Re:SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter
by dangus on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:55PM
(#31771474)
I think you're missing the wider point.
The point is that employer-employee relationships are inherently imbalanced. A corporation has far more freedom to make choices like that than their employees.
No, you can't just "get another job" if all the companies are abusing employees in the same way.
The fact that corporations are set as mini-dictatorships never made sense to me. Everyone's at the mercy of the whims of the CEO.
Karl Marx said that workers should own the means of production, and this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. In capitalism, shareholders have more power over the company than those doing the day-to-day work who know the business, and those shareholders could easily tell Musk to tone it down if they wanted to – and Musk would listen.
The employees could never sway him. "Take it or leave it," which really just means "go work for the other asshole."
I think it wouldn't be such a bad thing if corporations had mandatory employee democracy on certain workplace issues. I think the ownership class has too much power over the individual. Just because you own assets shouldn't mean you get to play games with people's livelihoods.
The point is that employer-employee relationships are inherently imbalanced. A corporation has far more freedom to make choices like that than their employees.
No, you can't just "get another job" if all the companies are abusing employees in the same way.
The fact that corporations are set as mini-dictatorships never made sense to me. Everyone's at the mercy of the whims of the CEO.
Karl Marx said that workers should own the means of production, and this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. In capitalism, shareholders have more power over the company than those doing the day-to-day work who know the business, and those shareholders could easily tell Musk to tone it down if they wanted to – and Musk would listen.
The employees could never sway him. "Take it or leave it," which really just means "go work for the other asshole."
I think it wouldn't be such a bad thing if corporations had mandatory employee democracy on certain workplace issues. I think the ownership class has too much power over the individual. Just because you own assets shouldn't mean you get to play games with people's livelihoods.