What if Facebook Was Regulated Like the Job Market?

Imagine, for a moment, that you were no longer free to choose who to add and who to keep on your Facebook friend list.

Let's say that "contents" of your friend list were mandated by law.

What kind of an effect would this have on your behaviour when it comes to choosing who to add to your friends list?

Let's take an example. Say, whenever you added someone to your list of friends, you were mandated to "like" X amount of their posts per day. No matter what he or she posts, no matter the value he or she does or doesn't add to your Facebook experience, you would be forced to give them an X amount of likes to their postings per day. No doubt this would make you think twice, three or even four times about adding someone to your friends list, even if the person seemed interesting on the surface. You would need to take into account that that person could end up decreasing the value of your Facebook feed, instead of adding to it.

Now let's say that after adding someone, you come to the realization that he is not worth the added trouble of liking a set amount of their posts per day, since you don't really like what he posts, they may even be against your particular philosophies.

What if it was also mandated that it would be illegal for you to just delete someone outright. It would be deemed unfair, so you would have to give them a month long "notice period" after deciding to delete them.

Now you would be stuck with someone you don't even like, forced to like a certain amount of his posts per day, which takes away you time and energy, generally making your experience lousier than it was prior to adding a new friend, who seemed interesting at the time.

You would no doubt think, not twice, three of four times, but rather at least five, six or seven times, before even considering adding someone. Even if your list of friends and their posts seemed mundane and monotonous, the risks of adding an unpleasent friend could easily outweigh the boredom cost by your existing friends list.

However, it wouldn't just be you who would suffer as a result. You could be missing out on some awesome new people to add to your social media circles, and they could be missing out on having you in theirs. Simply because a law would be added to intefere in the voluntary actions of two consenting adults.

The purpose of this analogy is to paint of a picture of how state mandated job market regulation can hurt both employers as well as employee-to-bes.

The more laws added to the hiring of workers, the higher the risks of hiring, and the higher and more obvious the potential rewards need to be in order for a deal to be met.

Just like in the Facebook analogy, in the real world, the more regulations like minimum wage are created, the harder it is for people to prove their worth to those looking for work force. You can think of it like this: someone with a top notch education, lots of work history, good references, coupled with excellent social skills are people with years worth of posts in public that you can check out before you make the decision of whether to click that "Add Friend" button - whereas a less skilled, less educated person, perhaps someone with less of a natural talent to sell themselves in job interviews would be the person with no public posts whatsoever.

With the aforementioned regulations added to the use of Facebook, which person would you add?

The important thing to note, however, is this: the guy who has posted everything in private could be the greatest, most intelligent, most-valuable-to-your-feed person ever - but he wouldn't be worth the risk.

Something to think about.