Workplace coercion

The other day, I tweeted that there's an "overlap between right-libertarians and shills for the rich." Bang on cue, Tim objects to the use of the word "Dickensian" to describe working conditions at Sports Direct.

Such pendantry causes Tim to miss the key point - that what's going on at Sports Direct is Dickensian in the sense that workers are suffering at the hands of domineering bosses. For example:

All warehouse workers are kept onsite at the end of each shift in order to undergo a compulsory search by Sports Direct security staff, with the experience of the Guardian reporters suggesting this typically adds another hour and 15 minutes to the working week – which is unpaid.

For most workers, I suspect, this sort of thing is far more intrusive and - importantly - demeaning than anything they suffer in their dealings with the state. These are acts of coercion of the sort that should outrage anyone who cares about liberty. Which poses the question: why are people like Tim who profess to be classical liberals apparently so indifferent to such workplace tyranny?

The question deepens because Friedrich Hayek, perhaps the greatest of classical liberals, was aware of the problem:

There are, undeniably, occasions when the condition of employment creates opportunity for true coercion. In periods of acute unemployment the threat of dismissal may be used to enforce actions other than those originally contracted for. And in conditions such as those in a mining town the manager may well exercise an entirely arbitrary and capricious tyranny over a man to whom he has taken a dislike. (The Constitution of Liberty, p136-7).

Hayek went on to claim that these conditions would "be rare exceptions in a prosperous competitive society". That might have been reasonable when he was writing: in 1960 the unemployment rate was only 1.6 per cent. But it is not true in today's slacker labour market where monopsony - Hayek's "mining town" - is less rare. As Chris Bertram has pointed out, workplace tyranny is widespread.

Why, then, do some rightists refuse to see this? One possibility is that they mistake the map for the terrain. They believe the labour market functions as the textbooks claim rather than see it as it is - a place where many people have lousy options and so are at risk of arbitrary and capricious tyranny. Their blindspot here is the same as some economists have when they try to deny the existence of involuntary unemployment.

Another possibility is that they believe that the cure is worse than the disease - that attempts to prevent bad employment practices would tie up even good bosses in red tape and so restrict growth and employment. But it need not be so. A basic income that allowed workers to reject bad jobs and a jobs guarantee that gave them other options would free people from tyrannical bosses without the need for burdensome regulation.

There is,though, a third possibility - that some right-libertarians and classical liberals care only about freedom for bosses, and not freedom for all. As I've said, it is we Marxists who are the true libertarians.

Comments

[RightistCynic]

Delicious lefty hand-wringing.

You force up the National Minimum Wage and it turns out that a flow of higher productivity workers didn't enter the workforce. Non-wage benefits, working conditions, are squeezed to the bone.

Yes, right-ists do believe the labour market will behave for low-productivity workers as textbooks predict when you impose a wage floor: very badly, and we expect that to manifest in unexpected ways which were unpredicted by left-ist optimists. So naive we were.

[James]

It's a simply that they're massive hypocrites, who couldn't give a toss about everything they proclaim to hate as long as they're getting a share of the loot.

So, their desire to "shrink the state" because they hate "bureaucracy", quickly dissapears once the bureaucracy is contracted out to private firms. The state hasn't shrunk, and the bureaucracy remains, but now it's unaccountable and has been been made available for them to profit from. Which leads them to also ignore the fact that for them to profit from these contracts, it first needs the government to interfere on their behalf.

There's plenty of more examples to use when talking about these infantile pillocks, but it goes in one ear, and out the other, so you might as well not waste your time.

The only freedom they truly desire, is the freedom to exploit. And to be able to exercise that freedom, they demand the government works solely for their benefit, ensuring there's always a large supply of desperate people available to them.

[James]

Corey Robin has written about the authoritarian implications and practices of libertarian thought, one of the more interesting voices out there http://coreyrobin.com/2012/03/07/when-libertarians-go-to-work/

[James]

Actually, this one is better http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/

[Jimmy]

@rightistcynic So, prior to the minimum wage we had people not getting paid enough and (I’ll grant you for the sake of argument) better working conditions than we have now. Now we have the minimum wage people are paid better but their conditions are (again, I’ll grant you) worse. And you’re answer is to get rid of the minimum wage? How about regulate to ensure a minimum wage and decent working conditions?

