spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Unless the person will literally starve right now unless they eat some bread, the situation is not analogous to the stabbing victim, who literally only has the one choice.
The crust of bread example also works poorly because we have a minimum wage, so the lowest the employer can actually offer is an amount that the legislature has deemed reasonable pay for work.
Unless the person will literally starve right now unless they eat some bread, the situation is not analogous to the stabbing victim, who literally only has the one choice.
The crust of bread example also works poorly because we have a minimum wage, so the lowest the employer can actually offer is an amount that the legislature has deemed reasonable pay for work.
Unless the person will literally starve right now unless they eat some bread, the situation is not analogous to the stabbing victim, who literally only has the one choice.
It is a horrible position for a person to bargain from for the person starving, and when a person is that desperate it doesn't matter if they'll starve to death in days or months it's a death sentence the stronger party is holding over them. Ethically it's monstrous. People should be treated with respect, not like wild animals.
The crust of bread example also works poorly because we have a minimum wage, so the lowest the employer can actually offer is an amount that the legislature has deemed reasonable pay for work.
The legislature isn't going out of their way to give the poorer classes fair wages, this isn't a socialist paradise like Sweden. They're giving the lower classes the absolute least they can do and they're being hounded by advocates in the political system who want even that to disappear. It isn't the best situation, it's the least terrible.
Unless the person will literally starve right now unless they eat some bread, the situation is not analogous to the stabbing victim, who literally only has the one choice.
The crust of bread example also works poorly because we have a minimum wage, so the lowest the employer can actually offer is an amount that the legislature has deemed reasonable pay for work.
The minimum wage is set at $7.25 an hour, which for a full time employee means about 15k a year. It's at such a low level, that anyone making minimum wage also qualifies for other government assistance programs. It hasn't been raised since 2009, and has never kept track with cost of living increases.
Making minimum wage is, quite literally, the crust of bread in this allegory.
Also minimum wage laws are irrelevant to the question. It's aimed not at the legal framework in place, but at the moral and philosophical basis for this belief that "Accepting the contract means you can't possibly be harmed by it."
Although if you insist on pushing that angle, the reason we have minimum wage laws is because we examined that problematic belief and said, "Hell no, fuck that noise."
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Also minimum wage laws are irrelevant to the question. It's aimed not at the legal framework in place, but at the moral and philosophical basis for this belief that "Accepting the contract means you can't possibly be harmed by it."
Although if you insist on pushing that angle, the reason we have minimum wage laws is because we examined that problematic belief and said, "Hell no, fuck that noise."
This exactly. We looked at the (mal)practices associated with labor that emerged in the gilded age and collectively, as a society, we said, "this is awful, no more of this."
There are any number of agreements that our society deems prima facia are unacceptable, even if both parties would consider them satisfactory.
Just because a deal can be struck, even if BOTH parties are perfectly happy with the agreement, doesn't mean that the agreement cannot be harmful or deemed unlawful/unacceptable by our society as a whole.
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Unless the person will literally starve right now unless they eat some bread, the situation is not analogous to the stabbing victim, who literally only has the one choice.
The crust of bread example also works poorly because we have a minimum wage, so the lowest the employer can actually offer is an amount that the legislature has deemed reasonable pay for work.
So? The person is still being exploited. Legal exploitation is still exploitation. And it's something that can be fought by people knowing how much they get compensated in comparison to others. Including CEOs.
Also minimum wage laws are irrelevant to the question. It's aimed not at the legal framework in place, but at the moral and philosophical basis for this belief that "Accepting the contract means you can't possibly be harmed by it."
Although if you insist on pushing that angle, the reason we have minimum wage laws is because we examined that problematic belief and said, "Hell no, fuck that noise."
This exactly. We looked at the (mal)practices associated with labor that emerged in the gilded age and collectively, as a society, we said, "this is awful, no more of this."
I think it's also worthwhile to look at that fact that many on the employer side of the employer-labor relationship have been working to reduce the effectiveness of this law since it's implementation. Examples include:
- Certain industries, such as food service, are given lower exemptions for shaky reasoning (tips) that specifically act to obfuscate earnings.
- The minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation / cost of living increases.
- The minimum wage does not apply to oversea workers for US companies, resulting in offshoring work (such as tech) to poorer countries.
- The minimum wage does not apply to illegal immigrants, although their employment is illegal in itself.
- The minimum wage does not apply to many transient work industries such as produce gathering, where pay is based on productivity (e.g. a dollar a bushel picked).
So, many in the US are offered only a crust of bread, yet corporations continue to try and slice that crust thinner and thinner.
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate.
