Take the argument to the extreme, is it OK for every employer in every industry to agree on wages and no-poach? What about on child labor? Minimum Wage? What about colluding on prices? Aren't these all the same infringement? The truth is sometimes society has to take away the rights of the few for the sake of the many. While I agree we tend to do it too often, you will be hard pressed to find many who agree with you on this matter. The fact is rules like this almost certainly make our economy more productive as a whole.
> Take the argument to the extreme, is it OK for every employer in every industry to agree on wages and no-poach?
Why isn't it? Those agreements don't restrict or infringe on the freedom of others to form different agreements, or avoid forming them.
> What about colluding on prices?
Same exact situation. Price agreements don't restrict the freedom of other parties to set prices contrary to that agreement.
> Aren't these all the same infringement?
Without getting into specifics... Yes.
> The truth is sometimes society has to take away the rights of the few for the sake of the many.
I truly commend you for your honesty about what these laws are.
> The fact is rules like this almost certainly make our economy more productive as a whole.
I don't see where that's been demonstrated here. They certainly aren't productive for the firms who are punished for, or prevented from, forming such agreements. I would argue that the fact that firms do form such agreements when free to do so, means that they are productive for the economy as a whole by definition.
How is this productive for the economy as a whole. This was done to keep salaries low, so a handful of people could make more money. How does that benefit the economy as a whole?
By allowing those firms to make more money. They are the economy too. The economy does not exist for one persons or class of persons benefit.
> This was done to keep salaries low, so a handful of people could make more money.
People cooperated to reduce their expenses without restricting the right of anyone else to cooperate. Just because people make money doesn't make it wrong. Conversely, a handful of people (the defendants) colluded to make more money by keeping salaries high, except they did it by restricting the rights of everyone else.
You seem to think that the "economy" in its (mostly or completely) unregulated form is some kind of ideal. Why? Such an economy is dependent on rational actors and perfect information, neither of which are present in human society.
It seems more reasonable that each human in a group will try to maximize their own economic outcomes as well as to assist the other humans that they personally care about in maximizing their economic outcomes. In the modern world, it's often expected that humans are able to extrapolate that the people that they don't know are similarly worthwhile human beings. So while it's generally considered acceptable to try to maximize things for themselves, doing so while knowingly making other humans worse off is seen as morally detestable.
It's important to remember that humans generally care much less about abstract ideals than they do about themselves, the people they care about, and their social standing. The "economy" as it exists in reality does in fact exist for the benefit of one class of persons: those persons who are willing to tolerate it and have the power to change it. When this real-life economy is no longer tolerated, it is changed, in ways like antitrust legislation, class action lawsuits against companies that participate in wage collusion schemes, and the French Revolution.
It wasn't demonstrated, it was assumed. Mostly because you will need broad understanding of economics. I'll try to do my best to demonstrate it. Imagine a smaller economy where there is only 1 firm. They have complete power to set wages, you don't like it you don't work. (We've already established this would happen eventually if agreements like this were allowed because it is far easier to control wages than it is to create new and competing firms.) What happens when they decide not to pay a living wage? More importantly, what is to stop them from influencing laws such that what becomes fair practice is changed over time? Is it fair to allow a single entity the power over not just the economy but the power to define what is just? We have to be very careful in a capitalist society about confining the limits of what actors are allowed to do because quite literally money often equates to power and with time power defines law. I hope it goes without saying that enough bad laws over a long enough time span are trouble for everyone in society. Unregulated capitalism will always lead to issues for a society because it always concentrates wealth. (Those with the most information and the best decisions always come out more ahead than the rest.) Remember, capitalism isn't the best way to run an economy its just the least bad.
Also, please remember you can't look at a statement in a vacuum. "Why isn't it? Those agreements don't restrict or infringe on the freedom of others to form different agreements, or avoid forming them." Perhaps not technically, but realistically they absolutely do. If we had a million worlds with a trillion firms and easy travel between them then such actions would automatically correct, but we don't and thus people do not realistically have the option to turn them down. The whole point of capitalism is to reward and penalize decisions. It kind of breaks down (predictably) when one side has enough power to prevent the downside of a bad decision.
Remember, free speech doesn't mean you can run into a theater and yell fire.
You don't have to agree with it for it to be happening. Though, understanding that side of the argument can help solve the problem for both sides of the equation.
I understand it happens. I was disagreeing with the attempt at justifying it as acceptable behavior.
The moral way to improve your pay is to find a way to make your labor worth more to the employer.
For a restaurant worker, that could be things like finding ways to boost sales, reduce wastage, find less expensive vendors, improve efficiency, etc. It's highly unlikely that any restaurant has successfully optimized all aspects of their operations.
