richardhutnik said:
I would have to wonder about all this, because you see from ample examples today, and in the past, that you will have people doing hours, months and years of work without getting paid, for a number of reasons. You have people trying for fame. You have examples on the Internet now. And you have situations where people bag groceries in Mexico for merely tips. Heck, if you factor in college internships, there are people who actually pay money to do a job. And businesses will exploit this also to make the students doing the intern get coffee and other grunt work, that has nothing to do with what they are majoring in. It actually gets bad sometimes to where colleges have to crack down on it. A question is, left to its own devices, could a market produce a form of a hell where people work their entire lives for no pay in an area, provide value and don't get compensated. I see this form happening on the Internet. I mentioned Second Life is full of this. You have people on there paying money to run businesses, and not existing. Cost to stay afloat is so low, people will do this indefinitely, if they can. And then you have the porn industry also, getting killed now financially, because free porn is running amok. Used to be you had to pay people for this. Then you find that people will actually do it for free, because doing it is a reward unto itself. And, does anyone here not think Game Stop couldn't get away with paying people pennies per hour, if that, if there wasn't a minimum wage law? They don't have problems staffing, because they get videogame fanboys there, who would even pay money to convert people to their system of choice. Only thing that stops this cycle is the labor pool does the equivalent of striking, and refuses to do things unless compensated somehow. A question here I would ask: Is it going to get to a place where most jobs could be such where business owners wouldn't even have to pay people enough to live, because the pool of labor is large enough to allow them to not do this? Maybe it wouldn't be totally so, but it could be that it happens in increasingly large numbers. |
I'd argue that your having a VERY narrow view of the market and a VERY narrow view of compensation.
People will only put up with stuff for so long without compensation, but monetary compensation isn't the only kind of compensation.
Jobs would never get to a place wheer people are happy not getting paid enough to live because well... people need to live. If they don't get paid enough to do so, they'll choose to instead die without working or revolt.
Which is why if it ever even began to approach such a reality you'd see an expansion in social services to keep the working class placated.
As for the "Rich getting richer" effect. I'll leave that for the other thread.
