The workers are every bit as dependent on their employer for their profit, as the other way around.
Total bull flops. The employer can do all of the work himself and maybe make a small sum of money, or he can hire several people and make a great deal more. As long as he pays them a decent wage, the entire community benefits. But, if he pays them less than a decent wage, to the point that they cannot get ahead, and this has become the accepted practice in the community, the entire community may collapse because all of the wealth has been transferred to the hands of what few entrepreneurs survive. In the end, the entrepreneurs may even hold most of the community in a sort of peonage. It happens. Look at most of Latin America. Look at Alabama, for that matter. If theemployers are not paying a decent day's provisions, they soon come to cotrol al of the resources available, so that only a select few can do business at all. The worker has no option to just quit and start his own business.
Now the employer has no incentive to reward eve an outstanding worker, or even to produce a superior product because he will probably have gobbled up all of his competition and slammed the door in the face of any upstart who might challenge him. Forget Ayn Rand. There is nothing noble about greed and selfishness. Mankind is not meant to survive by beating down the weak and hoarding resources. The fossil record stands as witness to that. We succeded in the Darwinian sense by sharing and cooperating.
Paying those people from whose labor you wish to gain more material wealth less than they need to survive with any sort of dignity is short of being fully human.
There is no rational way to defend this principle in one direction only, without applying it equally in the other direction.
The entrepreneur is not entitled to prosper unless he is providing a service or product that is needed. He has "taken a risk." Well bloody good on him. That does not mean that we have to reward him in any way if the risk he took was that we would all love creamed Brussels sprouts.
He still owes a decent day's wages to the workers whose labor he committed to producing that gunk. They did not make the bone-headed decision that put the company into bankruptcy.
There will be other people to come along and run the packing plant to pack other foods that people actually want to eat when that fool throws in the towel and decides to go looking for a job digging ditches.
