Student: I want to ask you about
a statement you made earlier when
you said, "Voluntary decisions
can't lead to exploitation."
I think that's a little misleading...
Shapiro: Mutually voluntary, yeah.
Student: ...because what it assumes
is that, even in nominally voluntary
instances, there can't be exploitative
behavior. And I get, sort of,
what you're saying. Usually, when
we think of exploitation,
we think of someone being forced
or coerced to do something.
You know, people don't have a lot
of money, they're not making a lot,
and so someone's totally at the
bottom, and they make a contract
with one of these employers,
they're making a decision,
they're taking the least bad option...
Shapiro: Right.
Student: ...and that employer might
say, "Hey, you'll work for me,
you'll work 80 hours a week, and
I'll pay you two dollars an hour."
I mean, it's the least bad option, and
it's a voluntary decision, but
I think it still is exploitative.
Shapiro: So here's the problem:
in seeking to end that exploitation,
what you are very often doing is
providing them a choice, now, of
no choice. Meaning, for example,
let's take a minimum wage law,
which is essentially what Lochner is
talking about, things like
minimum wage laws and talking about
maximum work hours and that
sort of thing. So the problem with
the minimum wage law is that
what you have now done is you have
circumscribed choice even further
because you're not actually giving
people a broader range of choices,
now you're telling employers that they
have to hire people at a certain price.
They may think that the employee's not
worth the price and just not hire them.
This is what happens very often
with minimum wage laws.
The solution to all of this is something
that I believe in, which is
private unionization. In private
unions, you get together
with all your friends. You say,
"Listen, none of us are going to work
for anything below this wage. We're
not allowed to kneecap anybody,
because that's use of force. But if all
of us agree, we're not going to go in,
we're not going to work in this place
that's going to kill us in two years."
That's perfectly legitimate and good.
Collective bargaining on
a voluntary basis is a good thing, and
it doesn't violate any free market
principles. What I don't like is the idea
that if you decide to take a job at
7.50 an hour, and I think that I could
have bargained better than you,
that I could have bargained it up to
10 dollars, for example, or I think that
if you held out a little longer, you
might have gotten 10 dollars,
or I think that maybe you couldn't
have, but the guy can afford 10 dollars,
you are now imposing your own view
of a situation on the actors who are
engaging in the act itself. We don't
so this in any other area of life.
It seems bizarre to me that we would
do it in the area of economics.
[Audience applause]