Except that the reason for the general horror about SKFM's opinions in this thread is that he's explicitly stated that there is no harm and that this kind of action is not exploitative. He hasn't, as far as I've seen, used the "it's perfectly legal" argument even once. He's used the argument that if the employee is happy without the knowledge of how much they are being underpaid, then they are not being harmed. (and as such, the most generous thing executives can do for employees such as that is make sure they never realize how much they are being underpaid.)
Though if I've misunderstood you SKFM, feel free to correct me. I'd be happy to learn that your arguments are less awful than what I've gleaned from the thread.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
Again, though, unconscionability is a thing in contract law.
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
As I said this whole tangent is just refuting SKFM's assertion that an agreement/contract can't possibly have resulted in harm as long as both parties agreed to it. The above are just examples of contracts freely entered where it would be really hard to argue that the less savvy party wasn't being harmed.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
I'd argue that is pretty harmful in the long run. Negotiating shouldn't be about squeezing the last drop of blood from a stone before tossing it and finding another stone. Co-prosperity works.
Caveat emptor only benefits cheats, frauds, and other shady individuals. It's perfectly legitimate to sell someone a car that doesn't start, advertised as such. It's not legitimate to sell someone a car in "very good condition" with the odometer rolled back that has been in a half dozen accidents and hope they hand over the cash before the engine gives out so the seller can make a quick getaway.
One of the most famous economic papers is George Akerlof's Nobel winning research on lemon cars: The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism. Information asymmetry screws up markets pretty badly, and it harms honest people for the betterment of the dishonest.
Hollywood accounting in particular is basically fraud, and should be recognized as such by the courts. Knowingly misleading someone as to the value of an asset should be forbidden. If they want to sell a billion dollar script for almost nothing, more power to them, but it should be very clear that is what is going on.
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
We can't completely legislate fairness, but we can certainly do things to eliminate the most egregious examples of exploitation (say, sexual quid pro quos in the work place, or the literal Work For Scraps of Bread example, which are handled via sexual harassment laws and minimum wage, respectively), and minimize the rest thorough things like wage transparency and effective unionization.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Plus there are plenty of examples of contracts in which one party exploits the other's naivete (read: information asymmetry) to extract more for themselves at the expense of the other party. They are often perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the other party wasn't harmed.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
I'd argue that is pretty harmful in the long run. Negotiating shouldn't be about squeezing the last drop of blood from a stone before tossing it and finding another stone. Co-prosperity works.
Caveat emptor only benefits cheats, frauds, and other shady individuals. It's perfectly legitimate to sell someone a car that doesn't start, advertised as such. It's not legitimate to sell someone a car in "very good condition" with the odometer rolled back that has been in a half dozen accidents and hope they hand over the cash before the engine gives out so the seller can make a quick getaway.
One of the most famous economic papers is George Akerlof's Nobel winning research on lemon cars: The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism. Information asymmetry screws up markets pretty badly, and it harms honest people for the betterment of the dishonest.
Hollywood accounting in particular is basically fraud, and should be recognized as such by the courts. Knowingly misleading someone as to the value of an asset should be forbidden. If they want to sell a billion dollar script for almost nothing, more power to them, but it should be very clear that is what is going on.
I feel like that line needs to be highlighted. Information asymmetry screws up, AFAIK, most of the economic theory about free markets and capitalism. Even your basic notions of supply and demand and price go out the window when there's misinformation in the market, which is supposed to self-regulate, but obviously can't when it disagrees with itself about its own nature. The whole, capitalism is about the best dealers making the best deals that screw others, thing is really kind of a bastardization of capitalism that's somehow become glorified and enshrined.
I mean, to draw this back to the original starting point of the tangent, SKFM said that salary negotiation is supposed to be adversarial. But in theory, it really shouldn't be - the employer and employee should actually both possess an accurate assessment of the value of the employee's labour in the market and settle on a mutually agreeable price. The consumer, in this case the employer, should not be able to lie to the supplier, the employee, about the state of the marketplace.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Hey, thank you Hippofant and programjunkie for pointing that out and describing what it means. I'm not trained in economics, but all throughout the thread I really felt like SKFM is arguing against the free market, but I couldn't really describe why.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
My contention is that you can't be harmed by entering into an arm's length contract voluntarily, because harm requires that you have been injured somehow and all we are talking about here is freely entering into a deal that is worse than a deal the other side would have agreed to. Under this definition, all positional bargaining results in harm to one or both parties, as long as there was something left of the table by either side.
I think the better view is to say that workers would like higher wages than they routinely agree to, which prompts the question of why they agree to lower wages than they would like. I think the answer is that labor is in oversupply, so companies have a competitive advantage. That isn't inherently a problem, and deciding to correct it harms the people that would have agreed to do the job at a lower rate than we permit, who now lose that competitive advantage in hiring. My pet solution is basic income, which eliminates the desperate need to be employed.
