Ford wanted his workers to have a living wage, to be able to afford the products they made.

From http://cafehayek.com/2010/08/fording-the-gorge-between-fiction-and-fact.html:

Ford raised workers’ wages for two reasons, neither of which had anything to do with raising consumer demand for his automobiles. The first reason was to reduce worker turnover. In 1913, the year before the $5 wage was announced in January 1914, the average Ford employee quit after less than four months on the job. A workforce so unstable and inexperienced prevented Ford’s factories from achieving peak efficiency.

Second, because the $5 wage was conditioned upon Ford’s workers learning English, as well as their steering clear of alcohol and gambling – conditions monitored by Ford executives visiting workers’ homes! – the higher wage was an incentive for workers to be more reliable and productive while on the job.

In short, Ford was something of an early supply-sider. He understood (at least in 1914) that the key to economic growth is not in giving people stronger incentives to spend but, rather, in giving people stronger incentives to produce.

Or perhaps we ought

Who's "we"? There are millions of companies - find one that works the way you want it to. If you don't, start one.

Well, at least you can't accuse him of being left or right wing:

people to accept 'Malthus-Darwin science,'
don't know what he meant by the 'Darwin' part, but the Malthus part will get him a job in any university

'ALL immigration pollution.'
and this qualifies him to run for governor in any southern state

You have to read about some actual CFOs and corporations and how they plan for the long term sometime - slashdot and reddit are not the places to learn about how corporations work.

To take 1 example, the airline industry plans at least 20 years ahead - fleet strength, maintenance costs, etc; not just the 'numbers for 3 quarters'.

It is funny how, on the one hand, Microsoft is accused of thinking of the long term to kill rivals even if they lose money in the short term, but at the same time, the meme is that 'corporations only care about the short term'.

but sadly I'm guessing this is par for the course at this level of "leadership" in most companies.

Or countries for that matter. The president gets blowjobs from an intern and he doesn't have to resign; the CEO did something similar and he has to resign. Looks like the corporation has higher standards than the govt.

The govt. already does this (see the lawsuit against Oracle); so do plenty of companies.

Think of Amazon and Apple acting as agents for the consumer - they collect all the buying power of the individual consumers and use that to get the publishers/manufacturers to get their pricing down.

I fail to see what the problem is - it is two entities voluntarily agreeing to certain terms (and please don't tell me it is not voluntary - unless someone holds a gun to your head, it is voluntary).

Right now, there's no way for the consumer to tell the market what you are looking for...Instead of having only the big corporations being able to talk to the costumers via advertisement and press releases, the customer could talk back and the companies would listen? Whatever happened to that?

It's called the market - the way the customers "talk back" to the producers is by choosing which products to buy (or not to buy); the feedback is pretty quick and much better than any other process that I can thing of.

And who is the "management" if not employees themselves?

An illusory opt-out system ... Therein lies the trick; by offering too many choices,

Of course, you can exercise the one opt-out system that works - don't use their services. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. It is like buying a car, but not wanting to pay the price. The price of working with Google and Facebook is not dollars, but your data.

Google's price/benefit is right for me, so I use it. Facebook's is not, so I don't.

I hope Google gets reamed for this. Not because I think they did anything wrong, but because they're always too happy to get the government to meddle in other companies' business; they need to get a dose of the same medicine.

Globalization is not the way forward.

Are you also against inter-state trade? Why not? If trade between 2 ppl in different countries is bad (that is what globalization is), why is trade between 2 ppl in 2 different state here is ok?

Wealth is created by division of labour aka trade - it doesn't matter if the 2 people trading are standing on either side of an imaginary line or not.

From here :

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

Some more data here

The govt should pass a new law that forces companies of all sizes to provide a breakdown of where they do business and where they hire. They should punish companies that do not hire where they make and sell things.

Every business should be forced to hire in the locality where they make money. This should be done not only countrywide, but statewide, citywide and blockwide.

Forget about stupid things like 'comparative advantage' - we will follow Mao's great leap forward. That will create a lot of wealth.



For the truly stupid, I'm being sarcastic.

Like the justification for govt. running postal service in the USA, maybe the Iranians feel that the only way to provide equal access to this vital service is for the govt. to run the email service.

Makes as much sense as the argument for the USPS monopoly.

Great idea: go to a BOOKSTORE and buy a copy. Even better? Get one at a locally owned shop. Book-buying is better in person: browsing shelves, reading through a few pages, checking out your favorite section, then finding that rare gem that you'd have never seen on Amazon anyway.

Why? I value my time and I like to spend it doing other things. Amazon makes it incredibly easy for me to purchase the books I want, new or used. In fact, I have a few books that I could not have found if not for amazon.com.

I see amazon, like any other store, as my agent who aggregates the buying power of consumers to negotiate a price from manufacturers/publishers. I applaud whatever they do to get prices down for me. Authors' rights? That's for them to defend, not me.