<story><title>Japanese hotel room costs $1 a night, but you have to livestream your stay</title><url>https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/livestream-hotel-room-japan-intl-hnk/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>contravariant</author><text>Businesses that cannot turn a profit without paying their employees enough to cover basic expenses (leaving aside whether this is higher or lower than the current minimum wage) do not deserve to exist. Having those jobs automated away or passing the cost of living of the employees on to the customers are both reasonable alternatives.</text></item><item><author>nickpp</author><text>Minimum wage hurts most the very people it pretends to help: the least productive of us, who become unemployable legally.&lt;p&gt;Business who can&amp;#x27;t raise their labor costs will either:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - raise prices while passing costs to consumers
  - go out of business thus reducing consumer choice
  - turn onto robots or offshoring (if possible)
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
None of those is good for neither workers nor consumers. I&amp;#x27;d rather we raise worker wages the Silicon Valley way: through merciless competition between companies for talent, while encouraging said talent to start their own competing businesses.&lt;p&gt;You know what minimum wage is great for? Electing politicians.</text></item><item><author>geofft</author><text>Sure, but that&amp;#x27;s not an argument for &amp;quot;actually exploitation is good.&amp;quot; That&amp;#x27;s an argument for figuring out a solution to exploitation seeming like a rational choice in the first place.&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the problem is just that the free market sets up a race to the bottom and regulations can provide an artificial bottom. This is the standard argument for the minimum wage, for instance: even if businesses can afford to pay more and still be profitable, they won&amp;#x27;t voluntarily do so in a market where there&amp;#x27;s more supply of labor than demand for it.&lt;p&gt;In some cases, like livestreaming your hotel stay or selling your organs or sacrificing your lungs to mine coal, there&amp;#x27;s a qualitative difference, and saying &amp;quot;This job no longer exists&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t solve problems. If that&amp;#x27;s the case, society should figure out if it can afford in any way to provide for people&amp;#x27;s basic needs so that they can start having meaningful other options.&lt;p&gt;It seems entirely possible to me that a society with a strong social safety net (welfare, UBI, whatever) needs less regulation of its free market than one that puts the burden on its market to treat the most desperate in society with fairness.&lt;p&gt;(BTW, a minor point about sex work: I believe &amp;quot;legalization&amp;quot; refers to making it a regulated industry with the remaining possibility of criminal penalties for breaking regulations, and many sex workers prefer &amp;quot;decriminalization,&amp;quot; i.e. just removing criminal penalties.)</text></item><item><author>nickpp</author><text>Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don&amp;#x27;t like out of existence will not actually make them disappear, just push them underground, out of society&amp;#x27;s eye and where the REAL exploitation takes place.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why adults actually working in those domains militate for legalization and that&amp;#x27;s why totalitarian societies require so much surveillance just to avoid collapse.&lt;p&gt;Because people WILL do the deals they need to do to survive or get ahead. Your laws will just provide the reason to catch and incarcerate them afterwards.&lt;p&gt;See the marijuana legalization mess.</text></item><item><author>gorgoiler</author><text>If you consider this to be exploiting the consumer then this is a good example for the textbooks of how, in a free market, there has to be some regulation to prevent exploitation of those at the edges of society.&lt;p&gt;It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living.  Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way.&lt;p&gt;It’s probably time ad-tech was re calibrated on this spectrum before we &lt;i&gt;race to the exploitative-bottom&lt;/i&gt; there as well, and build a shopping mall that we don’t want on the open common land that we do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>katzgrau</author><text>&amp;gt; do not deserve to exist&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s an easy position take take when you&amp;#x27;re a well paid developer and money problems aren&amp;#x27;t a concern.&lt;p&gt;I used to feel the same way, until I started my own business. I couldn&amp;#x27;t attract venture capital and I had to bootstrap the company. There was no way in hell I was using my house for a loan.&lt;p&gt;Early on I relied on people who wanted to stay relevant, but needed flexibility, and were happy to take a lower hourly wage. For example, a stay at home parent whose SO earned the majority of the household income.&lt;p&gt;My business contributes sincere value to a niche industry that otherwise doesn&amp;#x27;t get any attention or investment. It&amp;#x27;s been said by several in my industry that without my company, several hundred community news organizations would likely fail.&lt;p&gt;Today, I can afford to pay a living wage. But now I understand that growing a real revenue generating business (without artificially inflating a company via investment) is difficult, and often requires low cost labor in order to get to the place where you can afford higher cost labor. Try it and you may not be as idealistic.</text></comment>
<story><title>Japanese hotel room costs $1 a night, but you have to livestream your stay</title><url>https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/livestream-hotel-room-japan-intl-hnk/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>contravariant</author><text>Businesses that cannot turn a profit without paying their employees enough to cover basic expenses (leaving aside whether this is higher or lower than the current minimum wage) do not deserve to exist. Having those jobs automated away or passing the cost of living of the employees on to the customers are both reasonable alternatives.</text></item><item><author>nickpp</author><text>Minimum wage hurts most the very people it pretends to help: the least productive of us, who become unemployable legally.&lt;p&gt;Business who can&amp;#x27;t raise their labor costs will either:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - raise prices while passing costs to consumers
  - go out of business thus reducing consumer choice
  - turn onto robots or offshoring (if possible)
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
None of those is good for neither workers nor consumers. I&amp;#x27;d rather we raise worker wages the Silicon Valley way: through merciless competition between companies for talent, while encouraging said talent to start their own competing businesses.&lt;p&gt;You know what minimum wage is great for? Electing politicians.</text></item><item><author>geofft</author><text>Sure, but that&amp;#x27;s not an argument for &amp;quot;actually exploitation is good.&amp;quot; That&amp;#x27;s an argument for figuring out a solution to exploitation seeming like a rational choice in the first place.&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the problem is just that the free market sets up a race to the bottom and regulations can provide an artificial bottom. This is the standard argument for the minimum wage, for instance: even if businesses can afford to pay more and still be profitable, they won&amp;#x27;t voluntarily do so in a market where there&amp;#x27;s more supply of labor than demand for it.&lt;p&gt;In some cases, like livestreaming your hotel stay or selling your organs or sacrificing your lungs to mine coal, there&amp;#x27;s a qualitative difference, and saying &amp;quot;This job no longer exists&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t solve problems. If that&amp;#x27;s the case, society should figure out if it can afford in any way to provide for people&amp;#x27;s basic needs so that they can start having meaningful other options.&lt;p&gt;It seems entirely possible to me that a society with a strong social safety net (welfare, UBI, whatever) needs less regulation of its free market than one that puts the burden on its market to treat the most desperate in society with fairness.&lt;p&gt;(BTW, a minor point about sex work: I believe &amp;quot;legalization&amp;quot; refers to making it a regulated industry with the remaining possibility of criminal penalties for breaking regulations, and many sex workers prefer &amp;quot;decriminalization,&amp;quot; i.e. just removing criminal penalties.)</text></item><item><author>nickpp</author><text>Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don&amp;#x27;t like out of existence will not actually make them disappear, just push them underground, out of society&amp;#x27;s eye and where the REAL exploitation takes place.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why adults actually working in those domains militate for legalization and that&amp;#x27;s why totalitarian societies require so much surveillance just to avoid collapse.&lt;p&gt;Because people WILL do the deals they need to do to survive or get ahead. Your laws will just provide the reason to catch and incarcerate them afterwards.&lt;p&gt;See the marijuana legalization mess.</text></item><item><author>gorgoiler</author><text>If you consider this to be exploiting the consumer then this is a good example for the textbooks of how, in a free market, there has to be some regulation to prevent exploitation of those at the edges of society.&lt;p&gt;It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living.  Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way.&lt;p&gt;It’s probably time ad-tech was re calibrated on this spectrum before we &lt;i&gt;race to the exploitative-bottom&lt;/i&gt; there as well, and build a shopping mall that we don’t want on the open common land that we do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tenebrisalietum</author><text>Couple of counterpoints:&lt;p&gt;- Let&amp;#x27;s say I&amp;#x27;m a 16 year old adolescent who&amp;#x27;s doing well in school and wants to take a part-time&amp;#x2F;weekend job to gain experience in the job market.  My basic expenses are covered (I live with my parents).  Should a business get to pay me less just because of this fact?&lt;p&gt;- I&amp;#x27;m a wife of a rich man and have never had to work, but decided to try it because I&amp;#x27;m bored.  I know nothing but the finer things of life and my basic expenses are 10x what the middle class is.  If a business has to cover basic expenses why are we not going to cover this claim of full expenses, what determines in a corruption-free manner whether a claim for a basic expense is valid, and what is an acceptable burden to a business owner to determine this?&lt;p&gt;- Let&amp;#x27;s say I&amp;#x27;m a jobless struggling adult, sharing a cramped living space with 4 others including 1 or 2 who are drug addicts.   A job would really help me get out of this situation, but company X is only willing to pay minimum wage.  It&amp;#x27;s better than what I have now which is nothing.  How is having this job automated away a reasonable alternative for me - because you don&amp;#x27;t want this employer to give me a job in the first place because it doesn&amp;#x27;t cover my expenses.&lt;p&gt;- Let&amp;#x27;s say I&amp;#x27;m a customer of your business, and you decide to pass on the full cost of living of all employees to me.  Your product jumps from $10 to $50.  I&amp;#x27;m not shopping there, your business closes, and your employees are now jobless.  How does this help anybody?</text></comment>