3 of the population have moved out, following the money, the remaining 1/3 is growing food on the ruins of former factories, there are even some companies founded dealing with food, but nobody considers rebuilding a factory because the Chinese still produce cheaper than the cheapest American worker could.

Detroid is simply falling back into preindustrial agriculture.

 

If you believe that's a good goal, liberterianism it the way to achive it.

You'll have 2/3 of American population move to Asia where a worker literally owned like a slave by his employer at least has 3 meals a day, a roof over his head, medical care and a tiny little bit of money, while the rest of America will grow the food China requires to feed their workers.

 

Imagine it like this:

No matter how many laws you abolish, no matter how many taxes you abolish, no matter how low you make prices, unless you produce in this kind of gigantic Chinese factories where workers do absolutely nothing but live to produce, you cannot compete with their prices, so in an entirely open market, the Chinese system will become the dominant one.

[Laforge]

Fascinating! I'm not sure if, absent the state, this is a realistic scenario but let's assume it is.
Now since you and i consider this situation to be problematic, i think others will too. So i would propose that the free market will figure out a solution. Maybe like so:

Assume someone in a competing factory, (maybe in China, maybe in the west) recognises the problem and only hires workers for a maximum of 10 hrs per week.
His product will state this clearly, something like a 'Fair Trade' label.
And subsequently, if people care enough about this issue, he will out-compete the first factory.

Don't forget that if no human is needed anymore for shitty jobs, no low skilled person can make money. But this is also a huge problem for the factory owner.
What to do with 100 million ipads sitting in your factory hall each priced at 0.00001 bitcoin whom nobody can afford because only 0,02% of the people in the world have a job?

At this point maybe charity will play a role... or people will get paid for artistic expressions i don't know. It's still a long way to that point
Try to recognise that in real capitalism, supply and demand always balance out. This is in stark contrast to any kind of central planning. If free i think people will be much more safe from poverty than our current system with borders and permits.
Central planning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJYHCUM8QNs
 

[GasCap]

i believe your main concern is fairness. I think it is impossible to have fairness since people are born into this world differently. Some born rich/poor, some born in China some in US, some born with less body parts some more,born with different parents, different # of siblings, the list goes on and on. 

 

Take the rich/poor example.

People who are born Rich may never need to work a day in their lives. They don't even need to compete.

 

People who are born poor may never even catch up b/c the deficiencies are so great.

 

I have accepted that the world is not fair and you just make the best with what you have.

 

How do you make life fair when it is not fair at its beginning?

 

but I see fairness as in say parent to children or the law

 

if I had 3 children, I would be as fair as possible to give them equal attention,care,financials,education,experiences.

or

Every is equal under the law no matter who you are. (But of course you know that is not always the case)

 

That being said, I think the whole point of competition is to produce a winner and a loser. it is survival of the fittest and may the best man wins. If the company thinks you are the best man to run the project,team,company. then you are the best qualified candidate who will lead the company to success and grow to produce better products and services (which benefits mass consumers) and potentially employee more people. if they have chose a less competent person who does a bad job then the company produces a worse products/services and things start going down hill, company shuts down and hundreds unemployed. Cost and benefit, one person unhappy or hundreds?

 

But hey if you feel bad for the person you are more than welcome to give him a % of your salary. Nothing is stopping you

[Thomasio]

Yes @Laforge, there we agree on the main point and I agree on most of the rest you wrote.

Limiting the amount of work a single worker can do is the key to success.

To my mind that would have to include ANY kind of work, like self employed, managers, volunteer work for free, simply everything.

The point where I don't agree is, I don't think free competition can achieve that through a fair trade label or anything else not written in a law and/or not enforced.

Forces of Competition will outcompete fair trade products until enough people decide they rather buy cheaper and afford more.

A non mandatory fair trade label would not be honored by the general population, as you can see nowadays in fair trade coffee, where fair trade coffee remains a tiny little part of the market while most people rather spend their money for other things.

 

The rest of what you describe is the current problem under which capitalism will ruin itself.

With decreasing wages and less money going around among average people, either prices go into deflation or less products can be sold, causing companies to go bankrupt, decreased production, causing more unemployment, etc., simply a circle downwards ending in worldwide poverty for 99.99% of the population.

Opening markets even further than they are will not stop this, it will speed it up.

 

Investments such as houses, shares of stock, precious metals, etc., will increase to levels where average people can't even afford a wooden shed in the country side anymore, because anyone having achieved some wealth will try to secure it in investments not affected by currency values, but food and other all day items will become cheaper and cheaper.

Take a look at Japan, where they are stuck in this problem for over 20 years now.

Supply and demand are currently evening out by dropping demand due to lack of money among average people, met by closing factories and reduced supply, consequently leading to even less demand, leading to even more factories closing.

 

Of course it won't be played out to the very end, because the point where the population revolts against this comes way earlier, but whenever it comes, capitalism will be crushed there.

The only way to prevent that would not be entirely free markets, because you just can't convince the Chinese to limit their labor force.

You have to protect local wealth, charge huge import duty on foreign products and make local laws limiting the working hours for everyone.

Once neighboring countries see how such an environment prospers, the rest of the world will follow.

[Koroviev]

If I'm understanding correctly what you are proposing is that the way to fix the "unfair-ness" of competition is to limit the amount of time people are allowed to compete. Does this also include limiting the amount of wages people receive? Meaning a doctor would make exactly the same amount of money, and work the exact same amount of hours, as a 16 year old starting his first job flipping burgers at McDonalds. Is there another part of this plan I'm missing, because that seems far from fair to me.

