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
-
-
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
1 reply 2 retweets 12 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @ladyattis
A framing that has both been very successful and done incalculable damage to the US working class
1 reply 2 retweets 8 likes -
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?
4 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
There are fairly few places where individual workers have the opportunity to seek rents; plausibly something like occupational licensing, maybe.
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @mssilverstein @ladyattis
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
1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes -
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
1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes -
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
2 replies 1 retweet 14 likes -
After all, wages are just the price of labor, and an efficient market wage is by definition a slave wage (the lowest amount someone can get away with paying you where it's still possible for you to work)
2 replies 1 retweet 17 likes -
There's a lot of stuff that completely and totally fits the straightforward definition of rent seeking that I think is justifiable A union enforcing a closed shop, for instance (which is a "monopoly on labor")
2 replies 1 retweet 6 likes
And this is why I don't join in when people get all heated about, say, occupational licensing being a corrupt fiction intended as a rent seeking measure Yeah, and why is propping up high wages for the already employed a bad thing
-
-
Like I completely believe that the need to take a bunch of classes and pass a test to be a hairdresser is probably unnecessary to actually protect the public from bad hairdressing, and it exists so hairdressers can charge more money So? Why shouldn't they do that
3 replies 1 retweet 8 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein
Because others extract value from newbie hairdressers via finance aide for trade schooling?
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.