ilikeaces86 Endorses McCain!

[zook]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree with a lot of what you wrote.

On bad working environments: The reason people work in those conditions is because it's the best alternative they have. Take a factory in asia for example. People may work there for 10 hrs/day under bad conditions and for a pay that may look horrible from our perspective. But they are doing this because it's the best alternative they currently have. The other alternative might be to bust their asses off on a farm for 12 hrs/day. So the workers lives at the factories might still be quite an important improvement from how it was before it. And also, any regulation of the labour market will only make companies more cautious before hiring, meaning less people will get this improvement of their life.

I don't think that you can defend jobs that are dangerous or don't pay a living wage solely because "it's the best alternative they have". If the owners, managers and stockholders of the company are making money (and often a shitload of it), they have an obligation to provide a safe work environment and a living wage. Obviously what constitutes a living wage is up for debate, but one on which two working parents could feed their children, pay rent and afford medical treatment seems like a good place to start. Unfortunately, history has shown that employers, given the opportunity, will exploit their workers and we've needed unions and governments to make things right.

Unrestrained greed is bad. Fraud, theft and any other unvoluntary transaction of wealth should definitely be forbidden. However, I don't believe any transaction that's voluntary from both parts need to be regulated at all. Both parts believe they are better of after the exchange or it would not have taken place at all. So in every voluntary exchange, both parts are winners. Why should a third part have any saying in this at all?

I'm not talking about fraud and theft, I'm talking about business owners taking advantage of a free market system to exploit workers. When you look at what capitalism wrought in the late 1800's and early 1900's in terms of working conditions and economic inequality it's impossible to argue that unchecked capitalism is a good thing.