 

Also, who is going to enforce this work curfew, for lack of a better term, and how is it going to be enforced? As a citizen am I going to be forced to wear a tracking device that buzzes after I hit exactly 40 hours? What happens if I continue working? Does the SWAT team show up and force me to stop the task I'm in the middle of? What if my 40 hours ends right when said SWAT team's 40 hours ends, who stops them from working and am I free to keep working until the next SWAT team arrives?

 

What if I'm, an entrepreneur starting my own business am I supposed to just sit around for the rest of the week once I hit my limit putting my brand new venture at risk? What about painters or coders or any other artistic workers who get into "the zone" and if were forced to stop would never complete their masterpieces? What about doctors in the middle of a surgery??

 

Also, what if I'm more technically or physically skilled that those who work the next shift, I'm assuming most jobs will need multiple shifts unless everything is just going to halt all at once when everyone hits 40 hours. Is it fair to me, my employer, or those who are benefiting from my skills if someone less skilled or knowledgeable is forced to finish the job I've started? What incentive do I have to do better work if it's not going to better my lot in life. Yes, the "Chinese" factory workers may be able to produce more goods cheaper but the artisan's goods will always be much higher quality.

 

Finally, who decides how much money is enough money or how much work is enough work? Are we supposed to put one all-knowing supreme being in place to make that decision for us (dictatorship), elect a group of officials to do it (democracy)? Do those individuals get to say how much they make? Who enforces that?

 

It seems to me like the only logical solution is to give people as much choice and freedom to make those choices as possible. Although, yes there still will be "the poor" at least then we can say for certain that they are only "the poor" because of the decisions they have made.

[Thomasio]

If I'm understanding correctly what you are proposing is that the way to fix the "unfair-ness" of competition is to limit the amount of time people are allowed to compete. Does this also include limiting the amount of wages people receive? Meaning a doctor would make exactly the same amount of money, and work the exact same amount of hours, as a 16 year old starting his first job flipping burgers at McDonalds. Is there another part of this plan I'm missing, because that seems far from fair to me.

 

Of course wages are freely negotiable under limited working hours, there's no limit to how much someone can earn.

The difference is only that everyone would get paid what he is worth, rather than the most skillful one getting paid as much as the most desperate unemployed one waiting outside the door is willing to work for.

Wages would become a matter of skill, productivity and qualification, but you wouldn't see graduate students working nightshift in security business or flipping burgers at McDonalds, you wouldn't see highly trained doctors taking the jobs at Walmart, only because hospitals prefer to hire less doctors and make each of them work longer hours.

 

How to control that is another question, for self employed people it may be quite difficult if not impossible, but it doesn't have to be perfect, same as today's system survives corruption and nepotism, it would be sufficient to organize a regular working time of 10 hours a week in the same way we now organize 40 hours a week.

You would only have to add a paragraph saying, you cannot have more than one job, you cannot run more than one company and you cannot run a company and be employed elsewhere at the same time.

 

If you start your own company and you cannot manage to make it successful within the working hours you're limited to, maybe you simply aren't qualified to run a business?

What's the difference between trying to replace lack of skill by more hours, as long as that just forces every other self employed one to do the same long hours?

You'll be outcompeted either way, only that without limited working hours everyone works longer and a lot of people don't work at all.

[Thomasio]

That being said, I think the whole point of competition is to produce a winner and a loser.

 

There is nothing to say against that, until you see the ultimate effects of that.

 

Let's make it a very small scale.

Let's say there are 300 people, there are 3 companies producing all these 300 people need, each employing 100 people.

There are $900 in currency going around, which is enough to buy all the products these 3 companies produce and each worker earns $3.

 

If you apply taxes or people save some of their income, you're already doomed and forced to print more currency to adjust for the money leaving the circulation, but let's assume the ideal case where taxes are given back to people in benefits and savings are sooner or later spent.

Now let's see how it works if you apply entirely open competition.

 

Imagine one of the 300 workers starts to work twice as much for twice the money.

The company fires one of the others and produces the same as before, paying the same wages as before.

Now you have one guy starving, one guy saving $3 that he doesn't need to finance his life and only $897 going around to buy all products, meaning at least one of the companies either has to lower their price or will not be able to sell one of their products.

 

The starving guy is now forced to either offer his labor at a lower wage or he has to offer more hours, let's say he offers more hours, just like the first one, then next month you have two guys starving and 2 products not sellable anymore.

Next month 4 guys, another month later 8 guys and so on and so forth, until the system reaches the limit of its productivity, where 150 guys work twice as much, 150 guys are starving and half of all products can't be sold anymore.

 

That's the situation we have in this world right now.

At this point it doesn't matter anymore what you do, whether you decrease wages, lower prices, cut production or whatever else you do, under all circumstances 1/2 the population is starving, 1/2 of production isn't sellable and 1/2 of the money is sleeping in the bank accounts of companies and the 150 that still have a job.

 

There are 3 possible ways out of this:

1) Let the starving people die (after which you will find yourself in a situation, where 75 more people are starving and only 75 people do all the work).

2) Tax companies and working people by 1/2 of their income and give it to the starving people for free.

3) Restrict the working hours, so companies are forced to rehire the starving ones.

 

If I read you right, you'd prefer to let them die?

