Smith does recognise that workers might organise to drive up the cost of labour, just as owners certainly do conspire to raise profits. He repeatedly, however, cites the existence of an imbalance of power in this apparently competitive relationship between owners and workers. Governments often legislate against trade unions, but rarely act to curb profiteering. We hear, he says, of every attempt to organise labour, but usually nothing of corporate conspiracy.
https://launchpad.net/~700-150-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-265-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-501-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-505-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-551-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-651-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-751-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-760-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-765-exam-dumps-pdf
https://launchpad.net/~700-905-exam-dumps-pdf
We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it.
Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this (natural) rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine, of their own accord, to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions, sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of.
Smith seems to link the concept of "natural" to transactions between individuals and organisations of only moderate size, ones that are capable of influencing only a minuscule fraction of the overall trade in a good. Perhaps the largest trading group of his time was the East India Company, but this organisation he usually associates with incompetence or conspiracy or both. The problem with this contemporary corporate giant was twofold: its monopolistic advantage and its proximity to political power. The company, indeed, was the de facto ruler of India and, over two hundred years before Amartya Sen suggested via the concept of entitlement, that famines can operate selectively and often in times of plenty, Smith suggested that famines in India were largely a result of maladministration driven primarily by greed.
The drought in Bengal, a few years ago, might probably have occasioned a very great dearth. Some improper regulations, some injudicious restraints, imposed by the servants of the East India Company upon the rice trade, contributed, perhaps, to turn that dearth into a famine...
famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniencies of a dearth...
In an extensive corn country, between all the different parts of which there is a free commerce and communication, the scarcity occasioned by the most unfavourable seasons can never be so great as to produce a famine; and the scantiest crop, if managed with frugality and economy, will maintain, through the year, the same number of people that are commonly fed in a more affluent manner by one of moderate plenty
No comments:
Post a Comment