Another wrinkle in this is how the “businessman’s tragedy of the commons” gets reflected in the thinking of employees. Employees, when faced with enduring inequality, may well object to progress, out of a sense it isn’t fair. I find this really remarkable. An employer that wants the employees poorer must be very amused indeed to see a backlash such as in the URL below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-with-backlash-against-the-raise-that-roared.html From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 5:00 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America So business people are anti-union not because unions interfere with the running of their own businesses, but because unions interfere with their ruining of other peoples businesses? I think we could get a whole new freakonomics franchise out of this. -- rec -- On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:22 PM, David Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu<mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote: You know what I find curious about the various econ conversations around this topic? What I am about to say is not any deep insight, and I have heard Hanauer say the same things in his TED talk (nearly verbatim to the article), but just this time, reading it led to the realization. In the sense of where the agency lies, this is a simple non-cooperative game played by the owners of firms _against each other_. Powerless labor is essentially a background fabric that responds mechanically to the strategic choices of those who have the bargaining power over terms of employment, in the society as we currently have it structured. So essentially, as Hanauer says, every business wants its customers richer and its employees poorer. That is: they want all _other_ employers to provide richer citizens who can be customers, while they then return less of that wealth to their own employees as members of the customer pool. It can be framed as one of the simple standard public-goods games, in which a public resource (a non-desperate pool of people who both sell wage labor and buy products and services) is either contributed to, or not, by firms' wage-setting policies. The strategy of public contribution is dominated under the non-cooperative equilibrium, so the "businessman's tragedy of the commons" has everybody trying to cheat and not pay labor, until the whole populace is decimated and there are no customers. This is the descent into the Walmart effect on towns, though the way it plays out into a final locked-in ruined state is more complicated than this simple game has the structure to describe. All this is obvious, and putting it into a game-theoretic frame doesn't really add anything to the substance of the argument, though for me it does state more transparently who the players are and makes the useful point that it is the firm owners competing with each other as adversaries that drive this dynamic. Firm owners don't, as a class, destroy the economy through low wages because they are colluding: rather, they are being coordinated by the bad version of Adam Smith's invisible hand as they jointly independently and competitively choose the same destructive use of their power in the labor market. This is why the notion that firms will "voluntarily" raise wages once a few do, mentioned by opponents in Hanauer's essay, is false (and disingenuously so). Now, certainly, maintaining market power over wages by putting a fence around the labor pool is a collusive act, but it is carried out through different institutions (particularly, lobbying legislators etc.) and other levels than the competitive pricing one. Thus, the game has a few layers with different structure that interact, but it wouldn't be all that hard to lay out which parts are which. The thing that surprises me -- given how many statements of the obvious Complex Systems academics make lots of press putting into formalism -- is that I haven't seen anyone write this down in those terms. Maybe everyone realizes it would be kind of silly, and that is why they don't bother to do it? Would make sense, except that we see it done in so many other areas that are equally shallow and silly. ? Eric On Aug 6, 2015, at 6:24 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: Nick Hanauer is clear that he is a multi-billionaire because Jeff Bezos called him back before another guy when Hanauer had some venture capital to invest. See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VcJ-ElDnbqA Frank Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone (505) 670-9918<tel:%28505%29%20670-9918> On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. An analogous consideration is the (seemingly) popular conservative position that if you have succeeded at something (e.g. making money), it's because _you_ did it, not because you were lucky or fortunate. (The alternative position that God did it for you, or allowed you to do it is an interesting hedge.) Most liberals tend to place at least a little more weight on luck or circumstance when considering one's success. So, it's not spontanous firing the gun control people are worried about. It's not even the rational, intently intentional firing they're worried about. It's the accidental and/or rash, semi-intentional firings they're worried about. Hence the solution: remove the material cause. -- ⇔ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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