The free market as discussed by economists does not and can not exist. I don't think that is a problem (I think regulation of the market is good) but in the case of hiring, I think that the only problem is a lie, not information asymmetry (which will always exist on both sides).
So the case of the author who sells the movie rights to his work in return for a cut of the profits (and a small up-front payment), when the studio is able to manipulate their books so the wildly-profitable film shows a loss on paper, the author isn't harmed? They freely agreed to it so everything is hunky-dory? The contract isn't a lie, the accounting is (which is why studios tend to pay settlements rather than go to court where their accounting practices can be revealed for what they are).
What was the alternative if the author knew the truth, that he was going to get screwed on the royalties? Most likely a different payment structure, say with a much higher up-front payment. My contention is that the author was harmed in the amount of the difference between what he actually received, and the amount he would have received had he been aware of what the studio was going to do to him -- the cost of asymmetrical information as it were. (Note that I'm strictly speaking in the moral sense as this shit is unfortunately legal.) After all if the deal was %profit + lump sum, that %profit must have been of some value to the author, and if it wasn't on the table would he not have asked for a higher lump sum?
If someone sells their film rights for a % of profits and no lump sum, and receives nothing while the film does gangbusters, they're not harmed? Come on.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
My contention is that you can't be harmed by entering into an arm's length contract voluntarily, because harm requires that you have been injured somehow and all we are talking about here is freely entering into a deal that is worse than a deal the other side would have agreed to. Under this definition, all positional bargaining results in harm to one or both parties, as long as there was something left of the table by either side.
I don't think the ethical principles are the same between, say, a business to business printer service agreement, and potentially life and death duress agreements. I think popular conception of working and economics vastly underestimates the amount of economic duress most workers are under. No one would consider a contract valid if signed under threat of burning down someone's home, and while a bank foreclosure isn't necessarily* an agent of an employer in negotiation to put undue duress on the potential worker, the effect on negotiating position is similar.
* But they might be. It would be hard to overstate the amount of regulatory capture and low level malfeasance involved in labor relations today.
I think the better view is to say that workers would like higher wages than they routinely agree to, which prompts the question of why they agree to lower wages than they would like. I think the answer is that labor is in oversupply, so companies have a competitive advantage. That isn't inherently a problem, and deciding to correct it harms the people that would have agreed to do the job at a lower rate than we permit, who now lose that competitive advantage in hiring. My pet solution is basic income, which eliminates the desperate need to be employed.
You're right that it is in part an oversupply issue, but it is far more than that and encompasses a huge variety of issues. I think basic income is actually going to become mandatory for a country to be considered to have good economic policy in the next several decades, but minimum wages are both more politically viable at this time, and have their own benefits.
I would strongly caveat that oversupply reduces negotiation strength and not the intrinsic value of labor. An hour of labor is worth more today (using today broadly, I don't recall exact year to year data for the last few years) than ever in any part of human history.
The free market as discussed by economists does not and can not exist. I don't think that is a problem (I think regulation of the market is good) but in the case of hiring, I think that the only problem is a lie, not information asymmetry (which will always exist on both sides).
Well, the free market as conceptualized in theoretical economics won't, though I'd caveat that "Free market" is often colloquially used to be "the price system." Ideal economic policy looks at end goals, what deviations from a theoretical market the actual market has, and then goes from there. Copyright, while totally broken in its current incarnation, is an example of this, in that the free market has trouble producing the types of works available under a copyright policy, so a temporary grant of monopoly power on a good helps push the price arbitrarily high and allows for investments to be made. Of course, we went past the point of allowing for investment to regulatory capture and subsidies for the rich a long time ago.
My contention is that you can't be harmed by entering into an arm's length contract voluntarily, because harm requires that you have been injured somehow and all we are talking about here is freely entering into a deal that is worse than a deal the other side would have agreed to.
A worse deal that, say, restricts the kind of health care one can afford or what food one can buy or where one can live.
You seem to think that economic harm isn't harm which is an extremely odd stance to take.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
My contention is that you can't be harmed by entering into an arm's length contract voluntarily, because harm requires that you have been injured somehow and all we are talking about here is freely entering into a deal that is worse than a deal the other side would have agreed to. Under this definition, all positional bargaining results in harm to one or both parties, as long as there was something left of the table by either side.
I think the better view is to say that workers would like higher wages than they routinely agree to, which prompts the question of why they agree to lower wages than they would like. I think the answer is that labor is in oversupply, so companies have a competitive advantage. That isn't inherently a problem, and deciding to correct it harms the people that would have agreed to do the job at a lower rate than we permit, who now lose that competitive advantage in hiring. My pet solution is basic income, which eliminates the desperate need to be employed.
The free market as discussed by economists does not and can not exist. I don't think that is a problem (I think regulation of the market is good) but in the case of hiring, I think that the only problem is a lie, not information asymmetry (which will always exist on both sides).