I would prefer to rehire them, even though I still agree different skills and different productivity should make a difference in earnings.

[Koroviev]

Of course wages are freely negotiable under limited working hours, there's no limit to how much someone can earn.

The difference is only that everyone would get paid what he is worth, rather than the most skillful one getting paid as much as the most desperate unemployed one waiting outside the door is willing to work for.

Wages would become a matter of skill, productivity and qualification, but you wouldn't see graduate students working nightshift in security business or flipping burgers at McDonalds, you wouldn't see highly trained doctors taking the jobs at Walmart, only because hospitals prefer to hire less doctors and make each of them work longer hours.

 

How to control that is another question, for self employed people it may be quite difficult if not impossible, but it doesn't have to be perfect, same as today's system survives corruption and nepotism, it would be sufficient to organize a regular working time of 10 hours a week in the same way we now organize 40 hours a week.

You would only have to add a paragraph saying, you cannot have more than one job, you cannot run more than one company and you cannot run a company and be employed elsewhere at the same time.

 

If you start your own company and you cannot manage to make it successful within the working hours you're limited to, maybe you simply aren't qualified to run a business?

What's the difference between trying to replace lack of skill by more hours, as long as that just forces every other self employed one to do the same long hours?

You'll be outcompeted either way, only that without limited working hours everyone works longer and a lot of people don't work at all.

I still feel like a lot of the picture is being left out. First off in skilled jobs the most skillful employee will always get paid much more than "the most desperate unemployed" person waiting outside the door. This may not hold true in mindless or factory work, but it will always be the case in skilled positions. If I knock on the door of a hospital and say I will do all of their surgeries, no matter how little I am willing to work for the surgeon will always get the job. Now maybe this is an extreme situation so let's talk a little more along what I'm assuming you actually mean. Lets take 2 surgeons, both applying for the same position, one (Dave) has 30 years experience, worked in the same hospital for all 30 years never been accused of malpractice, and has as spotless a record as possible. The second (Jim) has 30 years of experience as well, but has been charged with malpractice many times has been fired from every hospital he's worked at and is in general not a very liked guy. As the hiring manager who are you going to want to hire? Who are you going to want to pay more? In real careers you are hired based on more than just how little you are willing to be paid.

 

Lets say this same situation occurs but since both Dave and Jim are not allowed to work more than 10 hours, the hospital can "afford" to hire both, I'm assuming management can only work 10 hours too but we'll get to this later, who is going to be assigned most of the work? As a patient who do you want to perform your surgery? If you ask me the answer to both is Dave, every time. Again we have an issue with fairness because Dave is doing all of the work and Jim is reaping all of the rewards. Yes, the hospital could pay Dave more and Jim less but then wouldn't it be more fair to the owners of the hospital to not hire Jim at all? So by making it "more fair" to the workers you've in a sense made it less fair for the employers. The beautiful thing about a free market is that if my employer does decide to hire all of the unemployed and pay them nothing, then as a skilled worker I have the choice to go to the next employer and get paid more, or start my own company doing the exact same thing but pay more and get all of the most talented employees.

 

Not to mention, as an employer how am I supposed to judge my staff if they're only there for 2 hours a day? As an employee how am I supposed to gain more skills if I'm only there 2 hours a day?

 

Also, this still doesn't answer the 2 main questions of how will this be enforced if at all and what about jobs where people need to work longer than 10 hours? Wouldn't this cause teachers to stop teaching right when they hit their weekly 10 hours since I'm assuming they would stop getting paid at 10 hours? What constitutes working? When are teachers supposed to grade papers? What if a surgeon is in the middle of a surgery? or a firefighter? This system would have to be enforced somehow, otherwise why wouldn't I work more, or hire someone willing to work more, in order to make more money?

 

If your salary is based on "skill, productivity, and qualification" isn't there still a "winner and a loser" since those less qualified would get paid less? Also what incentive do I have to be more qualified if I'm guaranteed a job?

 

Finally, and I'm sorry that this may come off as a little rude but if you think anyone could start or even run any business on no more than 10 hours a week, then you must have no experience running or starting a business yourself.

 

Read Atlas Shrugged and you'll see the effects of this theoretical policy (I'll happily give you my copy if you PM me ) 

 

There are 3 possible ways out of this:

1) Let the starving people die (after which you will find yourself in a situation, where 75 more people are starving and only 75 people do all the work).

2) Tax companies and working people by 1/2 of their income and give it to the starving people for free.

3) Restrict the working hours, so companies are forced to rehire the starving ones.

 

If I read you right, you'd prefer to let them die?

I would prefer to rehire them, even though I still agree different skills and different productivity should make a difference in earnings.

Not to steal GasCap's thunder but I'm pretty sure the preference would be for the "starving people" to take initiative to gain the skills to make more money themselves. Everyone is responsible for their own choices and the consequences that come from them. 50% of the world is not starving. The WFP says about 11% (http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats) and since they are in business to make things look as bad as possible you can almost be certain this is higher than the reality. And the 4th "way out of this" would be to bring down all of the barriers to entry which would give the "starving people" as much of an opportunity as possible leaving all of the responsibility on them, as it should be. 

 

I don't even want to get into everything wrong with the rest of your argument, but to begin if there's only $900 in circulation and all of that is going to wages how are the companies in business? 

 

- Cheers!!

