by robtherobber | 2026-02-26 18:59:32+00:00
This shifts the discussion elsewhere, but I'm happy to address the points you raised.

> [regulations] appeared because voters want low taxes and they want subsidies

Says who? If we move beyond opinion here, do we have something more to inform this conclusion? And how exactly do we connect the two here? - without more information it's a non sequitur situation.

I suggest that there are two separate things to look at here and we should not conflate them: tax politics (how states fund support) and labour law history (why employment protections exist).

On the first point, the claim that regulations appeared because voters want low taxes is wholly unsupported. It wouldn't make much sense either: regulations of all kinds existed long before democracy was a thing, as a general rule.

If we look at regulations pertaining to work in particular, labour law exists because the employment relationship has a built-in power imbalance and requires worker protection. It's really as straightforward as that. The ILO's Employment Relationship Recommendation [0] states explicitly that labour law seeks, among other things, to address "an unequal bargaining position" between parties, and it also notes problems caused when contractual arrangements deprive workers of protections or disguise the real employment relationship. It also says that national policy should clarify and adapt laws to guarantee effective protection and combat disguised employment relationships.

In fact, the ILO Constitution itself from 1919 says labour conditions involved "injustice, hardship and privation" on a scale that threatened social peace, and that improvement was urgently required through measures such as regulating hours, unemployment prevention, wage adequacy, protection against sickness/injury, protection of children, and freedom of association. That is a direct historical explanation of why labour regulation was institutionalised internationally.

Then you have the Treaty of Versailles [2] (the labour provisions) which explicitly state that labour should not be treated merely as a commodity, and list urgent principles including freedom of association and wages sufficient for a reasonable standard of life.

But the history of labour regulations is actually old, if you're into that. [3][4][5]

So let's put to rest the completely unfounded assumption that this is a tax-politics explanation and not a social-protection and industrial-order explanation.

> It makes no sense to hold businesses (and buyers in general) responsible for a seller's well being. That should be the role of the government, who has the power to tax.

Again, you misstate what labour regulation is for. Labour law does not generally make firms responsible for a worker's entire "wellbeing" in the abstract. It sets minimum rules inside a specific relationship the firm controls: wages, hours, safety, dismissal, status, notice, and similar conditions. The ILO framework is explicit that labour law exists because employment relationships involve unequal bargaining power and because protections are linked to the existence of that relationship, including where firms try to structure or disguise arrangements to avoid obligations. [0] Otherwise employment would pretty much be a form of slavery; favoured by employers, for sure, but an altogether shitty deal for the employees.

It is also historically (and morally, if you ask me) wrong to reduce this to tax-and-welfare politics. The foundational international labour-law texts explain the emergence of labour regulation in terms of "injustice, hardship and privation," social instability, and the need for social justice, so not as a response to voter demand for low taxes. The ILO Constitution and related early labour principles are very clear on this. [6]

> Holding businesses responsible is convenient for government leaders and the well connected, who can get away with corruption and the government leaders who can point fingers at others.

This is simply no evidence to support this. It's a simplistic comment about political incentives, not a demonstrated explanation of why labour rules exist, why they are wrong etc. Corruption can exist in any regulatory domain, but that does not establish that employer duties are conceptually invalid. At best, we could frame it as an argument about enforcement quality and governance integrity, but it wouldn't refute the underlying rationale for labour standards (power imbalance and prevention of harm in employment relationships).

I'll stop here, because I need my dinner.

[0] https://wecglobal.org/uploads/2019/07/2006_ILO_Recommendatio...

[1] https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/ILO%20Consti...

[2] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/partxiii.asp

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_labour_law

[4] https://law.exeter.ac.uk/v8media/facultysites/hass/law/hamly...

[5] https://formsoflabour.exeter.ac.uk/conference/levels-of-labo...

[6] https://www.ilo.org/resource/other/ilo-constitution