Talk:Consumer sovereignty/Archives/2012

'Consumer sovereignty' does not refer to demand for labor

Last paragraph (below) of the article was deleted:

Does the doctrine of consumer sovereignty imply that the consumers of labor (the employers) are the sovereigns over the time supplied by workers? The neoclassical school, would argue no since workers can choose which employer to work for (as long as the employer will have them). Since the demand for labor is a derived demand what workers produce and how they do it is a direct result of the demand for products, and thus they are sovereigns, albeit at secondhand. Conversely, the Marxian school argues that the concentration of purchasing power in the hands of a small minority (the capitalists) means that the bourgeoisie is the sovereign in both product and labor markets. This is reinforced by the normal existence of the "reserve army of labor" which restricts workers' ability to choose between jobs.

In standard usage (e.g. Campbell R. McConnell and Brue, Economics, 14th ed, p. 68), 'consumer sovereignty' refers to demand by "consumers" of goods and services. "Consumers of labor" above as a synonym for employers is non-standard usage. So, the above violates Wikipedia:No original research in adapting consumer sovereignty to the demand for labor by employees. --Thomasmeeks 13:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

huh?

The term can prescribe what consumers should be permitted, or describe what consumers are permitted.

Eh? What does this mean? —Tamfang (talk) 07:27, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't really understand it either. So I added a quite understandable passage by Bastiat. --Xerographica (talk) 21:05, 18 November 2012 (UTC)