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Discussion » Questions » Jobs » In the future will we admit there are just too many people competing with each other?
Mr. Bromide

In the future will we admit there are just too many people competing with each other?

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Posted - December 6, 2016
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Responses


  • 7795
    The human race is too arrogant to admit such a thing. Yet it's drilled into out minds that competition is good and makes for a better product.
      December 6, 2016 11:28 AM MST
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  • 44651
    Future? It's already happening.
      December 6, 2016 11:43 AM MST
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  • 2960
    It's happening, but we won't admit it.
      December 6, 2016 11:46 AM MST
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  • 283
    I suppose it depends on what they are competing for. My nephew has his own business and he can't get anyone with a decent work ethic to work for him. There are not enough people competing for hard work at decent pay. There is a shortage of tradesmen because everyone has been told they need to go to college to make a living wage. Not everyone is college material, an half the kids there arrive unprepared because it isn't the competition it use to be to get in.
      December 6, 2016 11:51 AM MST
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  • 2960
    Does your nephew pay decently?


      December 6, 2016 11:55 AM MST
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  • 283
    $15/hr starting pay with little or no experience.
      December 6, 2016 1:37 PM MST
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  • 3934
    @Gatorblu -- Has your nephew tried raising the wages he's offering by 50% to see if that attracts more worthy candidates to work for him?

    If not, then I submit his claim, "I can't get anyone decent to work for me" may actually be, "I can't get anyone decent to work for me...for the s**t wages/benefits I'm offering"

      December 6, 2016 11:57 AM MST
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  • 283
    He is offering $15/hr without experience. For where he lives those are good wages. He has fired people for showing up late, spending more time on their phone than on their work. Or they think they should get half of what he is paid for a job he bid on with no understand of what overhead means. If they go out of town he pays for their food and hotel. It just too many millennials seem to think they should be given median wages without putting in their time and dues of learning.  
      December 6, 2016 1:35 PM MST
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  • 3934

    @Gatorblu -- It sounds like your nephew is paying a reasonable wage (assuming that's W-2) and I don't deny that some people are flakes who don't put in a good effort on their jobs.

    OTOH, your nephew is drawing from a worker pool wher the vast majority of employers have taught them "You are an expense to be minimized, and we will f**k you over if we can get away with it." I've had an employer deliberately try to annoy me into quitting. I've had an employer where my immediate supervisors said "Wow, you're great. We really want to keep you"...two days before their superiors fired me and ginned up a charge of misconduct so they wouldn't have to pay unemployment compensation.

    You can look up the news yourself about employees who, despite being gainfully employed at some of America's largest and most profitable companies (e.g. Wal-Mart, McDonald's, etc.) make so little at their job they STILL require public assistance to make ends meet.

    It is hard to find employees who are going to invest themselves when they realize they'll be dropped like a hot potato the moment an employer thinks it's advantageous.

    I hope your nephew finds some employees who work well for him and whom he treats with respect. We need more employer-employee situations like that in our world.

      December 6, 2016 2:49 PM MST
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  • 3934
    The problem is we have millenia of built-up cultural norms and associated metaphoric constructs which were developed in a very different world than we currently inhabit.

    In the pre-Industrial Revolution world, human labor was scarce, resources were effectively infinite, and there was a limit to the wealth private individuals could accumulate in the absence of government confiscation.

    In the post-Industrial Revolution/post-Agricultural Revolution/post-Informatoin Revolution world, human labor is far more plentiful than the demand for it, resources are finite, and the financial constructs we've invented allow private individuals to control vast quantities of wealth which largely consist of claims on someone else's actual production (e.g. a stockholder in GM has a claim on the wealth generated by the employees who actually build and sell the cars).

    Unfortunately, technology and economic constructs have changed much more quickly than our cultural/moral constructs, and the incompatability between them is producing increasing social unrest.
      December 6, 2016 12:04 PM MST
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