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AlexAmore
01-29-2008, 10:27 PM
Can someone help me on the issue of working conditions and the free market? Where do libertarians/conservatives stand on this? The industrial revolution was quite unregulated, but the working conditions sucked and it was just like the current sweatshops with children working long hours and stuff like that.

Can anyone clear this up and how a free market would have workers being treated in giant corporations and factories?

Someone brought this issue up and I've been thinking hard about it.

benny215
01-29-2008, 10:53 PM
Can someone help me on the issue of working conditions and the free market? Where do libertarians/conservatives stand on this? The industrial revolution was quite unregulated, but the working conditions sucked and it was just like the current sweatshops with children working long hours and stuff like that.

Can anyone clear this up and how a free market would have workers being treated in giant corporations and factories?

Someone brought this issue up and I've been thinking hard about it.

I'm no expert but I believe that most of the credit for workers rights and benefits, at least initially, goes to workers unions not the federal government.

Matt Collins
01-29-2008, 11:28 PM
Exactly. As scummy and rotten as the unions were/are, it's much better to have collective bargaining of the people instead of blanket legislation creating wasteful regulation.

In a free market the unions and the employers are free to negotiate however they want.

NMCB3
01-29-2008, 11:39 PM
The truth of the matter is although some people were exploited most were much better off after the industrial revolution than before it. I`d rather work in a sweat shop than starve to death. Apparently most people felt the same way at the time, and in the present time in third world nations.

Fox McCloud
01-29-2008, 11:55 PM
In a totally free market, unions wouldn't really be necessary...though, no doubt, some group would form, complaining over their $50/hour job (backed by gold) with benefits....$50 would be too little; they'd want $150.

there's always greed, and that's not preventable.

Worker protection agencies would likely be abolished....as, well, if a worker was hurt, it'd probably result in the company folding up....so they'd have a natural incentive to protect workers (I know if I was a corporation, I'd protect my workers, even if it involved extra expenses....and this is without legislation).