So you'd agree that there is no possible way for a union to harm a business? That unions are an ideal solution that prevent harm to any party?
I think the better view is to say that workers would like higher wages than they routinely agree to, which prompts the question of why they agree to lower wages than they would like. I think the answer is that labor is in oversupply, so companies have a competitive advantage. That isn't inherently a problem, and deciding to correct it harms the people that would have agreed to do the job at a lower rate than we permit, who now lose that competitive advantage in hiring. My pet solution is basic income, which eliminates the desperate need to be employed.
If part of the answer is oversupply, it is not a natural oversupply. Many companies, when an employee leaves, will re-distribute his duties to several remaining employees rather than replace the loss. Or it may be posted, but either with unfulfillable conditions, or at a salary level well below industry standard for the work. In today's workforce, the oversupply is being driven by the employer, who is then able to reap the benefits of this oversupply.
Additionally, you're ignoring the stark disparity between the employer need to have one more productive employee, versus the labor need not to lose their lifestyle or even starve. An employer can much more easily go without an employee than a laborer can go without a job.
The negotiations that occur for hiring also require the prospective employee to provide his full information to the employer, while the employer has no such burden to reciprocate information to the prospect.
With very few exceptions, the employer-laborer negotiation is completely skewed towards the employer side of the equation.
I think the better view is to say that workers would like higher wages than they routinely agree to, which prompts the question of why they agree to lower wages than they would like. I think the answer is that labor is in oversupply, so companies have a competitive advantage. That isn't inherently a problem, and deciding to correct it harms the people that would have agreed to do the job at a lower rate than we permit, who now lose that competitive advantage in hiring. My pet solution is basic income, which eliminates the desperate need to be employed.
If part of the answer is oversupply, it is not a natural oversupply. Many companies, when an employee leaves, will re-distribute his duties to several remaining employees rather than replace the loss. Or it may be posted, but either with unfulfillable conditions, or at a salary level well below industry standard for the work. In today's workforce, the oversupply is being driven by the employer, who is then able to reap the benefits of this oversupply.
Additionally, you're ignoring the stark disparity between the employer need to have one more productive employee, versus the labor need not to lose their lifestyle or even starve. An employer can much more easily go without an employee than a laborer can go without a job.
The negotiations that occur for hiring also require the prospective employee to provide his full information to the employer, while the employer has no such burden to reciprocate information to the prospect.
With very few exceptions, the employer-laborer negotiation is completely skewed towards the employer side of the equation.
Isn't intentional unemployment a foundational idea of Thatcher-ian/Reagan-ite economic policy? That rather than aim for full employment, as in the 70s, nations would try to maintain to a higher level of unemployment to curtail inflation. Because when unemployment rates dipped near 0, workers could bargain for higher wages, which increased their purchasing power and caused inflation, which was undesirable for financial investors and large corporations who found their assets depreciating.
(I'm pretty sure it's more complicated than just this, since there are issues of stagflation and supply shocks and etc, involved now, but my main point is that the economic policies our governments pursue are intentionally designed to keep unemployment relatively high, and that the phenomenon isn't just an employer-driven one.)
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
In the case of the movie studio it isn't the deal that was problematic (as you admit). It was the accounting behind the scenes. I think that the author is harmed because the studio is taking the benefit of the bargained upon deal from him.
I disagree that needing money for food and healthcare puts you under duress and undermines the contract. If the other party to the contract did not create the pressures on you and the other party is not a war profiteer preying on you based on his role as the only possible provider of a necessary good before you would die or be seriously harmed, then what fault of the employer that the employee didn't "really" want to agree to the terms he agreed to?
Wage disclosure enables employees to push for higher salaries. That doesn't mean that they are harmed by agreeing to a lower salary in the absence of wage disclosure. I've said this before, but I think it means a true statement. A party to a negotiation is not harmed by accepting a deal when he could have taken a better deal. Salary isn't any different than buying a car in this regard. If you negotiate to pay $35k for a car and someone else negotiates to pay $32k for the same car, you aren't harmed by paying $3k more, because you are paying the price you agreed to pay for the car. Maybe with different data you would not have do agrees, but then maybe the car dealer would have refused your offer of $35k if he had more complete information and knew you were really willing to pay $38k. No one is harmed here. It's just a negotiation.
You can't completely separate the deal from the accounting though, because the deal doesn't exist in a vacuum. The accounting exists, and the studio agreed to the high percentage because it knew it could manipulate the books to avoid paying anything to the author. The studio does this all the time. The author, having never dealt with a studio before, was unaware of this tactic and accepted the deal in good faith. If he had more information about this common practice he would not have agreed to hand over his rights in return for what would most likely be nothing.
