You seem to assume a relationship between price and quality/skill. You are wrong.

Price is always in favor of who is better organised. In terms of negotiation, it often resembles a mexican standoff. Who wins a mexican standoff? Well, you dont find out by counting bullets. (Which is what you are doing).

Workers get exploited by companies if they have less savings on the bank. Companies get exploited by their workers if they have less savings. In the end they often need each other more than they are willing to admit.

The whole socialism vs capitalism debate does actually end up in either revolution or an authoritin state. But to consider minimum wage "socialism" or exploiting interns "capitalism" feels like more americans anally inserting their one dimensional culture war into reality. Does this bullshit pass for "intellectual debate"? I sure hope not.

So please dont refer to Europe in your arguments. We are neither socialist nor capitalists. Not into the extreme of these arguments. And not on this one dimensional axis.

And unemployment may be high in certain parts of Europe. Its high because we let capitalism do its thing. The economy has to reform itself. Certain economic activity has to burn, to make room for progress. But we do actually take care of each other.

Without minimum wage, companies would fix a cleaner's salary at 3 usd per hour. No matter what your experience. Unregulated, most ism's are bad.

There are ways of negotiating a salary that don't involve the government mandating your wages.

While a Costco may negotiate and give the worker a fair wage. Others would simply test the limits of the labour market.

Though, I feel I am being too cynical, fearing the unknown. I would like to know what the situation was in a pre-minimum-wage era.

It was terrible. Wage slavery lead to Marxist revolutions. Conditions weren't better in American factories, but we escaped bloody revolution by democratically passing numerous planks of the socialist platform into law. (Limited work hours per week etc.)

>Wage slavery lead to Marxist revolutions.

Any material to back up this wild claim?

Nope, not even one link. Edit: well OK maybe a little one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_the_usa#Two_steps...

I'm sorry, I must be blind. Could you please cut & paste a passage from the link you provided that support the claim that: "wage slavery lead to Marxist revolutions"

What I'm interested in is: 1. Name of the revolutions. 2. Their place. 3. Their date. 4. Professional historian who claims that the "wage slavery" lead to the events in points 1-3. (not a communist with an agenda)

I assure you that the Marxist (or rather Bolshevik) revolution in Russia in 1917 wasn't caused by "wage slavery". As any other communist revolution too.

Probably you watch too much KGB-TV... sorry RussiaToday.

> I assure you that the Marxist (or rather Bolshevik) revolution in Russia in 1917 wasn't caused by "wage slavery".

Sure it was. Wage slavery -> the work of Marx (alone and with and Engels) -> core of the propaganda basis for the Bolshevik revolution (with suitable adaptations to be applied in a something other than an industrialized, democratic, capitalist environment.)

Now, it wasn't a proximate cause, but...

Aside from that, I suppose, you could look at the generally-less-violent process by which virtually every state even approximately meeting the necessary preconditions for Communism in Marx's work has adopted a substantial subset of the platform laid out in the Communist Manifesto as a form of "Marxist revolution" that is more like the Green Revolution or the Industrial Revolution than the Bolshevik Revolution; in that case, "wage slavery" was more of a proximate cause than it was of any of the various violent revolutions driven by Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism, et al.

wow, even more wild claims without providing sources.

I lived in communistic country, trust me workers were exploited much more in the communism than in capitalism. They had to work for free in gulags (slave labor), they had to work overtime (i.e. 16 hour shifts), the child labor was common. And any complaints regarding this were equaled to anti-communistic act of treason and punished with jail time. Ever heard of Dear Leader and North Korea?

I think you got it backwards. You really did. The revolution of workers against the communistic rule is ultimately this what destroyed communism in the Eastern Block. Solidarnosc was a trading union fighting against communism. If communism was so great for workers why they were the ones who lead the revolution against it in places like Poland?

Communism is much more worker unfriendly system than capitalism. So, yep, you got it opposite. There were workers revolutions against communism and not capitalism.

But because communism is a religion, you won't listen to these arguments based by facts in recent history, you'll keep mumbling about Marx, so I'll leave you with that. It's like trying to explain to a Catholic that a virgin can't give a birth to a child.

> I lived in communistic country, trust me workers were exploited much more in the communism than in capitalism.

