----- Original Message ----- From: "Marvin Gandall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Capitalists and workers seek the best POSSIBLE price, but the best possible is, of course, not always the best. Your example of a capitalist who has a profit opportunity but foregoes it for no apparent reason is extraordinary, and defies the logic of capitalism - what do the shareholders think? Your example of workers wanting better pay and conditions but fearing employer reprisals and job loss in a union organizing drive is, alas, not all that unusual. ----- The transaction costs to shareholders in monitoring every sale by management to ensure they got the best possible price would be inordinate. Based on my experience, there's plenty of management shirking and collusion in shirking going on when it comes to pricing strategies. In my case re unionization it wasn't even a case of workers wanting better pay and some of us asserting that a union would be a beneficial strategy for achieving it; it was more a case that they didn't even care to find out that their real wage had declined over a period of 8 years. It was a matter of simple economic illiteracy combined with indifference to those who pointed it out to them. It took some horrible on the job tragedies to turn the situation around before worker-to-worker education could get into and out of first gear.