[Koroviev]

"if you have a problem with inequality take it up with Mother Nature" - Stef 

 

https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/44288-youtube-an-introduction-to-capitalism/

[labmath2]

I see the point Thomasio is trying to make. Back in the days, if you did not get hired, you could farm or hunt for food. These days, most farm land is owned and hunting is becoming a pastime. Unless you live in certain locations, it is impossible to survive without money. This puts those some in a position where they have to take any job they get. Its hard to imagine this reality would not exist even in a stateless society.

[Thomasio]

labmatth2 got it right, free competition in an industrialized environment where 1/2 the population is sufficient to do all the work means, the other half has no chance of entering the labor force.

A single person will always be able to enter and make it, but he will always push someone else out and under all circumstances 1/2 the population will be starving.

You might say it's the fault of the losers, because they didn't work hard enough, but given the fact you will always have half the population unemployed that's not the answer to the problem.

 

@Koroviev

Your example with the two surgeons is correct, as long as there is only one talented surgeon.

Make it a bit wider, say there are 4 surgeons, two good ones and two bad ones.

The bad ones will be kicked out sooner or later and may go flipping burgers at McDonalds, the two good ones can share the available work in the hospital and take good care of the health of the population.

All good, all fine, two talented surgeons making a lot of money and two low skilled workers at McDonalds earning a small life, that's unequal but fair and nobody is starving.

 

Now there are two ways how you could mess this up:

 

1) One of the two surgeons decides, he can work twice as much, he can do all the work and he offers double work for less than double money.

The hospital will fire the other talented surgeon, and the problem evolves.

The fired surgeon may come back and offer to work twice as much for less money, then the hospital will switch and fire the one who started it, he comes back and offers to work for less, and so on, and so on, until one of them gives up.

2) The hospital decides they want to cut expenses by lowering wages.

Both surgeons will try to work more hours to keep their income stable, a little bit later the hospital will find out they can do with just one surgeon, fire one of them and the problem evolves the very same way as in case 1.

 

In both cases the talented surgeon losing the battle of more hours for less money in the hospital will then apply at McDonalds, he'll work double hours to make at least a bit of a life and push both the untalented ones into unemployment.

 

If that's not enough, in the end the remaining talented surgeon will be under a gigantic amount of stress, he will make mistakes and he will do no better job than the untalented ones would have done on start, after which the hospital might decide to fire the talented one and hire one of the untalented ones, because he does the same quality of work for less money, after which you don't have any good health service anymore, one untalented surgeon working around the clock, one talented surgeon working around the clock at McDonalds and the other two unemployed regardless of skills.

 

Either way, even if one of the talented surgeons keeps the job at the hospital, there is only one winner in this game, that's the hospital, while all workers lose and even the population depending on the health care lose.

[Thomasio]

50% of the world is not starving. The WFP says about 11%

 

Do you believe that's because 89% of the world earns a living on their own, or is that maybe because huge taxes and donation funds (where donations can be deduced from taxes) redistribute supplies?

Do you expect this to remain as it is in a stateless society where nobody pays any taxes and all wellfare is based exclusively on donations nobody can deduce from his taxes?

[Koroviev]

No and no.

 

The only way a stateless society will come around (barring some major crisis) is if people are raised better, and therefore better able to think for themselves. This is the trap of the Liberal media making people believe "the poor" are sad and helpless and that the only way to save them is for the government to force people to give the government money so the government can decide how to "save" "the poor". This is prejudiced and takes all of the responsibility away from the poor and pushes it onto the "evil people" who they say are not helping the poor. 

 

In a stateless society the barriers to entry will be as little as possible so more people will be able to hire more employees, and more entrepreneurs will  be able to start their own businesses. Obviously things will still not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is, and obviously there will still be "the poor" but they will have WAY more opportunities to not be "the poor" than they ever have. If society cares about "the poor" then society will find a way to help "the poor." If society does not care about "the poor" and needs the government to forcefully redistribute wealth to help "the poor" than we aren't even living in a democracy but a dictatorship.

 

The question is what good is the welfare system doing for the poor?

(If I remember right Stef also did a show on the effects of the welfare state I just don't remember which it was)

[Thomasio]

Ok, let's see.

The world is producing 30% more cars than there are sold, if all car manufacturers were to reduce production by 30% customers wouldn't notice the slightest difference in availability of cars, only 30% of workers in the car industry would notice when they get fired.

About any other kind of supply gives you the same picture, whether food, computers or whatever else from specialized doctors down to paperboys, there is a vast supply and less demand.

How on earth could a lower entry into the labor force, meaning a cheaper way to produce even more cause anything but lower wages for everybody, even less demand, followed by increasing unemployment?

 

There is no shortage of supplies, there is no shortage of labor force, there is only a shortage of demand, simply because the half of the population that produces will not buy more bread and they are too busy competing to spend their wealth in leisure time.

[Koroviev]

First off, if car companies reduce production by 30% that does not necessarily mean they are firing 30% of their workforce. It still takes just as many people to run the machines, but I see the point you are making.

 

Lower barrier to entry means employers can afford to hire more employees for higher wages since startup and day to day costs are cheaper. It also means the unemployed have more opportunities to start their own businesses and/or gain the skills they need to not be unemployed. Lastly, it places as much of the responsibility on each individual as possible therefor in all but rare circumstances if they do not have skills or a job it is entirely on them (most of those rare circumstances would be worked out through charity I'm sure).

