Why the minimum wage should be abolished

[Cognisant]

What is a fair race? Is it a timed race where a margin is added or removed from your time based on your body mass index and the length of your legs relative to your height? Or is it a race where the faster person wins? By what metric is the winner of a race decided and if it is not the speed at which they reached the finish line can it still be called a race?
Fundamentally what is fair?

Fair is an ideal and as an ideal it is not what is natural, it is an imposition upon reality and as an imposition upon reality it implies that reality itself is not fair. But reality cannot be unfair in the absence of the concept of fairness, so either fairness precedes reality (which is absurd for without reality nothing can be fair or unfair) or reality precedes fairness, which implies that unfairness precedes fairness, but it cannot for the concept of unfairness is itself predicated upon fairness. So what we need to fill this gap is something analogous to the concept of zero, the number that is the absence of a number, the fairness in the absence of the concept of fairness.

Impartiality
Impartiality (also called evenhandedness or fair-mindedness) is a principle of justice holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons.

I'm going to use that word for this concept, it's not quite right but better than nothing.

I assert that a preoccupation with fairness has blinded people to impartiality, which is similar to fairness except pertaining to objective criteria (what is) rather than subjective ideals (what ought to be).

For example America is a country with systemic wealth inequality and yet despite this there's a strong anti-union sentiment, they believe they are entitled to better wages as a matter of fairness but from an impartial perspective the onus is on them to fight for those better wages, and how does the individual fight a corporation? By joining a union.

But what if there's no union or the union is corrupt? Create one.

What if the corporation bans employees from joining a union? Go on strike.

What if the corporation union busts by firing everyone that joins a union? Burn their business to the fucking ground.

This is a natural discourse, there is a conflict, you try to solve the conflict with words and when the words don't work you escalate to actions until the other party is willing to return to the negotiating table.

@Daddy as a reply to your post in the other thread:
If you don't fight for your rights (i.e. to receive a fair day's pay for a fair days' work), you don't deserve them, and I'm not saying that as a subjective value I'm saying you don't get what you don't fight for because you didn't fight for it. You can't expect someone else to give it to you because its your right and you're entitled to it, because it's your right, that's just a circular argument, it doesn't mean anything.

I think the minimum wage should be abolished because doing so will dissuade people of this notion that they're entitled to anything, and when people have that realization it will eventually lead to a more equitable society.

 

[The Grey Man]

The minimum wage is and always has been, in all places and for every person, zero. In fact, the very term 'minimum wage', like so many terms in politics, is a euphemistic equivocation which serves to propose a false dilemma or conceal a real dilemma that has been ignored. In this case, a real dilemma has been ignored, namely that between condoning paltry wages and raising the 'entry level' of the workforce. Politicians will always avoid openly demanding sacrifices because they don't want to be seen as the 'bad guy' (this, incidentally, is why they passed the buck to unelected 'experts' during the pandemic), so they use euphemisms like this one to flatter the fantasy that we can 'have it all'.

Yes, everyone has a right to a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, but by what criterion do we judge what is fair? This is why the question of just wage is menaced by equivocation and why some are able to make the absurd claim that a fair wage is 'x' dollars per hour even though, as everyone admits, the value of a dollar, or any other unit of currency, is purely extrinsic or, in other words, the intrinsic value of a dollar is, again, zero. Such people also ignore the fact that we cannot decide the fairness of an employee's pay without taking into account the conditions of the employer. It is certainly not fair to pay one's employee's more than one can afford while still keeping one's business afloat.

At the risk of sounding casuistic, I doubt that there can be any general criterion of a just wage, meaning what is fair has to be determined with reference to each individual case. Local fixed rates of pay are, of course, necessary to simplify administration, but the minimum wage will remain zero no matter how much noise the unions make.

 

[Black Rose]

Juice went from 4 dollars to 6 dollars.

They took away the benefits from the covid relief and now I get a third less than before.

 

[scorpiomover]

What is a fair race? Is it a timed race where a margin is added or removed from your time based on your body mass index and the length of your legs relative to your height? Or is it a race where the faster person wins? By what metric is the winner of a race decided and if it is not the speed at which they reached the finish line can it still be called a race?
Fundamentally what is fair?

If you regard the the minimum wage as "unfair", then you must already know what fairness is. So you've proved you know what fairness is.

