Question
Does the existence of labor barter systems like "hour exchange" suggest that the minimum wage and other barriers to commerce are too high?
Answer
The minimum wage is not a barrier to commerce. It is a barrier to certain models of labor organization. Changing the specific number makes that model more or less competitive with respect to other models.
The minimum wage was never actually intended as a computation of some reasonable cost of living based on humanistic notions of dignity. It was an accounting unit designed for labor-capitalist negotiations, with the government having a seat at the table, representing accounting of social costs. It is mainly relevant to industrial relations models from the last century.
To see why this is true, you merely need to think about what happens when you raise a minimum wage: corporations employ fewer people in permanent jobs and shift work to contract project models or outsource/automate, leaving the government with the choice of either intervening in socialist ways (and effectively nationalizing companies by demanding minimum numbers of jobs, a far more potent lever than a minimum wage) or tweaking the welfare/unemployment policies.
Contrary to popular belief, depending on your business model and competitive environment, you can actually benefit, as a large corporation, from higher minimum wage requirements. A new, non-union company with a lot of automation and an educated employee base, competing with one that offers the same service with low-cost labor, would actually benefit from a higher minimum wage.
A minimum wage is less a "right" than a particular kind of policy knife used to divide up the national income. It cannot raise the national income except indirectly. Instituting a minimum wage in (say) India wouldn't miraculously make that country per-capita richer overnight or even unambiguously affect the Gini index for the better. It would merely change labor market dynamics drastically in complex and mostly unpredictable ways (to understand how unpredictable the system is, look at some of the work in system dynamics models of the labor economy). In other words, there is no unambiguous relationship between the minimum wage mechanism and either conservative/liberal political values. If you support the minimum wage because you believe in "human dignity" you are in for trouble as you navigate this complexity. A higher minimum wage may actually increase inequality, make the 1% more powerful, swell and strain the welfare system and increase the size of slums.
It is a better knife than some other mechanisms (like the "guaranteed employment for all" blunt instrument that some small countries practice and idiots in larger countries still swear by) and worse than others (If I were a pure left-liberal, which I am not, I'd probably trade minimum wage for portable nationalized healthcare, free universal college education and much higher inheritance and capital gains taxes in a heartbeat... it is surprising how little the left attacks the ability of the rich to pass on their wealth to spoiled Paris Hilton types... the trustafarian layer of society should be the primary target in any battle against income inequality, not the 1%).
In that sense, "minimum wage" is like the word "portion" in nutrition labels. It has precisely nothing to do with how much we eat or should eat. It has everything to do with various parties in the food industry lobbying for their share of the national stomach, using some convenient accounting unit.
The minimum wage was never actually intended as a computation of some reasonable cost of living based on humanistic notions of dignity. It was an accounting unit designed for labor-capitalist negotiations, with the government having a seat at the table, representing accounting of social costs. It is mainly relevant to industrial relations models from the last century.
To see why this is true, you merely need to think about what happens when you raise a minimum wage: corporations employ fewer people in permanent jobs and shift work to contract project models or outsource/automate, leaving the government with the choice of either intervening in socialist ways (and effectively nationalizing companies by demanding minimum numbers of jobs, a far more potent lever than a minimum wage) or tweaking the welfare/unemployment policies.
Contrary to popular belief, depending on your business model and competitive environment, you can actually benefit, as a large corporation, from higher minimum wage requirements. A new, non-union company with a lot of automation and an educated employee base, competing with one that offers the same service with low-cost labor, would actually benefit from a higher minimum wage.
A minimum wage is less a "right" than a particular kind of policy knife used to divide up the national income. It cannot raise the national income except indirectly. Instituting a minimum wage in (say) India wouldn't miraculously make that country per-capita richer overnight or even unambiguously affect the Gini index for the better. It would merely change labor market dynamics drastically in complex and mostly unpredictable ways (to understand how unpredictable the system is, look at some of the work in system dynamics models of the labor economy). In other words, there is no unambiguous relationship between the minimum wage mechanism and either conservative/liberal political values. If you support the minimum wage because you believe in "human dignity" you are in for trouble as you navigate this complexity. A higher minimum wage may actually increase inequality, make the 1% more powerful, swell and strain the welfare system and increase the size of slums.
It is a better knife than some other mechanisms (like the "guaranteed employment for all" blunt instrument that some small countries practice and idiots in larger countries still swear by) and worse than others (If I were a pure left-liberal, which I am not, I'd probably trade minimum wage for portable nationalized healthcare, free universal college education and much higher inheritance and capital gains taxes in a heartbeat... it is surprising how little the left attacks the ability of the rich to pass on their wealth to spoiled Paris Hilton types... the trustafarian layer of society should be the primary target in any battle against income inequality, not the 1%).
In that sense, "minimum wage" is like the word "portion" in nutrition labels. It has precisely nothing to do with how much we eat or should eat. It has everything to do with various parties in the food industry lobbying for their share of the national stomach, using some convenient accounting unit.