 

In the business world everything is a give and take since everyone has choices. If an employer decides to lay off his entire workforce and only employ a single worker there are very real consequences for the employer (what if the one employee gets sick, burnt out, or realizes the entire business depends solely on him and decides to take advantage of that, not to mention the magical and immeasurable goodwill every business strives for), just as there are consequences for the employee if he decides he will only work for 5 times more than he is worth (no one will hire him), and the customer who is only willing to pay 1/5 of the asking price (no one will sell to him).

 

I'm not sure what population you are referring to that is competing to spend all of their wealth in leisure unless you mean retired people or those countries who have government required vacations (or maybe the super wealthy "playboys" who inherited all of their wealth?) but this is a very small percentage of the population and are not trying to work. Those who are actually running the businesses don't have time for leisure because they are running their businesses (hence why they get paid more).

 

Also, I think your supply/labor/demand equation is a bit off since in reality there are shortages of all three, but again I think I understand the point you're trying to make (i.e. in certain countries at this point in time there are more people needing jobs than being hired). However, all of these situations in all of these countries can be followed back to increased government regulations (or corrupt government practices). Take increased minimum wage for example, when minimum wages go up employers are forced to fire the less skilled, or liked, workers because they know they can still get by since the more skilled workers will pick up the slack. For an example of how the agriculture industry got to where it is I recommend reading Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (yes the banks made it so people lost their land but they could only do that because the government allowed/enforced it not to mention most if not all of the government is run by those who greatly profit when the banks profit, etc., etc.).

 

Finally I agree with you that it will never be 100% fair to 100% of the people 100% of the time, however I do not see how the solution of limiting working hours could come even close to being "as fair" (whatever that might mean) as giving people as much choice, and therefore as much opportunity, as possible. Especially since you still have not answered any of the original (and I think the most fundamental) issues I brought up.

 

Once again life isn't fair and that's just nature. Increased government regulations will never make it fair but will only make it worse.

 

P.S. I hope you're getting as much enjoyment out of this delightful conversation as I am, it's been truly challenging and very enjoyable for me. Thanks!!!!  

[Thomasio]

You bet I enjoy this.

I find nothing wrong in people with opposing opinion discussing the topic, even if neither side "wins" the argument, talking about it can never be wrong.

Not sure why I got a -2 reputation for this topic?

 

Sorry if I missed some of your points, I got a bit lost in long posts that require moderator approval and short posts showing up right away.

Aside of that I´m on the way installing my software on my new computer (that's a ton of stuff), so I'm only reading and writing while some installation is running, until next reboot.

If there's a real important thing I missed, that would change this discussion big time, point me to it again please.

I believe, we have gotten into so many details, always including all of that in every answer would result in way too long postings.

 

The busy half of the population I'm talking about are the ones that have a job or are running a business.

Those are busy competing against those who don't have a job, they keep them from entering the labor force by making sure they can get all the work done with less and less workers, lower and lower wages, never considering giving the others a chance.

 

I believe that's the main problem of an entirely free market, because a lower entry point into the workforce wouldn't give any more poeple a job, just the opposite, it would make the ones who have a job work even more, compete even harder, produce even more, meaning in the end we would have more unemployed while the few who still have a job work for lower wages.

[Koroviev]

Apologies, for the delayed reply just returned home from a business trip (another issue with your proposal get to that later). 

 

It seems to me that the free market would give more people jobs first off because there would be fewer requirements to get a job (I'm thinking all of the pointless certificates that don't really add anything to the profession but seem to be in place simply to make the government more money), employers would not be paying taxes so they would have more money to go toward wages (you could say this would just go into their pockets but wouldn't it be better to hire more people so you can make more profit for a longer period of time), and finally there would be little to no barriers for people to start their own businesses (employing themselves) and hiring more people. Also, wouldn't the removal of the welfare state force more people to become more marketable (hirable) since they wouldn't be receiving free living expenses from the state?

 

The fundamental things I think need to be answered to make this proposal viable are:

- it would have to be enforced so how would you enforce it?

- what about all of the professions that require more than the allotted time (surgeons, teachers, etc.)

- What about entrepreneurs or sole proprietorships almost all of whom work 60-70 hour workweeks to ensure the survival of their companies, and would fail if they had to hire even one more person, let alone five to six?

 

I can give you a real example of why this would never work. I work for a small information security company in the United States. We do things like security audits, pen tests, and training mostly for small banks and credit unions all over the US. It is a job that takes a very specific type of person and a lot of experience so it's very hard for us to find new employees. There are four of us full time auditors, two sales guys, and an intern. Just this last week I was at a job in a different state (~1,500 miles away). The way the work is split up is one person onsite (travel, hotel, and food expenses), one person offsite, and the intern cleaning up the rest of the grunt work. There is at the very least 40 hours of work for the onsite person (not counting travel time), 30-40 hours of work for the offsite person (full yearly salary), and maybe 10 hours for the intern (per job paid hourly and he usually has multiple jobs per week, as do the rest of us). If we hired eny more employees the company would begin to lose money, and if we got rid of some of our employees we would be unable to keep up with the work.

