> why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios?

The state is supposed to be servants of the people, not of the companies. Human rights are important; companies are at best a means to an end, and if winding up a company leads to better outcomes for humans, few would or should shed a tear for the company.

> this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ?

It's a race to the bottom, and the only way to prevent that is collective organisation. There's nothing elitist about the notion that people acting together are stronger than people acting alone.

> is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?

Yes, by definition. How can they save up if they're being paid starvation wages?

> It's a race to the bottom, and the only way to prevent that is collective organisation. There's nothing elitist about the notion that people acting together are stronger than people acting alone.

not true. For example, I have a minimum I would work for, if this is not met, I would not accept working for less. I would rather go eat grass and leaves from trees than that. I would rather plant carrots, chase after a rabbit, whatever it takes. I do not need a union, I do NOT want anyone else interferring in my salary negotiations, and I can deliver value to a company beyond what I am asking in salary. vast majority of employees can deliver value beyond a decent salary.

> I would not accept working for less. I would rather go eat grass and leaves from trees than that. I would rather plant carrots, chase after a rabbit, whatever it takes

Easy to say when you haven't had to do it. And if you say "whatever it takes", you've already undermined your argument - you'll reach a point where your only option is working.

> vast majority of employees can deliver value beyond a decent salary.

Sure. But employers often capture all (or indeed more than all) of that value, through monopsony situations, self-organising de-facto cartels, or just acting as an actual cartel (e.g. the famous "anti-poaching agreement").

> why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios? why do we always assume its the "slave-minded plebs" that blinks first?

Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

> if companies really are so greedy, surely they could see the benefit in paying more than they would prefer(which would naturally always be 0), and get to earn decent, rather than employees saying "too bad, wont work" and they get to earn nothing?

Observed behavior? Are you unfamiliar with the small businesses complaining about how “nobody wants to work” while offering minimum wage? Or in the tech industry how the majority of firms have settled on providing below market yearly salary increases and eating the replacement cost for employees rather than pay a few percent more to keep people from looking for new jobs. To the point that it’s commonly accepted for jobs to be 2-3 year stints instead of the lifelong careers of the past?

> this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ?

You’re reading into it if you think I’m referring to just “working joes”. It’s what desperate people do in the rule set you propose. It’s how we had indentured servants in the American colonies. It’s how there were literally people who sold themselves into slavery to pay off bets in the Roman Empire.

> is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?

If someone is in a desperate enough situation to consider selling themselves into slavery, how pray tell, do they save up a decent enough buffer?

> Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

I legitimately do not understand what you are saying. I am a business owner, are you seriously saying I would rather dissolve my business than pay what it costs for labour (assuming i could still make money after paying that much for labour) ? Are you saying that if all software engineers tomorrow simply had an epiphany, and demanded 50% more money, google would say "we had a good run, time to simply END google" ?

> Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

And clearly those companies still do reasonably fine, and isnt THAT much in lack of employees, or they are in a low margin market where paying more would not really result in sufficient profit to incur the risk?

> You’re reading into it if you think I’m referring to just “working joes”. It’s what desperate people do in the rule set you propose. It’s how we had indentured servants in the American colonies. It’s how there were literally people who sold themselves into slavery to pay off bets in the Roman Empire.

I am not saying any one solution fits ALL scenarios, but WHY are they desperate? if they have skills that are useful enough to a company that it could ever sustain hiring them for a pay we would both agree is decent, then what is the reason?

> If someone is in a desperate enough situation to consider selling themselves into slavery, how pray tell, do they save up a decent enough buffer?

by saving up before they become that desperate. I am not saying this covers for absolutely everyone, but I will dare say the vast majority, and I would double down and say that a large part of those where it doesnt, its because they have been held back by these authoritarian nanny-state laws and customs. A very large amount of people who are living paycheck to paycheck very regularly does very stupid shit, like buy fancy clothes, go to restaurants instead of cooking themselves, prioritize a fairly new iphone, have a few streaming subscriptions etc. They would consider it 100% impossible to live without that, and would rather go into extreme debt and be "desperate" when the bill comes due.

Again, not everyone, some people legitimately have all odds against them from the beginning. Some have emergencies happen that they realistically couldnt have prepared for even if they did everything. This is the edge cases, the outliers. NOT the bulk of people. The bulk of people who subscribe to nanny state things considers it more apropriate to have a netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund, assuming they are paycheck-to-paycheck

I don’t think there’s much more to talk about here if you read my posts and come away with this question

> I am a business owner, are you seriously saying I would rather dissolve my business than pay what it costs for labour (assuming i could still make money after paying that much for labour)

Having to pay more for labor as a business when you can is not comparable to being so destitute that selling yourself into slavery is a better idea. It is equivalent to being bankrupt as a company.

> by saving up before they become that desperate.

That’s just hand waving away that it happens, and has happened in the past at greater frequency without government limitations on what rights people have. You started this off with advocating that the government should only set defaults and everything else is on the table and you’re response to asking what we do for people who hit the failure mode is to say “don’t fail”. It’s not an edge case, it’s not outliers. You might think so only because you are a century into heavy government intervention into business/employee relationships and to suggest that this is the natural state and would continue without government intervention is frankly, ridiculous

> The bulk of people who subscribe to nanny state things considers it more apropriate to have a netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund, assuming they are paycheck-to-paycheck

I felt like I might be a little too hot with my previous section and then I read this line. It’s obvious you subscribe to some equivalent of Calvinist theory where the poor deserve it and you are hand waving away the idea of failure.

This is an ideological position and I hold the opposite ideological position so I think we’ve reached an impasse

> It’s obvious you subscribe to some equivalent of Calvinist theory where the poor deserve it and you are hand waving away the idea of failure.

that is simply not true. I said very clearly the default way things work shouldnt happen to outliers. What exactly are you saying here? that most people are simply not able to handle themselves throughout their lives without the nanny state handling salary requirements to the evil companies? I would say this is PARTIALLY correct, but only because people have been lulled into relinquishing all sense of personal responsibility. its like helicopter parenting adults, by the nanny state.

and your argument makes no logical sense anyway, how can someone that has marketable skills, WANTED by companies, then be not expected to be able to handle their life themselves?

there will then of course be edge cases, those that through disease, low skill (and low ability, low intelligence etc) not be able to really earn a living. That does not make them worse people, and a different mechanism should help them have a decent life.

When you characterize wanting worker protections as wanting a “nanny state” and then claim that the people who support that think it’s a better idea “to have a Netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund”, am I supposed to infer that you have a high opinion of people in this situation or that you think they deserve it?

> and your argument makes no logical sense anyway, how can someone that has marketable skills, WANTED by companies, then be not expected to be able to handle their life themselves?

Perhaps if I had started this chain off by talking about people with in demand skills, this would be an appropriate critique. However, I was speaking about when people are in a desperate situation which usually implies they don’t have some sort of leverage like in demand skills.

Your suggestion of letting the government be the default but allowing employees and employees to negotiate whatever deal they want is already the case for people with leverage. People with in demand skills aren’t trying to negotiate a $2/hr wage but the “nanny state” is getting in their way. You’re proposed change to removing government minimums that cannot be negotiated away will only change the situation for people in desperate situations and you are continually hand waving that away as an outlier case despite that both A) not being an outlier, and B) being the vast majority of peoples whose personal situations would be affected by your proposal