[Georg Thomas]

The (ModernMoneyTheory's) Job Guarantee proposal is absolutely worth being seriously considered. It could lead to extraordinary improvements.

But what it won't lead to is the abolition of tensions between management and workers.

It appears that free societies such as yours and mine (Germany), whose freedom has been brought about by people of quite divergent political agendas, continue to provide the best framework in which to bring to the fore and resolve in management-labour tensions.

As for, classical liberals and right-libertarians, they tend to subscribe to an ideology, a form of commitment that is ill-advised no matter what the flavour of your ideology.

Libertarians strike me as more concerned with a sense of being in possession of a calculus that ensures they are always consistent and right - I see intellectual conceit as their most fundamental driver. They tend to be inactive mopers, playing a negligible role in the real work.

Being effective in the real world (of workplace relations, e.g.) tends to require pragmatism, which ever side you are on, and thus is not dominated by ideology but by interest(and compromise).

Those who let ideology trump interest, are likely to lose out or underachieve in considerable measure relative to their desiderata. Which is what Marxism's real regimes have done in a big way.

And this, in turn, is related to Marx's inability to understand evolved forms of social cooperation.

I happen to read a book ("Evolution of the Social Contract," by Brian Skyrms) where I found this quote:

"On June 18, 1862, Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels, "It is remarkable how Darwin has discerned anew among beasts and plants his English Society ... It is Hobbes' bellum omnium contra omnes.""

(No source of the Marx quote)- p.43, Second Edition, Cambridge University press, 2014)

So, by definition, from such a perspective, workplace tensions must be of a vicious nature and do not admit amelioration and less agonistic trade-offs between the involved parties. That, however, is neither a good description of history, nor a good programme for the future.

[Luis Enrique]

I think some libertarians pretty much think "if I was in that situation I would get myself out of it" hence lack sympathy.

[imo that's a dumb / nasty way to think]

[Tim Worstall]

I am puzzled why people think that such searches are odd in the slightest.

The basic job in the warehouse is to move large quantities of high value and branded clothing out of its packaging and into new packaging. There's thus a very high opportunity to, well, think about it, just wear a few hundred quids worth of that high value and branded clothing out of the warehouse at the end of a shift.

Staff are told not to wear *in* any of the 800 odd brands that are repacked in that warehouse. On the basis that this makes it rather easier to check they're not wearing any from inside the warehouse on the way *out*.

I've no idea whether they handle Air Jordans but imagine they did. How would you check that the staff were not walking out in £200 worth of new shoes at the end of every shift?

Is anyone surprised that diamond miners are checked at the end of a shift? Jewelry workers for a bit of scrap here and there? A bonded warehouse will check that the workers aren't walking out with a carton of fags or a half case of whiskey (both worth less than some of those clothes). So why the surprise when people handling high value clothing are?

Sure, we could say efficiency wages and wave our magic wands but other than that, who has a better idea than what is done. Don't wear our expensive brands in and then we can check easily that you're not wearing our expensive brands out?

[Georg Thomas]

Tim Worstall,

I assumed that not the "checking" as such was the bone of contention, but the circumstance that

"this typically adds another hour and 15 minutes to the working week – which is unpaid."

The latter is a valid issue for discussion and negotiation, and I don not see how classical liberals or anyone else would make it impossible for us to work out a solution.

[Luis Enrique]

I heard someone made himself a car by taking out parts, once piece at a time. Didn't cost him a dime.

[Wayne Kerr]

The problem with people like Tim is that they have never had to work a 'real' job before, or simply have never had to work to 'survive', and undertake relatively precarious and low paid employment in order to keep the roof over his head and feed his family.

People like this have absolutely nothing interesting to say about labour markets, he is nothing more than a jumped up little shill for private, vested interests - hence he works for the Adam Smith Institute.

[CyncialRightist]

"How about regulate to ensure a minimum wage and decent working conditions?"

All such regulation already exists (NMW plus Health and Safety acts), but it's possible to believe that extant regulation imposes a balance between wage and non-wage compensation which some workers find unpalatable.

