I wish HNers would get their heads out of their tech arses and face the reality. Most people do _not_ have a choice where they work. Most people cannot afford to quit. Most people don't have jobs where they can increase their skillsets. Most people do not have time to read HN while they enjoy their 10 AM pause in their comfy sofa while working from home. You are, for the most part, amongst the most privileged people in the world. Yet you continue to spew the "employment is voluntary" propanganda because you never had to face actual hardships. Worse, you push people of lower classes even further in the ground, when what you should be doing is elevating them to make a better and fairer society.
Urbanization fundamentally has been engineered to create "wage slaves", who are basically modern sharecroppers (though the system has some extra steps).
Suppose someone was born out in the forest, and there were no cities, no societies, no technology. Would you call that person a sustenance slave? Would you say that their foraging was involuntary?
> Suppose someone was born out in the forest, and there were no cities, no societies, no technology. Would you call that person a sustenance slave? Would you say that their foraging was involuntary?
No, they are not a slave because they have no master except nature.
A wage slave has at least one master: his boss and the system that forces him to work for one.
The difference lies in the fundamental difference between natural law and synthetic human systems. Entropy isn't your master, it's a fact of your own existence.
By contrast, the present economic system is a synthetic construct made by other humans to exploit you, designed with largely that purpose, co-opting your biological needs for coercive power, and doesn't necessarily need to happen.
That's what makes one slavery and the other not.
The difference is so obvious, I actually am confused why you think conflating physics with political norms was appropriate.
Most of society (and the wage slave concept) is about human farming.
would you say you are a farmer or livestock?
That's right, and it's a shame it's been downvoted.
Being employed at a particular organization is, in fact, voluntary. You are not obligated to stay at one employer forever.
Don't say "no one".
Productivity keeps rising. It becomes possible to support non-workers with a smaller and smaller fraction of that. And thorough safety nets help non-lazy people too. They even help people create their own businesses!
I do my job because I love it. I do my job for you because you pay me more than the next guy.
I enter into employment agreements knowing full well that it's a business transaction. The business and I have agreed to an amount of money (and other benefits) in exchange for my labor.
It's not about the American dream. It's not about "slave labor". It's about you give me money for services I provide. When either of us decides that deal isn't advantageous for us anymore, then we end that agreement.
Stop being edgy.
I think most of HN is in the "baronet" class (say, 2-3x of median income) or higher, and doesn't necessarily have a good perspective on what most people (ie, those at or below median income) deal with.
Per capita income has flatlined for a decade (since 2008), after 60 years of steady growth. But that largely doesn't impact programmers, entrepreneurs, etc. Instead, it impacts the people on the bottom.
Just because the present system works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone.
It was always good to be king.
So, overall, it looks more like a form of economic slavery than some cooperative, voluntary, win-win system. A good hint is that most of the wealth has moved into few hands who usually didn't work their way up into it from the bottom like the people producing it. The people producing it didn't want that arrangement either. They have no control, though, since the elites outspend all of them combined on politicians passing these laws, media shaping perspectives, and public education limiting their intellectual growth while simultaneously reinforcing submission to authority (esp arbitrary requirements) daily for 12+ years. Most of America is born into a new form of slavery that few ever escape.
"[the illusion of]"Democracy", "Organized religions", "history of our society", esp. the last 300 years or so", 3 of the most profitable lies in todays day and age. Its wrong to say that this "happens to be happening because A, B .. Z", this is "works-as-designed". A world viewed from the top has no nations, only powerful blood-lines, it has not morals only self interest, it has no humanity only contempt of the "human animals" they have inherited and extended control over. It's them, a new species, and us, the soon-to-be transformed, stripped of everything that could challenge them, rest of the world.
I suspect that, for many, if not most of us, the loss of the ability to earn income would be an unspeakably grave event. This puts to the lie that we have any real choice about employment, assuming we are one of the vast majority of people who is not financially independent.
Incorrect. Throughout history there has been many societies where people would legally sell themselves into slavery (e.g. to pay a debt, under threat of being imprisoned) and even receive a meager salary.
Yet it's still slavery; you can look up the definition in a dictionary.
No one has the perfect job, everyone thinks they should make more, have more benefits, more freedom. But everyone has choices. You don't have to participate in the rat race, you can stop letting material possessions drive your lifestyle decisions.
The choices that are available, however, have an extreme variance from person to person. At the extremely shitty end, Viktor Frankl, while a captive of a Nazi death camp, worked out that when all other choices are taken from a person, the only remaining one is to die with dignity.
But it's a choice, right?
At the other end of the spectrum, choices may include where to vacation this winter or if the maid should be fired.
The bottom line is that the quality and quantity of choices vary so much, depending on luck and pluck, that it's a bit glib to say "everyone has choices", including, I guess, the choice between working a crappy, abusive, mean job or two to make ends meet, or starve.
I don't think everyone has the luxury to philosophize about giving up material possessions and exiting the rat race, either. A lot of people are living from paycheck to paycheck (or worse), have dependents, and don't have the prospects to find a new job. Those people can't afford to say "no" to their boss' unreasonable demands.
I said you didn't have to participate in the rat race.
For most of human history, choosing not to work for 3 months meant starvation and death. Hunter-gatherers had to work.
My brother is 50 years old and has delivered pizzas for about the last 20 years. He only works enough to afford to rent a room, own a car, and pay for an annual ski pass, and skiing/volleyball gear. He spends his free time on the mountain and the lake.
He obviously doesn't own many material possessions and his retirement isn't going to be pretty. But that choice was his, he had opportunities to work corporate and make far more money, own more stuff, and maybe raise a family, but he chose to have more freedom and the lifestyle he preferred.