[Jabanga]

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.

[nxsynonym]

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?

[AngryData]

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.

[Jabanga]

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.

[namlem]

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.

[nxsynonym]

Difficult to change yes, but you are not obligated or physically forced to stay with any one country.

If it were a true dictatorship, as the article claims, you would have no say in where you apply, what you accept, when you decide to leave, etc.

[crdoconnor]

>completely voluntary. People need income to live, sure, but they are not forced to work for any one person

Would chattel slavery be voluntary too if the slaves had a degree of choice over which master used them?

[nxsynonym]

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.

[fallingfrog]

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?

[nxsynonym]

I don't think I am following.

What would democracy, at its purest form, in a work place look like?

Would employees have voters rights over every single decision that would be made? That seems inefficient.

I don't think applying democracy to a workplace is crazy, I just don't understand why it's necessary.

[dragonwriter]

> What would democracy, at its purest form, in a work place look like?

Exactly like corporate governance, except that instead of stockholders with voting rights weighted by size and class of their stockholdings, the people voting on the basic rules which govern the degree and manner in which routine authority is delegated to elected directors, officers, etc., are the employees each having an equal vote.

> Would employees have voters rights over every single decision that would be made?

On a fundamental level, yes but they'd probably in practice delegate much routine authority to elected representatives who would serve like a board of directors and who would in turn likely be given, and exercise, the right to delegate some of that authority to particular individual employees (directly to officers, who then delegate to subordinate managers, etc.)

[jhbadger]

Citizens don't have rights over every single decision in a democracy either. They elect representatives. Worker democracy could work similarly. As for why it is "necessary", presumably it would guide decisions so that the needs of the workers were taken into account, which very often doesn't happen.

[crdoconnor]

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.

[nxsynonym]

If you're not making an argument then why even mention it?

True freedom is living in a society that provides the necessities for every individual, or living in a completely lawless non-society.

What is it that you are getting at, exactly? Or are you just posting to being argumentative (without making an argument).

[crdoconnor]

To determine if you really thought that not being able to choose your master was the distinguishing feature of slavery as you previously claimed.

Apparently you didn't really think that.

My point was that there's no stark dividing line between freedom and slavery and that wage slavery does indeed share many of the same features as chattel slavery.

[jinjin2]

A better example would be schools, which are definitely run as tyrannies, and where the students are legally compelled to stay in place.

Democratic schools do exist, but they are few and far in between.

[valuearb]

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.

[cphoover]

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.

[GhostVII]

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.

[subway]

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?

[GhostVII]

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.

[coldtea]

>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

Yes.

[Jabanga]

You want to compel people to be nice, by force of government?

[coldtea]

>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.

[Jabanga]

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.

[coldtea]

>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.

[Jabanga]

>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").

This is a much less utilized conceptual framework for freedom than the one that equates freedom with what you call 'freedom from'.

In the social science conception of freedom, no one in practice can be absolutely free, and we are simply bargaining over how much freedom each person gets. It's very much an 'ends justifies the means' morality, which can justify forcibly seizing one party's wealth/income, in order to establish what is deemed to be a more just distribution of wealth that maximizes 'freedom' for society as a whole.

I find this to be an amoral sort of morality, as all 'ends justifying the means' moralities are.

>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 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.

Your argument brings to mind Bastiat's commentary on government [1]:

Man recoils from trouble - from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, &c. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppression should be detested and resisted - it can hardly be called absurd.

Slavery is disappearing, thank heaven! and, on the other hand, our disposition to defend our property prevents direct and open plunder from being easy.

One thing, however, remains - it is the original inclination which exists in all men to divide the lot of life into two parts, throwing the trouble upon others, and keeping the satisfaction for themselves. It remains to be shown under what new form this sad tendency is manifesting itself.

The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. No, our conscience has become too sensitive for that. The tyrant and his victim are still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government — that is, the Law itself. What can be better calculated to silence our scruples, and, which is perhaps better appreciated, to overcome all resistance? We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it, “I am dissatisfied at the proportion between my labor and my enjoyments. I should like, for the sake of restoring the desired equilibrium, to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could not you facilitate the thing for me? Could you not find me a good place? or check the industry of my competitors? or, perhaps, lend me gratuitously some capital which, you may take from its possessor? Could you not bring up my children at the public expense? or grant me some prizes? or secure me a competence when I have attained my fiftieth year? By this mean I shall gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace!”

As it is certain, on the one hand, that we are all making some similar request to the Government; and as, on the other, it is proved that Government cannot satisfy one party without adding to the labor of the others, until I can obtain another definition of the word Government I feel authorized to give it my own. Who knows but it may obtain the prize? Here it is:

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

For now, as formerly, every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to profess such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself; and then what is done? A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes to it, and says, "You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake." Alas! Government is only too much disposed to follow this diabolical advice, for it is composed of ministers and officials - of men, in short, who, like all other men, desire in their hearts, and always seize every opportunity with eagerness, to increase their wealth and influence. Government is not slow to perceive the advantages it may derive from the part which is entrusted to it by the public. It is glad to be the judge and the master of the destinies of all; it will take much, for then a large share will remain for itself; it will multiply the number of its agents; it will enlarge the circle of its privileges; it will end by appropriating a ruinous proportion.

>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.

It's only less voluntary to your eyes. Not to the person who values $100,000 more than their kidney. You are wrong to believe that you are doing the poor any favours by limiting what options are available to them.

Without society having an ironclad commitment to personal autonomy, powerful factions will use your justification for regulatory prohibitions on voluntary interactions to create a vast regulatory morass that greatly excludes the poor from participating fully in the economy, and in doing so, exacerbates income inequality, and this is exactly what we see today [2].

In other words, the indirect costs of abandoning the principle of absolute personal autonomy are steep. Society can only collectively manage simple and unambiguous principles, like "people should have a right to engage in any voluntary interaction they wish". Any principle more complex than that, like "people should be free to engage in any voluntary interactions they wish, unless that voluntary interaction is deemed less-than-fully voluntary according to some vague set of criteria" is rife for abuse.

[1] http://bastiat.org/en/government.html

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why-t...

[aaronhoffman]

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.

[trendia]

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.

[ctulek]

If the government backs your inhuman activities, you practically have all these institutions at your disposal.

[fallingfrog]

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.

[fallingfrog]

Besides, why is it that democracy in government is common sense but workplace democracy is just crazy talk?

[coldtea]

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.

[fallingfrog]

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 :)