more unproductive progress in Mexico

Mexico's millions of street vendors have little to gain the new labor law the government has engineered to bring them in from the cold, Reuters reports.

Indeed, the news agency notes, the so-called market reforms seem little more than a transfer of rights from labor to manaement. The law, Reuters reports "aims to make work contracts more flexible by providing for trial periods for new employees and specifies that productivity, not seniority, should be the main criterion in assessing a worker's suitability for a new position. It also caps the amount of back-pay workers can receive after winning a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal."

This, of course, only makes life better for big businesses, but won't do anything to improve life for System D entrepreneurs.

Similarly, part of the proposal to allow hiring of part time workers for as little as an hour a day seems unlikely to be attractive to energized entrepreneurs. And another proposal that would liberate short-term hiring ignores the fact that many firms already hire temporary workers for cash under the table.

Mexico's leaders would do well to consult "El Progreso Improductivo" ("Unproductive Progress")., by the amazing essayist Gabriel Zaid. It's only been translated into English in fragments. But what fragments there are (courtesy of Ibsen Martinez) are amazing: introducing faith into the discussion of economic progress, and evaluating bribery as an economic system.