The Limits of Control

There is a story that goes back a millennium about how King Canute commanded that his throne be brought to the seashore where the king commanded the tide to halt so as not to wet his feet and robes, knowing full well commanding the elements was beyond his power:

“Might I stay the sun above us, good sir Bishop?” Canute cried;
“Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride?
If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide.

“Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?”
Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, “Land and sea, my lord, are thine.”
Canute turned towards the ocean–“Back!” he said, “thou foaming brine.

“From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat;
Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master’s seat:
Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!”

But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar,
And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore;
Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the king and courtiers bore.

And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay,
But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey:
And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day.
King Canute is dead and gone: Parasites exist alway.

I am frequently baffled that people don’t understand how limited government is. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone earned at least $30,000 per year? Sure it would but you can’t mandate it. If you did here’s what would happen:

• Some people would be better off
• Some people would lose their jobs
• Some businesses would go out of business and all of their erstwhile employees would lose their jobs
• Other businesses would invest in equipment to make it possible for them to get rid of more of their employees

or, as Amazon has recently learned, it would not only ensure that its employees earning less than $30,000 per year got that but it would make its employees who are already earning $30,000 per year unhappy that they were being paid at the same rate as people who used to earn less.

Or it might have the results that Jim Epstein points out at Reason.com—it might produce a black market:

“We used to do the same thing with 25 people, and now I’m doing it with two,” says Belinsky.

By making cheap labor illegal, the $15 minimum wage made it possible for Belinsky to downgrade his service. “Before if I go exterior, my competition would say, ‘ah, he went exterior and I’m still full-service so I’ll take all his customers,'” Belinsky says. “That never gave me a chance to go exterior. Now everybody is forced to go exterior because of this crazy law and the minimum wage $15 per hour. It evened out the field.”

“These workers have few options and little power, RWDSU President Stuart Applebaum said in his December 2014 speech. “They live in the shadows.”

The irony is that progressives have pushed the car wash workers further into the shadows.

The $15 minimum wage amounts to government prohibition of low-wage work. And yet just making something illegal won’t stop able-bodied men with few alternatives from meeting a market demand for their services.

Since many legitimate car washes can no longer hire them, workers are going to the streets, where it’s all cash, no tax, no unions, no workers comp, no insurance, and certainly no wage floors.

“The economy has led us to this situation to have to work washing cars in the street,” says Fausto, an illegal car wash worker who asked that we only use his first name. He’s part of a three-man operation washing cars on the curb out of a van for about $15 a pop.

We don’t need a $15 per hour minimum wage. We need more jobs that pay more than minimum wage and more workers who are capable of filling jobs that pay more than minimum wage. Some of that can be accomplished with training if the workers are trained in the right skills. But some of it means that we need to control immigration.