But it sure is easier to lazily bash "right-ists" than consider that maybe an "act of coercion", that is, legislation has had counter-productive effects.

The signalling dripping from every paragraph of this post really is priceless. We should be outraged by the apparent "coercion" displayed at SD, because... well, we can imagine a world where working conditions are higher for the working classes. That's really all it is.

I am nostalgic for the days when the left wanted everybody down pit, because there was a job with real pride (and never mind the emphysema).

[Matt Moore]

Either those workers have a better option for employment, or they don't.

If they do, they should quit.

If they don't, it seems odd that they would direct complaints are the one person in the world who is offering them the best deal.

[Matt Moore]

"There is,though, a third possibility - that some right-libertarians and classical liberals care only about freedom for bosses, and not freedom for all. As I've said, it is we Marxists who are the true libertarians."

You are confusing freedom with capability. There's an argument to be had there, but let's have the right one.

[Keith]

If Tim Worstall and those who agree with his position are classical Liberals then they presumably think arbitrary searches should be illegal re The case of General warrants. But if they are happy for people to be subjected to them by an employer as a condition of employment than I cannot see them as being consistent Philosophically..

Liberty is for all or it is a mere special privilege. Allowing rights to be alienable makes them nugatory. How can you object to people being able to sell themselves into slavery if you take such a view? The moral problem of capitalism for want of a better name lies in reducing human rights to mere properties that can be sold and thus lost. I am indebted to T H Green for this point from 1890 I believe. An absolute theory of freedom of contract is not consistent with freedom. Which is why there always tend to be restrictions on contractual freedom in legal systems.

[Bob]

"All such regulation already exists (NMW plus Health and Safety acts), but it's possible to believe that extant regulation imposes a balance between wage and non-wage compensation which some workers find unpalatable."

"An absolute theory of freedom of contract is not consistent with freedom. Which is why there always tend to be restrictions on contractual freedom in legal systems."

Employment laws need policing:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports-direct-effectively-pays-below-minimum-wage-pay?CMP=share_btn_tw

A Guaranteed Alternative Job does not:
http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2015/11/job-guarantee-jobs-for-people.html

The libertarians can't seem to understand the concept of 'no deal' or walkaway.

The problem is still that one of the axioms upon which monetarism is built has unemployment as voluntary - they won't train for skills, they're in the wrong place, they won't take a low enough wage. However there comes a point when these excuses don't wash and the alternative explanation becomes obvious - that there are 100 people and 95 jobs and no matter how good they are at looking 5 are going to be disappointed.

If there are 100 jobs and 95 people, jobs will be eliminated to balance the market. Get that the other way around and 'markets' require people to be eliminated.

The Tory position is unchanged since Lamont:

"Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down"

Absolutely fine. So why are they not prepared to fully compensate the millions of individuals such a policy deliberately leaves on the scrap heap. Surely those people, who they now admit are systemically unable to get a job due to their policy actions, deserve a full living wage, decent housing and a degree of comfort.

Or does the policy also require starving people, blaming them for something that is out of their control and ensuring that they endure the diseases of poverty. In which case why not set up the gas chambers now?

We're not talking a small number of people here. The number of people unemployed is the population of the cities of Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol combined. The number of people wanting work if they could get it is the same as the population of the cities of Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Leicester combined.

Don't these people think that 8 cities worth of people deserve a better deal?

[B.L. Zebub]

@Georg Thomas

The flavour of Marx's observation to Engels is lost, when one considers, as you did, only part of the quote. The entire quote

"It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, 'inventions" and Malthusian 'struggle for existence'. It is Hobbes 'bellum omnium contra omnes".

"Marx-Engels Correspondence 1862", marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_06_18.htm

Marx was referring to the conception of human society then prevalent among the English (and apparently German) bourgeoisie, inherited from Ancient Greece and Rome. It had a manifestation in Malthus' proposals to keep living wages at the bare minimum, lest generous pay led to a demographic explosion among workers.

Malthus' views became popular among aristocratic families from Cambridge. For one they influenced Darwin's thought, as Darwin himself recognised in The Origin of Species (hence Marx's reference). Later, in his Autobiography, Darwin wrote:

"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species."

