Agree. The central idea behind capitalism is a hard logical division between employment and ownership, so it's almost tautological to say that workplaces are small tyrannies- but it's good to see someone say it. I mean, I think the real issue with our democracy might be that we've never experienced it on a personal level, so we don't really understand how government by the people is even supposed to work. Our day to day experience is authoritarianism, so that's what we project on a national level.
I have the same thoughts every July 4th. I ask myself 'what exactly am I celebrating here?' Our rights and freedoms seem heavily curtailed and most people have to work and are wage slaves in service of their debts.
I am debt-free, but have not yet managed to extract myself from this system. Health insurance is a big reason why.
Also, there are few part-time jobs that pay anything and although I have been attempting a career downshift, I can't find decent paying work. It's either I kill my body as a software developer and make decent money but work way too much, or I go be a $10/hr schmuck checkout clerk, I guess. I need that in between thing...but it's not there...on purpose.
> It's either I kill my body as a software developer and make decent money but work way too much
If you are a half decent developer, there are tonnes of good paying software jobs with decent hours, it's probably one of the easiest high paying jobs in the world...
I think what you are celebrating on July 4 is that you have free speech, and are in such a good position that you are actually trying to downscale your career from one of the best careers in the world.
I agree overall, but I would say that in terms of your work killing your body, software dev is clearly much less destructive than, say, working in construction. But likely anything you do nonstop for hours on end is going to exact a toll. I am interested in what you think the purpose of the our system is - social control? Simple snatch-and-grab by the 1% ?
The article mentions that the industrial revolution has made it too difficult for small business to compete with large companies.
To solve that problem, let's eliminate all taxes for everyone making less than $100k. No income tax, no payroll tax, no property tax, no sales tax, no...
I personally am drawn to this idea. $100k seems arbitrary though. I would like to see it adjusted for the COL of an average American family. Would you happen to have any reading material or studies related to this tax scheme?
I don't see it that way at all. Trump is not responsible for what has taken place here, as fun as it is to blame him. I see him as someone who is trying to undo a lot of the problems and fix them but he has no support from either the Democrats or the Republicans because both sides are vested in continuing the slave plantation that we have here in service of the ultra .01%. In Trump, we have a guy who is part of the system who has rebelled from it because he no longer could live with what he saw it doing and what he knwos it to be. He deserves a little bit of sympathy and the American people deserve credit for finally waking up to what is going on. It's going to take more than one guy to fix this, though. I don't hold out a lot of hope. It is what it is now--we're headed for third world style living, and let's be honest--a large number of Americans are already living in third world squalor. It's not "heading" it's here.
When politicians keep their campaign promises, that is democracy working properly.
President Trump is keeping his campaign promises to reform lobbying[1], cracking down on illegal immigration[2], cracking down on ISIS[3], and he's making America no longer be the world's police officer[4].
> we're headed for third world style living, and let's be honest--a large number of Americans are already living in third world squalor.
What constitutes third world squalor? Not many Americans are starving, having to make do without indoor plumbing, or spending 12 hours per day collecting firewood.
I like the worker council idea. Though perhaps a more elegant solution would be to eliminate all corporate tax deductions and set the rate to a flat 20% while taxing co-ops at 5%. Over time, this would Incentivize the formation of co-ops over corporations and reduce the negative effects of having an economy controlled by large corporations.
It is interesting that no one with money believes that democracy is a credible way to run a business and yet people still believe it is a credible way to run a government.
Fun fact: the US Constitution has exactly ZERO uses of the word "democracy" in it.
There are numerous examples of cooperatives, businesses that are run democratically, which are successful. Sure, no one amasses huge piles of money that way, just like nobody in a (effective) democracy amasses huge amounts of power. But that's kind of the point. Saying nobody with money thinks democracy is a good way to run a business is like saying no dictators with power think democracy is a good idea. It's not a criticism of democracy/cooperatives, it's an obvious statement of the motivations of dictators/business leaders.
A bit off topic, but I think it speaks to the more general issues that voters (as employees) have little say in the laws which govern their workplaces.
The notion that America is currently a functioning Democracy is still a bit up in the air for me. Americans in general have little factual policy knowledge, and for the few issues that do get fairly well covered there is a strong politicization which verges on propaganda.
More to the point - many political arguments that we see today in the national press usually has the strong cashflow backing of a few elite pocketbooks. It is likely impossible to run an apolitical cause for the public good.
If not for overwhelming politicization, is there another reason why so many US voters are basically anemic to political causes (e.g. wages, education, vacation, medical) which (in general) they could easily vote into law - but don't?
