| > If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first. Should this be that far-fetched though? That employees might not be simple thralls of the capitalist, whose agency extends only as far as his master permits? It reminds me of something I'd read that one of the reasons modern capitalism is so borked is because the founding fathers weren't conceiving of things like "Amazon" existing, where one entity employs a staggeringly large number of employees. Or that a small number of companies would employ such a large percentage of workers. Their worldview was that where most people were "self-employed" - and if they weren't, employers were small and had a few or tens of employees at most. Or it was a matter of master and apprentices where both groups were investing heavily in each other in a trade and in the running of a shop. So, while yes our current system finds it a matter of course that employees are utterly subject to the whims of their employer and the legal and economic system fully supports them in this, does it have to be that way? (I know you can go be a contractor, but good luck with health insurance and etc etc etc all the other things that being yoked to an employer brings that I wish were just public taxpayer-funded services). |
I'm not quite sure I buy that argument. They lived in the time of the East India Company, which owned something like 50% of the world's trade at the time and ruled several nations.