Why is it that during the industrial revolution, with the free market, workers were treated badly and things improved when government imposed safety standards?
Supply versus demand. Lots of available workers (the higher populations variously because of improved survival rates of children due to less disease and improved food supplies, and then often combined with an influx of huge numbers of immigrants). So if/when someone quit (or moved on to a better job), there were ready replacements at hand.
One sees similar things happening today with the influx of large numbers of "undocumented workers" -- since the people/companies that employ them are already violating (one or more) laws in hiring them, those same people/companies are NOT exactly all that concerned about complying with the more inane "regulations" etc... and they have little fear of their employees doing anything about it because the employees now live in near constant fear of being identified and/or deported. (And the "crackdown" on illegal immigration really only serves to INCREASE the power of those employers who are NOT caught and prosecuted).
I think things would have improved by themselves through other jobs offering better accommodations.
Given enough time, yes. Indeed for most situations (bar an influx of hordes of new "naive & needy" immigrants) as the businesses themselves became more successful and needed to expand (and attract MORE workers), then working conditions WERE (in general) improving. Not in all cases, certainly, but overall yes the expanded market would have resolved this (per example see China... abhorrent conditions in virtually ALL factories a decade ago, but as the number of factories grew, and the "supply" of labor began to tighten, the situation substantially improved (at least in a significant number of factories in the main cities -- and this mainly BECAUSE of the market -- and quite regardless of the {noble, but relatively ineffective} efforts of various "humanitarian" groups.
I know that the government regulation hurt the economy. Was it worth it or am I missing something?
Well, in a sense, MUCH of the original problem was government FAILING to fairly and objectively administer existing laws.
For example, in situations where employees worked but grew deeper into debt to "the company store" -- the courts were often to blame by being a corrupt vehicle that allowed companies to "enforce" contracts with violence, and/or aided and abetted those same companies by ignoring existing usury laws, limitations on what constituted a valid contract, whether the employee "signing" such a contract was even ABLE to read and understand that contract {frequently recent immigrants didn't have ANY command of English, couldn't read, yet no translators or impartial witnesses were available, etc.} -- so the contracts were NOT truly "freely" entered into, and an interrogation and examination of the circumstances surrounding such contracts should have given them at least "questionable" status of validity (the same could be said of many MODERN contracts as well).
If you look at it from THAT point of view -- adding MORE rules and regulations was really a method of attempting to "get around" the problem without dealing with the root cause, a corrupt police and justice system (both civil AND criminal) which turned a blind eye in general in favor of the businesses.
And since the root cause of the problems was thus never really dealt with, the implementation of additional regulations also required a whole slew of new (and extra-constitutional) oversight and "dispute resolution" systems... which themselves would then (eventually) become subject to the same (and additional) potential corruptions and abuses. (Witness the recent problems with MINING industry... the regulations are disregarded, or otherwise "worked around" in part because of corruption, in part because workers themselves find many of them inhibiting to their own job performance, etc.)
Was the addition of multiple new layers of regulation worth it?
The downside of course, is the "unseen and unintended consequence" (cf the works of Frederic Bastiat, et al) in that the many people who were MORE "ethical" and LESS likely to enter into the corruptions and abuses (and thus NOT in need of the regulations at all) -- were (because of the burden of additional regulation, and the risk of additional exposure to losses at the hands of so many bureaucratic "systems") -- essentially driven off and DEmotivated from entering into competition with existing businesses in those "regulated industries" abandoning them to people who knew how to "play the games." In short, more regulation tends to lead to more corruption rather than less, if only because of the increased number of opportunities for it.
Hopefully without sounding TOO darn glib, I believe myself to be an excellent example of our society's LOSS in this regard.
I have started and run several successful small businesses, my first "real company" was begun in 8th grade -- literally manufacturing of unique tools, albeit on a small scale, and selling via mail-order. And later I ran another (publication & consulting agency) business that had a half dozen employees and additional part-time contract people. I shut that down (and suffered somewhat of a loss) rather than endure MORE risk trying to grow it -- in significant part because dealing with all of the paperwork (the various FICA; FUTA; State UC; liability insurance; office, asset & inventory taxes, and host of other onerous regulations and other encumbrances) became to my mind just SO darn burdensome that it was NOT worth the bother.
Unless the "business environment" changes substantially (or I move to some country with substantially LESS onerous regulations) then I am very UNLIKELY to ever run such a sizable operation again, much less an even larger concern (not if I can help it, anyway).
Yet I always have been (and continue to be) a HIGHLY ethical person. (I have often thought that were I significantly LESS ethical, then I probably would have found the regs and such to be much LESS burdensome, many businesspeople I know just run "under the radar" and ignore a lot of it... if/when they are even aware they are doing so.)
But since I really don't care to become "super-rich" I find that running a "bigger" operation is actually unnecessary -- and instead I choose to do LESS work, am selective in what I do work on, mainly work alone, and in general try to run as "simple" a business as possible, and to stay "comfortable" rather than trying to create business and manufacturing with lots of employees; thus I am able to "avoid" becoming entangled in just about everything other than small accounting and tax issues.
The economy thus loses not only a good and "ethical" employer, but also the additional "growth" in GDP that would result from my supervising others in the creation of more extensive products and/or services. (In a sense, I am {albeit independently} somewhat of a "John Galt Striker" RE Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged -- or to use another metaphor, like
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I have essentially mastered "flight" but keep the majority of the benefits mostly to myself, rather than trying to force them on an entirely unappreciative flock of "scrapping" seagulls.)
And I really, SERIOUSLY, do NOT think that I am all that *rare* or exceptional of a person; but rather I believe that this country contains thousands, and perhaps substantially several order of magnitude MORE people who, just like me, choose to "limit" their involvement in the economy, thus robbing us all of their potential but therefore "unseen" innovations and gains.
