Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Sorry, but that's not how the real world works, Mises is a fantasy for kids. That works for maybe contractors, and even that is muddy in cases like Uber etc. But for employees, they sell labor, not services.

Likewise, when someone owns a factory, they don't just own the physical tools and material inputs of production (which they would rent to workers), but they own (control) the whole social structure that is needed to produce, all the human relationships (workers - management - owners - customers) required for the factory to work.

That was Marx's main point, and that's why sane countries have labor laws that regulate this relationship. (But even if everybody was truly selling a service, "free market" would quickly collapse into oligopolies, as it usually does.)



> they don't just own the physical tools and material inputs of production (which they would rent to workers), but they own (control) the whole social structure that is needed to produce

Ayup. That's why when you run a small business an early lesson is that your competitive advantage isn't your intellectual property (because any larger company can come along and find a way to copy that legally) but your business relations and reputation.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: