I don't understand the perception of exploitation in this context. No one is legally forced to work for a given employer, nor one that they don't like.
Are you really so sure about that part? Granted we're not living in the 19th century anymore. But hey! None of them was 'forced' either. They always had the choice to quit - but why didn't they? Because they had to make some kind of income and compromise.
You don't need always some kind of legal framework, to get people into doing something against their own interest and exploitation can also happen on consent - ask any domina and his/her sub!
For decades now, have individuals like Friedman and Heyek pushed their Neoliberalism, telling people that less regulations and a smaller state, will lead ultimately to more freedom for all where everyone can negotiate their own conditions with a maximum in felxibility. I am curious though, where is this wealth for everyone and the oportunity for everyone they're all talking about? Why aren't we there yet in this dreamworld? Why is the economy growing, while more and more people have less money at their disposal despite the fact that we're living probably in one of the most efficient economies ever. The factor at which our production today is more efficient then let us say, just 50 years ago, is staggering. Don't quote me on it, but I vaguely remember that we're 90% more efficient in production, but in comparision to that loans only grew by 10% or something.
We often forget the history of our economies, that we had those times already where profit was everything and company owners and employeers could literaly do everything they wanted without any restirctions what so ever, and it has lead to more freedom only for some. And it was definetly not a paradise. The industrialisation has actually given birth to the term of 'capitalism' and it was so bad that societies had to invent things like workers rights, unions, pensions, social security, safety standards and a lot of regulations that we're seeing now dismantled one by one.
Conversely though... many employers here are legally forced to hire employees that they are not comfortable with having... and to me that seems like using the law to exploit the employer. It would not surprise me if an employer would just close up shop rather than be exploited. One opens a business because they want to have their own business—not to offer out jobs; they don't owe anyone a job. The purpose of offering a job is to get what one wants or needs to be done—to be done; preferably by the best skilled candidate they can afford.
Though, the really big question that is looming over everything right now, is how we can keep this economic growth without runing our planet, which seems to be the case right now. And the harsh reality might be that our economic system even if it was very succesful in the past, is most probably not a sustainable system for the future on a planet with limited resources and space. The Club of Rome made some extensive studies on that already in the 1970s and some of the papers they published, predicted a lot of the effects we are seeing right now.
The point I am making, is the grand scale or the big picture if you want so, small business and small business owners are not so much the problem here, particularly as they are suffering almost the same like average employees and workers. How many small business had to close when Wallmart became really big or what kind of preasure is Amazons book selling doing to small book stores all across the country. What we do have right now, is a large consumer society with mass production of countless of products we simply throw away, even though we should really aim more towards a
circular economy.
However, at the end of the day you will always have the interest of a minorty of business owners against a majority of non-business owners.
The employee shows up, [ideally] does what they agreed to do, and gets a paycheck... that's it.
If it was that simplistic then there would have never been a need for unions or workers rights where they had to 'force' employers and business owners to make concessions. Again, you're only concentrating on the micro-economic scale of things.
What you say holds merit when we talk about smaller business owners, where the employee has eventually some leverage, particularly if they bring something valuable to the table, like knowledge and experience, that no one else has. Today, the largest employers are corporations and medium sized enterprises though and they have a large pool of workers they can chose from. The basis for negotiations for the employee compared to his 'boss' is much smaller, particularly as in any large corporations, the manager who's eventually doing the negotiations with his employee is also employed by the company himself, since no one who's working at the assampley line at Ford or filling the shelves at Cosco is actually seeing the owner of the company eye to eye and they certainly don't bring anything special to the table that would give them some kind of huge advantage, hence why many of them earn less than the minimum wage. And that's sure not, because the owner of Walmart or any other large corporation is poor as fuck.
I mean at the end of the day, the business owners - as a group, will ALWAYS be in the better position compared to any potential employee. Even if this might not be true for ALL business owners, it certainly is true for many.
Because we're living in a society where people are taught that if they simply work hard enough, they might become wealthy and if they aren't, then it's entirely their fault. What we experience right now though, is that a growing part of the population is working harder while earning less. People feel more and more that the system they are living in, is rigged - what ever if that's true or not doesn't even matter what depends is how people feel about it. And this idea already starts in school where people are taught that performance equalls success, yet the majority of people are not succesfull - anymore.
So, even though worker productivity has been increasing, the people doing the actual work aren’t seeing the benefits. Part of the reason for this is the way the wealthy make their money. Many of those at the top of the socio-economic scale make their money off of money. They aren’t actually earning wages.
Again, this is a mathematical problem. It seems to be a natural occurance of capitalist societies. The question comes down to social mobility, and what happens to society when it comes worse over time.
If a rich person pays other people to run their business for them, then they have paid the asking price, and the work is willing done by the employees—just as had they done it themselves. There is no exploitation here.
In capitalism exploitation is one of the fundamental principles, be it of resources OR the workforce by minmizing costs as much as possible while increasing profits as much as possible trough what ever means necessary. This simple, yet universal truth of a free capitalist market, is what gave birth to many social democracies:
Marxists further argue that due to economic inequality, the purchase of labor cannot occur under "free" conditions. Since capitalists control the means of production (e.g., factories, businesses, machinery) and workers control only their labor, the worker is naturally coerced into allowing their labor to be exploited.[18] Critics argue that exploitation occurs even if the exploited consents, since the definition of exploitation is independent of consent. In essence, workers must allow their labor to be exploited or face starvation. Since some degree of unemployment is typical in modern economies, Marxists argue that wages are naturally driven down in free market systems. Hence, even if a worker contests their wages, capitalists are able to find someone from the reserve army of labor who is more desperate.
AGAIN That does NOT(!) mean that this is true for every single business owners out there or that the majority of them want people to starve, but even the good ones, have to abide to the rules of a capitalist society. And the rule always is, maximise your profits and lower your costs.
That's rarely not the case... but tell that to the Grateful Dead, MC Hammer, or
Willard Wiggins—who sold his original artwork in bulk to a collector, for twenty million dollars. I understand when you mention just pointing out a few success stories... but they can, they did. If they chose to do nothing, or wait for assistance, then they would never have had the success they achieved—and to be sure,
it was hard work.
Harder work as in some chinese sweatshop working for less then 1 $ per hour with the risk of dieing on lung cancer due to toxic fumes or some other shitty conditions? I am pretty sure I could find someone there, would change his life with MC Hammer in a heartbeat.
You can not compare that just like that. Even if you take a musician or artist, then It would only hold merit, if he sold every single rap CD all by him self to every single costumer. I am not dimnishing the artistc quality of their work or that they have put some serious manpower in to it - albeit that sure isn't true for every rich musician out there. The proportionality with the workhours they have put in to it, compared to the amount of money they have received is in question here. The quality of artistic work is within limitation a matter of subjectivity, as there are counltess of musicians which might even show more skill than MC-Hammer, but they earn not even a faction of what he did. You can not put artistic work on a scale and measure it reliabily, but you can do that with money and manpower/worktime.
I don't see a distinction between doing the work, and being the person who paid for all of the tools and equipment to make doing the work possible.
Except one them might get paid billions and the other one pennies, which sure makes a difference to the guy getting paid in pennies for his labor.
