I’ve definitely shared this concept or observation or whatever you want to call it before, but recent events have made me think of it again. I should clarify first that what I base this train of thought on isn’t entirely something that clicks for me, something I might not get into expressing, but it definitely makes you or at least me wonder why the implications in the train of thought aren’t considered, at least outside my occupation (since I’m in an occupation designed to work around the otherwise neglect of the concept), and I thought of running this by.
Back in the old days, it was common for business people to pay their workers more honestly, as in based on what they thought the worker seemed to deserve. Often the workers would seem underwhelmed. Organized criminals would then step in and say “you’ll get more out of us” and so that part of society grew. For some reason, the first thing within the mind of the people in charge, trying to assess everything, was “let’s invent this thing, we might call it the minimum wage”. Alrighty. So this side thinking, what do we think of it? Something happened, right?
So here is where the train of thought works into the picture. Matters of monetization are just one arena up the sleeve of bad actors. A lot of people feel abruptly socially isolated. When this happens, instinct is often to seek out companions. Social life might be dead or people might be avoidant. Someone I know is in such a situation. Along comes what might be called a bad actor. To them, they might see a potential extension of themselves with freedom of minimal effort. And voila, someone new joins the “bad crowd” or “dysfunctional crowd”.
Watching this unfold myself, I think to myself. Places have a “minimum reference point” for the topic of exchange/payment/whatever the word is, so then what does the non-thinking come from to apply this thought to the whole isolation thing mentioned? Anyone here have people they know who were absorbed into a bad part of society when everything seemed dead and thought “well, it’s not like anyone else was going to give them what they need”?
I don’t think this is something that can changed with laws. It has to be a cultural thing or else there wouldn’t be that same weight / understanding behind why they need to do it and actually trying to socialize.
Also socialization isn’t as easily quantifiable as money is and once you start doing that then it loses something in the process.
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Why not both?
Because trying to make laws around socialization, at least for businesses, will lead to them just optimizing how to be just within the bounds of the law which pushes the problem down further and they have to create a new law for it. This is worse for socialization because it’s ambiguous meaning it can be “satisfied” without really being satisfied.
It’s like a parent telling a child a rule for the house without the child understanding why. The child will follow the rules because there is expected punishment but it is fragile. If the child understands why and agrees then the child will follow the rules and it will be robust.
So yeah you can do both but I think only one of them actually solves the issue, the other just delays it.
Edit: added apostrophes.
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In a way, you wouldn’t be wrong, though I like to think of this as being pushed into the realm of experimentation. Even the wage laws everyone knows of were once thought of like this. Not denying impracticality, just saying it seems worth fidgeting on from the drawing board, that and the fact it does describe a real phenomenon.