Retribution not enough

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Julian Assange wrote:

>This years Nobel for Economics won by George A. Akerlof, A.  Michael
>Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz "for their analysis of markets with
>assymetric information" is typical.

With "prior art" in the Austrian economic literature, which I hear is
considerably more interesting.

>You don't need a Nobel to realise that the relationship between a large
>employer and employee is brutally assymetric. One entity knows far more
>about the rules of the negotiation than the other.

The term "asymmetric information" refers to a specific situation where you
e.g. do not know a whole lot about what you're buying. Small people
applying for jobs in big companies does not really fit the bill -- you'd
have to be pretty darn stupid to sign a long-term contract for a dayjob
you know nothing about.

Yes, there is a legal quagmire around employer-employee relations. No,
asymmetric information hasn't got a whole lot to do with it.

>To counter this sort of assymetry. Employees naturally start trying to
>collectivise to increase their information processing and bargaining
>power. That's right. UNIONS Declan. Those devious entities that first
>world companies and governments have had a hand in suppressing all over
>the third world by curtailing freedom of association, speech and other
>basic political rights we take for granted.

Sure, unions are good and using coercion to stop them from coming into
being is bad. But that only applies as long as unions are granted no legal
status apart from other voluntary organizations, and participating in a
strike is taken as what it is, a refusal to work. Likely a breach of an
enforceable contract, too. Any "workers' rights" beyond that are something
you'll have a *really hard time* justifying. Asymmetry does not help,
either.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
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