As to duress: no, the company did not put the person in the situation where he could be homeless/starving/etc tomorrow or next week. But can you at least acknowledge that human beings are subject to these pressures to a much greater extent than an immortal corporation? A company can easily afford to hold out for a better deal much longer than a person. A job can go unfilled for months or years, with its workload divided up amongst other workers. A person cannot afford to turn down infinite unfavorable offers, but the company essentially can. This is yet another tick box on the column of leverage the employer has. Maybe if we had GBI and universal healthcare this wouldn't be an issue. But we don't.
It's my contention that a party can agree to a deal and still be harmed, if the other party purposely withholds critical information that would have allowed him to push for a better deal. Like agreeing to a $30k salary when the company refuses to tell you that everyone else in that position is making $60k. edit: Lies of omission are still lies, are they not?
It's like buying a house with no information on how much it's worth. The seller won't tell you how much he wants for it. You can't see the assessments. You can't see how the rest of the neighborhood is valued. You just have to make a blind offer. You offer $500k and it's accepted. He hands over the deed. Only then do you discover that the house was only worth $300k, and the seller is laughing all the way to the bank. But you weren't harmed, right?
You wouldn't buy a house this way. Why should we negotiate salary this way?
DivideByZero on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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jmcdonaldI voted, did you?DC(ish)Registered Userregular
So when a deal is negotiated with the knowledge that an accounting gimmick is going to invalidate a compensation component that's not bad faith?
I disagree that needing money for food and healthcare puts you under duress and undermines the contract. If the other party to the contract did not create the pressures on you and the other party is not a war profiteer preying on you based on his role as the only possible provider of a necessary good before you would die or be seriously harmed, then what fault of the employer that the employee didn't "really" want to agree to the terms he agreed to?
It is duress. The employer will exploit that weakness to further their goal of getting the best deal, what's the employee going to do? They'll get similar offers elsewhere, there's no safe alternative the poorer they are. They didn't have to create the circumstances to be responsible for holding them over the employees head in negotiations, which is terrible. They can also do that with a richer employee for leverage - "That's a nice house you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it." Companies don't need to be war profiteers to be scumbags; it's perfectly legal to be an asshole with negotiations with employees.
Wage disclosure enables employees to push for higher salaries. That doesn't mean that they are harmed by agreeing to a lower salary in the absence of wage disclosure. I've said this before, but I think it means a true statement. A party to a negotiation is not harmed by accepting a deal when he could have taken a better deal.
They were pushed into a lower salary without the knowledge of their real worth, which the employer knows and deliberately omits for their own benefit in the negotiations. That's a hidden advantage, when they're already in the stronger position before the first word is spoke. This isn't about the end agreement, it's how they got to the end agreement - and that isn't always going to be good for the employee, it's just the least bad situation they could agree to before buckling.
Salary isn't any different than buying a car in this regard. If you negotiate to pay $35k for a car and someone else negotiates to pay $32k for the same car, you aren't harmed by paying $3k more, because you are paying the price you agreed to pay for the car. Maybe with different data you would not have do agrees, but then maybe the car dealer would have refused your offer of $35k if he had more complete information and knew you were really willing to pay $38k. No one is harmed here. It's just a negotiation.
Negotiation may be a neutral term, that doesn't mean one party won't be harmed by it. It's very easy for bad negotiations to end up indirectly harming the loser. If you end up homeless, or on your way to financial ruin - like someone gets deathly ill and they have to go into debt to pay it the employers forced them into that position then they otherwise would have been if they had the proper guidance and knowledge to better negotiate. Negotiations have real world consequences and they can be dire for the losers - which is on average the employee not the employer. This isn't a game of Monopoly where no-one gets hurt.
I disagree that needing money for food and healthcare puts you under duress and undermines the contract. If the other party to the contract did not create the pressures on you and the other party is not a war profiteer preying on you based on his role as the only possible provider of a necessary good before you would die or be seriously harmed, then what fault of the employer that the employee didn't "really" want to agree to the terms he agreed to?
It's not usually the employers fault that those conditions exist. Though god knows plenty have purposefully worked towards creating them.
It's the employer's fault that they exploit those conditions to pay a person less. And what many people in this thread would like to see is for those conditions, such as keeping salaries secret and based entirely on negotiation, done away with.
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The crust of bread example also works poorly because we have a minimum wage, so the lowest the employer can actually offer is an amount that the legislature has deemed reasonable pay for work.
That's a nice little backtracking loophole there.
It is a horrible position for a person to bargain from for the person starving, and when a person is that desperate it doesn't matter if they'll starve to death in days or months it's a death sentence the stronger party is holding over them. Ethically it's monstrous. People should be treated with respect, not like wild animals.
The legislature isn't going out of their way to give the poorer classes fair wages, this isn't a socialist paradise like Sweden. They're giving the lower classes the absolute least they can do and they're being hounded by advocates in the political system who want even that to disappear. It isn't the best situation, it's the least terrible.
