Im sure most of you are aware of the current writers strike. For those on the left that complain about the perils of corporations having monopolies on certain industries it elucidating to see your lack of concern when unions flex their monopolistic muscle. Markets find the fair price for all things including the value a writer’s skill. The writers union is unhappy with its market value and instead of finding legitimate ways to increases it’s value it aims to increase its value by forcibly taking other groups market value. The rhetorical story, in which the left buys into, is that the little man, in this case the writer, is sticking it to the rich fat cat producers which are taking inordinate amount of the profits by forcing the producers to pay more.

If unions or people on the left had even vague understanding of economics they would realize that that the cost of any of the concessions a production companies makes to the writers will have to be managed usually by being passed on to the consumer. Of course this is not always the case and as this post notes, another cost to the writers selfishly demanding more than their market value is that other jobs vital to producing entertainment are suffering.

“I respect the WGA’s position. They probably do deserve a larger percentage of profit participation, but a lengthy strike will affect more than just the writers and studios. On my show we had 14 writers. There were also 2 cameramen, 2 camera assistants, 4 hair stylists, 4 makeup artists, 7 wardrobe people, 4 grips, 4 electricians, 2 craft service, 4 props people, 6 construction, 1 medic, 3 art department, 5 set dressers, 3 sound men, 3 stand-ins, 2 set PAs, 4 assistant directors, 1 DGA trainee, 1 unit manager, 6 production office personnel, 3 casting people, 4 writers assistants, 1 script supervisor, 2 editors, 2 editors assistants, 3 post production personnel, 1 facilities manager, 8 drivers, 2 location managers, 3 accountants, 4 caterers and a producer who’s not a writer. All 102 of us are now out of work.

One possible way producers will get around the problem of having to pay more than the market value of writers is to reduce costs with these employees. Be it thorough the elimination of positions to reduction in wages, it’s quite likely producers will reduce the standard of living for some of these workers. Note that the producers will not be able to pay less than the value of these workers because he is not allowed the power of monopoly. Using force to artificially inflate market value is apparently a right only reserved for certain groups of people.

IBM claims to have acquired a breakthrough in nano technology for memory storage. The poster states:

And it is often not the inventor who decides how and where to apply new technology. It’s the entrepreneur, the investor and ultimately the consumer who supply the imagination.

Couldn’t of said better myself. Its the capitalists that does all the work of converting some obscure discovery into something usable by consumers. To accomplish they must assume financial risk and develop a manufacturing process with no precedent. For this we offer them ownership of the fruits of their work even when it requires a labor force to generate the products.

Some wish to punish those willing to take risk and undergo sustained difficult problem solving. They wish to move ownership of the fruits of such efforts to the labor that produce the developed products. Such an inversion in incentive structure is doomed to fail. Denying wealth to financiers and entrepreneurs by shifting ownership to labors discourages economic development by forcing those that take risk and work hard to give their fruits over to those that took no risk nor worked hard. Moving ownership to labor simply reduces innovation required for economic growth. Wealth in the country is reduced over time and everyone becomes more poor.

Nope. In my country the entrepreneur and financier gets ownership of the nano memory products they develop for mass production. Sure labor gets a cut. It’s determined by the market value of the kind of labor need for production. However, labor does not get ownership of what is produced. If they want that kind of access they can take the financial risk and/or sustained problem solving required to convert discoveries like this one into something desirous by many consumers.