Who decides? The state or the individual?

Is this a gossip forum or a place to discuss ideas? I read the rules posted and do not think you are following them. Personalities are off limits, are they not?

I am totally amazed that no one has chosen to comment on the information given by T. Sowell.

The brilliant writer and analyist,Dr. Thomas Sowell,

Italgato/Massagato/Chiczaria/Mortkat/BernardR/MarionT/Renatus5 is usually fairly easy to spot--but i never thought i'd spot him on the very first post.

However, the culture of the Ghetto is a culture which must be totally changed in order for Black people to fully engage in the US Economy. The ridiculous emphasis on "victimhood" must go.

Again, I must point out that the characterists of Blacks in the ghetto are almost directly antagonistic to schooling. The all day school won't help. It is only when Blacks begin to lose the victimology schtick, that they can make progress. African-Americans have succeeded--usually by abandoning the dulling effects of the ghetto mentality....

There is nothing stopping Blacks from changing their culture and emulating those in our society who are successful.

This is a continuation of another discussion, but I'd like to start by addressing the basic philosophical point first. To do so, let's examine this situation:

Worker is looking for a job and Boss is looking to hire someone. We can assume that Worker, all things considered, would prefer to work for the highest wage and the fewest hours, whereas Boss, all things considered, would prefer to hire someone for the lowest wage and the most hours. Now, suppose also that the state is considering a law that both sets the minimum wage at which an employee may be paid as well as the maximum hours that an employee may work. Without the law in place, however, we can assume that Boss and Worker might negotiate a deal which would fall short of the law's minimum wage limit or exceed the law's maximum hour limit.

In this situation, who should make the decision regarding Worker's wages and hours: Worker and Boss, negotiating between themselves, or the state, through its minimum wage/maximum hour legislation?

The purposes of government are to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty.

Although this is not the "rule of law" as we know it, from a philosophical point of view, I believe there should be a presumption in favor of liberty.

Well, then I don't know what happens when the state is wrong in that sense. Maybe it apologizes?

Thomas wrote:

Let me revise my sentence then: "The government must not force Boss at gunpoint to pay a higher wage to Worker, or to lay him off, or not to hire him in the first place, or to do any choice of those three."

That's a rather broad interpretation of "force," isn't it?

Furthermore, just how much "force" is the state permitted to apply? For instance, suppose the state passed a law that required Boss to pay Worker something -- in other words, the law would prohibit an employer from not paying an employee at all. All Boss would need to do in order to comply with the law, then, would be to pay Worker one cent in wages. Is that "forcing" Boss to pay a higher wage to Worker, given that Boss would, in the best of all possible Boss-worlds, prefer to pay Worker nothing? And if that's "force," is that a permissible level of force for the state to exert?

There you go again, assuming that the only good is economic good. As I've mentioned elsewhere, minimum wage laws primarily address a sociopolitical problem, not an economic one. If those laws, therefore, don't satisfy the Rawlsian imperative to better the lives of the worst-off, maybe it's because your notion of "betterment" is too narrow.

FREEMAN: Rawls thought that people - able-bodied people - should work. He thought that was a condition of self-respect for people. He didn't really favor giving money to people who were able to work. But, of course, along with that he felt that people, if they work, they ought to have a sufficient wage in order to enable them to be self-sufficient individuals. So he supported - he would support wage subsidies. So for people who were worse off and live on a minimum wage, he would support the government coming in and basically increasing...

WATTENBERG: Increasing the minimum wage.

FREEMAN: ... of course we have something like that, really.

WATTENBERG: Do you support that? An increase in minimum wage?

FREEMAN: Yes, I do. Very much so. Yes. Very much so. Five and a quarter is not enough for a person to obtain the necessities of life.

WATTENBERG: What about the argument that's made by conservatives that if you raise the minimum wage you price poor people out of the market? That people who would normally hire you for $5.25, if they've got to pay $7.25 would say the hell with it. That is the argument.

FREEMAN: Exactly. That's true. It is true. The wage subsidies come from government. He thought we ought to get rid of a minimum wage and let the labor market just go as low as it would and let employers just pay two, three dollars an hour if they could and let the government come in and supplement that. So that was the way he would deal with that problem.

WATTENBERG: Through the tax code.

FREEMAN: Through the tax code.

Holding someone at gunpoint is force, and that's not a broad interpretation of the term "force". What the state forces Boss to do by holding him at gunpoint is irrelevant to it being force.

Yes, it is still force, because the amount of violence threatened in case of non-compliance is the same. On the other hand, I doubt employer and worker have a work contract in this case, as there is no consideration on Boss's part. If Boss is unhappy with anything Worker does, contract law does not oblige the state to enforce anything on behalf of Boss.

I've never heard you quote Ronald Reagan before. Are you feeling alrightl?

