Throughout the course of history, rich and powerful have exploited the poor and weak. The worst forms of this exploitation are slavery and forced labor. Slavery is the complete control of one person over the other. Finally, the slavery and forced labor got abolished in most of world, at least, on paper. Slavery, for the most part was replaced by waged labor. Waged labor did exist before the slavery was abolished, but, it was never as common and organized, as it is, now. Waged labor is a business relationship between labor which needs money for livelihood, and business which needs labor for production. So, in this setup, hired person provides labor to its employer or business, and in turn, business pays him a set amount of money, often settled as hourly wages or annual salary.
The value of labor or the compensation an employee (wage earner) earns for its labor is generally determined by the principles of supply and demand, just like any other commodity in free markets. Level of knowledge, skills, experience, level of success or failure in past, and the availability of people with comparable sets of knowledge, skills, experience and success or failure in past, are usually the major criteria for the determination of value of labor.
In many cases, determination of the value of labor, may not simply be the result of supply and demand principles, due to external and internal interference in open markets. There may be monopolies in the markets which due to the lake of competition, may undermine the actual value of labor. On the other hand, external forces like government can interfere with free market determination of the value of labor through laws like minimum wage laws. In simple terms, it is extremely difficult to determine the actual value of labor. Why? The reason is that we are stuck in a very unnatural system of production and doing business. Although better then slavery, it is not very far from it.
Every individual thrives for freedom and liberty. People like to and want to be able to make their own decisions, and run their own lives. Waged labor takes away these basic rights and pride from the lives of people. Unlike slavery, employer doesn’t have control over their whole life, but, a part of their lives, usually a chink of hours, at least five days a week is totally under the control of employer. You have to wake up, get ready, commute, be there on time, and do exactly as the policies and your boss dictates. If you are sick or something you have to call and inform them. If for any reason your time off from the work is more then allowed, you do not get paid.
You can get fired for violation of “their” policies. Your termination stays on your record for ever. If you apply for another job, other employees do not like a termination status, they call the previous employer, and your fate is totally dependent on whatever your former employer is telling them. If your termination is on the bases of things like willful misconduct, you will not even get the unemployment benefits, even though you may have been paying taxes for decades.
So, you are stuck in that awful perpetual circle for life. People say that more education and higher set of skills can solve this problem. Not true. At the most, that will promote you into a higher level of modified slavery. That is why, it is not unusual to hear from the people even at a fairly higher level of compensation, “I hate my job!” The only real and practical ways out of these are either to get a job in an employee owned company or to get self-employed or start your own business.
People who work for employee owned companies, self-employed people and business owners will often tell you that the best part of it, beside wealth, money and others, is the freedom and being your own boss. No one else and the rules made by others are not running your life. In other words, no slavery. Think about it! If we are in waged labor, and get an opportunity to be our own bosses, how many of us will prefer to stay in waged labor setting?
So, this whole discussion about minimum wage or no minimum wage is a bull shitting crepe. The root cause are not low wages, it is not even very wide economic disparity between poor and rich. Problem is the bad system. A system not slavery, but very close to slavery. I mean, in most case, your healthcare, your retirement, your regularity in paying your bills, your ability to get credit or loans, your ability to have and keep a good credit rating, your ability to stay in your house, all depend on what is called a “steady paycheck”.
So, the problem is that we are in a perpetual, financial slavery. If you do not want to risk the steady life and living you and your family has, then, shut up and work. Follow the most ridiculous policies, thickest manuals, stingiest bosses or else. No media guru, no politician ever looks at the issue from this stand point. My friends, what is so different between saying, “I have a right to completely control a part of your life, since I hired you”, and “I have a complete control on your life, because, I bought you”. The whole system is pretty much based on similar exploitation, slavery was based on.
We need to completely re-structure our society. We must get rid of exploitation of individuals from employers, and government regulations. We must have only two types of business relationships. Employee owned companies and self-employed contractors. This is the only way we are going get rid of all the problems like minimum wage or no minimum wage, poverty, exploitation and economic disparity. Employee owned businesses will compete for hiring labor in open, contractor markets. Contractors will keep their prices reasonable to be able to get hired and earn some money. No boss can abuse an employee because everyone owns the business, and has a comparable stake in profit or loss.
Stats Shop
