Kent Pitman · @kentpitman
323 followers · 214 posts · Server climatejustice.social

@straygoat

I completely agree though usually express it differently. I might say a company that cannot pay a living wage is not yet profitable, and it should not be permissible to skim "excess" until there is some.

Or, alternatively, you're profiting on your employees, not your product. Nothing to be proud of if this is your desired end state.

I like to think of a minimum wage as a bound on how much you can underpay folks to get your business started, and like those being underpaid are automatically founders who should automatically be buying priority stake (sweat equity) in the company equal to the delta between what can be paid in cash and what is offered in equity to acknowledge that these people are every bit as much taking a risk as those putting up initial cash.

That stake should not be dilutable by the games rich people play with excess cash. This is these people's lives and just because they have a terrible bargaining position doesn't mean they aren't owed human decency.

This is why we have government and regulated economic systems: to ensure that this money exchange model isn't just one more tool of rich to exploit the poor.

It's important to understand that power doesn't scale linearly with money. Money begets money and it hoards money, but after a while does not measure contribution. A person with a million dollars can make a second million much more easily than a person with zero can make the first million. And when big companies make money on workers, that should not be something where society lauds them for doing so and says "go forth and invent more ways to exploit".

And don't even get me started on regulatory capture as an obviously inappropriate way to magnify that power even more.

More thoughts in my 2013 essay Lien Times for Startups.
netsettlement.blogspot.com/201

#minimumwage #livingwage #sweatequity #equity #inequality #bargainingpower #economics #startups #Profit #exploitation #morality #ethics #law #government #workersrights #politics #StakeholderTheory #capitalism

Last updated 2 years ago

No Pasarán, Mate! · @nopasarannz
12 followers · 31 posts · Server mastodon.social

In 1990, were elected:
• Businesses wrote laws to steal from workers
• Workers were forced to fight for jobs by destroying
• National promised "real growth, more jobs, and higher pay"

#nznationalparty #bargainingpower #workers #unions

Last updated 2 years ago