Would be interested to hear your thoughts on competing individual rights inside a capitalist society. More specifically the company owners right to make a profit versus the employees right to make a salary. Interested to know your opinions on why the employers rights supersede those of the employee.
I think you're confusing "rights" and "freedom to persue".
Capitalism is about free trade and voluntary exchange (of whatever); "right to profit" and "right to salary" sound both horrible and rather anti-capitalistic.
Actually agree with you that maybe I shouldn't have gone for capitalism to get my point across. But then again aren't you confusing the concepts of "free market economy" and capitalism with the former just being one possible form of the latter. Another possible form being a "social market" which should allow for some kind of state intervention on a lot of the issues being raised here.
PS A genuine thank you for engaging in discussion as opposed to hit and run downvoting
Among other things: it puts your entire staff in a short-term thinking mode.
If I'm walking into work every day wondering if my door badge is going to work that day (one of the psychologically damaging aspects, IMO, of door badges -- I've had co-workers comment "well, I've still got a job" as they walk into the office) based on the capriciousness of a boss (some of whom are very capricious), well, I'm not going to be focusing particularly on the long-term elements of my position. In fact, I'm going to be spending a fair bit of time looking at alternatives and networking.
In ecology, the growth you get in an environment that's continuously disturbed and disrupted is best described as "weedy". There may be vegetation (and even some animal life), it's not going to be particularly productive. What you're getting is lifeforms that are selected for survival capacity, not, say, wood or food production, or even necessarily stability.
Nial Fergusson, though frequently not the best guide, does point this out in his Ascent of Money, noting that one of the requirements for successful and productive economic activity is stability. This applies equally to firms and individuals. Many of the structures we've adopted (debt, savings, finance, subsidized mortgages, various "golden handcuffs") exist either to buffer change or incentivise stability.
Kicking (or threatening to kick out) the legs from under someone isn't that.
Unfortunately, there's also been a lot of cargo-culting built around this: people in the U.S. who bought houses to ensure personal financial stability .... because buying houses is what financially stable do. Unfortunately, that's confounding cause and effect. You buy a house when you've got an assurance of lifetime (or at least long-term) employment, in part to help cement you with that employer. Similarly, establishing large lines of credit (or revolving debt): useful when you've got a reliable, if perhaps fluctuating, income stream to meet those debts.
Anti-discrimination measures, seniority rules, tenure, unions, labor review boards, and the like, all seek to change the power balance of the employer/employee relationship. Which, for any employer with n>1 employees, is greatly skewed in the employer's favor. While this may make for an economic climate which doesn't expand as quickly, it may also make for one that's more stable in a downside movement. Looking at economic growth between the US and established (e.g.: not modernizing, BRIC nations) economies, particularly in Europe and Japan, might be instructive (I haven't done the analysis). However northern Europe (particularly Scandinavian countries) have done quite well over the past 20 years or more.
If your landscape is rapidly shifting and/or doesn't sustain the level of existence you're trying to establish, you're going to want to move elsewhere (physically or figuratively), reduce your needs, or strengthen your foundations.
As to Mr. Andor's statements concerning his employment growth plans and policies:
1. He could move his business to a more hospitable environment.
2. He could find himself competing (successfully or otherwise) with those having different policies. This is "letting the market sort it out".
3. He could petition his government for changes in law and/or practice that better suit his business goals.
I'm not sympathetic to the arguments he provides, and suspect that he'll find that he's greatly limiting his enterprise's growth prospects by foregoing any possible payroll expansion.
Please see my response to kiba, below. I'll reiterate, though - it's a personal view, and I'm no economist, so please take it with several grains of salt :)