Anyway, just my opinion.
Gilens and Page[1]:
>>>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Some rebuttles:
>>> Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time. The difference between the two is not statistically significant.[2]
>>> The researchers found the rich’s win rate for economic issues where there's disagreement is 57.1 percent, compared with 51.1 percent for social issues. There's a difference, but not a robust one. "The win rates for the two issue types are not statistically different from one another," Branham, Soroka, and Wlezien conclude.[2]
In a democracy, shouldn't the middle class get their preferred outcome far more often than the rich since their are far more of them? If the rich get their preferred outcome even just as frequently as the middle class do, they have way more power than they would in a pure democracy.
> In a democracy, shouldn't the middle class get their preferred outcome far more often than the rich since their are far more of them?
Even in theory in a democracy, outcomes are not democratically chosen, actions (at some level, which may merely be choice of representative) are; therefore, those who have more resources to devote to understanding the relationship between actions and outcomes, and to understanding other actors preferred outcomes to craft propaganda tying preferred actions to other actors preferred outcomes will tend to get their preferred outcomes more often than others.
I hate to get pedantic, but with the misuse of terms for the purpose of demagoguing against those with more capital, I feel compelled to point out that an employment relationship is wholly contractual, and therefore not a "tyranny", and perfectly consistent with a completely democratic society.
Maybe the author means "egalitarian" or some other concept tangentially related to democracy. Voluntarily formed hierarchies are perfectly consistent with a free and democratic society.
But points to the author on hitting people's emotional buttons with her victim/outrage politics.
Yeah, I don't understand the need to compare the structure of a business to the structure of a countries government in the first place.
Employment relationships are contractual, and completely voluntary. People need income to live, sure, but they are not forced to work for any one person or company to receive that income.
The working conditions mentioned in the article are insane, but you "vote" by choosing not to work for that company.
I also take issue with "Like Louis XIV’s government, the typical American workplace is kept private from those it governs." What world is the author living in where normal governments disclose 100% of the information they hold or receive?
Im not sure it is contractual when death is the alternative. It isn't like they can just walk to an empty piece of land and build a cabin and farm on it to live. Or wander the wilds foraging and hunting. Work, or the capital to purchase other people's work, is a requirement to live here. That is why I support stronger minimum wages and eliminating work 'benefits' in favor of paying that money directly to employees. If they want to buy into a company insurance plan, so be it, but it should be entirely optional and payed into out of their bank account, not drawn out before the employee even knows what it is worth. Companies are using benefits to hide employee's actual wages from them so it is harder to even value your own income and compare it to others or other companies.
Why can't it be contractual when death is the alternative? What if I agree to provide X in exchange for someone's kidney? That can't be contractual? Unless there is imminent threat of death, I can see a contract that is entered into by one of the parties in order to avoid death as meeting every condition of consent.
Eh I don't know if I would describe all employment contracts as completely voluntary. There are plenty of workers without the ability to change jobs easily. If you're broke, have kids, and have few skills, it's very hard to change careers.
No, and it's not even close to the same thing. Your argument is just as ridiculous as the original article.
People were literally considered pieces of property under chattel slavery. "Salary slavery" is nowhere near as horrific or demeaning as real slavery, and it's frankly an offensive comparison to make.
If you want to never work a job in your life, pan handle on the streets, live off your relatives, or become a recluse, you are completely free to do so. Nobody is holding a gun (or a whip) over you and demanding you work.
Here again though, I disagree with the assumption that those should be our only two choices. Why is democracy in government common sense but workplace democracy is just crazy talk?
I never said it was the same thing and I didn't make an argument.
If you think "true freedom" is the ability to choose between minimum wage servitude and a (substantially criminalized) panhandling lifestyle that doesn't say much for your conception of freedom.
That's only true of Public schools, Charter and Private schools give parents the ability to take their kids elsewhere if they are ill-served. Obviously children don't usually get a say, but they usually don't have a say in anything until they become adults.
Haven't read the article... but my response to you is that not every "contractual" agreement is voluntary. Think people working minimum wage jobs to feed their children, or children working in sweatshops in asia.
I get what you are saying... that it is a click bait title, but the fact remains that the late-stage capitalistic hierarchies that form are not totally unlike other labor systems (indentured servitude/slavery) that we have generally deemed as immoral.
How is a minimum wage job not optional? People stay in their minimum wage jobs because it is better than their other options, not because the company forces them too. Really, the company giving the person their minimum wage job is more 'moral' than the other companies in the area, because the other companies offered an even worse job, or didn't offer one at all.
I mean, I guess giving up and letting your family or yourself starve is an option.
