Going to jail for your beliefs or standing up to cops with dogs and fire hoses—-those make otherwise indifferent people stop and think.
The fact that “stay and change things from the inside” is maximally convenient for soi disant activists doesn’t strike many of us as a coincidence.
Employees are literally in place to do one thing: trade time/energy for money in service of the companies goals.
"Why should peasants have any voting power? It is not their country. If they want a say in how it is run they can leave or figure out how to buy into the country as a feudal lord.
Peasants are literally in place to do one thing: trade time/energy for money in service of the King's goals."
Revolting from your company is called quitting. So go ahead and revolt if you want.
If believing that both companies and workers should have the freedom to set their own terms for how they want to operate within the bounds of the law is authoritarianism then I will proudly take the label although of course, this is directly inverting the definition of authoritarianism.
Indeed. Both can be run either a democratic or authoritarian fashion. "Ownership should mean absolute power" is a common belief (everywhere but particularly in the US where labor rights have never been strong), but is only one option, and more democratic forms are possible.
> Peasants don't optionally sign contracts to belong to their nation.
Thinking that employers "belong" to the companies they work for is quite strange language. But more to the point, employees don't "optionally" sign employment contracts - most people are forced to work to pay the bills - in other words, they are coerced into signing the contract. Most people hate their jobs and would rather not do them.
I don’t think the “coercion” perspective is the most convincing argument, personally: but there really isn’t much of an alternative to employment. The fact that the US has starving children speaks to how little of a social safety net we actually have.
I guess while I wouldn’t personally use “coercion” in a debate about this stuff, it’s also somewhat of a reasonable argument when you consider the alternatives. It’s just very ... meta.
"Do the bidding of an employer or be forcibly denied food and shelter" sure sounds like coercion to me.
No, they couldn't. Feudal peasants (i.e. serfs) were tied to the land and were NOT free to leave. In general, their lords controlled every aspect of their lives, including who they were permitted to marry.
Being a serf wasn't quite as bad as being a slave (for instance, serfs generally couldn't be sold away from their families, as they were attached to the land), but it was pretty damned bad nonetheless.
At any rate, drawing a comparison between a feudal serf, owned from birth and tied to the land, and a software engineer who could likely have a new job by the end of the day (particularly coming from a high-profile shop like Basecamp) seems rather disingenuous.
Why shouldn't they? Companies make many decisions that are not central to their business -- what snacks to provide, where to hold the company holiday party, etc.
Yes, you can claim the above somehow tie into the core business. If so, then I also get to make the connection. I'll argue that (e.g.) supporting Black Lives Matter is a net positive to the company.
Take Away: I suggest we dismiss the notion that companies should not take positions on various issues.
One may debate the wisdom of companies taking various stances, but I think it is quite ridiculous to claim that companies do not have the freedom to take various stances.
They aren't legally owed them though. So if the company doesn't want to give them that say, then they don't get that say.
Germans voted for a specific right. American's do the same all the time. Germans still do not have some blanket right for every worker to control company policy.
Or what is legal. So many people don't assert their rights because some random piece of paper (or online form) told them they can't, when it would be completely unenforceable in a local court.
EDIT: I see this is being downvoted. It's a genuine good faith question, and if you've downvoted, I'd love to know what you see as unconstructive about this comment. I'm sure the HN community would not be so petty as to downvote it out of pure ideology.