Fair is an ideal and as an ideal it is not what is natural,

Being scientific is an ideal and thus is not what is natural. So you must be anti-science.

it is an imposition upon reality and as an imposition upon reality it implies that reality itself is not fair.

Then by your same argument, reality is unscientific.

But reality cannot be unfair in the absence of the concept of fairness, so either fairness precedes reality (which is absurd for without reality nothing can be fair or unfair) or reality precedes fairness, which implies that unfairness precedes fairness, but it cannot for the concept of unfairness is itself predicated upon fairness.

You never really defined what is "fair". So since you've not really defined what you mean by "fair", we can replace "fairness" with almost anything and get the same argument. So your argument justifies that almost everything other than fairness that you do believe is true, doesn't exist, and is complete nonsense, including your argument that you are placing here.

So your own argument proves that your own argument must be false.

So what we need to fill this gap is something analogous to the concept of zero, the number that is the absence of a number, the fairness in the absence of the concept of fairness.

Impartiality
Impartiality (also called evenhandedness or fair-mindedness) is a principle of justice holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons.

I'm going to use that word for this concept, it's not quite right but better than nothing.

Impartiality is a concept that means that you have no partiality, meaning you have zero reason to argue the case. If you think that there is something to be gained by abolishing the minimum wage, then you are partial to abolishing the minimum wage, and consequently are NOT IMPARTIAL on the topic of the minimum wage.

The idea of impartiality being based on "objective criteria", has nothing to do with the meaning the word. It's an subjective interpretation of the word, which indicates a bias towards towards objective criteria.

Moreover, the term "objective", means that it is based on the "object" (the thing being observed/talked about), not the "subject" (the thing doing the observing and talking).

If you and 5 million other people saw the moon, and they all say it was "green", but the day before you all saw the sun and say it was yellow, then that is objective, because the only difference in your perceptions was which object you were looking at.

But if some of you say it was green and some of you say that you didn't see a moon, then different subjects reported different observations about the same object, which makes your perception subjective.

So we know objective criteria, because objective criteria has unanimous agreement.

So if you wish to base conclusions on "objective criteria", then you need to stick to only arguments based on criteria that the entire world agree entirely on.

I assert that a preoccupation with fairness has blinded people to impartiality, which is similar to fairness except pertaining to objective criteria (what is) rather than subjective ideals (what ought to be).

If even one person in the world disagrees with your assertion, then your criteria is not objective. Hence your own argument argues that you should abandon your assertions.

For example America is a country with systemic wealth inequality and yet despite this there's a strong anti-union sentiment,

America is famous for its unions, and for being extremely pro-union. The extremely rich owners of businesses are known for being anti-union the world over.

but from an impartial perspective the onus is on them to fight for those better wages,

Fighting leads to conflict and violence, which leads to murder.

and how does the individual fight a corporation? By joining a union.

But what if there's no union or the union is corrupt? Create one.

What if the corporation bans employees from joining a union? Go on strike.

Corporations are trying to get legislation passed so that strikes don't hurt them at all. See recent attempts by the Conservative Party to pass UK legislation that agency workers should be allowed to work during a strike, for an example of this.

What if the corporation union busts by firing everyone that joins a union? Burn their business to the fucking ground.

Destroying a corporation's property is illegal. Moreover, burning someone's business to the ground is called arson and is generally considered a criminal crime, for which prison time is mandatory. It's generally considered one step below murder. It's also considered on the edge of murder, because in some cases of arson, people have been in the building at the time, and died as a result.

I think the minimum wage should be abolished because doing so will dissuade people of this notion that they're entitled to anything, and when people have that realization it will eventually lead to a more equitable society.

The minimum wage was established nationally in the UK in 1909, in the USA in 1938 and in Australia in 2005. It was first introduced in some places in the USA in 1912, and in Australia in 1896. So it's been around for a very long time, and decades before the new attitude of entitlement.

So it didn't cause entitlement, or it would have caused a sense of entitlement long ago. It hasn't caused entitlement in your country of Australia, because people felt entitled long before 2005. So there's zero evidence to suggest that it was the movation for entitlement. So taking it away is very unlikely to stop entitlement either.

You've basically burned your arguments to ashes. I really don't even know why you are arguing this.

Usually, most people who are arguing against the minimum wage are either executives of corporations or people who want to start a business, who want to employ people for so little money, that their employees are probably going to be much worse off than if they didn't take the job at all. So from an impartial viewpoint, I would conclude that you are arguing that no employer should be allowed to even employ anyone under any circumstances.