The minimum wage is set at $7.25 an hour, which for a full time employee means about 15k a year. It's at such a low level, that anyone making minimum wage also qualifies for other government assistance programs. It hasn't been raised since 2009, and has never kept track with cost of living increases.
Making minimum wage is, quite literally, the crust of bread in this allegory.
Although if you insist on pushing that angle, the reason we have minimum wage laws is because we examined that problematic belief and said, "Hell no, fuck that noise."
This exactly. We looked at the (mal)practices associated with labor that emerged in the gilded age and collectively, as a society, we said, "this is awful, no more of this."
There are any number of agreements that our society deems prima facia are unacceptable, even if both parties would consider them satisfactory.
-Child Labor
-Human/Sex Trafficking
-Organized Gambling
-Organ Harvesting
Just because a deal can be struck, even if BOTH parties are perfectly happy with the agreement, doesn't mean that the agreement cannot be harmful or deemed unlawful/unacceptable by our society as a whole.
What about the garage band who signs on with a record company in return for a five-figure payout, but also gets themselves hooked into repaying a seven-figure production and distribution deal? Now they're basically indentured servants.
What about the Hollywood accountants who routinely fuck over rightsholders by manipulating the language of their contracts and the byzantine structure of their companies? Was the author of Forrest Gump harmed when he sold the rights in exchange for royalty payments that were never made because they were conditional on the film turning a profit, which the accountants and lawyers conveniently made impossible? Space would say no, he wasn't harmed, but I say yes, he was -- if the alternative was a fair contract that didn't exploit his unfamiliarity with the negotiation process.
Both of these practices are completely legal. I challenge you to claim they are not also completely repugnant.
So? The person is still being exploited. Legal exploitation is still exploitation. And it's something that can be fought by people knowing how much they get compensated in comparison to others. Including CEOs.
I think it's also worthwhile to look at that fact that many on the employer side of the employer-labor relationship have been working to reduce the effectiveness of this law since it's implementation. Examples include:
- Certain industries, such as food service, are given lower exemptions for shaky reasoning (tips) that specifically act to obfuscate earnings.
- The minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation / cost of living increases.
- The minimum wage does not apply to oversea workers for US companies, resulting in offshoring work (such as tech) to poorer countries.
- The minimum wage does not apply to illegal immigrants, although their employment is illegal in itself.
- The minimum wage does not apply to many transient work industries such as produce gathering, where pay is based on productivity (e.g. a dollar a bushel picked).
So, many in the US are offered only a crust of bread, yet corporations continue to try and slice that crust thinner and thinner.
I'm certain that SKFM wouldn't claim a lack of harm, but that's not the same as saying they're legal or even legitimate. The essence of this style of dealmaking is the attempt to maximize your own advantages while minimizing the other party's, so that you get the best deal for you that they will also agree with.
I think that trying to legislate "fair" contracts is a fool's errand and functionally impossible, not to mention unwise and undesirable! The effort should be toward regulating some standards, and other than that, caveat emptor. It's definitely shitty that the author of Forrest Gump never made a dime, but the solution to that is to burn down the film industry as it exists today.
I am obviously fine with that, as I would love to see a massive source of progressive political funding disappear and as anyone in [chat] can tell you , I have opinions about copyright.
Except that the reason for the general horror about SKFM's opinions in this thread is that he's explicitly stated that there is no harm and that this kind of action is not exploitative. He hasn't, as far as I've seen, used the "it's perfectly legal" argument even once. He's used the argument that if the employee is happy without the knowledge of how much they are being underpaid, then they are not being harmed. (and as such, the most generous thing executives can do for employees such as that is make sure they never realize how much they are being underpaid.)
Though if I've misunderstood you SKFM, feel free to correct me. I'd be happy to learn that your arguments are less awful than what I've gleaned from the thread.
Again, though, unconscionability is a thing in contract law.
As I said this whole tangent is just refuting SKFM's assertion that an agreement/contract can't possibly have resulted in harm as long as both parties agreed to it. The above are just examples of contracts freely entered where it would be really hard to argue that the less savvy party wasn't being harmed.
I'd argue that is pretty harmful in the long run. Negotiating shouldn't be about squeezing the last drop of blood from a stone before tossing it and finding another stone. Co-prosperity works.
Caveat emptor only benefits cheats, frauds, and other shady individuals. It's perfectly legitimate to sell someone a car that doesn't start, advertised as such. It's not legitimate to sell someone a car in "very good condition" with the odometer rolled back that has been in a half dozen accidents and hope they hand over the cash before the engine gives out so the seller can make a quick getaway.
One of the most famous economic papers is George Akerlof's Nobel winning research on lemon cars: The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism. Information asymmetry screws up markets pretty badly, and it harms honest people for the betterment of the dishonest.