A few decades later, Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin, also from Cambridge) reformulated Malthus' views, with the help of his cousin's natural selection. Herbert Spencer, however, expressed more eloquently those ideas, which would provide the core for Eugenics:

"The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many 'in shallows and in miseries,' are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence. It seems hard that an unskilfulness which with all his efforts he cannot overcome, should entail hunger upon the artizan. It seems hard that a labourer incapacitated by sickness from competing with his stronger fellows, should have to bear the resulting privations. It seems hard that widows and orphans should be left to struggle for life or death. Nevertheless, when regarded not separately, but in connection with the interests of universal humanity, these harsh fatalities are seen to be full of the highest beneficence—the same beneficence which brings to early graves the children of diseased parents, and singles out the low-spirited, the intemperate, and the debilitated as the victims of an epidemic."
(Social Statics or, The Conditions Essential to Happiness Specified, Pt. III, Ch. 25, Poor-Laws.)

Galton was co-founder of the British Eugenics Society (currently, the Galton Institute) and his honorary president. Among other members of the British bourgeoisie, Lord John Maynard Keynes - indelibly associated to Cambridge and its university - William Beveridge, Charles Galton Darwin, Leonard Darwin, Havelock Ellis, Ronald Fisher, Karl Pearson, Margaret Sanger and others were later to join the Eugenics Society during the first half of the 20th century.

I'll leave the German bit for another opportunity.

Me, but I think Marx described the thought of a substantial and prominent fraction of the English bourgeoisie, both conservatives and liberals, including many pseudo-left icons.

If Marx failed in something, it was in predicting how prevalent those views would remain.

[Trofim]

That's nothing mate. In the sixties, when you finished your apprenticeship as a compositor (hot meal printing - remember?) they took your trousers off and inked your balls with a roller.

[Andrew Curry]

@Luis Enrique: too good a reference not to share the link. Here's Johnny Cash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws-_syszg84

[Andrew Curry]

The real problem here is that trades unions have been removed from the workforce by 30 years of hostile legislation in the UK.

Since - before the conservatives in the comments section jumpdown my throat - pretty much all the evidence suggests that they are a more effective way than minimum wage legislation than ensuring better wages and they also redress the imbalance of power that exists between employer and worker. In short they mean that workers have power of voice as well as power of exit, to borrow from Hirschhorn.

[Georg Thomas]

B.L. Zebub,

Thank you for your instructive contribution.

One looks through tinted glasses, mine are hopefully not too tinted - the main message that I read into your account is that Marx was critical of those, whose attitude, you seem to claim, he was not adopting but describing. And that the critical sensitivity (vis-à-vis social Darwinism)putatively demonstrated by Marx in the above quote could have helped him anticipate and resist terrible extremes.

An interesting interpretation - what I am missing is any evidence that what Marx clearly states in the quote, IS NOT WHAT HE THOUGHT, but a (critically minded) description of other people's attitude.

In fact, I wonder if there were Marxist eugenicists? Considering your synopsis, I am inclined to think so.

There has certainly been more than one Marxist holocaust, perhaps not thanks to eugenist conviction, but owing to a dedicated will to erase lives considered dysfunctional from the point of view of historical materialism and the needs of a Marxist dictatorship.

[Georg Thomas]

Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.

— Marx; 16 January 1861[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influences_on_Karl_Marx#Charles_Darwin

[Andrew B]

A warehouse like SportsDirect will be full of security cameras. These cameras are there to observe activity and gather evidence which can be used to press charges against thieves. There is no need for mass searches. They are there to let the workers know who is boss. They are about intimidation, not crime prevention.

[Tim Worstall]

Don't be a complete dick Mr. Kerr:

"The problem with people like Tim is that they have never had to work a 'real' job before, or simply have never had to work to 'survive', and undertake relatively precarious and low paid employment in order to keep the roof over his head and feed his family.

People like this have absolutely nothing interesting to say about labour markets, he is nothing more than a jumped up little shill for private, vested interests - hence he works for the Adam Smith Institute."

You have absolutely no idea what my employment history is whatsoever. So, cordially, do fuck off.

[B.L. Zebub]

@Georg Thomas,

"what I am missing is any evidence that what Marx clearly states in the quote, IS NOT WHAT HE THOUGHT, but a (critically minded) description of other people's attitude."

