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The Demand for ‘Guard Labour’: Another Explanation
Author(s) -
Geloso Vincent,
Kufenko Vadim
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
economic affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1468-0270
pISSN - 0265-0665
DOI - 10.1111/ecaf.12254
Subject(s) - guard (computer science) , argument (complex analysis) , inequality , government (linguistics) , law and economics , economics , labour economics , business , political economy , computer science , mathematical analysis , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , programming language
We consider the argument that inequality drives society to expend more resources on supervision, which imposes an extra cost on doing business – an argument advanced notably by Samuel Bowles, who framed it as a coordination failure. We propose an alternative, though not mutually exclusive, explanation in the form of government failure. We argue that the efforts of government to prohibit drugs leads to increases in violence and policing failure, which in turn force private actors to deploy resources to supervise workers and protect themselves. Our explanation complements and moderates the argument regarding the link between inequality and ‘guard labour’.