Anyway, Rawls himself made this point about how the legal rules produced by his social contract would target economic inequality. My copy of Rawls (1971) is in hiding, so I can't back this up with a quote. Failing that, I Googled for "'John Rawls' 'Minimum Wage'". The first hit that came up was a PBS interview between Ben Wattenberg and two philosophy professors about Rawls. Their testimony is consistent with my reading of Rawls and inconsistent with yours.

Independent of that, I'm curious: Do you seriously believe that if workers get disemployed by minimum wage laws, they receive non-pecuniary benefits as attractive as the pecuniary raise the other workers are getting? I'd like to know what you imagine them to be.

The permissible use of this violence is constrained (...) according to Locke: He says natural law, in a state of nature, allows Worker to thwart any attempts of Boss to actively kill him. But it allows him no more retaliation than is necessary to protect his "life, health, liberty, and possessions" (Second Treatise, sections 6 and 7). Boss's low-wage job offer does not transgress against any of these. Worker can either take the offer and be better off, or he can leave it and be off the same as before. Either way, Boss does not violate any of Worker's rights. Hence, the law of nature gives Worker no rightful power to retaliate against Boss's low-wage job offer in a state of nature. When Worker leaves the state of nature and subjects himself to a government, he surrenders to it all rightful power of punishment that he had in the state of nature (Section 130). But he cannot surrender to government any righful powers that he didn't previously have (section 135). Summing up, Boss violated none of Worker's natural rights by making him a low-wage job offer; Worker had nothing to rightfully punish Boss for. Because Worker had no such right, he couldn't transfer it to government when he left the state of nature. It follows that under Locke's Natural Law, government cannot rightfully punish Boss for not paying worker a minimum wage.

Thomas wrote:

Holding someone at gunpoint is force, and that's not a broad interpretation of the term "force". What the state forces Boss to do by holding him at gunpoint is irrelevant to it being force.

I don't understand how someone can be "forced" to do anything by a metaphor, but I'm convinced that this point has become so tangential as to merit no further discussion.

Thomas wrote:

Yes, it is still force, because the amount of violence threatened in case of non-compliance is the same. On the other hand, I doubt employer and worker have a work contract in this case, as there is no consideration on Boss's part. If Boss is unhappy with anything Worker does, contract law does not oblige the state to enforce anything on behalf of Boss.

I'm sure a contract of indentured servitude was enforceable by the courts in the eighteenth century.

Thomas wrote:

I've never heard you quote Ronald Reagan before. Are you feeling alrightl?

(1) I don't know what you're talking about, and (2) I feel fine.

I'm not entirely sure why a minimum wage law that obligated employers to pay their employees a certain wage is more objectionable than a general tax that obligated everyone to supplement the employee's wage, but perhaps Rawls, if he had actually participated in that discussion, might have explained the difference.

Now, from the interview excerpt you posted (but did not link)

If large income disparities, unalleviated by any form of wealth redistribution, causes civil unrest, then the non-pecuniary benefits of wealth redistribution, in whatever form (and a minimum wage law is nothing but a form of wealth redistribution), flow to everyone in society, regardless of social class. Bismarck certainly recognized that.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I accept Locke's argument, but I accept your summary of it.

The monopoly on rightful physical violence is a standard sociological definition of what it means to be a government. It goes at least as far back as to Weber: Politics as a profession (1919).

I just don't understand what that had to do with my example you were responding to.

The line "there you go again" marked highlights in Ronald Reagan's 1980 and 1984 TV debates with Carter and Mondale. Many American conservatives I have met in real life cherish these moments.

An econ 101 welfare analysis of the labor market yields that the wage subsidy can raise all workers' wages at the same deadweight loss to society, at the same cost to those who pay the subsidy, but without disemploying workers. That's the advantage from a Rawlsian perspective, and from my perspective as a utilitarian. From my perspective as a Hobbesian, the advantage is that the state uses its legitimate power to tax Boss instead of illigetimately infringing on his freedom to dispose of his property. From my perspective as a Spencerian, the advantage is that the state doesn't infringe on the freedom of contract. From my perspective as a disciple of Hayek, the advantage is that the state doesn't censor the useful information that prices in a free labor market offer.

I agree with the general principle, disagree that minimum wages are nothing but wealth redistribution from rich to poor, and emphatically disagree with your appraisal of Bismarck. Are you serious?

Let's apply the Rawlsian test: Someone with a time machine offers you the choice between sending you to 1880 Germany or to 1880 England, the most laissez-faire country in the world. You don't know the social position in which you'll arrive there. Would you really choose Bismarck's Germany? I'd opt for England in a nanosecond.

The purposes of government are to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty.

Is that the purpose of every government or just the government of the US?

Although this is not the "rule of law" as we know it, from a philosophical point of view, I believe there should be a presumption in favor of liberty.

Why?