|
I don't think there's really any reason not to have all businesses be required to be run in, at least, a representational democratic manner (i.e. employees can either elect or vote to remove managers). While it's not hard to come up with potential problems with this, I think they're greatly overshadowed by the plethora of problems with the current undemocratic way most workplaces are run. Personally, I've just interned under a financial adviser, interned at a national laboratory, and then spent all my post-college years working at a public state university as a low-paid programmer (specifically my wages started at 14.50/hr and gradually increased to the current 17.80/hr). I consider my job to be an immensely privileged situation (which is kind of objectively true, since I make over median wage for a 32 year old), and constantly feel thankful that I'm not stuck in the retail hell that some of my friends are in (even if I might not be making six figures like some of the people I knew from college).
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2018 00:22
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 13:03 |
|
|
glowing-fish posted:I worked in a non-profit that was a consensus-based cooperative. It worked pretty well when it was under about 12 employees. At a certain point, the consensus model became too unwieldy and the non-profit transferred to being a more conventionally run organization, with an executive director etcetera. I certainly think they should have thought more before ending the experiment. There is no need for a consensus model. You can also just give employees the power to remove/replace leadership; they don't need to be involved in all decision-making. For example, the board of directors could just be elected by a company's workers (for probably the least directly democratic version of this). Edit: Basically, as I mentioned, there are obviously some new problems it causes and it doesn't solve all problems, but its undeniably preferable to the status quo (as opposed to owners/private shareholders, who certainly aren't inherently wiser and better at decision-making). Think of it this way - in a reasonable world, democratic workplaces would be the default, and the burden should be on others to prove that removing employee representation is necessary. I am not remotely convinced that shareholders/private owners are not only better, but so much better it justifies disenfranchising employees. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Aug 26, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2018 09:02
|
|
|
roomforthetuna posted:I'm not sure electing leadership is significantly better - that's how you end up with the American Politics model, where leadership consistently lies to the voters about what it's going to do, then scrapes out as much grift as they can while in power, and hey let's also introduce some sort of weird constraints on who can run for the position to guarantee it's never someone who actually wants to improve conditions for employees. Oh, it absolutely doesn't come close to solving all problems; it's just definitely better than the alternative of "workers having basically zero control over their superiors." It at least gives workers some direct recourse if the company's leaders are terrible and treat them poorly. Obviously you also need strong regulation, but it's just part of the solution to move power from private owners/shareholders to workers.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2018 03:20
|
|
|
Cicero, you are ignoring the perspective of the economy as a whole. It is impossible for most workers to do the 10-20% of jobs that pay anywhere near as high as the Google job you describe, because most of the jobs required for society to function do not afford their employees much/any negotiating power. Basically, to be frank, the well-being of the minority in the labor aristocracy is irrelevant when considering the overall effectiveness of an economic system at providing for its participants. Most people will never have the choice of entering the professional upper-middle class as you have. Edit: Put another way, you're creating a false dichotomy that assumes good pay is mutually exclusive with better worker representation, as well as ignoring the fact that good pay is not characteristic of our economic system for most people. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 28, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2018 00:14
|
|
|
Cicero posted:You misunderstand. In that comment I was just talking about individual decisions given the economic context we currently live in, not what would be preferable for society. It was more of a philosophical question: is it better to not be exploited for the fruits of your labor, even when being exploited would mean actually getting more "fruits"? I don't think it is strange for someone to interpret a post referencing a real-world anecdote where someone has a good job despite exploitation (followed by talking about the possibility of being people exploited having better jobs) as implying that good jobs are somewhat a result of (or dependent on) exploitation. In the real world, most people do not benefit from being exploited, so it's a pointless hypothetical to bring up. glowing-fish posted:So for me, what matters to me first is my experiences, rather than the theoretical question of whether someone somewhere might be getting money that in a just world they shouldn't. I would have preferred being paid 25 cents an hour, having that money go into some "capitalists" bank account, if it meant I wasn't going through a week where my face felt like styrofoam because I was so depressed and felt so trapped. This logic doesn't make any sense, since "how much a person is being paid" is a completely separate thing from whether their workplace is unpleasant in other ways. There is nothing about being paid less that somehow causes the work itself will be more pleasant, and the fact that higher paid work can also be more unpleasant is not in any way an argument against requiring that it be higher paid. wateroverfire posted:The part of your labor product you aren't paid is the rent you pay to the rest of your organization to help keep it operational, and for allowing you to use it to make money. It's awfully convenient that your same logic could be used to justify virtually any exploitative situation short of outright slavery. I mean seriously, just think about it for a second. Imagine that a business is actually unjustly profiting from the labor of its employees (something that you seem to think is fictional, but bear with me). Your exact same argument could be used to defend the business in that situation. Of course, we don't really need such an abstract argument, since we know for a fact that wealth inequality has skyrocketed while more workers' wealth/income has stayed stagnant (which very directly shows that the upper class is benefiting from the labor of the working class). glowing-fish posted:---an adult, who has actually had a job, rather than someone who has read wikipedia articles on economic theories. It seems like the reality is actually the opposite of the stereotype you're working with here (in the sense that, at least on these forums, the people who make statements like this are usually far more well off than those they're attacking).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2018 18:06
|
|