How far should we go? For the sake of profit?
How does one extract infinite profit from finite resource? Our economic model is set up to suggest you can continue into infinity, but everyone knows that land is finite, the planet itself and its resources are finite, yet we continue the charade.
what kind of restrictions may be imposed on our employment agreements, after being signed or before even being signed, for the sake of competition, free market principles, productivity and sustainability?
Henry Ford said over 100 years ago and i paraphrase;
'Unless I pay my workers enough to buy my cars I eventually have no business'
Globalisation has seen organised labour face ever downward pressure on terms and conditions, the percentage share of the profit pie awarded to CEOs growing ever since the Chicago school of economics and Milton Friedman linked share price performance to executive remuneration. The change in the last thirty years is staggering: Wealth concentrated in fewer hands.The political establishment captured by commercial interest does not see any other way, their continued salary depends on it. Ironically one person's income is another's spending. People need people, companies are people not individual units of labour cost as taught at MBA courses the world over..Companies cannot understand that ultimately driving down salary eventually reduces their revenues, as discretionary spending is curtailed. Politicians are lost and scream 'get a better paying job' and 'spend more'. Those jobs long since globalised. People have listened though borrowing enormous amounts of debt to keep up. This has limits and arguably we are approaching that limit in most western economies. Add in aging populations, retirements and increasing health care costs and a new way must be found. Ultimately though 'the poor will suffer what they must', as the system is controlled for the benefit of the few. Promises will be broken until the model itself breaks from exhaustion, until then more of the same.
For my mind, I listen to my grandparent's stories of the depression, when neighbours helped each other, people were resourceful and respect drove relationships is something we will eventually re-discover.
South West Airlines have consistently proven that respect when truly two way does far more to improve company performance than any HR/IR attempt to lower unit cost. Air New Zealand showed it too.
However adversarial IR models mirror the modern world, every person an economic agent, every interaction a transaction and the only way to win is have more. Somewhere along the way we collectively abandoned our being a society and became an economy.
Whether it is an asteroid, weather related or simply the consistent collapse of fiat currency and empire, one thing is for sure, history never changes: People, societies and empire rise, stagnate and collapse.
Replaced by something better, something more inclusive. Around 80 years later when the lessons are forgotten the generation gone and the new breed say
it's different this time, you know it isn't different this time, just a case of wash rinse and repeat...Man has never proven very good at managing himself.