In criminal law people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. It's a good principle, based on logic, prudence, and a modicum of common sense.

For instance, MMTers would have had a hard time proving that Keynes was not a paedophile, a Devil-worshiper, a wife-beater, a plagiarist, or even a swindler (as he, as a teenage, claimed he wanted to be). How would anyone go about proving he never did any of that?

Mind you, I wouldn't accuse Keynes of any: I lack positive, let alone conclusive evidence to the contrary.

This brings us back to your observation, above. Is there in the passage above (which I'll repeat for your convenience) any indication - let alone conclusive evidence - that Marx personally approved of those views? Does Marx even use the pronoun "I"?

"It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, 'inventions" and Malthusian 'struggle for existence'. It is Hobbes 'bellum omnium contra omnes".

What, when it comes to Marx's case, entitles you to invert the burden of the proof?

-----------

"In fact, I wonder if there were Marxist eugenicists? Considering your synopsis, I am inclined to think so."

There were indeed. Absolutely. Eugenics is not correlated with political beliefs, but with class.

Off the top of my head, there was the mathematician John Haldane (I didn't mention him because he never joined the Eugenics Society, that I am aware).

From Haldane's brief biographical profile at the MIA:

"Haldane was born into an aristocratic intellectual Scottish family, educated at Eton College and at New College, Oxford. His father was a scientist, a philosopher and a liberal, but his mother was an ardent Tory. During the First World War, he served with the Black Watch in France and Iraq, and whilst in the army, became a socialist."

Apparently, there is a strong correlation between the words "Eton", "aristocratic", "intellectual", "liberal", and Eugenics.

(By the way, I cannot prove that Haldane wasn't an alien reptile, hopefully this doesn't prove he is.)

-----------

"There has certainly been more than one Marxist holocaust, perhaps not thanks to eugenist conviction, but owing to a dedicated will to erase lives considered dysfunctional from the point of view of historical materialism and the needs of a Marxist dictatorship."

As a German, you are probably a lot more knowledgeable than me on the matter of holocausts.

However, considering its history in Ireland and India, where famines became all too common under English rule, the British bourgeoisie could not cast the first stone. The English colonisation of the New World, Africa, or Australia and New Zealand did not shine for their humane treatment of the locals, either.

[B.L. Zebub]

@Georg Thomas

"Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.
"Marx; 16 January 1861[9]"

I missed your second comment.

To the extent that Social Darwinism and Eugenics permeated and shaped the thought and behaviour of the bourgeoisie, it cannot be left out of political and economic theorizing, certainly?

Wasn't economics supposed to be descriptive of reality?

That is precisely the mistake Utopian Socialists make: to believe that one can make workers and capitalists to co-exist peacefully.

As absurd as that belief is, it has had a long life in religious prophesy:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 1:16 KJV)

[Georg Thomas]

B.L. Zebub,

Marx's quote as such is inconclusive as to both of our readings. We need further context to motivate our renderings. I have used my general knowledge of Marx for probative context, based on which I seemed to remember supporting pronouncements by Marx, which - on further research - I have indeed been able to retrieve and present in nuce in the form of this quote:

"Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.
"Marx; 16 January 1861[9]"

I fail to understand why I qua German should be presumed to be more knowledgeable about holocausts than anybody else (who may have studied the terrible matter more profoundly than I have).

Should we expect Marxists to be most knowledgeable about holocausts because Marxism has effected more holocausts and a greater number of holocaust victims than any other perpetrators?

[B.L. Zebub]

@Georg Thomas

Frankly, I find your "general knowledge of Marx for probative context" rather unpersuasive, for it is selective and inconsistent.

----------

"I fail to understand why I qua German should be presumed to be more knowledgeable about holocausts than anybody else"

Shouldn't one presume your general knowledge of the Holocaust, qua German, from the fact that you introduced it in the discussion?

Doesn't that mean this subject is prominent in your mind or did it just come out at random?

I'd have thought that was sufficient probative context.

Good night. This conversation is over.