> For a restaurant worker, that could be things like finding ways to boost sales, reduce wastage, find less expensive vendors, improve efficiency, etc. It's highly unlikely that any restaurant has successfully optimized all aspects of their operations.
Perhaps you misunderstood that the point of it was to demonstrate your higher value and hence you were worth more pay.
If you choose to do as little as possible, it does make for a tough negotiating position when asking for more pay.
When I've gone into my boss's office and negotiated for more pay, I'd come in prepared to show how I'd already demonstrated higher value to the company. Sometimes I walked out with a raise, and other times I failed and started looking for another boss who did value what I could do for him.
Forgive me for making assumptions about you, but, you sound as though you have never even known anyone who worked this kind of job. What you're describing would likely earn you enmity or a very antagonistic working relationship with your coworkers.
I do understand that demonstrating higher value and then successfully negotiating for a raise can earn you the enmity of your coworkers. People are only human, after all.
On the other hand, I knew coworkers who were thieves and justified it with their notions of entitlement. I didn't exactly feel inclined to trust them, either, and trust is a basic element of friendship.
So I guess we all get to make our choices and accept the consequences.
Nobody is trying to justify thievery and of course you shouldn't trust thieves. My point is that if you pay your workers the lowest possible wages, you shouldn't be surprised if quality suffers.
Thank you for that link, I had never heard it referred to as Crab Mentality. Note I wasn't describing my own life philosophy, but rather my observations.
Your comment suggests that you are analyzing the situtation as a static configuration rather than a dynamic system.
From a static point of view where the job situtation will never change it doesn't make sense to put in an effort that exceeds the compensation but that 'solution' is certainly non-optimal from dynamic point of view where the employment contract gets continually revised over time resulting in raises, promotions or perhaps shifting to a new employer where your experience and skills result in a better employment situation.
Nothing ever comes for free.
$2,982 x .15 = 447.3 (best case)
I don't have any good numbers but its safe to say that the amount of theft prevented (the amount the their income has decreased since this was implemented) is greater than the extra $20-$70 ish dollars that their income has increased from increased sales.
In other words, their net income is down. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the net increase in sales isn't just a temporary scramble to keep income up / items actually being rung up. The truth is this benefit will almost certainly decrease as more knowledgeable and productive servers find jobs elsewhere or find new methods around the system while the remaining lower skilled / productive settle in at the amount their effort is actually worth.
I have doubts this action would produce a net benefit in the long run. (As quality of service decreases.) Its easy to think that the only people stealing are the "lazy and incompetent". In my experience the most skilled "thieves" are also the hardest workers with the most in depth knowledge of the controls the restaurant has in place. They also tend to desire/need/feel they deserve the cash more than the average employee. (and to most extents all three are true) Of course, all of this applies to the tipped employees, non-tipped employees will feel this doubly so though their forms of theft tend to be easier to track / reduce.
Theft in a restaurant setting is a complex issue, there is no magic bullet to stopping it.
I don't follow your math here -- their revenue increased by $2982/week after installing the monitoring software, not decreased, due to the effects of employees who felt observed being more conscientious.
2982 (increase in sales) x .15 (assumed tip amount) = + $447 divided by all tipped employees. But you have to remember even many small chain restaurants have 15-25 tipped employees this nets to very little increase in income per tipped employee and zero increased income for non-tipped employees. Next, subtract from that small increase all the money they used to make from theft and overall they are likely coming out of the deal with less income.
lmakeppleave is saying that the amount that used to be stolen was "income" the employees were making (albeit illegitimately). like, I as a waiter make $100 per shift and steal $20 per shift; my net is $120 per shift.
When they put in cameras and I start upselling instead of stealing, I need to upsell 20 / .15 (15%, the traditional tip amount) to have my net remain at $120. That means I need to increase the restaurant's gross by $133 to maintain my extra $20 of income. lmakeppleave is arguing that it's easier to steal $20 than to increase the restaurant's gross by the amount needed to make $20 legitimately.
^This a million times. I'm so sick of all the irrelevant arguments made by ALL the parties involved. There is only ONE product type that can hold an artificially high value for any extended period of time; a status symbol. By definition status symbols are impossible on any digital medium. THEREFORE, stay off the internet or follow economics. I will respect either choice. I will laugh at anyone that expects to get the benefit of both without the cost of the either.
Quite a few friends of mine took this test. 4 of the 6 of us who felt we almost certainly choose google could not load the results page. Not exactly a scientific study but I thought it was fishy. Anyone run into similar results?
I had the same result. The last page would never load for me. I know picked mostly Google results (because I recognized some links). But I tried again and purposely picked the Bing results and the last page still did not load. (I'm using Firefox 18.)