 

So if we're generous we can say 80 hours of work for a single job. By your proposed system this would mean we would need eight employees (each working 10 hours, again not counting travel time), which is double what we currently have, and four employees onsite (four times travel, hotel, and food), three employees offsite, and at least one intern per job.  Not even getting into the chaos and space requirements this would bring about (some credit unions have set us up in a hallway next to a water fountain), we would either have to not make any profit and go out of business, i.e. lose all of our jobs, or raise our prices and lose most of our business (small businesses can only spend so much money). This doesn't even touch on the fact that usually we are all working on multiple clients at a time, travel time, administrative work, business meetings, or anything else that running a business requires. I can guarantee that this holds true for every single other business out there, and forced reduction of work hours would have major unsustainable consequences.

 

Sorry for the long-windedness, free-market is just a very important topic that if people don't understand can have (and already has had) very negative consequences for all of us.

 

-Cheers

[Thomasio]

I've got a bit of spare time today, so don't worry about the length of your post, my reply will be even longer, I hope you take the time to read it.

 

First thing I have to note is: For your own company you need highly trained and experienced specialists, but (if I got that right) you're not training anyone, meaning you take the training someone else paid for, you use it to your own advantage and then you claim everyone has to work 80 hours a week because there is no trained personal.

Or in other words, you create a shortage in qualified workers by not training anyone and then you wonder why you don't have trained personal.

I believe in an entirely free market, your company wouldn't exist at all, because the trained personal you require wouldn't exist, because nobody would pay to train someone to the advantage of someone else.

Even among entrepreneurs, most of them got their business because they didn't know what else to do with the skills they got from somewhere else, but nobody would find it a good idea to train for a job that then requires 60-70 hours of work a week, so you would never be able to even start such a business.

 

Second thing is, a lower entry into the labor force does not create the need for more working hours, it gets the work done for less money, but still in the same time.

Why would a company hire additional workers while they don't need more production?

They would simply produce the same as before and pay less.

You might argue that lower wages and therefore better chances to compete on the market will increase the success of the company, it will grow and hire more workers to expand, but that's a relative concept, whenever one company expands, another has to shrink or close down and in the end, the total hours of work required are the same.

From your point of view the expanding company did it right and won the competition, from my point of view everybody loses.

Lower wages means companies would pay less taxes, the state would have to cut social services, overall sales of every day products would drop, because the people buying them have less money to spend, but I believe you don't want any social services, so let's leave that aside and look only at the rest.

Workers would earn less money, which even without social services reduces sales of every day products, so with or without social services, you get a spiral downwards, companies would be forced to cut production or outcompete each other so that one after the other closes down, fire workers they don't need to produce less, which again reduces sales and so on and so on, until in the end everybody produces nothing at zero wages.

 

There is one exception of this, where new inventions create entirely new products, good examples have been computers or mobile phones, where a newborn branch of industry creates new jobs, but unless there's a continuous stream of an exponential increasing amount of ever more new and useful products, increasing automation in production will require less and less human work.

Also all these new inventions cause loss of jobs elsewhere, computers have replaced literally millions of jobs, so even if you could come up with continuous new inventions, they give a short lived boom followed by depression.

Furthermore, as you surely are aware, production of almost all these new inventions is moved almost instantly to the far east, where giant factories produce millions of mobile phones at wages of $30 a month.

Within existing products, lowering the amount of money someone earns for doing the work does not increase the total amount of work, just the opposite, increasing automation permanently decreases the amount of work needed.

 

So again we're back at the title of this topic.

Anyone can find a job and make a living, all it takes is the will to work for less than someone else and be content with lower living standards, anyone can become self employed and run a company, all it takes is the right idea, some talent in organizing and the will to work harder than the competition.

But not everyone can make it, because at 40 hours or even more per week and worker there just isn't enough work to do.

No matter how hard everyone would try, at best someone can outcompete someone else, but at any given time the amount of work required remains the same.

The only question is, at what bottom level of wages and poverty will competition result in civil war.

 

Now let me answer your questions:

 

- how would I enforce limited working hours?

Answer: 100% income tax on every hour worked above the given limit.

Controlling this will be the same job, by which the state is today able to calculate everybody's tax rate.

 

- what about professionals?

Answer: We need to educate more people and train them to become the professionals we need.

Letting a tiny amount of highly trained experts work 100 hours a week, while 1000s of teachers and potentially talented youngsters remain unemployed only costs money for food stamps and makes no sense at all.

 

- what about entrepreneurs?

Answer: In today's market anyone trying to set a limit to the amount of work he does, would near instantly be outcompeted by someone else, therefore nobody can afford to reduce the amount of work he does, not because his company wouldn't function with less work done, but because someone else would overtake him.

If everyone was forced to reduce the amount of time he spends working, there is no overtaking by someone who works more, there is no problem, only more leisure time for everybody.

If you have to hire more workers to get the work done, so do all the others.

The only thing not possible in this environment anymore is replacing lack of skill by more hours, the skillful and talented ones would win the competition every time, but to my mind that's the whole point of competition.

 

Last but not least, let me tell you a real example from my own experience.

Happened today in the afternoon, so the impression is very fresh.

 

I live in Italy and here in town we have a street market.

Long ago this used to be once a week, where farmers came to town, selling their products, which were usually cheaper than the shops in the streets and even if not, all the stuff was very fresh, homemade, without industrialized production and without chemical additives one can't even pronounce.

As supermarkets got bigger and cheaper, while at same time people had less and less money in their pockets, these farmers weren't able to sell their high quality products anymore, so the farmers were replaced by Chinese guys selling all kind of cheap junk, usually cheating on their taxes big time.

Towards the state they argued, they can't pay more taxes, because business is just too bad.

