While acting as a middle man that EXTRACTS value from the labor of the drivers themselves. But please continue to lie about the impact of Uber on labor rights (i.e. they keep calling their drivers contractors and fight all unionization).
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Replying to @ladyattis
Right, Uber is anti-union because they're ideologically opposed to "rent seekers", their whole deal is pushing for low low prices for the consumer by any means necessary
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Survey says... *bzzzzt* Sorry, that's the wrong answer. You keep trying to confuse the issue. Labor cannot rent seek what it is INHERENTLY OWED. You write a book or invent a gadget, you have the book and the gadget. Me making a copy isn't the same as stealing either.
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Replying to @ladyattis
Yeah nobody has a magic "labor theory of value-o-meter" they can wave over a good or service to determine what the objective amount you're owed is Labor unions operate on the principle that you get what you're able and willing to fight for
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Replying to @arthur_affect
And yet you keep saying their actions are equivalent to that of the capitalists who lord over them. That's my big problem with your declaration. You keep trying to dilute the meaning of a term like rent-seeking to include justified actions.
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Replying to @ladyattis
No, I said I think rent-seeking is good, it just depends on who's doing it to whom It's generally good when consumer prices go up if it means wages also go up
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ladyattis
When you say "rent-seeking" as a concept is fundamentally bad, however you personally mean it, you're playing into the extremely common narrative in American politics that low prices for you the customer are a social good and high prices a sign of corruption and waste
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ladyattis
A framing that has both been very successful and done incalculable damage to the US working class
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ladyattis
I agree that the lower-prices-at-all-costs is a bad principle to go off of, but I'm not sure that rent-seeking is typically the issue, is it?
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There are fairly few places where individual workers have the opportunity to seek rents; plausibly something like occupational licensing, maybe.
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Ricardo did draw a distinction between deliberate rent seeking and wages being propped up at an inflated level by the "customs and habits" of a given country Like the reason English workers didn't live in mud huts and eat only gruel is England generally thinks that's improper
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To the extent that's true, globalization is a direct attack on it - our "customs and habits" (and the minimum wage laws passed to reflect them) get our jobs shipped overseas to a sweatshop in Bangladesh The labor movement is about recognizing "customs and habits" are fought for
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Anyway this is why I don't feel like trying to argue that if it's justified it's not really rent seeking because rent seeking is bad You should be letting go of the idea of an "efficient market price" in the first place, it's a dangerous fiction
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