Hollywood accounting in particular is basically fraud, and should be recognized as such by the courts. Knowingly misleading someone as to the value of an asset should be forbidden. If they want to sell a billion dollar script for almost nothing, more power to them, but it should be very clear that is what is going on.
We can't completely legislate fairness, but we can certainly do things to eliminate the most egregious examples of exploitation (say, sexual quid pro quos in the work place, or the literal Work For Scraps of Bread example, which are handled via sexual harassment laws and minimum wage, respectively), and minimize the rest thorough things like wage transparency and effective unionization.
Too late. Your card is in the mail, brother. Solidarity!
I feel like that line needs to be highlighted. Information asymmetry screws up, AFAIK, most of the economic theory about free markets and capitalism. Even your basic notions of supply and demand and price go out the window when there's misinformation in the market, which is supposed to self-regulate, but obviously can't when it disagrees with itself about its own nature. The whole, capitalism is about the best dealers making the best deals that screw others, thing is really kind of a bastardization of capitalism that's somehow become glorified and enshrined.
I mean, to draw this back to the original starting point of the tangent, SKFM said that salary negotiation is supposed to be adversarial. But in theory, it really shouldn't be - the employer and employee should actually both possess an accurate assessment of the value of the employee's labour in the market and settle on a mutually agreeable price. The consumer, in this case the employer, should not be able to lie to the supplier, the employee, about the state of the marketplace.
I think the better view is to say that workers would like higher wages than they routinely agree to, which prompts the question of why they agree to lower wages than they would like. I think the answer is that labor is in oversupply, so companies have a competitive advantage. That isn't inherently a problem, and deciding to correct it harms the people that would have agreed to do the job at a lower rate than we permit, who now lose that competitive advantage in hiring. My pet solution is basic income, which eliminates the desperate need to be employed.
The free market as discussed by economists does not and can not exist. I don't think that is a problem (I think regulation of the market is good) but in the case of hiring, I think that the only problem is a lie, not information asymmetry (which will always exist on both sides).
What was the alternative if the author knew the truth, that he was going to get screwed on the royalties? Most likely a different payment structure, say with a much higher up-front payment. My contention is that the author was harmed in the amount of the difference between what he actually received, and the amount he would have received had he been aware of what the studio was going to do to him -- the cost of asymmetrical information as it were. (Note that I'm strictly speaking in the moral sense as this shit is unfortunately legal.) After all if the deal was %profit + lump sum, that %profit must have been of some value to the author, and if it wasn't on the table would he not have asked for a higher lump sum?
If someone sells their film rights for a % of profits and no lump sum, and receives nothing while the film does gangbusters, they're not harmed? Come on.
I don't think the ethical principles are the same between, say, a business to business printer service agreement, and potentially life and death duress agreements. I think popular conception of working and economics vastly underestimates the amount of economic duress most workers are under. No one would consider a contract valid if signed under threat of burning down someone's home, and while a bank foreclosure isn't necessarily* an agent of an employer in negotiation to put undue duress on the potential worker, the effect on negotiating position is similar.
* But they might be. It would be hard to overstate the amount of regulatory capture and low level malfeasance involved in labor relations today.
You're right that it is in part an oversupply issue, but it is far more than that and encompasses a huge variety of issues. I think basic income is actually going to become mandatory for a country to be considered to have good economic policy in the next several decades, but minimum wages are both more politically viable at this time, and have their own benefits.
I would strongly caveat that oversupply reduces negotiation strength and not the intrinsic value of labor. An hour of labor is worth more today (using today broadly, I don't recall exact year to year data for the last few years) than ever in any part of human history.
Well, the free market as conceptualized in theoretical economics won't, though I'd caveat that "Free market" is often colloquially used to be "the price system." Ideal economic policy looks at end goals, what deviations from a theoretical market the actual market has, and then goes from there. Copyright, while totally broken in its current incarnation, is an example of this, in that the free market has trouble producing the types of works available under a copyright policy, so a temporary grant of monopoly power on a good helps push the price arbitrarily high and allows for investments to be made. Of course, we went past the point of allowing for investment to regulatory capture and subsidies for the rich a long time ago.
A worse deal that, say, restricts the kind of health care one can afford or what food one can buy or where one can live.
You seem to think that economic harm isn't harm which is an extremely odd stance to take.
So you'd agree that there is no possible way for a union to harm a business? That unions are an ideal solution that prevent harm to any party?
If part of the answer is oversupply, it is not a natural oversupply. Many companies, when an employee leaves, will re-distribute his duties to several remaining employees rather than replace the loss. Or it may be posted, but either with unfulfillable conditions, or at a salary level well below industry standard for the work. In today's workforce, the oversupply is being driven by the employer, who is then able to reap the benefits of this oversupply.