Mostly they sold cheap clothes, like jeans for $10 or so, so it wasn't a miracle that a short while later nearly all shops in town selling jeans went out of business, the shop assistants lost their jobs, they couldn't afford things like the hairdresser anymore, they bought less of everything, causing further businesses to close down.

By today about 1/2 of the center of my town is empty shops for rent that nobody would take even for free and the other half is changing owner on average every 6 months, because not one single shop can sell enough to make a living for the owner.

Even the real large corporations (not sure which ones you would recognize) who used to have shops in about every town in the country have closed down and left, because there isn't enough profit to make out of the little money the unemployed population has left.

A few years ago the town ruled, there will now be two street market days a week for those Chinese guys plus one additional day a month for the farmers.

I guess they were hoping twice the opening hours would sell more, but how could it? The total amount of shops will never sell more or less than people have money to spend, regardless how many hours they are open, they only compete one against the other, where the one with the longest opening hours will get a bigger piece of the cake but overall, all it does is force some workers to work longer hours while pushing others into unemployment.

Obviously twice a week and one a month fall on the same day every now and then and today was such a day.

I've taken a walk through the center with my wife, curious what's all for sale there, we even had planned to buy a few things if we saw something nice or useful.

The whole center of the town was packed with people, everybody walking around, looking at things.

But after I while I noticed, nobody was buying anything, people were standing like half a meter away from all boots and stalls, just looking, talking about things, once in a while someone asking one of the sellers some questions, but I saw nobody actually buying anything.

Then I took a closer look and I discovered why nobody was buying anything.

The Chinese didn't have cheap jeans anymore, the prices of Chinese clothes now exceed the prices regular shops would have charged in the past, meaning you now get junk quality for the price of high quality, simply because the Chinese have managed to push their high quality competition out of business.

The farmers prices for fresh food are ...... how shall I say? ....... outrageous is an understatement.

By coincidence I recognized one of these farmers and I knew him good enough for a little private chat.

He explained to me how these prices come to be.

Since 90% of the people can't afford to buy anything anymore, he has to make enough money for himself out of 1/10 the customers.

Since that still doesn't work, he restricts the amount of customers even further.

He asks 25 times the former price, up to a level where ONE single customer a day gives him enough profit to survive.

This allows him to run his farm all by himself, 10-12 hours per day of his own work will do, 90% of his land lies fallow and he has fired all his former workers.

Only because the top 1% of the richest people now finds it attractive to shop on the street market, where they find exclusive products nobody else can afford, he still finds the one customer he needs, so he has managed to survive, but he agrees with me, the rest of the country is going down the drain.

 

In the end my wife and me went home and even though we would have had money to spend, at THESE prices we kept our money and as far as I´m concerned, I won't even look at the street market anymore in the future even though it's a real pity to lose such a lovely old tradition.

[LibertarianSocialist]

This is a reply to Thomasio's post above.

 

Your statement about taxing individuals past a certain number of hours worked is problematic.

 

Why do you expect the state, an organizational body facilitating the rule of a minority elite, to enact such laws in clear opposition to its own interests? The role of unemployment and the forced overwork of others have clear motivations in the capitalist mode of production. To state we only need to enact laws to ensure full employment ignores who currently controls the legal system, and their clear interest in upholding the status quo. It's not that the state lacks the technical ability to do so, it's that it has no desire to do so.

[Thomasio]

Yes @LibertarianSocialist, you're right as far as most governments currently seem to believe that a load of unemployed people is better for them than full employment.

But once you make it clear that full employment has advantages for everybody, you'll get support for it.

Once large corporations discover that people can only buy as much as they have money to spend, meaning increasing profits are possible only through reducing costs of unemployment and supplying the population with enough money to buy all products, you'll get the desire to achieve it.

It's just a question of how low economy has to drop before even the richest people realize that lower wages equal less production.

Maybe they realize it only when they reach zero wages and zero production but sooner or later they will.

[LibertarianSocialist]

It's been done before, Keynesianism was just that. Unfortunately it works too good. Capitalism is not meant to be efficient, it's meant to be exploitative. Keynes' policies led to a generalized "crisis of democracy", and consequently the rise of neoliberalism that is pwning us to this day. Anything short of a complete social revolution will leave us yo-yoing between these two points of instability. Not very appealing.

[Koroviev]

Ah, thanks for restating the original point, I think it got lost in the details. I highly doubt Stefan would ever argue that everyone should, could, or would be employed, and I for one never would. Some people are purposefully unemployed (monks), some people cannot be employed (those with severe disabilities), some people don't want to be employed (retired people), and some people society doesn't want to have employed (children..kind of). However, I'm going to assume you only meant full employment for everyone not in those categories as including them would bring a whole other dimension to "unfairness." To this point I would argue that you wouldn't want 100% employment because what would you do if people got sick and/or died, there'd be no one to replace them. Meaning, if you're operating at full capacity you wouldn't be able to keep up with demand, and since everyone who can work already has a job it could be years before you have someone to replace them. So, yes, I completely agree with you that everyone would not be employed in a free society, but I'd also argue that for a democracy, a capitalist society, or any other society there is.

 

As to the example of my work I don't think I explained it very well. I didn't mean that we all work 80 hours per week. Although, we do generally work more than 40 hours a week, especially if you count travel, 70-80 wouldn't happen unless you count business trips as work since you're away from home only because of work but then business trips wouldn't be possible at all in your proposed system.