 

[Cognisant]

Being scientific is an ideal and thus is not what is natural. So you must be anti-science.

Science is not an ideal, the entire point of the scientific method is to objectively verify things, ideals are subjective, ideals are a matter of what ought to be, science is about objectively verifying what is.

You never really defined what is "fair". So since you've not really defined what you mean by "fair", we can replace "fairness" with almost anything and get the same argument. So your argument justifies that almost everything other than fairness that you do believe is true, doesn't exist, and is complete nonsense, including your argument that you are placing here.

Fair point, I'm mainly referring to society's propensity to seek equality through uniformity, for example the often cited fact that men on the whole earn more than women being held as proof that there's some societal bias in men's favor or systemic factor to their success. That it's not fair that men earn more.

The problem with this theory is that it's only looking at one metric, who earns more, not what work they're doing, how much of it they're doing or why they're doing it.

If a job is dirty or dangerous 9/10 it'll be a man doing it, that figure is hyperbole but I'm sure the more dirty/dangerous a job the more true it is. From my own experience doing shift work when extra shifts are available it was almost always the men volunteering for them. Finally I think men earn more because society expects them to be providers, or more specifically men earn more to impress women, like a bluebird decorating its nest with blue things.

With this context is it unfair that men earn more, or would it be unfair on men to mandate women ought to be earning just as much? This is I think the fundamental problem with trying to mandate fairness, what we consider "fair" is always an ideal, an imposition upon reality. But reality itself is only unfair relative to that ideal, on its own terms reality is totally fair and if people feel they are disadvantaged in some way the onus is on them to do something about it.

You've basically burned your arguments to ashes. I really don't even know why you are arguing this.

You have a lot of confidence despite very little idea understanding of the things you're talking about.

 

[dr froyd]

minimum wage - the snake oil of leftist politics

the economically illiterate get fucked over and over but they keep buying it every time

minimum wage has a theoretically very predictable effect, namely you reduce the supply of entry-level- and unskilled-labor jobs. I.e. it hurts the very people it's supposed to help. This theoretical prediction comes to fruition *every goddamn time* in practice, but obviously that will not stop leftist charlatans from peddling it to the low-income segment of the population. They get votes, you get fucked, and that's how the world goes round.

 

[scorpiomover]

Being scientific is an ideal and thus is not what is natural. So you must be anti-science.

Science is not an ideal, the entire point of the scientific method is to objectively verify things, ideals are subjective, ideals are a matter of what ought to be, science is about objectively verifying what is.

Disagree. But not going to argue this at the moment.

You never really defined what is "fair". So since you've not really defined what you mean by "fair", we can replace "fairness" with almost anything and get the same argument. So your argument justifies that almost everything other than fairness that you do believe is true, doesn't exist, and is complete nonsense, including your argument that you are placing here.

Fair point, I'm mainly referring to society's propensity to seek equality through uniformity, for example the often cited fact that men on the whole earn more than women being held as proof that there's some societal bias in men's favor or systemic factor to their success. That it's not fair that men earn more.

It's not about equality through uniformity. If it was, then women wouldn't sleep with men who pay who don't go dutch.

The problem with this theory is that it's only looking at one metric, who earns more, not what work they're doing, how much of it they're doing or why they're doing it.

If a job is dirty or dangerous 9/10 it'll be a man doing it, that figure is hyperbole but I'm sure the more dirty/dangerous a job the more true it is. From my own experience doing shift work when extra shifts are available it was almost always the men volunteering for them. Finally I think men earn more because society expects them to be providers, or more specifically men earn more to impress women, like a bluebird decorating its nest with blue things.

With this context is it unfair that men earn more, or would it be unfair on men to mandate women ought to be earning just as much? This is I think the fundamental problem with trying to mandate fairness, what we consider "fair" is always an ideal, an imposition upon reality. But reality itself is only unfair relative to that ideal, on its own terms reality is totally fair and if people feel they are disadvantaged in some way the onus is on them to do something about it.

So you think it's unfair that men are treated unfairly? According to your own argument, strike, burn the building down, fight for your rights, or accept your lot.

You've basically burned your arguments to ashes. I really don't even know why you are arguing this.

You have a lot of confidence

Actually, one of my main issues is that I have a severe lack of confidence.