[plus.google.com/101212154638138223114]

The lowest paid workers are subject to coercion, and Sports Direct is a good example, and more so, that coercion is contagious. When unemployment is high, the middle classes, and the professional classes, can find themselves facing adverse conditions. Consider, nowadays, for many computer engineers, if they want to find interesting work, they often try to work at startups. The management of startups often emphasize "fun" aspects of work such as ping pong tables, arcade games, free pizza and sometimes free beer. These ephemeral aspects of fun are meant to distract from 70 hour work weeks and stressful deadlines. And the funding for startups is uncertain.

A great recent first-person article that illustrates the kind of coercive management one can run into at a startup was "What happens when the Board Of Directors begins to panic". This is very long, but it gets surprisingly dramatic at the end:

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/what-happens-when-the-board-of-directors-begins-to-panic

[Bob]

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/21/378774480/scandium-middle-man-is-a-rare-guy-selling-a-rare-element

"From time to time, our Planet Money Podcast profiles people with unusual jobs. David Kestenbaum has this story about a man who realized he was the only person in the world with his job. It was a job selling something almost no one wanted.

DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: In the 1990s, Tim Worstall found himself in Moscow. It was just after the fall of the Soviet Union, a time when things that had been hidden were now out in the open.

TIM WORSTALL: Just, you know, one of the flood of people who went over there just to see if there was (emphasis mine) any way to MAKE MONEY OUT OF of the entire collapse of a civilization.

KESTENBAUM: Maybe video games, he thought. Tetris had been written by a Russian programmer. But then he came across something much more elemental.

WORSTALL: I just bumped into somebody at a party.

KESTENBAUM: The guy said this. I'm having trouble selling my scandium. What's scandium, Tim asked. They drank some vodka, and the guy explained. Scandium was a metal with remarkable properties, one of the so-called rare earths. You can find it on the periodic table, the little box with an SC on it and the number 21.

WORSTALL: It's usually classed as one of the lanthanides, that funny strip of rare earths along the bottom of the periodic table that we all forgot in high school chemistry class. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, scandium is referred to "as one of the lanthanides." In fact, it is not a lanthanide. But scandium is often grouped with the lanthanides as one of the rare earth elements.]

KESTENBAUM: Add a dash of scandium to other metals; you get something very strong and very light. The guy explained that the Soviet military used to love it. But now no one seemed to want it. So Tim did some research. He tried to. There was almost nothing written about scandium. Eventually, he called the U.S. government, the U.S. Geological Survey.

WORSTALL: And I said, hello, I want to know about scandium. And the man at the other end of the phone line said, well, that's good because I am our scandium expert.

KESTENBAUM: Finally, someone else on the planet who knew about scandium. The man told Tim there were some people who might need scandium. It was used in small amounts in certain high-intensity light bulbs, metal halide bulbs, the kind used to light sports stadiums. Scandium was added to the gas inside the bulb to give the light a nice daylight color. So Tim tracked down a manufacturer in the U.S. and picked up the phone again. You called up, and you said, hey, I have - I'm in Russia, and I have scandium? And...

WORSTALL: Yes.

KESTENBAUM: (Laughter). What did they say?

WORSTALL: Well, that's great. We buy scandium from Russia. What's your price?

KESTENBAUM: Oh, did you have a price?

WORSTALL: Yes, which was significantly lower than what they were already paying for it - and so there we go.

KESTENBAUM: He had it sent over through the regular mail in a powdered form called scandium oxide. Tim was, as far as he could tell, the only person on the planet with this job, a scandium middleman, a rare guy selling a rare element. How was it being a monopolist?

WORSTALL: Not as profitable as people think running a global monopoly will be.

KESTENBAUM: Tim is trained as an economist. And this, he explains, is a classic example of what's called a contestable monopoly, meaning it's easy for someone else to get into the business. So even though you don't have any competitors, the simple fact that it would be easy for someone else to get into the game forces you to keep your fees low.

WORSTALL: I don't live in a mansion. I'm not a multimillionaire. But I've had a lot of fun, done a lot of traveling and made a good living.

KESTENBAUM: Five or six years after his first deal, other scandium middlemen started popping up, people arranging deals for anyone who wanted to buy some. Scandium is now used in some lightweight baseball bats and bicycle frames. Airlines are experimenting with it. But it's expensive, something like $2,000 a pound. The total amount bought and sold in a single year could fit on the back of a truck. David Kestenbaum, NPR News."

