First of all great video I loved it. I thought I’d just throw in an example of what you were saying.

Remember the construction of railroads way, way back before there really was a state, let alone any involvement in the economy. People were paid poorly to build railroads for companies. The really bad part about building railroads was planting explosives in tunnels. Back then it was just a single man holding a bottle of nitro-glycerine. Nitro-glycerine is very unstable, especially back then before its use had been refined. Half of all people who planted these bottles for demolition were killed because it was so unstable.

Obviously no one was enthused about taking up this job. So logically the market dictates that you pay whatever is necessary to get someone to do the job right? That’s the “law” of supply and demand. And it’s absolutely as simple as that, there are no other factors that could possibly be involved. All supply and demand in real life exists in a vacuum and doesn’t interact with anything.

But the businessmen in charge of this didn’t offer more money, in fact they offered less to Chinese migrants they brought over just to do this job. Did Chinese labourers feel that their lives were worth less than Canadian workers? No, the poverty of their situation compelled to take a job wherever they could.

So really supply and demand didn’t work out like it does in the econ 101 textbook. In real life, capitalists took advantage of desperate poverty in another market. This is how labour supply and demand works in real life.