Independence Day
[a draft]
The market for labor is not free. In an ideal Smithian world one would sell their labor to the bidder offering the best deal for it, and do so until someone offered a better deal. Unfortunately, the process doesn’t work with Smithian efficiency. In fact, the market for labor is horribly inefficient – almost opaque.
No one should ask you who your employer is. You should not have one. There is no need for citizens to be defined by a single arrangement made under duress with a lack of good information. There is a contradictory assumption of employment-at-will lack of control and the overwhelming necessity of having a name to put in the blank for every form you fill out. i.e. the only control you have is to give up the ability to be healed when sick, compound your savings, find new housing, or even get a call from your dentist. The actual terms of employment are rarely published, often arbitrarily changed, and not negotiated – shouldn’t there be a two-way discussion required before changing the terms of the deal? This kind of arrangement leads too often to a vicious cycle of management exercising arbitrary power and labor, realizing that their best interests are not involved, undermining management, which then makes even more draconian policy changes, and so on into disaster. This, I think, is a large part of what Uncle Karl meant by alienation of labor; when the only stake someone has in the arrangement is a paycheck, they’ll not help in the process of one that exploits them, i.e. when work harms rather than helps, it loses its intrinsic value and becomes something negative. (This, perhaps, the reason that lower income inexplicably correlates to worse health?) Could anyone really expect loyalty or innovation if it would only serve to line the pockets of someone that treats them like the enemy?
The European model tries to address the abuses of opacity, but puts in place a system of capital barriers that make any alternate arrangement more difficult. If you can’t terminate an agreement, you can’t even enter into it unless you have sufficient resources to cover all foreseeable situations. While preventing nasty things by management, it also makes the pool of capital required to become management larger and larger, concentrating things further. How, I wonder, does one work as a freelancer? At least they seem to have the healthcare problem worked out (or at least portable) but the choices of places to go with this portability are fewer and fewer.
Solutions:
1) Clearer, more equitable agreements with true informed consent.
2) True mutual benefit arrangements (which can be very simple) that align everyone’s interests together and eliminate perverse incentives.
3) Shifting decision-making power back from the large entity to the individual (or maybe the government, if absolutely necessary.)
4) Reducing or destroying all capital and regulatory barriers to alternate arrangements. (That make them real alternatives, not a reclassification in name only.)
The market for labor is not free. In an ideal Smithian world one would sell their labor to the bidder offering the best deal for it, and do so until someone offered a better deal. Unfortunately, the process doesn’t work with Smithian efficiency. In fact, the market for labor is horribly inefficient – almost opaque.
No one should ask you who your employer is. You should not have one. There is no need for citizens to be defined by a single arrangement made under duress with a lack of good information. There is a contradictory assumption of employment-at-will lack of control and the overwhelming necessity of having a name to put in the blank for every form you fill out. i.e. the only control you have is to give up the ability to be healed when sick, compound your savings, find new housing, or even get a call from your dentist. The actual terms of employment are rarely published, often arbitrarily changed, and not negotiated – shouldn’t there be a two-way discussion required before changing the terms of the deal? This kind of arrangement leads too often to a vicious cycle of management exercising arbitrary power and labor, realizing that their best interests are not involved, undermining management, which then makes even more draconian policy changes, and so on into disaster. This, I think, is a large part of what Uncle Karl meant by alienation of labor; when the only stake someone has in the arrangement is a paycheck, they’ll not help in the process of one that exploits them, i.e. when work harms rather than helps, it loses its intrinsic value and becomes something negative. (This, perhaps, the reason that lower income inexplicably correlates to worse health?) Could anyone really expect loyalty or innovation if it would only serve to line the pockets of someone that treats them like the enemy?
The European model tries to address the abuses of opacity, but puts in place a system of capital barriers that make any alternate arrangement more difficult. If you can’t terminate an agreement, you can’t even enter into it unless you have sufficient resources to cover all foreseeable situations. While preventing nasty things by management, it also makes the pool of capital required to become management larger and larger, concentrating things further. How, I wonder, does one work as a freelancer? At least they seem to have the healthcare problem worked out (or at least portable) but the choices of places to go with this portability are fewer and fewer.
Solutions:
1) Clearer, more equitable agreements with true informed consent.
2) True mutual benefit arrangements (which can be very simple) that align everyone’s interests together and eliminate perverse incentives.
3) Shifting decision-making power back from the large entity to the individual (or maybe the government, if absolutely necessary.)
4) Reducing or destroying all capital and regulatory barriers to alternate arrangements. (That make them real alternatives, not a reclassification in name only.)
posted by KP | 4.7.06
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