[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.)

[Jabanga]

Do you mean every company should be a worker owned coop? If that's your suggestion, that's already possible. Why not continue giving people the option of working in a traditional hierarchical enterprise, and working in a coop? Why make the latter mandatory?

[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.

[Jabanga]

Worker-owned coops exist. No one is stopping people from forming them. By all means, help develop these organisations. But the government shouldn't be stepping in and prohibiting other voluntary organisational structures.

[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.

[Jabanga]

Being dependent on someone to survive is not antithetical to freedom. What distinguishes a free society from an unfree one is that in the former, no one violates your right to your person or property, through theft, fraud, violence and threats of violence, as long as you do not violate other people's equal right to the same.

Laws prohibiting private enterprise, or mandating that individuals pay a tax on their private income, limit a person's freedom, as they involve a threat to their person, in a situation where they have not violated any other party's rights.

Freedom does not mean economic security. It does not mean empowerment. These are independent attributes.