[Bob]

https://eziwrestler.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/tim-worstall-curious-british-attack-dog/

"Normblog: What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job?

Worstall: Over the past couple of years, since I started blogging, I’ve been changing my profession, from vaguely unsuccessful businessman to vaguely unsuccessful writer. I’m still astonished that people wish to pay me to tap on a keyboard and I think I’ve found my ideal alternative."

"Tim Worstall calls people things like ‘Cretin;’ ‘Cunt,’ (or “union cunt,” once, for a workers’ representative) as well as ‘Twat,’ the more puerile ‘Twatface,’ and thick as pig shit. He has used terms for women that include ‘bitch,’ ‘little bitch,’ ‘honey‘, and, it seems, ‘screaming harpies.’ Articles such as Women on Contraceptive Pill Should Pay $1,500 a year More Tax rub along with the Chinese-focused “Do all the Yellow Perils look the same?,” and a short piece on mainstream politicians entitled “Well, I agree that we should hang them all,” after a UKIP politician recommended that British voters are traitors and that mainstream politicians should be ‘hung from the neck until dead.’ (There’s lots of hanging, it seems: here, or here, just from the last few days.) He writes ‘Fuck Off’ in his headlines. He seems to loathe “idiot fucking bureaucrats” (who, again, should be hanged).

He would abolish the United Nations. He has called current concerns about inequality “a massive whingefest by those who look down upon their intellectual inferiors but find that they then get outbid by them them for the finer things in life.” He seems to be a big fan of mucky tax havens, and an opponent of corporate financial transparency.

You might also take a look at this unpleasant episode. Or consider this charming Worstall headline: “Wog. Spastic. Queer. Nigger. Dwarf. Cripple. Fatty. Gimp. Paki. Mick. Mong. Poof. Coon. Gyppo.”"

[Bob]

"Is he “the head of the international scandium oligopoly?”
He seems to claim he is exactly that. His Low Hanging Fruit Company B.V. calls itself “the world’s only specialists in the scandium market.” (It’s possible he’s boasting: others vaguely in the market include Stanford Materials Co, Alfa Aesar, Atlantic Equipment Engineers (a division of Micron Metals Inc), Goodfellow Corp, Rhone-Poulenc Inc, GFS Chemicals Inc, All-Chemie Ltd, Cerac Inc, alongside Hydro, Alcoa and Pechiney).

He has warned others off this terrain: draw your conclusions from that article.

Either way, it seems he is – whether falsely boasting of being the head of a global oligopoly, or actually being one – comfortable with the idea of skimming excess profits from markets through concentration of market power. The general practice of extracting excess profits through oligopoly is one form of what is known as rent-seeking, and Worstall himself agrees with Adam Smith’s old wisdom that taxing rents of this kind is “a very good thing”. And yet, curiously, he is a vicious opponent of taxation of corporations, capital gains, and wealth in general. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?"

[Anarcho]

"As I've said, it is we Marxists who are the true libertarians."

So, now Marxists are going to steal the word "Libertarian" from the people who first coined it, the anarchists?

See: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/150-years-of-libertarian

Anarchists have been exposing the authoritarianism of the so-called right "libertarians" for some time, indeed it was born as a critique of classical liberalism:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/few-thoughts-anarchism

In terms of Marxism, sure there are a few libertarian Marxists (the likes of Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick) but mainstream Marxism is pretty far from libertarian ideas. It supports state control, not workers control, as well as centralisation rather than federalism.

Anyways, section H of "An Anarchist FAQ" (http://www.anarchistfaq.org) critiques Marxism and section F critiques "anarcho"-capitalism and propertarianism (a better word for right "libertarians") from from a libertarian perspective.

[Jackart]

Most people don't want freedom. They want a better boss. Is it reasonable to only care about the freedom of those who actually want it? You want freedom from such petty humiliations? You'll pay for it lower wages (for non-wage costs are costs), and more time spent unemployed (making it harder to fire makes it harder to hire). Personally, I've sacrificed enormous earning potential for self-employment, in part because I cannot stand the petty humiliations and hypocrisies of corporate life.