We would probably have much higher unemployment and slower-moving industries, and might no longer be the economic powerhouse of the world.

When it's simple and easy to fire people, companies are a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee, and willing to hire a lot and grow fast knowing in both cases they can fire easily if needed.

I find it sad that so many people never think about the second and third-order consequences of what sounds like feel-good policies. They often end up being a net-negative for the people they were intended to help.

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aDyslecticCrow 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I strongly disagree. If they're is such a massive difference we would see alot less globally competetive European companies.

> a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee.

Just proof hire them for 6 months to a year.

Your argument doesn't hold for someone that has worked for 10 years. If they were a bad hire; it's on you at that point.

But the improvements are plenty;

- Easier planning life and reduce work anxiety for employees.

- It encurrage companies to invest and train their existing employees since they're hard to get rid off.

- It makes employees less scared to speak up or discuss problems.

- It makes companies more cautious about reckless hiring if they're not sure about their economics.

- Allows older workers to remain productive for longer, reducing the burden on the pension or unemployment system from people 55+ having a hard time finding new work for few years before retirement.

Finally, i must ask what the societal purpose of jobs and companies are. From a pure "numbers go up", there is a cost to worker protection. But id argue the society as a whole benefit much more from it than having a multinational IT company on the stock market. There is a balance to these things ofourse, but dismissing it outright is not fair.

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ufmace 3 days ago | parent [-]

You're welcome to disagree, I don't mind some competition.

> Just proof hire them for 6 months to a year.

As is common with most quickly tossed out "tiny fixes" to Socialist policies of excessive regulation, this makes the whole thing more complex and doesn't really solve the full problem for either workers or companies the way true free markets do. The only real "just" is just stop meddling with what everyone else does, let workers quit and companies fire whenever they want to.

> Your argument doesn't hold for someone that has worked for 10 years. If they were a bad hire; it's on you at that point.

Yes it does. It's not necessarily only that they're a bad hire. They could have the wrong skills or temperament or something for where the company needs to go, or the company could need to shut down a whole department or something. I don't know, the world has infinite complexity and possibility. I'm not smart enough to come up with everything anyone could ever want to do, and frankly, neither are you or anyone else.

> Easier planning life and reduce work anxiety for employees.

That sounds like a personal problem. I don't care to reshape national policy to cater to someone's alleged anxiety.

> It encourage companies to invest and train their existing employees since they're hard to get rid off.

Eh maybe, but many companies still do that now because good people are still hard to find. That's the better and more reliable way to do all of these things.

> It makes employees less scared to speak up or discuss problems.

Plenty already do that, I don't think it's much of a point. It's not really proven any more than the counter-statement that it makes employees more willing to slack off.

> It makes companies more cautious about reckless hiring if they're not sure about their economics.

That's exactly my point. I think it's good to let them "recklessly" hire if they think they can afford it. Some will get things right and grow huge, other will fail and those workers will be able to find new jobs more easily.

> Allows older workers to remain productive for longer, reducing the burden on the pension or unemployment system from people 55+ having a hard time finding new work for few years before retirement.

"Allow" how? They can already do that fine. Many companies value the experience of older workers just fine without the Government forcing them to do things. And I'd rather they have a comfortable retirement already set up from a robust investment market, possibly with a 401k or something like that. I don't want them to be dependent on either one company or the Government.

And intentionally saving this for last along with the end:

> If they're is such a massive difference we would see alot less globally competetive European companies.

> Finally, i must ask what the societal purpose of jobs and companies are. From a pure "numbers go up", there is a cost to worker protection. But id argue the society as a whole benefit much more from it than having a multinational IT company on the stock market. There is a balance to these things ofourse, but dismissing it outright is not fair.

"much less competitive European companies" is exactly what I do see, and you are also arguing that that's a good thing. Europe seems to have very little in the way of invention or growth pretty much since WWII. They haven't invented much new, and most of what they have invented has been eclipsed by more aggressive and nimble American companies. The European economy is still mostly dominated by the same large companies mostly doing the same things they've always done, sometimes adopting new technology long after American companies led the way.

I'm not dismissing anything outright. I've carefully observed the results of both styles of economy and I prefer freer markets. I like helping lead the way towards creating awesome things thanks to everyone's free will. It's not always perfect, but the market usually fixes things faster and better than half-baked Government policies.

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aDyslecticCrow 2 days ago | parent [-]

I know this is quite a deep cultural difference between Europe and USA going back ... probably since the the industrial revolution. I dont even think we can compare numbers and expect the same outcome if the US implemented european worker laws.

One thing i am curious about though. Do you think worker unions are a good thing? Historically USA pioneered them, yet theyre nearly nonexistent today.

The reason i ask is, Sweden where I'm from, does not actually have a miminum wage, or much of any worker protection codified in law. Its a more open market than people (even swedes) really realize. Its just that a we have a 68% unionizaion rate of all workers, 2nd highest in the world. Its the unions that have established much of the worker protections.

> They haven't invented much new, and most of what they have invented has been eclipsed by more aggressive and nimble American companies.

I think this is rather difficult to measure. Certainly it looks that way for the tech sector in particular.

But europe also has a very high upstart per captia ratio. Its also there really common that small innovative european upstarts get bought up by international and American companies after passing 100-200 employees. We rarely see new giant corporations show up in europe before being absorbed.

Though i also think if any of the US FANG companies were based in europe they would be shattered by monopoly protection laws at a heartbeat. Our ideals about a good company is simply different.

	▲	ufmace 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, I suppose it is a deep cultural difference. My opinion on unions is mixed, I suppose. They may be necessary in some times, places, and industries to compel reasonable treatment of workers. If such things are necessary, they're probably better than government intervention due to being much closer to the actual workplace. Historically, they have been responsible for establishing some good practices as standard in the American workforce. But they also have their bad sides. They tend to encourage an excessively antagonistic relationship between workers and management, cause pay and promotions to depend only on seniority rather than skill and work ethic, make it impractical to terminate workers who are ridiculously lazy or toxic, force everyone to take the same benefits whether they want them or not, enforce ridiculous rules about who can do what when, and other such things. They probably deserve at least some of the blame for the fall from grace of American automobile manufacturing due to things like being unwilling to accept greater factory automation even if it may lead to fewer workers needed, thus making the whole company less competitive. I suppose in my ideal economy, I'd expect around 10-30% unionization, with the rest of the workers treated reasonably well due to a combination of market forces and threat of unionization. That's decently close to what we have in the US right now. I do find advocates of it in the US to be ridiculous at times. Like, okay maybe unions are necessary and beneficial sometimes, but I think software engineering is about the least in need of unionization of any career in the modern world. But still some people seem to be obsessed with the idea of it. Anti-monopoly regulation seems to be a mixed bag to me too, particularly in today's economy. Only 20-25 years ago, Microsoft was the big bad monster company, enough so that the US Government did start to look at using monopoly regulation against them a little bit. But the internet world and Google took the wind out of their sails better and faster than the Government could, and I think the tech world is better for it. FANG occupy similar economic space now, and I think it's likely that changing technology and market forces will again do a better job of knocking them back down a peg than the Government would. Europe certainly doesn't lack smart and ambitious people, but I think those attitudes of who is allowed to be "on top" in society and what a good company looks like holds them back. That's a legitimate tradeoff that the people of Europe are free to make of course, but I disagree that it's the ideal way to organize a society.

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jbs789 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a valid point. As with anything there is balance. Consider the value of being able to plan some aspect of one's life. This generally goes up as one gets older and is responsible for others.