Additionally, you're ignoring the stark disparity between the employer need to have one more productive employee, versus the labor need not to lose their lifestyle or even starve. An employer can much more easily go without an employee than a laborer can go without a job.
The negotiations that occur for hiring also require the prospective employee to provide his full information to the employer, while the employer has no such burden to reciprocate information to the prospect.
With very few exceptions, the employer-laborer negotiation is completely skewed towards the employer side of the equation.
Isn't intentional unemployment a foundational idea of Thatcher-ian/Reagan-ite economic policy? That rather than aim for full employment, as in the 70s, nations would try to maintain to a higher level of unemployment to curtail inflation. Because when unemployment rates dipped near 0, workers could bargain for higher wages, which increased their purchasing power and caused inflation, which was undesirable for financial investors and large corporations who found their assets depreciating.
(I'm pretty sure it's more complicated than just this, since there are issues of stagflation and supply shocks and etc, involved now, but my main point is that the economic policies our governments pursue are intentionally designed to keep unemployment relatively high, and that the phenomenon isn't just an employer-driven one.)
I disagree that needing money for food and healthcare puts you under duress and undermines the contract. If the other party to the contract did not create the pressures on you and the other party is not a war profiteer preying on you based on his role as the only possible provider of a necessary good before you would die or be seriously harmed, then what fault of the employer that the employee didn't "really" want to agree to the terms he agreed to?
Wage disclosure enables employees to push for higher salaries. That doesn't mean that they are harmed by agreeing to a lower salary in the absence of wage disclosure. I've said this before, but I think it means a true statement. A party to a negotiation is not harmed by accepting a deal when he could have taken a better deal. Salary isn't any different than buying a car in this regard. If you negotiate to pay $35k for a car and someone else negotiates to pay $32k for the same car, you aren't harmed by paying $3k more, because you are paying the price you agreed to pay for the car. Maybe with different data you would not have do agrees, but then maybe the car dealer would have refused your offer of $35k if he had more complete information and knew you were really willing to pay $38k. No one is harmed here. It's just a negotiation.
As to duress: no, the company did not put the person in the situation where he could be homeless/starving/etc tomorrow or next week. But can you at least acknowledge that human beings are subject to these pressures to a much greater extent than an immortal corporation? A company can easily afford to hold out for a better deal much longer than a person. A job can go unfilled for months or years, with its workload divided up amongst other workers. A person cannot afford to turn down infinite unfavorable offers, but the company essentially can. This is yet another tick box on the column of leverage the employer has. Maybe if we had GBI and universal healthcare this wouldn't be an issue. But we don't.
It's my contention that a party can agree to a deal and still be harmed, if the other party purposely withholds critical information that would have allowed him to push for a better deal. Like agreeing to a $30k salary when the company refuses to tell you that everyone else in that position is making $60k. edit: Lies of omission are still lies, are they not?
It's like buying a house with no information on how much it's worth. The seller won't tell you how much he wants for it. You can't see the assessments. You can't see how the rest of the neighborhood is valued. You just have to make a blind offer. You offer $500k and it's accepted. He hands over the deed. Only then do you discover that the house was only worth $300k, and the seller is laughing all the way to the bank. But you weren't harmed, right?
You wouldn't buy a house this way. Why should we negotiate salary this way?
It is duress. The employer will exploit that weakness to further their goal of getting the best deal, what's the employee going to do? They'll get similar offers elsewhere, there's no safe alternative the poorer they are. They didn't have to create the circumstances to be responsible for holding them over the employees head in negotiations, which is terrible. They can also do that with a richer employee for leverage - "That's a nice house you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it." Companies don't need to be war profiteers to be scumbags; it's perfectly legal to be an asshole with negotiations with employees.
They were pushed into a lower salary without the knowledge of their real worth, which the employer knows and deliberately omits for their own benefit in the negotiations. That's a hidden advantage, when they're already in the stronger position before the first word is spoke. This isn't about the end agreement, it's how they got to the end agreement - and that isn't always going to be good for the employee, it's just the least bad situation they could agree to before buckling.
Negotiation may be a neutral term, that doesn't mean one party won't be harmed by it. It's very easy for bad negotiations to end up indirectly harming the loser. If you end up homeless, or on your way to financial ruin - like someone gets deathly ill and they have to go into debt to pay it the employers forced them into that position then they otherwise would have been if they had the proper guidance and knowledge to better negotiate. Negotiations have real world consequences and they can be dire for the losers - which is on average the employee not the employer. This isn't a game of Monopoly where no-one gets hurt.
It's not usually the employers fault that those conditions exist. Though god knows plenty have purposefully worked towards creating them.
It's the employer's fault that they exploit those conditions to pay a person less. And what many people in this thread would like to see is for those conditions, such as keeping salaries secret and based entirely on negotiation, done away with.