I don't trust you on that point. I would agree that countries that claim to be "communist" exploit workers far more than workers are exploited in modern mixed economies like those in most of the West, of course, but that's somewhat beside the point of the discussion. First, because no one claimed anything to which that is directly relevant, and second, because, while the modern west is often called "capitalist", it bears little resemblance in economic system to the system in the 19th century whose critics (notably, Marx) coined the term "capitalism" to refer to, differing from those systems largely by having adopted, on top of the old capitalist system, a number of reforms, many of which are straight out of the Communist Manifesto.

> The revolution of workers against the communistic rule is ultimately this what destroyed communism in the Eastern Block.

Sure, largely. That doesn't make it any less true that the exploitation of workers under capitalism was the source of Marxism and a proximate cause for the adoption of many policies that were part of the original Communist program as near-universal policies throughout the developed world by Social Democrats/Democratic Socialists, and that the same dissatisfaction was a less-proximate contributor to the "Communist" revolutions of Lenin and his ideological heirs.

> If communism was so great for workers why they were the ones who lead the revolution against it in places like Poland?

I don't recall anyone arguing that "communism was so great for workers". Arguing that capitalism being so bad for workers was one of the causes of the development and spread of Communist ideology is not equivalent to arguing that Communism, as implemented by Lenin et al., was "good for workers". It does not even require the weaker claim that Leninism was better than 19th capitalism for workers.

> Communism is much more worker unfriendly system than capitalism. So, yep, you got it opposite.

Well, except that you are the only one who is arguing about the topic of whether Communism is more worker friendly than capitalism, on either side.

What I'm saying is - contrary to your point of view - that there were workers revolutions against communism and that there weren't workers revolutions against capitalism.

I.e. a revolution of some type in Russia in 1917 would happen for sure because people were tired of monarchy. Not capitalism.

> What I'm saying is - contrary to your point of view - that there were workers revolutions against communism and that there weren't workers revolutions against capitalism.

There is probably some strained definition of "workers revolution" for which this is true, but since it doesn't contradict anything I said, I am not sure what your basis is for the claim that it is contrary to my point of view, rather than a complete non-sequitur.

And, if it wasn't workers, who exactly is that drove the revolutionary change in western economic systems that led to late 19th Century capitalism being replaced, pretty much universally in the West by the mid-20th Century, with the modern "mixed" economy which adopts a wide range of socialist elements?

>And, if it wasn't workers, who exactly is that drove the >revolutionary change in western economic systems that led to >late 19th Century capitalism being replaced, pretty much >universally in the West by the mid-20th Century, with the >modern "mixed" economy which adopts a wide range of >socialist elements?

Voters - you can even substitute "voters" with "workers" - in a democratic process (non-violent) and not workers in a revolutionary anti-capitalistic revolution.

So, it's not like they hated capitalism so much that they had to do revolutionary violent acts to overthrow the system. They modified it by voting. Evolution, progress, not a revolution.

Again, revolutions there were against communistic rule. Communism was much worse so people revolted against it and not opted for an evolutionary change.

Funny how communism propaganda has always been all about revolution, but that never happened. History shows us that people - mostly workers who were supposed to have it so good under the communistic rule - revolted against communism. Not capitalism. In capitalism they voted for a change and they got it.

So you work for $3/hr as a cleaner, but while at the shop where you clean you pick up other skills. I.e. helping guys doing other jobs when it gets crazy busy. You noticed how at work everybody usually wants everybody's help. Once you're done cleaning Mrs. A will want you to help her with putting merchandise on the shelves (and she will have to tell you how to do it), Mr. Z will ask you for help with some mechnical stuff he's doing, etc, etc. After 6 months you're worth more than $3/hr because now you have real world experience from a job. You move on to putting merchandise on the shelves, and this can be 5usd/hr. So on, so on. The worst thing that could happen to young guy out of school with basic education would be not to be allowed to work at all. And that's unfortunately what the minimal wage put through by the Unions does to them. Again the unemployment rate among young unskilled workers is 30-40% in the EU on average! You say that's better than letting them find actual job and work even for $3/hr ? Remember that's temporary, nobody sane stays at McDonald's at the cash register all their life. You learn new skills and move on.