The scarce resource in a society is labor limited by its ability to coordinate (specifically, calling for the expenditure of time and effort on communication, computation, and control), which must be diverted from primary production either to maintain coordinated group activity, or to provide the institutional services supporting decentralized trade.
Worldwide there are also 215 million children aged 5-17 years old involved in child labor, limiting their time in school (if they are attending school at all).
More broadly, is the purpose of organized labor limited, confined to checking off a list of old demands without venturing beyond, or is the struggle for a freer and more pleasant life ongoing?
Halloween is a form of entrepreneurial training, and to confiscate the fruits of their labor without limit is predatory.
I've often wondered why some of the companies that best exemplify aesthetic coherence are Scandinavian, whether it's at least partly because their high labor costs limit their ability to compete on price.
Liberals and union members considered it a "slave-labor bill" because it included numerous punitive amendments to the Wagner Act that have continued to hamstring the labor movement, limit democracy on the job and ensure Americans have to work longer hours for less pay than anyone else in the Western world.
In Wisconsin, where Republicans took hold of state government years ago though the populace remained somewhat split politically, the political leaders have done the opposite — pressing forward with a conservative agenda that has included hard-fought measures to reduce labor power, limit abortions and add restrictions on voting that disproportionately affect Democratic constituencies.
China's ambitions have become election issues in countries from Pakistan to Indonesia; a newly elected Malaysian government went so far as to put Chinese projects worth $22 billion on hold in 2018 because of concern about loan conditions and the use of Chinese labor that limit benefits to the local economy.
Even agitation to ban child labor and limit female employment was motivated in part by a desire to temper the pervasiveness of unemployment by curtailing the pool of available labor.
Numerous politicians of the Workers Partyy were arrested by the government in the subsequent backlash, but a wave of industrial legislation, including reforms to ban child labor and limit working hours, were introduced in the aftermath of the strike.
