I wrote once long ago about how the Civil War was not really fought for the noble ideal of ending slavery, but because slavery was anathema to capitalism because it does not give the elites the same measure of pressure to control costs such as labor.

In the last week or so there have been lots of outcries about the rise of unpaid internships. It’s not surprising that when allowed to, businesses will stoop to not actually paying people for their work. These are the same members of society that brought us child labor, sweatshops, and the romantic lifestyle of the migrant farm workers, after all. The only difference is that unpaid interns tend to come from white, educated, middle class backgrounds. OMG we can’t exploit the young white people! That’s criminal.

But it was always going to come to this.

First, let’s start with some basics. Economists (some, most even) and Libertarians will tell you that the job market is a market just like any other and there should be no restrictions on it because restrictions interfere with competition and the invisible hand. Employees and employers are considered equal in their negotiations.

If you don’t like your job, you can find another job.

But anyone who has ever worked knows that’s not how it really works.

Despite whatever its mission statement might say, all businesses have one, single, solitary function. To make profit.

First you have to sell something. You have to make something that people want to buy, you have to price it at a price people will pay, and your costs for making a thing have to be less than the price people will buy it at. You will probably have investors, or even stockholders who have put up their own money for your business in exchange for getting a piece of the profit.

Now this might all be fine if there wasn’t massive constant pressure to increase profit. The shareholders want a bigger return on their investment, the CEO wants a bigger bonus payout. That screaming man on that money show will insult your company if it’s not growing profit margins enough

So things must be done. Companies are always looking for ways to maximize sales and minimize costs

And negotiations between employee and employer end up looking more like this

And since companies compete with each other, not just for customers but for stockholders, all companies eventually end up in the evil labor eating blob phase, unless there is another force at work to keep all companies from becoming sweatshops.

But unions only work if companies can’t do seedy shit to stop them. For that we need yet another external force

Government can do things like set minimum wages, create 40 hour weeks, mandate overtime pay and work safety standards. But they don’t do any of this unless they have pressure put on them, by say a large group of organized individuals who have people who can lobby for them. Like a union. Government can also set rules for the establishment of unions and make it so that companies can’t go around breaking the legs of striking workers.

But……..

So with neither the government nor unions working to keep companies from doing everything they can to screw the workers to maximize profit, unpaid interns are inevitable. You can’t go lower than zero on labor costs. Well yes you could. If companies start thinking that they would like to take a chunk out of the expensive college ed market by telling prospective students “You don’t need to go to that fancy school for 4 years, come do an apprenticeship here. We’ll only charge you half the tuition the university will, plus we’ll throw in valuable on-the-job experience. Can your uni offer you that?”

(Shit, should not have typed that. Somewhere there is a CEO coming up with fee-based apprenticeships right now)

One of the fundamental principles of economics is this: People are rational actors.

What that means is that we all are always using what information we have to act in our own best interests. And that’s true. Rush Limbagh shouts the douchebaggery from the rooftops because he is paid enormous amounts of money to do so. People put off going to the dentist because it costs enormous amounts to do so. People work at crappy jobs they hate because otherwise they would live in the park. We choose food and shelter over medicine because we may be able to skip a few days of our drugs, but skipping a few days of food costs more right now.

Here’s where it gets progressive: ALL people, regardless of race or income or social status, ALL people are rational actors. Poor teenage girls getting pregnant and becoming mothers, not actually an irrational choice if you have their information and life experience. Their own mothers are likely to die younger and are more likely to offer support to a young pregnant daughter than an older one. Also motherhood is a reasonable excuse to skip out on the more dangerous actions available to youths. It’s not uncommon for a teenage mom to say that becoming a mother “saved her”. Because of poverty, their prospects for college and high paying jobs are diminished, it doesn’t make much difference if you’re looking at a life of $8 an hour retail jobs if you have a child now or later career-wise, but now you have a mom who is both sympathetic and alive. 10 years from now you might not. That’s pretty rational.

LBGT- rational actors. Considering all the pressure, including threats and acts of violence, family ostracism, social ostracism, etc. if they could be another way, many probably would. And many try, if they didn’t then there wouldn’t be programs to pray the gay away. So coming out (or not coming out) is a rational act. Coming out means that the costs of a life in the closet are higher than the costs of a life lived openly. Reverse that for staying in the closet.

Even drug addiction can be looked at as a rational choice (I know, I know). To the person with the addiction, whatever internal pain has driven them to drug use is a more pressing matter than the fact that they are ruining their lives and destroying their bodies.

Teabaggers fighting on the wrong side of the healthcare debate- not actually an irrational decision (I know, I know). They are middle class white men for the most part. They are seeing their little sliver of advantage (the cough synonym for privilege in economics) stripped away through anti-sexist and anti-racist measures. They are seeing competition increase for resources they used to fully enjoy, and they have never developed the skills to compete fairly. They are not wrong that they are going to be losing something in this fight, but the information they don’t have (and that neither major party is willing to give them) is that they will make gains too. Take the five biggest issues in the life of a married, middle class parent: 1) healthcare, 2) retirement money 3) paying for the kids’ educations 4) job security 5) housing. All of these things have viable, universal solutions with progressives, but these men’s experience is someone always has to come out on bottom, and after centuries of unearned privilege, they are terrified that they are going to be the ones to take the fall. In essence, they are afraid we are going to do to them what they have done to us. Not an irrational belief.

I use this principle of people as rational actors to judge information I receive (ha! that’s meta). This is why I get down on the virtuous foodies and the meddling middling middles so much. Both of these groups (and there is massive overlap between them) believes or acts as if only certain types of people are rational. People like them, who only eat organic and did everything “right” by going to college and waiting to have children until they were financially established and married and getting all the preventative medical and dental care available to them. They cannot get out of their own privilege bubble long enough to see that poor people are acting rationally, based on what is available to them. And that is utter fucking bullshit.

I also use this principle to do a little extra work and figure out why someone might act in the polar opposite way that I would (see teabagger description). It also means that I give people credit for figuring out their own lives, and I don’t make excuses for the bad behavior of those who govern us. If they are misusing their power (anti-abortion executive order, thankyouverymuch) it is because it is in their own best interest. And since their job is to act in OUR best interest, it is a purely rational act for us to not let them keep their jobs when they fail at it.

There’s one more reason to believe in the all people are rational actors principle. If you think otherwise, if you think people are irrational or even that some people are irrational, then you can’t believe in democracy. The only solution in an irrational society is some form of totalitarianism, a single person or group or class or even trade group (health insurance parasites)having all the power over the the irrational hordes. And you need to hope that person’s (or group’s) self interest benefits yours. Otherwise you are just another dissenter, another irrational miscreant, who can’t see the hope and change and promise of the the big man in charge.

First- are you all enjoying the quick and dirty primers? I’m not getting a ton of comments on them but I do like writing them.

Feedback peeps, Mama needs feedback.