We do employ at least 1-2 interns a year who we train right out of college and they almost always get hired on. Unfortunately the job itself is a lot of work, and it takes a certain type of person to do. As fun as it may sound most people don't like lying to people all day and then writing reports when they aren't doing that, so many of them don't tend to stick around long. Also, it's not the case that we only hire people after other companies have paid for their training, in fact we only hire people looking for a career change (like most businesses). We just can't hire people unless they have certain skill sets, like every career, so I'm not sure this would effect whether we would be around in a free society or not. I do however agree with you that likely we would not be around in a free society, but mostly because our business is ensuring companies are meeting government regulations (which would not exist the way they do now). Although I suppose people will always want to know how safe their money and sensitive information is... Either way that does not change the point which is we would never be able to survive as a company if we had to double (or more) our wage expenses.

 

Although, yes lower barrier to entry does not necessarily create the need for more working hours it absolutely does create the opportunity for more working hours. This is the key point. Whether or not those jobs actually get filled depends entirely on the environment. As to why a company would hire additional workers while they don't need more production? This is simple, to make more money. If they are selling all they are producing that must mean the demand for that is high and the supply is low therefore they need to make more. If they are not selling everything they are producing that means the demand is low and they need to put more effort into figuring out why, expand to other areas, or face the impending doom of going out of business. Just ask your farmer friend if he'd like to hire more employees I can guarantee he'll say yes, at least until he can afford to work only as much as he'd like to work and still be able to live comfortably. Also, how would he survive if he had to split up all the money he makes between the number of people it takes to cover the time he currently spends working. He probably "works" at least 70-80 hours a week. In a nutshell, the more employees you can afford to hire the more opportunities you have to make money, need is relative.

 

Now, I hope this doesn't come off as "moving the goal post," but I still think there are issues surrounding the 3 main questions I had.

 

First, while 100% income tax would ensure most law abiding citizens ("rule-followers") would abide by the hours cap that still does not answer the tracking part of enforcement, or the what-happens-when-people-work-more-anyway part. Both of which were stated previously, although in not so few words. That also isn't very fair to the people who have no choice but to work more than the allotted time. Even if that system was perfectly implemented there would still be situations where certain places were under-staffed, for lack of a better word, or where it would be required for the same person to continue doing the same job for more than 10 hours. Specifically, I'm thinking long and intense surgeries, custom coding jobs where there is a very specific style, or skill set, or even teachers who don't have enough time in a day as it is. I'm sure there are hundreds of other examples as well.

 

Second, putting more people in college does not make them more intelligent. The reason (in general) college graduates make more money (in general) than people (in general) who are not college graduates, is because (in general) they already have the higher intelligence(in general)...generally. Also, I would not be surprised if that figure is decreasing now that more people are going to college for free (or getting in loads of debt), since it seems like a lot of people just assume that sending their kids to college automatically makes them smarter/more skilled/more marketable/more talented, etc. So, it's not that only a tiny amount of people are "allowed" to be professionals it's that there are only a tiny amount of people who can, or want to, be professionals, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just nature. Also, would the 10 hour cap relate to students as well? If so that would increase the time it takes to get a degree, and how would you pay for the degree?

Now I'm assuming by educate you didn't necessarily mean college, but how are you supposed to get on the job training if you can only work 10 hours a week? Are all companies going to be expected to have dedicated trainers? That would double the wage expense for every new employee you hired, and you'd have to pay every unskilled employee (remember we're assuming they have no skills or education) at least cost of living plus full medical benefits, and probably extra so they have spending/emergency money as soon as they got hired since it is illegal for them to work any more than their allotted 10 hours (same for the person who trains them). Not to mention the, although iconic generally accepted as quazi-truth, 10,000 hours it takes to become a professional which would be more than 19 years of training! Yes, obviously a person wouldn't be "in training" for that long but I think the point still holds true, which is it would take too long and cost too much to get good at anything at 10 hours/week.

 

Third, the statement you made about entrepreneurs not able to reduce the hours they work because someone else will take all the business is not true. There are lots of businesses that do just fine and only work the hours they want. They simply compete in other ways. Putting more people/companies that do the same type of work would only create more unsustainable companies since all of the demand would shift to the "best" companies. I'd still want the best people to do the job but an hour cap would just increase the time it takes them to do it, leaving all other companies/people without work,but still having to employ more people than they can afford. Also, wouldn't this situation create unsustainable and infinite inflation since it would cost the companies more because they'd need more employees, so they'd be forced to raise their prices, meaning workers would need to be paid more, which would increase costs to the companies, etc., etc. You still have to pay people living expenses (average cost of living in the US is $20,194 per person, per year http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Cost_of_Living) even though they are only working about 520 hours per year (assuming 10 a week every week). That's $38.83 per hour, minimum, per person, for every person. That's about $75,000 per year with normal working hours, and that's with vacation time. So, no one would be able to get sick, need time off, need an emergency fund, or be able to do anything with all of the "leisure" time they have. 

 

Finally, to your example I don't really think you could say that Italy is a free market society, or even that the market street you are talking about is really a free market, so I'm not sure it can be used as an example of how the free market would fail. Also, I would be very surprised if the Chinese workers were really the only reason, or even the main reason, the other stalls went out of business. And, if the Chinese were able to push the other businesses out because they did not pay taxes, which is if I'm not mistaken illegal, wouldn't they just do different "illegal" things to get around the system you propose?