For a lot of folks in low wage positions, the mere act of looking for an alternative puts their current wages in jeopardy. Their employer may decide they're now disloyal and sack them. They bring home less money because they have to spend unpaid time searching for a new gig -- they'd do it outside of work hours, but at some point you have to sleep and feed the kids, right?
Yea, so the company provides a significant benefit, because without them the person would starve. I don't see why any of that is the companies problem, should they pay people more money just to be nice? The governments job is to ensure that regulations allow people to switch jobs without putting their family in jeopardy by having unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc, not the companies job.
>Yea, so the company provides a significant benefit, because without them the person would starve. I don't see why any of that is the companies problem, should they pay people more money just to be nice
>How is a minimum wage job not optional? People stay in their minimum wage jobs because it is better than their other options, not because the company forces them too.
Because by optional we mean a totally free choice -- not merely the necessity to chose among N available options (lest you starve).
There are degrees in freedom (a rich person doesn't have to work at all if they don't feel like it), but when you're scouting for minimum wage jobs, you're at the lowest of those degrees.
You're confusing freedom in the figurative sense, which denotes empowerment, with freedom in the literal sense, which is a state of living where one is not deprived by anyone else of their right to their person or property through force.
The solutions you propose would limit freedom in the literal sense, through taxation of private property and regulatory prohibitions on mutually voluntary interactions.
>You're confusing freedom in the figurative sense, which denotes empowerment, with freedom in the literal sense, which is a state of living where one is not deprived by anyone else of their right to their person or property through force.
This is absolutely not a case of "figurative freedom" vs "literal freedom" -- there's a large body on work on the issue, and the most used terms for those two types of freedom are "negative freedom" (for what you call "literal freedom") and "positive freedom" (for what you call "freedom in the figurative sense"). You might also find them referenced by the simplified terms "freedom from" and "freedom to". In any case, it's very limiting to consider "negative freedom" (the most limited form) as THE "literal" freedom.
I would still argue that hanger is a force, and being obliged to work for food (even if you have a choice of employment options) is not being free in the "literal sense" (you are not "free from hunger") and even less so if your choice is (because of your "market value" or lack of skills, or being unfortunate to be born in a family that couldn't invest in your education) between awful minimum wage jobs.
Just because what compels you is not an actual master/person, but the collective arrangement we call a "job market", and just because you have a choice, doesn't mean you're free or that you enter those contracts without an external force leading your hand.
>The solutions you propose would limit freedom in the literal sense, through taxation of private property and regulatory prohibitions on mutually voluntary interactions.
Voluntary is a spectrum: my solutions will only harm the much-less voluntary types of interactions. Sort of like preventing the poor from selling their kidneys for money -- it's indeed a regulatory prohibition, and they could make a good buck off of it if they were allowed, but I also believe its better to not allow it until it becomes a positive freedom choice and not "what could I do, I had to pay the bills or I'd lose my house" kind of "voluntary" choice.
I agree the issue is complex, and I wish there was more balanced discussion throughout. You can not simply ignore the control large corporations have throughout society just because it is not the "monopoly of violence" that a civil government has.
We need to think about these problems in context of time, and the decisions made over time. A stork does not drop a baby off at your door, and a company does not accumulate/generate wealth overnight (although, companies are turning over more rapidly recently). We need to make sure the correct incentives/systems are in place to ensure healthy, decentralized, competition.
This is my disagreement with the article as well. I agree with the author that Amazon Fulfillment should need to give employees adequate breaks, but I don't agree that the rules make Amazon a government: they don't have law enforcement, a court system, the power to make laws, an army, etc.
At least a majority of these are necessary to be considered a government.
Tyranny is not black and white. Just because this is not North Korea does not mean that we are free, and just because a relationship is contractual does not mean it's fair. There are fantastic, gigantic power imbalances in this country, and this is one of them- and if people point out a moral problem it does not mean they are playing the victim, whining, or hitting emotional buttons. You can justify sharecropping with the argument you just made. Not only that but you just gave any government the right to impose any restriction on its citizens so long as they are able to leave- that's totally absurd.
Probably because also "democracy in government" is also BS, but harmless (people get to chose between two same-ish parties, with most options that affect the majority of them being the same, and some token items where they differ so that each can catch the appropriate demographic).
If that wasn't the case, a country could potentially change hugely from government to government, but most of what they do is small stuff, and all converge towards the benefits of corporations and mega-interests.
That's true, but if we had daily, practical experience with democracy on a day to day basis- then maybe on a large scale our system would become less dysfunctional. Hey, I can dream :)